Wily Weka 2023 - Cable Bay Adventure Park, Nelson - a debrief

Team Lis Kev & Cam comprising of Lisa & Cam Algie and Kevin O’Donnell took out the six hour race at Wily Weka this year, with the event being held at Cable Bay's Adventure Park just north of Nelson.

Kevin has written about his team’s race and their winning route in this blog entry. “We recently put together a new adventure racing team and had/have a super exciting summer planned of racing. This was all working towards the big show of Godzone (boohoo ☹) but started with the equally impressive Wily Weka!

I always find the hardest part of a rogaine (especially a multi discipline long event) is plotting a course. At first glance the map looks like a blur and it always takes me a few minutes to work out what’s up, what’s down and what might link together. My new team mates taught me a great trick of putting a map bag over the map and using it to plot potential routes that can be wiped off as needed. You never get it right first go so this is super helpful!

 

Being the eternal optimist I’ll usually plan to clear the course but leave plenty of egress routes for that inevitable moment where I realise it just isn’t going to happen. For this event we thought that clearing the mountain bike leg would be worth the points on offer and would be a load of fun so we committed to that before making the transition. The foot section looked to us like three big loops with some out and backs in the middle of the course. We planned on the smaller loop being last so we could drop or shorten it if needed. The big question though was what was the bush like between 111, 132 and 115….. 

 

Within about 4mins of being on the course we were full of lactic acid grinding our way up the extremely steep hill on the south side of the course. We picked up the controls easily and then had the fun bit of screaming down the mountain bike track towards the river and a bridge. “Where the hell is the bridge?” I often say mid race that the map is wrong, its usually not and its just me being a muppet, but this time it was. We naved off other features to confirm where we were then carried on, picking up the bridge control further down river. The next part of the course for us was fun with pretty smooth nav, we even said, half way through the run, that we were looking like we would clear it, ha ha fooled again! We got into the bush to go 131, 111, 132, 117 and everything slowed down. Past 132 we started having the ‘what can we, what can’t we’ conversations. This is honestly the most fun part, looking at the watch, assessing the map, adding up the points, guessing at the times and then plotting a course that you change again 15mins later. The pressure always builds here and you need to stay tight as a team. Cam suggested that he navs to the control while I plot the wider course, great suggestion and this teamwork paid dividends. We did our final improvised loop, got on the bikes and arrived with 14 seconds to spare, nailed it!” 

Left: Kevin and teammates (Cam and Lisa) crossing the bridge at to get to the finish line before time runs out

Right: The Runaways consisting of Maegan and Lizzie all smiles out on the 6 hour cours