Double header at the Faultline Ultra

At last year’s Faultline MTB race, my friend Emma Bateup bugged me to do the 53km run, one day after racing 163km on my mountain bike.

“No, that would be stupid”.

On Sunday April 27, less than 12 hours after completing the mountain bike race, I found my alarm going off with a 53km run on the agenda for the day. The legs were sore, my back stiff, and hands aching after yesterday’s bike antics.

I thought back to my 1:15am alarm the day prior in order to get me to the start line at Queen Elizabeth park on the Kāpiti coast for the MTB portion of my weekend. At 3:30am we started, after last year’s hard start I eased into my pace a bit more this time, conscious of two extreme days of hard graft ahead of me. A chilly morning greeted us as we climbed up through Whareroa farm, down the first big descent in the pitch black with only a headlight for company gives plenty of time for thought. The usual self doubt and nerves evaded me though as I’d already done this once!

Just the same again, then a 53km Run the next day, ah. Hadn’t done that bit before….

From the first aid station a long commuting section greeted us, this chilled my bones and ironically made me look forward to our next climb. More than 40km in now and going well with the sun starting to appear.

Towards Belmont we progressed and kept ticking off kilometres and metres climbed, the photos on my phone tell me it’s now 9:35am so we’re now over 6 hours in the saddle completed. The views are incredible and trails fun as we descend towards Lower Hutt.

By the next aid station we’re over 80km through and making good progress, I get my bike checked over and carry on with my journey. Each kilometre past half way feels like a big win, although by now my hands and wrists are as sore as my backside so neither descending or climbing is as comfortable as it was all those hours ago at 4am…

Towards Wellington we progress and descend past the Zealandia fence, this is a good chance to carry some good speed but also interesting on a hardtail with a maze of rain ruts and rocks to navigate “crashing is a lot slower than cruising” I remind myself as I get a bit carried away on the descent.

We navigate through the remaining 20km withsome steep grunts and quick descents towards the finish, the course felt harder than last year and I was a bit disappointed to finish slower than last year but in almost the same position overall. Hopefully I was looking after my body with a view on what was to come.

I spent as much time as I could recovering that evening, only moving when necessary and drinking as much water as I could. I was asleep as my head hit the pillow, looking forward to a generous 6am alarm for the run starting at 7am.

My friend Jason kindly gave me a lift to the start and I joined the second wave of runners with a calm, composed pace to wake up the legs.

It was only a couple of kms before the climbing started with a decent grunt out of Ian Galloway Park to ascend above the capital, battling the humid weather.

Makara Peak MTB Park revealed an excellent view of Wellington, which motivated me to the first food stop 22km in. Conditions were windy like yesterday but this was more of a blessing on foot as it helps keep you cool.

After some ramen, crisps, pickle juice, and spilling half a cup of Coke on myself I mustered up the motivation to continue - at this point the MTB and running courses converged so with 30km to go I began tricking myself into thinking, “I’m almost there”

Running past Zealandia , Emma was out for a mountain bike ride and high fived me as I put on a brave face to hide the pain of running for three and a half hours. The descent was rocky and hard going, but with quads burning I soldiered on as our route showed me the finish along the waterfront which now felt so close.

As I climbed and descended the many suburbs of Wellington, I started passing those brave souls tackling the 100-miler on foot, they had begun nearly 34 hours ago by this point and were still soldiering on. I shared some words of encouragement and carried on, trying not to make it look to easy as they tackled 3 times the distance I was on Sunday.

With a slice through Mt Vic and a final stair-filled descent, our final push along the waterfront began at Oriental Bay. I’d held back most of the day through fear of cramp but now it was go-time.

I put my aching body to the back of my mind and attacked the last 2km all the way to the line, the crowds’ cheers carried my sprint over the line, and fortunately one of the photographers was there to catch me before I collided with the finish barrier.

A jump into Wellington harbour freshened me up and provided some relief for my aching muscles. Thanks for the nudge to do this Jason!

The crew at Barefoot Sports put on an incredible set of events with great marshals, clear signage, and a fantastic atmosphere. If you’ve ever thought of giving a big adventure race a go, on foot or on a mountain bike (you don’t have to do both!) there are runs from 6km and MTB races from 50km available. I would highly recommend making the trip to Wellington to see what they have to offer.