Pureora Timber Trail: Half of it. Twice.

Locked and loaded. Godspeed.

There is more than one way to skin a cat.  And likewise, there's more than one way to ride a trail.  You can even ride it both ways.  Not wanting to mess around with shuttles, dropping a car at the end of the trail, or taking more than one night away from home, Megan and I decided to start at the halfway point of the Pureora Timber Trail and ride the second half there-and-back in one day.

Colville Connection 2013

Sunset. Firth of Thames,
 Coromandel, New Zealand

Setting up my tent at 10 o'clock at night in the middle of a paddock was not my idea of a good lead-in to a bike race.  The flies were buzzing my ears and biting my hands.  Probably because I had unwittingly trodden all through their dinner and covered a good chunk of their dessert with the floor of my tent.

I'd driven up from Hamilton earlier that night with the aim of picking up my registration pack before setting up camp.  I arrived at Colville school in the pitch black darkness.  As I got out of the car, something caught my eye and I looked up.  The sky was smeared with stars laid out before me like those pictures you see at an observatory.  It wasn't just a few twinkly stars like we see above the city sky at night - the whole sky was spray painted with stars.  This beautiful country we live in, moment #1.

Ngutunui: Twice is nice.

In a bid to find some fitness and some climbing legs before I committed to dragging myself around the Colville Connection, I decided I needed to find a better training ground.  I felt my progress was good and my gravel riding skills had improved over the few rides I had done so far.  But, if I was going to survive the 72km ride at Colville, I had to step it up in terms of distance and elevation gain. 

The Ngutunui Time Trial had been on my radar for a while.  This is a 50-something kilometre pan-handled loop in the backcountry between Pirongia and Kawhia.  A lot of local mountain bikers have been using this loop as a measure of their training progress and preparedness for events.  It had the right mix of climbs, descents, gravel, and distance.  And the Waipa Mountain Bike Club was doing a group ride out there this Sunday.