This past weekend in between getting gear sorted (ie: sun cream and surf trunks) I took the trip down to Te Anau to watch and support friends who were competing in a classic adventure race. The Kepler Challenge is a fantastic event that I participated in last year – it’s a 60km mountain run in the wilds of Fjordland National Park. With over a 1km of altitude gain in the first half alone it’s not one to underestimate! Great fun was had by all – even those who ran the 60kms!
It was great to see young and old ‘competing’ in a race that 99% of the athletes are there for the awesome experience and not the victory. A couple of things to keep in mind for a bit of perspective – the winning time was a shade under 5hrs (most hikers take 3 or 4 DAYS to walk the track) and there was a competitor who has competed every year for the past 20 years!
Congrats to Christian for a stellar 18th place finish, Alice, with a 1hr30 min improvement on her PB to come a very enviable 8th place, and Mark for his great effort on the Luxmore Grunt – well done guys!
I’ll be out there next year – it was too hard watching all of the fun and not getting the chance to be out there amongst it too!
I better ‘RUN’
~Scott
Ps. This is a photo of the mayhem at the start – with 450 runners competing to get through the bottleneck at the start of the trail.
It was great to see young and old ‘competing’ in a race that 99% of the athletes are there for the awesome experience and not the victory. A couple of things to keep in mind for a bit of perspective – the winning time was a shade under 5hrs (most hikers take 3 or 4 DAYS to walk the track) and there was a competitor who has competed every year for the past 20 years!
Congrats to Christian for a stellar 18th place finish, Alice, with a 1hr30 min improvement on her PB to come a very enviable 8th place, and Mark for his great effort on the Luxmore Grunt – well done guys!
I’ll be out there next year – it was too hard watching all of the fun and not getting the chance to be out there amongst it too!
I better ‘RUN’
~Scott
Ps. This is a photo of the mayhem at the start – with 450 runners competing to get through the bottleneck at the start of the trail.
for more info on the race check out: http://www.keplerchallenge.co.nz/
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