This year�s Triple Peaks Challenge was interesting for different reasons. Firstly the team that won it (Napier Harriers of course!) consisted of 2 vets and 1 who will be this year, and they convincingly dispatched the team of young pretenders, all seniors.
The second interesting point was the inability of a number of athletes to remain on the marked course! The event is renowned for its poor marking, but having said this, this kind of event is renowned for poor marking. Adventure running, as they like to call it, is all about finding your way along the course. Triple Peaks may not quite make the Adventure Running category but it is very similar in nature.
There were al sorts of stories coming of the Peaks about people going the wrong way, and they started just about from the word go when Chris �Captain Compass� Corney almost took a wrong turn about 1km into the first leg. Then, heading over the top of Mt Erin well ahead of Darryl �Downhill� Strachan, Captain Compass made the mistake of following another competitor (a mountain biker) instead of finding his own way, and headed down the wrong track! A couple of minutes of hard downhill running later he met the same mountain biker coming back up the hill �You�re going the wrong way� he was told. I�m quite sure our illustrious leader didn�t mutter event the faintest profanity as he turned and headed back up the hill again! Meanwhile �Downhill Strachan� couldn�t believe his luck as he came over the peak of Mt Erin, took the left turn that Captain Compass had missed, and started down the hill with no one in sight! So Chris� 40 second lead at the top of Mt Erin was turned into a 3:48 deficit at the bottom!
John �Hambo� Hambleton took full advantage of the lead his team had inherited, and sprang off up the road to Kahuranaki, looking more like an excited teenager than the veteran he is. Unfortunately for the young pretenders, his lead was such that Craig �Forest� Mathers could not see him to chase and somewhere in the deepest depths of Mt Kahuranaki �Forest� went bush! Waiting patiently at the next changeover �Sparky� Speakman was warming up, and cooling down, and warming up, and cooling down�Hambo came staggering up the road, now looking for all the world like a vet (as the pic in the paper would later prove) and handed over to Terry �Striff� Strampel. Forest shouldn�t be far behind. Sparky is warming up, and cooling down, and warning up�Finally �Forest� appeared out of an orchard beside the road exactly 15 minutes behind the �old boys�.
�Striff was by now haring up Te Mata Peak, probably under the assumption that the young pretenders would be about 4 minutes behind, and knowing that it was that awesome action athlete �Sparky� Speakman chasing him he would have been shaking in his shoes and wondering just how long it would be until he was �run� down. As it happens, Striff was half way up the Peak before Sparky even got under way and �Captain Compass� had already conceded defeat.
So it was that the �old boys� comprehensively beat the �lost boys� having a 14 minutes 3 second advantage at the finish line.
Mean while Nick Holmes was completing a remarkable back up in events. Three weeks previously Nick had completed Iron Man NZ in Taupo (and not a particularly memorable one for him, apparently) and he was now completing the solo section of this event. Nick was the first solo to the top of Mt Erin and came off the first leg with two others very close. Nick then powered up Kahuranaki having a lead of 4:20 at the top, but then lost it all coming down the other side to be about 1:30 behind at the start of Te Mata. It must have been about here that the iron from the Iron Man leaked into his legs as the eventual winner put another 5 minutes on Nick on that last leg. Nick eventually finished second solo man, a remarkable achievement considering his recent events (Nick also did the Wellington Marathon in January!).
