Crazyman

When dad first brought it up I was like yeah, Nah. After some actual thought I agreed that if I could find a team mate (someone I knew) that I would do it. I managed to con my old primary school friend and amazing runner Anna Gibbs to do the run for me. Around a month before the race we got a kayaker (Brooklyn Saunders) - my friends little sister. So we had a multisport team in the schools category and in true Wellington Girls College fashion we were called The Teal Seals.

Brooklyn did an awesome Kayak; she was about mid pack. This meant that I wasn’t too far down when I started the bike.

After about 1 ½ hours I reached Hill Road. I was pretty pleased that I managed to ride most of the Hill Road climb, given I could only see 20-50m in front of me because of the low cloud. The best moment of the race was a few hundred metres from the transition when I hear “GO MARTI!” in a British accent. A few seconds later I see Kim running down to the track cheering me on, and start to run beside me.

I managed to get 2:50 for a time; I was pretty pleased with that given the conditions, but the medal winner for our team was Anna. She ran an amazing run taking only 1 ½ hours, which was high up in the running times. Our team managed to make the Schools multisport teams record, which was pretty special given that we originally hadn’t planned on being serious.

The real thing that made The Crazyman an awesome event was the atmosphere. Like most mountain biking events, Crazyman was all about having a good time and doing your best. This meant that you could have good laughs about who got the muddiest- I think I won that for my team.  Of course I wouldn’t have been able to ride what I did if it wasn’t for the amazing support I get from everyone. First off are my family, mum and dad were the best support crew I could have asked for. The next is the Gibbs and Saunders families, for agreeing to do it, getting up early in the morning and supporting all three of us. Of course you can’t race on a poorly maintained bike, so cheers to Ricky, Don and Dave at MUD Cycles for making sure my bike was running smoothly. Last but not least is the amazing coaching Lisa has given me and the finish line support from Kim.