NZ - Day 3 - Lonely Mountain Sprints Day 2

Sunday, 26 January 2020

Today we were based at the Taranaki Race Track for the day. We had a race around 10am, and another about 2pm so we spent the middle time relaxing and playing cards in the shady grand stand. 

Both races were through the adjacent Pukekura Park which has a network of tiny tracks and trails and cute little lakes and bridges.  I thought both races were really fun and quite different from the normal campus sprints we're used to in Australia. 

I had two good enough races to clean sweep the series which was nice.  Riley hit the front in his morning race only to immediately lose his lead with a big mistake on the very next control which was disappointing but he made up for it with a really strong race in the afternoon.   Jett had two consistent runs to put himself firmly into third over all. Zali moved up the field to be within 10 seconds of third, but couldn't quite grab that in the last race, and Julia continued to have some really good splits but is just a little behind Zali overall.  Jon was much better than yesterday and dragged himself up the ladder to finish 3rd overall.  It was pretty impressive that all of us managed to finish all the races without mispunching or skipping any controls - well done us!

Mt Taranaki in the background on both my prize and in real life. 

After the races we went home via the waterfront to check out a sculpture park.  

Then we feasted on mexican prepared by Zali and Julia. 

Once it got dark we headed back to Pukekura Park to check out the festival of lights that happened to be on..

It was pretty cool but what was also amazing is how I missed all of these giant light installations as I raced through the park twice earlier in the day! I guess because they were mostly up in the air or otherwise not on the map I just couldn't see them when I was focussed on track junctions and bends and finding controls!  

Tomorrow we have one last race here - a relay, then we head to Taupo for 3 nights.