Triple Peaks – a play in three acts.

Act 1: The Pre-Amble

Finished work at 12, on the road by 1, eldest son and possessor of a recently acquired restricted driving licence at the wheel. Four hours to the Hawkes Bay ahead. He would drive the first half; I’d take over when his teenage concentration started to wane.

I’d persuaded him to come along partly for the driving experience and partly for a couple of days of distance from his siblings. He hadn’t needed much persuading. The opportunity to have the car for an exploration while I was running, a not inconsiderable time given it was a 55 kilometre event, was also part of the appeal while, for me, I had the chance of an easy drop-off to the start line and the vague hope that he might find his way to some of the farther-flung parts of the course and offer some support. Following convention, the side-by-side-staring-into-the-distance manly bonding opportunity was never openly mentioned by either of us.

All went smoothly. He drove well and I resisted the urge to comment every time he skipped a music track by fiddling with his smart watch.

By the time we got to Taupo he was ready for a Countdown raid and the chance to swap seats and de-focus.

Which is when it all went wrong.

Less than a kilometre into my two-hour stint, meandering along Lake Drive, I gently nudged the accelerator to attack the slight rise past the end of Titiraupenga Street and got absolutely no response from the car. A check that I was still in gear and a stronger press on the pedal and the same thing happened. Or didn’t, and we cruised to an unscheduled halt outside the mini-putt course.

My knowledge of cars extends little beyond ‘a wheel in each corner and one in the hand’ so after playing to my audience of one by lifting the bonnet and checking that there wasn’t a critical cable dangling loose just waiting for me to reattach it, I did what all office-based workers have been trained to do: I turned it off and tried to turn it back on again. No luck. The battery was strong and willing, but the engine wasn’t responding. Having replaced spark plugs within the last 12 months it wasn’t that so we quickly moved to Plan B.

After about twenty minutes spent variously on hold or ‘selecting from the following options’, I finally shared my story with a real-live human at the AA. She promised a response in 15 minutes which was great until I realised that the ‘response’ was a text from the local contracted garage which said they would be with me in 68 further minutes. Bradley disappeared into town in search of shade and free wifi while I leaned back against the mini-putt’s fence and contemplated the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

Long story short, three-and-a-half hours after rolling to a halt we were on the move again. My car on the back of a truck headed for Tauranga after the AA guy had diagnosed a duff carburettor, and Bradley and me in a rental car headed for Havelock North.

We finally reached our motel well north of nine o’clock and set about cooking dinner, picking up the race pack, unpacking, packing, and working out the motel’s free wifi. Bed couldn’t come soon enough but simultaneously loomed too quickly: had I packed everything? Would the alarm wake me? What was Bradley going to do tomorrow now that he didn’t have the car (the rental place laughed out-loud when I said he was both under 25 and on a restricted licence)? Had I drunk enough while sitting (in the shade) waiting for the AA? What impact would walking (in the sun) to two different rental car offices (the first one, recommended by the AA guy, had no cars left) in two different corners of Taupo have on my energy levels tomorrow? Sleep well, said Bradley. Yeah, right, I thought.

Act 2: The Amble, or what others might call the Main Event

The Triple Peaks race unsurprisingly involves three distinct hill climbs: first up Mt Erin (490m), then a loop out to Kahuranaki (645m), before knocking off Te Mata Peak (399m) on the way back to the centre of Havelock North. Much of the course is on private land but for 33 years the organisers have negotiated event-day access so that locals and visitors can experience the joy (and pain). In the usual way of things there are multiple entry options involving one, two or three hills, running, walking, mountain biking, e-biking, relay teams and individuals – the results sheet lists 16 different events and that’s before gender splits are taken into account.

To meet Covid restrictions the 422 entrants were split into bubbles of less than 100, both for the staggered race start and the staggered registration process which we missed because we were so late (many thanks to the team for being so accommodating with a Plan B for me). Each bubble had its own physical pre-start muster area with its own scan-in process, own toilets and own hand sanitiser. Supporters were actively discouraged (which suited me OK as mine was still in bed at that time). The race briefing was an online video that was both informative and entertaining. In short, the organisers seem to have bent over backwards to provide a great race experience while complying with the Level 3 requirements. On behalf of all 422 entrants, thank you to everyone involved.

The race started in valley fog but that was soon left behind as we wound our way out of the village, past the posh schools, past the even posher rural mansions, and into the foothills. By the time the climbing got serious the sun was hot and I was beginning to compare my summer’s running in the mostly dense bush of the Kaimais and the Coromandel with the arid open expanses of the Hawkes Bay hills.

Training ground:

Race day:

Did someone mention ‘training specificity’? Fair call, though in my defense I hadn’t planned on entering this event, only picking up a complimentary from Wild Things (thanks Rob) a couple of weeks beforehand. Still, a reasonable learning point.

