Tuesday evening, and the news is just coming through that another earthquake has devastated Christchurch, the most serious of the quakes to have hit in the past 6 months.  Live reports show collapsed buildings crushed cars, and rubble in the streets, often with tangled construction fences delineating safe from unsafe  where recovery work was underway now separating one disaster from another. Street names and sections that we see look and sound eerily familiar.  Mercifully, our friends there respond that they are safe, but many have suffered terrible material losses. Please pray for healing and restoration.

Up at 4 A.M. to dress – no shower, need to keep the natural oils to prevent chafing – breakfast of oatmeal with tasty blueberries and a couple of boiled eggs. everything is loaded and we’re on the road in time to be set up at the bike stands by 5.15. From there, its a 3 k walk down to the start on the shore of the Tasman, waves crashing and rushing up the beach threatening to soak my feet as I reach down to touch the waters.  We line up for a few announcements, and off we go.   Read More

Its here. after months of preparation, and two weeks ‘on the ground,’ we have paddled, run, cycled, and driven over the entire coast to coast race course, run through it countless times in our minds, rehearsed transitions, prepared nutrition plans, even pre-filled bottles with race fuel so they are ‘just-add-water’ ready.

It all starts tomorrow, 6 AM New Zealand time (so if you’re in Ontario, noon on Friday). The weather forecast is fantastic for a day that will involve:

3 km running (in the dark) from Kumara Beach on the Tasman Sea to our bikes
55 km cycling up a peaceful river valley as the sun rises
33 km running over goat pass, featuring 24 river crossings and 700+ metres of climbing
15 km cycling to our kayaks
67 km kayaking through braided river channels, a steep-walled gorge, and several 90 degree bluff corners
70 km cycling in to the finish line at Sumner Beach on the Pacific Ocean!

I’m here with my friend Barb Campbell, and our crew: Nelvia (my sister) Chris (my brother-in-law) Richard (Barb’s husband) and Andrew (a big-hearted kiwi).

You can follow our progress throughout the day at:

www.facebook.com/vandorpracing

www.coasttocoast.co.nz

and barb will have a spot transponder to relay her position every 10 minutes:

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=03EEh29tdLhuhXnflR3yVggXOniKTvnUa

Logs Rocks and Steel Winners Train to Race in New Zealand Summer

By Barb Campbell, Jan. 25, 2011
Originally Published Online at breathemag.ca

Paddling Colpoy

When the mud settled after the GUATS Logs Rocks and Steel race last September, Jack Van Dorp and Barb Campbell were the winners on the Championship course. Both accepted the grand prize of a free entry to Speight’s Coast to Coast in New Zealand, the World Multisport Championship.

Now in its 29^th year, Coast to Coast is one of the oldest multisport races on the planet.  Before sunrise on February 12, two hundred racers will line up on the beach at Kumara on the west coast of New Zealand’s South Island. Over the next 12 to 18 hours, they will run, bike and paddle 243 kilometres to Sumner Beach, a suburb of Christchurch on New Zealand’s east coast.

Training for a summer event during the Canadian winter can be a challenge. Van Dorp, who placed 12^th at the 2010 Coast to Coast, has learned some tricks over the past two winters. He runs along the rugged Bruce Peninsula shoreline to prepare for running in rocky riverbeds and other rough terrain in New Zealand. The race goes over the Alps, so Van Dorp makes strength work a priority. “I do a lot of core work and lunges to increase my power for climbing over rocks.” He converted his unheated garage into a training space where he rides his bike on rollers or a trainer. A strong Nordic skier, he skate skis regularly to build general fitness.

To train and raise funds for last year’s Coast to Coast, Van Dorp did a race simulation at Heritage Place Mall in Owen Sound. Sears and the Sportmakers Gym where he trains provided him with a treadmill, stationary bike and rowing machine, and he went the full race distance as passersby watched and friends dropped by to train beside him.

While the running in Coast to Coast is rugged and often off-trail, the three cycling legs of the race take place on 140 kilometres of paved roads. A keen trail rider, Campbell did not own a road bike when she won the race entry. “My race preparation began with some hurried shopping and a bunch of late season rides to get used to the different gears, brakes and handling of a road bike.”

Campbell and her husband Richard Ehrlich have dubbed their home gym the Adventure Basement. Although she prefers snowshoeing and Nordic skiing in winter, this year she has spent some time indoors doing strength training and working out on the kayak erg, bike trainer and – for intervals only – the treadmill. She does her other runs outdoors in snowshoes or spiked shoes.

