Magellan Whaka100

Well what a huge week for the 2012 Magellan Whaka100. This track took a lot of marking out and seen as i'm the N-Duro track marker I was very busy boy from Wednesday, myself and Ra were boosting around the forest sort all 3 tracks, the weather turned it on for race day with a was perfect one. 260 entries and 70 ish of them were from Australia, it was all on.

Race day, I was primed and ready to defend my title, it was a frosty morning in Rotorua so I didn't really warm up but 100km is a long way to warm up, I started slowly watching a big group of guys sprint off I left them to be and just rode along at comfortable pace, the group was slowly dropping guys off and after a few km's I was 100meters off the back of them I stay there watching them do there thing for a good 10km after 20km I decided I would test them out and jumped on the front for a few strong pulls, they all seemed comfortable so I just sat back in and we just rode along with mainly myself and Mark Tupalski from Australia doing the turns, not stressing the bodies to much. The bunch was 5 of us 2 Aussies and 3 Kiwis on the 1st major climb up to No Brains I put the hurt on and strung everyone out the 2 other kiwis of Sam Shaw and Brad Jones jumped across to me and that was the last we saw of the Aussie duo. On the descents Sam and myself would get away from Brad and we would let him slowly catch back up but making sure he was working to get there, after the 60km mark I started to think about my race plan and on the long climb to the roof of the forest I slowly picked up the pace and the other 2 boys disappeared I still had 35km to go so I  tried to keep the heart rate as low as I could and the legs fresh as they could be but still attempting to get a lead, I had no one giving me split or anything this time so I completely in the dark to my lead over the last 35km. I ended up winning by just over 2 and half mins to my cousin Brad.

I was pretty sure the race record was 4h.43 but wasn't sure, I knew the track was super fast and when Ra said it maybe a record I look to Scott in the timing caravan and I held up 10 fingers and he said yip, I was stoked as I knew there was a $500 bounty on that bad boy, and I broke Scott Thorne's 4 year old record by 10 minutes in a time of 4 hours 33min. 59.

Massive Thanks to Ra and Paris and Tony from Magellan for supporting me and the Whaka100 event I have some very cool new toys. Everyone that broke a record yesterday got a gps from Navman worth 450 bucks each, bloody good of the sponsor if you ask me, If your interested in a Switch up or any GPS for that matter (They are very good for chasing strava records as most of you know ;p) or a very flash little liquid image camera check out their website or a store that stock their product they are off the scale of cool.
I had an awesome day out boosting around the redwoods with Paris the Magellan poster boy, Scott Green and Steve Turner (while his bike lasted) in the rain today followed by 3 hour of laxing out and eating a mean lunch at the newly renovated Zippys.                 

Off to the deep south on Saturday for the Power net Tour of Southland wish me luck, I think i'm going to need it down there, Ill keep the blog updated every day hopefully, I might even make a video diary of each day with my new little liquid image ego camera :)

Cheers
Carl