Mother Nature

It’s amazing how Mother Nature can change our perceptions of a place.


I’ve been in Hawea (near Wanaka) since the Monday before Christmas. I have set up an office in the lounge of my in-law’s holiday house so that I can work and I have been utilising the Wanaka community pool for swim training, hitting the Challenge course for riding and circulating around a 7km block in Hawea for my runs.

It’s been a big week with four rides totalling 376km, the biggest being 191.7km in just over 7 hours over the Challenge course (plus a little bit more). I did more than 21 hours of training between Tuesday and Sunday last week (including one rest day). Even in normal conditions this would have been a tough week, but there have been persistent strong northerly winds for most of the week (certainly every ride), making it the most unpleasant of training weeks yet.

I have felt pretty strong, albeit fatigued, all week but the wind is totally demoralising. Tail winds are fantastic! Yesterday, on the long ride, I was easily (and I do mean easily) maintaining 40-50km/hour downwind between Luggate and Cromwell. BUT, when I crossed the bridge over Lake Dunstan and turned into the wind, it was like someone had attached a huge parachute to my seat post and my speed more than halved.

I guess it is partly because it is so easy down wind, but is also definitely just the sheer veracity of the wind. My aero position simply becomes like massive scoop sucking in air that pushes against my body acting as an air brake. My cadence steadily slows and I have to chop down gear after gear and within five minutes I am pedalling furiously in a very low gear, going nowhere fast.

However, whether riding or running, it’s not just the physical impact on my effort. It saps my mental energy. The constant, deafening roar bombarding my eardrums makes it nigh on impossible to concentrate. The howling in the power lines emanates a sense of foreboding like a scene from a disaster movie. The browned-off grass in the dry summer landscape forms constant waves on the roadside that look like the powerful current of a fast flowing river and I feel like I have to battle against it. The normally placid lakes become angry with white-caps that smash the unsuspecting shores. This beautiful landscape somehow becomes hostile and inhospitable.

Despite all of this, I know that I run strong in the wind (my half marathon PB in October was run in one of these nasty winds) and my legs remained relatively fresh throughout my 190+ km ride the other day. I am feeling confident that, if/when the wind arrives I am ready to defeat it. I have trained in every type of weather this year: torrential rain, 32 degree heat, snow, frost and, more often than not, strong winds. I am ready for whatever Mother Nature chooses to throw at us on race day.