Both Van Dorp and Campbell have travelled outside Ontario to train. On separate trips to Florida, they biked, ran and paddled while snow fell back home. In December, Van Dorp raced on Team GUATS Adventure in the six-day Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge.

It hasn’t all been palm trees though! In January, Campbell met a friend in Vancouver for whitewater kayak coaching to prepare for the 67 kilometres of river paddling in Coast to Coast. Back home, a few days after Christmas, Van Dorp and Campbell post-holed through the snow to launch their kayaks for a few hours on Georgian Bay near Van Dorp’s home town of Wiarton.

With Coast to Coast less than three weeks away, their final training phase will take place in New Zealand. Amongst other activities, Van Dorp and Campbell will do the mountain run over Goat Pass and take a guided kayak trip down the Waimakariri River.

See www.coasttocoast.co.nz for more information and live coverage of the race. You can follow the Canadian racers through the afternoon and evening of February 11 (in North America) by following “vandorpracing” on Facebook and Twitter.

It is definitely easier returning somewhere than going there for the first time. with just a week before we depart, the accommodations and vehicles are booked, boats arranged, and gear mostly organized in just a fraction of the time it took to get things together last year. Barb (also doing the race) has also been a big help in getting everything looked after.

Latest reports are that the river is running comfortably higher than last year (when it was quite low during our training sessions), but we have to hope that the current rainfall levels which are wreaking havoc in parts of the country and australia won’t be a factor when it comes to the race time (and that they stop mucking things up for the locals, too).

our goal is to provide coverage throughout the run-up and during the event, wherever possible, via this website and text messages to facebook and twitter (which show up on the right). sportzhub.com will also be covering the race, feeding information through to www.coasttocoast.co.nz.

We race on February 12th, but if you’re in North America it’ll be the 11th. the way the time change works, the race will start around noon if you’re in the eastern time zone, and with an estimated 12 hour time to complete it, should be wrapping up a little before midnight. more to come!

Hard to believe how fast the time flies by… it seems like just yesterday that I was wondering if we’d ever make it out of the desert!

But its already been 6 weeks, and we are gearing up to head to New Zealand for Coast to Coast in just a week.

We arrived in late on December 8th after two mostly uneventful flights. I met Jen in London; Bob and Bill flew in via Frankfurt. After the initial excitement of the swankiest  hotel I’ve ever stayed in, I slept very well.

The next day was devoted to briefings, packing, gear checks, and topping up our food supplies. An amazing buffet dinner and opening ceremony occupied the early evening, then it was bedtime.

Race day 1 started pretty early, but we had our gear together and, after a solid breakfast (same wide-ranging menu three days in a row helped us get ‘comfortable’ with the local food) we headed downtown to the beach where 100 inflatable canoes were lined up. after an hour of getting the boats pumped, gear stowed, and ourselves warmed up we were off. our canoe was in the middle so we didn’t have far to run to get to it, which put us ahead of the pack through the first paddle. Then it was a run through the grounds of an opulent palace (or hotel?), swim, run back to the boats, paddle (our canoe was leaking some air so getting a bit slower over the course), run, and paddle back to finish. about 10 minutes from the end i broke the blade off a paddle, but thankfully team orion adventure (from new zealand) gave us a spare and we finished in good time. Read More

We’re going back to New Zealand!

Bob Miller’s crazy race, the Guats Logs Rocks and Steel Multisport Adventure went off in the rain, mist, and wind on Saturday. Hosted at the Frost Centre on Highway 35, about 50 solo and team competitors lined up for the ‘Championship Course’ race and 150 (including my sister!) for the shorter ‘Frost’ course. Read More

After a bit of an uncertain spring, the ankle seems to have resolved itself for the most part, and I was able to kick off the season with a top-10 finish in the blazing heat at the Victoria duathlon on the weekend.
With that encouragement, we’re heading forward with a pretty race-intensive june that will build speed for the Peterborough 1/2 Ironman in early July and then provide time to build up to and focus on the later season multisport / adventure races. Stay Tuned!

Peter and I drove to Deerhurst Friday night, arriving around 10 pm and opting for the less ostentatious back-of-the-van-in-the-parking-lot accomodations. Lots of signs of renovations around in advance of next months G8 Summit – including some dumpsters and a variety of shipping trailers here and there. We wanted to get a good sleep though, because the race was anticipated to take 6-8 hours. Read More