On new adventure in China
A strong Nelson team of adventure racers is heading to China with another Wulong Outdoor Quest title dead in their sights.
For Trevor Voyce and the husband and wife duo of Richard and Elina Ussher, it’ll be another chance to repeat the 2011 title success they achieved with former Seagate team captain Nathan Fa’avae. But it’ll be a whole new experience for kayak specialist Dan Busch who’ll complete this year’s impressive quartet as part of Team Adventure Sport NZ.
Starting on September 5 in the Chongqing Municipality in SouthCentral China, the four-day stage race begins with a brief opening day prologue followed by three days of racing involving kayaking, mountainbiking and running covering about 250km.
It’ll be Voyce’s fifth Wulong event, with the Usshers having also competed several times. So according to Voyce, most of the crew knows what to expect as they prepare for three intense days of stage racing involving ‘‘anywhere between 51⁄ and seven hours typically’’.
It’s clearly not a walk in the park.
‘‘It’s challenging racing because you’ve got the Chinese food and there’s usually a bit of altitude to deal with and heat,’’ Voyce said. ‘‘But if you’ve been four times, you’ve got a pretty good idea of the landscape.
‘‘They vary it, but we’ll be going over some of the same ground. We’ll recognise some of the places, so we’ll get a pretty good idea of what we’re in for.’’
Since his 2011 success, Voyce has competed variously with Fa’avae, the Usshers, Sophie Hart, Chris Forne and Stu Lynch, who was part of last year’s team. But Lynch couldn’t make it this year, opening the door for Busch.
The Usshers are both in Finland with Elina’s family, meaning that Voyce and Busch have been training together in Nelson. They’ll all meet in Wulong just before the event.
‘‘Dan and I have done the same thing pretty much for the past six weeks so we’ve been training together, which has been great because it’s not a great time of year to be training. It’s been good to have two of us working in this climate together,’’ Voyce said.
‘‘It’s all about just starting off getting a base fitness and getting yourself ready for a higher intensity level of multisport racing.
‘‘It’s a bit different to expedition racing in that you’re only racing for six of seven hours a day and it means the intensity rises.’’
Voyce said that despite the unknown variables, the team was heading to China with a good deal of confidence.
‘‘China’s such a crazy environment to race in, so many things can go wrong that you’ve got to go in with fairly open expectations. Ultimately, we’re all fit this year which we haven’t had for a while because we’ve all been committed elsewhere, so we’d be stupid if we weren’t having a go at winning it.’’
And Voyce had absolutely no concerns about the Usshers arriving in China in tip-top shape.
‘‘I had an update from Elina last week saying that Richard’s the fittest he’s been in a couple of years.’’