Besides the usual accolades about the scenery, and the people, or whatever, here is a varied list of other good things about the trip, in no particular order.

1. Shoes: Salomon Speedcross 3 Very Purple – size 10
I needed a pair of shoes with traction but without metal studs, and these seemed to fit the bill. Little did I know that the Very Purple color would be considered to be SO **bright**, but I guess it is, since the color has been much talked about, both here and abroad. After getting past the color, the grip was admired as well.

I wore them a half dozen times in December, so I knew I could stand them for the trip, and, indeed, they turned out to be the perfect shoe for the varied New Zealand terrain. I had taken my Ice Bugs but never took them out of the bag.

I should note that the Speedcross does not serve me as well on the steeper, leaf covered hills behind my house, so I still need the Ice Bugs for most of the local orienteering maps. Continue reading →

Wide awake with no place to go, well, at least not for a couple of hours. 🙂

This morning, I was greeted by Catherine’s cat, Nadia, looking to wrestle a bit. Fortunately, I was warned that she plays rough, though not enough warning that I didn’t get scratched.
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Description: One of the original STB maps (2010), remapped to issom standard for 2013 with some new and very interesting additions. Havelock North Village is a very fast area made up of urban, industrial, school, and park terrain. Very appropriate for the 6th stage as you’ll definitely need that 6th gear to make up time on your rivals on this map!

Had to set up in the rain and wind, and it didn’t look good for a festive finale to the Sprint the Bay, and for the trip to New Zealand on the whole. It cooled off quickly.

Some people will wear anything when they are cold.
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Description: This brand new sprint area will be the ultimate spectator event for 2013. The terrain is quite similar to The Slump (used for the final World Cup Stage) and was formed by a huge natural land slide near the Tuki Tuki river. You will find very strange/intricate but very fast open-farmland contour detail sprinkled with rocks and other point features. The entire race [mass start by classes] will be visible to spectators from the clifftops above, so get a good spot to watch the elite grades battle it out head to head!

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Description: A new map introduced to STB in 2012, and an instant favourite amongst the urban sprinters. The map covers a vast majority of the ‘Art Deco Capital of the World’ that is Napier city. You’ll need that 6th (or even 7th gear) for this stage, the terrain is super fast urban style with some areas of park and intricate building detail.

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Again, no pictures! Will have to see what I can borrow from elsewhere…

Description: Another brand new sprint map for 2013. This is a very unique and tricky terrain type never seen before in Sprint the Bay (or in NZ to our knowledge). Set in the riverbed of the meandering TukiTuki river with unusual contour and vegetation detail, Kaiwaka will challenge STBers’ physical and technical abilities to the max after the beginning urban stages.

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Description: A brand new map in New Zealand’s biggest water park. This will be a highlight of STB 2013 for both competitors and spectators. Terrain consists of intricate park detail, and building areas, you will face very fast but technical courses and expect to get wet!

In between the morning and evening races, Phillip and Tim added a small extension to the monitor stand in order to add another two monitors in the vertical position. These gave enough room to get some splits up for everyone.

Sadly, I have no pictures from this day, probably because this was a fast and furious setup since we couldn’t get into the park until after closing time. We also had to carry all of the equipment about 100 feet from the trailer to the event center. Even with lots of hands, things ran behind, and the starts were delayed 30 minutes.

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Sprint the Bay – six events in three days.

From the STB website – Description: the first stage will be held on an updated Woodford map. This map is part of the Woodford Iona map first used for the NZ champs in 2011. It consists of very technical building detail, school grounds and farm type terrain. Parts of the map are very steep making it very physically demanding and also allowing for difficult route choice legs.

Setup was easier with the reduced number of monitors, and it was nice to have the start and finish within meters of each other. However, the reduction of the monitors to two proved to be somewhat inadequate for the number of results needing to be displayed.

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Well, it was sort of a rest day. A leisurely start to the day, followed by unloading and reloading the trailer with a reduced amount of equipment. I also organized the leftover maps by day and by course. Continue reading →

Last day of the Oceania Carnival, World Cup races, and there were three separate races today. First up was the World Cup Prologue, followed by the Oceania Carnival mass start race, with the World Cup Chasing start event last.

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