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.

Started later than even my delayed start, so I was the nearly the last starter with just a few elites behind me. From 3-4, I cut across the water, which was possibly illegal. I had interpreted the rules to be that you couldn’t cross the dark blue water inside the park. From the wet footprints, and the split times to this control, I wasn’t the only one who went this way.

So confused at times, especially from 10-12. Took full advantage of the romp through the water at 13.

This was a fun course, which may have more fun if I hadn’t been out there by myself in the setting sun, as the elites were cooling down and/or rerunning part of the course. But, I didn’t mispunch, so it was a good day.

Race stats: 2.1 km, 15m climb, 16 controls
Garmin distance: 2.3 miles with 1 m climb
Place: 20/24
Time: 33:00
Time lost:
Time per km: 15:43
Finish split: 9th – 29 seconds, with 1st at 26 seconds.