Sure beats Disneyland

My recent blogs may have painted a-less-than-rosey picture of my training over the last few weeks, but my time in Central Otago training on the Challenge Wanaka course was nothing short of mind-blowing. I have visited Wanaka several times a year for most of the past 25 years, but never have I experienced it like I did the weekend before last.

For some reason, while training all of my senses were heightened and every experience, especially the visual, filled me with awe. Perhaps it is because my view of the world was sepia-toned, filtered, as it is, through sunglasses and goggles: intensifying some colours and dulling others, magnifying contrasts and creating a painted world that would not look out of place hanging on the walls of some of the best art galleries in the world. Perhaps I am just 'in the zone'. Who knows and who cares? I just love that it has opened my eyes to a magnifcent place that I had begun to take for granted.

Here are some of the highlights (in no particular order):

I lie floating, weightless, in the early morning glow; soaring above diminutive sand dunes that sweep off into the distance in an endless desert. Ripples of light dance like a serpent across the surface of this vast, breathtaking wasteland. A glance to the left reveals golden shafts of light beaming down from the heavens. I pause and soak in the energy and then, in an instant, as my arm penetrates the surface of the lake, the peace and tranquility is broken and I begin my morning swim: energised and contented. 

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A shimmering bay reveals itself below me as I cross the Lake Hawea dam. An iridescent, paua-shell blue, green and silver shimmers in the bright, bright light of the morning. The perfectly flat water somehow seems to be leaping off the surface of the earth; an abstract three-dimensional hologram - deep, sharp and crisp.

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Late in the evening in the half hour before sundown, clouds are floating along the ridges of the southern alps. To the west, the divine 'light of God' pierces the clouds like daggers. A real world reflection of the fearful depiction of the wilderness of a romantic landscape painting: imposing, scary and awe-inspiring. To the east, the light has an altogether different effect.  Pure, soft, cotton top clouds billow up from a menacing saw-toothed ridge, appearing to be illuminated by a brilliantly white light from the inside: inviting, comforting and cuddly.  

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Not only have the romantic painters been at work in this landscape, but the impressionists have applied their palette to this beautiful springtime scene. Renoir could easily have painted on the  canvas of Glendhu Bay. Tiny ripples on the water disturb the mirrored image projected on to the bay and it is instantly transformed into a brilliant impressionist painting. Tiny brush strokes fade into each other, brilliant technicolour becomes muted water-colour. What was real now becomes imaginary.

Masses of lupins punctuate the roadside as if put there by Monet himself: every shade and hue of purple, pale and delicate through deep and moody. A brilliant contrast of colour against the harsh, inhospitable, sunburnt countryside.

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In the last hazy light of the day, a truly idyllic world. An emerald sea of grass. A surging golden tide of rape seed. A silhouetted cardboard cut-out scene: tractor and plough. A spray of dust wafting from the wave of earth churned up by a plough. A delicate agricultural sea-mist hanging in the still, cool air of dusk.

This is a truly special part of the world. The tag of most scenic iron distance race in the world is fully justified and, as a holidaymaker yelled to me from an inner tube as she floated down the Clutha River on the blisteringly hot day that I attempted to do a 3 hour run, "This beats Disneyland any day!"

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