Taking on one of New Zealand's great sporting events
The tent fly slaps with a breeze which carries the salty tang of nervous tension, and the sea.
The salt is carried from nearby Kumara beach - an achingly beautiful run of coastline - and the nerves bubble like hot goulash in the stomachs of several thousand humans occupying a tent city spread across the Kumara race course.
It’s the very early morning start of the Kathmandu Coast to Coast, an event which enjoys a mythical, mystical place amongst New Zealand sporting events.
No matter how much you want to push your face back into the folded up hoodie which serves as a pillow, it’s time to get up and get going; after all, the mainland won’t cross itself, there’s work to be done.
For the first time, Sport Southland has entered a team in the two-day Corporate teams event. Our three-person team will bike, run and kayak across the South Island from near the West Coast hamlet of Kumara to Christchurch’s New Brighton.
We are here thanks to an invite from Sport Canterbury, and there’s an element of provincial rivalry, but both teams would actually spend the weekend aiding and supporting each other.
What this was really about was an opportunity to take a risk. ‘Step outside your comfort zone’ is a hackneyed phrase, but it feels newly minted in the context of the Coast to Coast.
Because there’s nothing comfortable about this event. The heat is sapping (goodness knows what it would be like to race the Coast to Coast in the rain), the mountains are untamed, the water has cold claws, the dry riverbeds resemble giant hammered marbles, and the braided flows lure kayakers in like the Sirens, and end in dispiriting cul-de-sacs.
Photo: Sport Southland chief executive Brendon McDermott takes on the Kathmandu Coast to Coast mountain run. Pic: Marathon-Photos.com
Our runner is actually a cyclist, and to prove the point he pulled a calf in the lead up to the event. Even 3km after starting he wasn’t sure whether he would be able to run, walk or even stumble the full 32km distance.
Our cyclist hadn’t done a competitive cycling event since high school. Our kayaker got in a boat for the first time last October.
As an organisation we do a lot of work to understand the barriers to being active, but sometimes it’s important to experience it on a practical level. There will be many insights gained over the next two days.
The start of the Coast to Coast is a 55km bike which actually begins on foot, about 2km up from the beach to the transition area close to the racecourse. Logistics mean we have to drop Lauren at the transition with all the other participants, and so she makes her way in the dark to the start line - alone, but part of a tribe.
Photo: Sport Southland team member Lauren Richardson. Pic: Marathon-Photos.com
Setting the tone for the weekend, Lauren buries herself on the ride and drops exhausted but satisfied into a camp chair at the Aickens transition, handing her bib and transponder onto Brendon for the run over Goats Pass to Klondyke Corner.
Brendon’s been agonising over this run for weeks. A summer’s worth of careful preparation has been put in jeopardy by a small, hard lump in his right calf. We don’t know what’s going to happen and we don’t really know what to say. The early signs aren’t great - the first checkpoint information suggests he has had to walk the early part of the stage. It looks like our Sport Canterbury colleague has caught and passed him despite starting some 20 minutes behind. But every successive checkpoint provides more positive news. Under a blazing sun he lopes across the Klondyke Corner finish line and day one is in the books.
Camping out that night, the sky is a gift. A vast dark ceiling is unfurled and this event, as hard and as consuming as it is, has its context. As the Bard told us, we are all small players on a very large stage. A warm breeze runs over muscles knotted like knuckles. Day two awaits.
Our mahi starts at 4am. Camp needs to be cleared within the hour, and again we leave Lauren behind to contemplate a hard and fast 15km bike to the kayak transition. She blasts her way through and meets Brendon, who runs the bib down a steep 1.6km gravel road to the river, arriving to greet our kayaker with airways which have narrowed to a point like those hard stars from the night before.
Tessa sets off into the unknown. Coast to Coast kayakers have to pass a qualification to be allowed to race, but today’s test has so many questions and the answer only reveals itself some six hours and 70km later.
At one point Tessa will arrive at a bend already crowded with upturned boats. It resembles a sea skirmish, but this isn’t her fight.
Photo: Sport Southland team member Tessa Hewlett. Pic: Marathon-Photos.com
She will be tipped out, have to carry her boat when she runs out of water, cope without any steering for the final 20km and keep pulling with arms and shoulders which feel like they belong to someone else. Eventually she will pass under the Waimakariri River Gorge Bridge. The old kayak she has borrowed has been scraped see-through. The rudder has been bent into a question mark. The entire boat looks like it is held together by will and desperation alone.
Brendon carries the bib up a hill to Lauren for the final 70km bike to the finish line. Lauren averages 35kmh for the first hour and we are worried we won’t be able to make it through Christchurch traffic in time for the finish. Then the wind turns from ally to enemy and it all becomes a grovel.
The finish line is heaving. Bodies of many shapes, sizes and life stages sprint or stumble up the sand carpet to an elevated finish. It’s done, it’s finished. My goodness, some people do this in one day, by themselves. Chapeau, you crazy cats.
Our team has achieved everything they set out to do, and more. Medals around necks, photos snapped.
If only that finish line feeling could be bottled, but then anyone could buy it, rather than earning it with sweat and tears.
