Ring of Fire 50km 2023

11 March 2023

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/10669943645

https://www.strava.com/activities/8693544431

51.6km, 2050m vert.

Pre-Race
We (7) originally planned to run this event last year, but covid got in the way. This year 5 of us were signed up, however Barnaby and Will decided at the last minute that a dose of the 'vid was a better option than running around a mountain in the dark. Pretty sensible I guess.

So Brett drove just me and Neville down to National Park, with great anticipation for the run.

We were hardly scared at all!

The weather had been quite rainy on Friday, but the forecast for Saturday was for the day to fine up quite nicely.

Nev and I planned to run together and run steady/fast and enjoy the day.

Race Day

We set our alarms for 3:40am, and bounced out of bed with excitement to drive up to the Chateau to catch the 4:30am bus to Turoa.

There was light rain falling, but little or no wind.

We were on the first of the two buses, and the trip seemed to take ages. This wasn't helped by the bus driver seemingly unable to find the correct bus gears while driving up the mountain road....

We got to the start-line at about 6:00am and immediately joined the (quite long) toilet queue. There was only one working men's toilet, and the official start time of 6:15am arrived before we managed our businesses. I fully expected the race start to be delayed, especially since the second bus was even later than ours. But no, the gun went off as scheduled! Shit! (or no shit, as the case may be).

Anyway, the end result was that Brett started 3 minutes late, and I held Nev up by a full 6 minutes.

Finally we were storming down the road, in pitch black, in a light mist, by head torch light. Fun!

I'd borrowed Barnaby's torch, which was great (thanks B).

Nev and I ran steadily down the first 4.5km of easy downhill road (overtaking Brett on the way), and turned off onto the RoundTheMountain track, to do the 'missing link' section. This was very nice running with the footing not too bad, through forest and enjoyable in the torchlight.

It was dark and misty for over an hour, and I didn't turn my torch off for probably 90 minutes. The mist slowly abated and I ran in a t-shirt all the rest of the day. (after wearing a polypro layer for the first 45 mins)

We got out onto more difficult terrain after a while, including some difficult rocky running, going down and up massive valleys. Very pretty and quite wild as we followed the poled trail. At times there were (fairly rickety) boardwalks to run on, and we crossed dozens of small rivers and some big ones. We couldn't avoid getting our feet damp on some of the numerous boggy and damp patches, but I stepped on rocks across all the streams.

It seemed to take us forever to reach the 'half way' point at 27km - a full 4.5 hours in fact!! This suggests how slow and technical the terrain was.

Both Nev and I were feeling fine and running conservatively (although we agreed several times that going slower might be sensible!).

Bridges and stuff

As we were descending down one of the long rocky scree slopes, Nev dislodged a large boulder, which proceeded to turn over and crash down on his ankle. I had an excellent view of this, and expected the next adventure was going to be using one of my first-aid bandages on his compound fracture of the ankle, followed by a fun ride in a helicopter. Rather surprisingly, however, the rock had merely bruised Nev's ankle and not even properly broken the skin.

In contrast (as we found out later), Brett had taken a nasty fall early on in the race and hurt his leg. By favouring the injury, he had then suffered from cramp issues. To add to it all, Brett managed to stub his toe hard enough to possibly break it! It certainly looked red and sore afterwards. So Brett had a tough day and was out on course for over 10.5 hours. Whew!

Halfway was a welcome relief, getting our drop bags and more food and water (and a quick toily break). This was on the Tukino Access Road, and it was exposed and very windy here. My vegemite and chip sandwiches threatened to blow away several times!

I had the option of a change of shoes at this point, but my Fiesta coloured TectonX shoes were just perfect, so I didn't swap over. For some unfathomable reason, Nev hadn't used his Diva Pinks - perhaps next time??

The last 25km was the 'tussock traverse' route, and was much less technical and overall somewhat downhill. This was very helpful, given that our bodies were beginning to seriously object to their long day.

You seem to run away from the mountain for a long long time before slowly curving around to the left (anticlockwise) and coming back between Mt Ruapehu and Mt Ngauruhoe.

I found the last 10km pretty hard going. I just didn't want to run anymore! We were now walking the uphills, but even the flats were a mental struggle. I'd been eating pretty well during the day (my normal schedule of a gel or muesli bar or snickers every 40 minutes), but by this point food became very unappealing.

I drank about 2.5 litres up to the mid-race aid station, and about another 2 litres after that. (plus 400ml of flat coke at the midway point)

With about 6km to go, we summitted the last big hill, and Nev found a burst of energy and sped off ahead. I did raise my speed to some extent, but Nev steadily gained on me over the last 5km of mostly gentle downhill.

Taranaki Falls very pretty.