-x-

The view from Mt Erin was sublime, cotton-wool clouds bridging the gap to Kahuranaki in the distance, but the subsequent descent was murderous on the quads. While the gradient eased towards the bottom and the crossing of the thigh-deep and briskly-moving Tukuituki River was welcome, I hobbled into the teams’ transition point at the end of the first leg with a sense of unease.

The second leg started with a fairly gentle meander alongside the river though an ambiguously-placed sign meant that my little group of three (and who knows how many others because the path was definitely recently-worn) went up a farm track cul-de-sac and had to vault a couple of fences and traverse a holding pen of calves to get back on course. From there we headed inland and upwards, initially fairly gently upwards (a net 100m over four kilometres) and then more solidly upwards (another almost 500 metres over the next five). Like many around me I power-walked much of this and was fine with that. I felt pretty good, was passing many of the one-hill walkers who had started an hour after us but 15 kilometres further along the journey, and was only passed by the occasional fresh legs of a relay team runner. In many ways I felt better going up the higher Kahuranaki than I did up Mt. Erin. Maybe I was acclimatising?

Having said that, I was thankful to be at the top when it arrived, despite the mega-watt speakers blaring 80s rock anthems that made meaningful conversation with the aid station staff largely impossible (though it was at least more recognisably musical than the lone bagpiper massacring a ‘tune’ at the top of Mt. Erin).

The journey down from Kahuranaki was less steep than from Mt. Erin, but the cumulative toll on my legs and then my spirit was crippling. I soon found myself walking again, and not a purposeful, striding power-walk, but more of a stumbling, get-me-off-this-hill, desperate lurching. I was not happy. About halfway down, in the midst of another walk-break, a friendly face from Tauranga caught me and we shared stories of our days unravelling and tried to pick each other up (thanks Mike). As each of us felt alternately better or worse we would break into our own version of running or ease up and walk again such that we were probably never more than a few hundred metres apart for the rest of the descent. He caught me for the last time just short of the transition area and said that he needed ‘a good attitude re-set’ before embarking on leg three.

By that time, I had decided my day was done. I was hurting, I was not having fun, and the prospect of thrashing myself with another three or four hours of jog-a-bit, walk-a-bit just wasn’t appealing. When Mike trotted out of transition, headed for a refreshing river crossing and on towards Te Mata Peak, I was sitting in the shade of a small truck removing my transponder.

The Triple Peaks is a great event on a cracking course run by truly wonderful people (and with a great T-shirt, which I kept, and a decent medal, which I declined despite the volunteer’s best efforts) but it was too big for me on this day. I didn’t have the fight to hurt, and finishing was less important than not completely smoking myself which I feared was on the cards if I continued. For once, stopping was the right decision.

Cool t-shirt:

Act 3: A Better Amble

Arriving back in Havelock North after an hour’s wait and 25 minutes in the sad-wagon (“I’m Rachel’s dad. I came across from the Waikato this morning to help out. It’s what dads do.” – it’s that sort of event) I texted my son to see what he was up to. Turns out he had hired a bike from the motel and tootled his way around Havelock North and eventually into Hastings (“The sign said 2km so I thought, why not?”, why not indeed) but was now back at the motel feeling a bit hot and a bit tired. Tell me about it, I thought.

Anyway, while I unpacked and showered and refuelled and while we both downloaded edited highlights of our day’s events, a seed of an idea settled into a corner of my mind. An hour later, and less than three since I had turned off my Garmin at Transition 2 in a wee funk, we had hired a second bike and were off looking for the route to the coast.

The Hawkes Bay marketing folk make much of their 200 kilometres of bike paths. Based on our experience over the next two or three hours, I’d say that was entirely justified. We easily found our way to the Tukituki River and then rode the wide, flat stopbank-topping trail the ten kilometres or so to Haumoana beach, side-by-side, chatting away as if none of the car debacle, the late-night arrival debacle, the race debacle, and the promised-weekend-with-wheels debacle had ever occurred. It could only be bettered by one thing and a few kilometres along the beach we rectified that when we found a Four Square and the necessary ice cream.

We ambled our way back first on another easy track on the opposite bank of the Tukituki, then through some road-sections which involved hills that my shot quads really didn’t appreciate. Finally, after more of the off-road trails we were back at our motel, 42 kilometres done, celebrating with a masculine handshake and smug been-there-done-that grins on our faces. We would both sleep well that night.

With spirits high the rest of the weekend zoomed past in a flurry of pub dinners, Napier sightseeing and coffee, Craters of the Moon in Taupo, and a quick look at Okere Falls to sow the seed of a rafting trip with his mates one day. It was magic.

So, for a 48-hour play which was at times part tragedy (in a small way), part farce (definitely), and part (black) comedy, it seems that at the end of the day it was actually a love story, a father-and-son-weekend-away-doing-simple-stuff-but-having-fun-doing-it type of love story. I wouldn’t have changed it for anything.