Heading to hills helps with health and happiness
Grunting around the Coromandel can be fun, great for mental health and not a self-help book in sight
When a fellow cyclist told 61-year-old Wendy Spence she would conquer the 200km K2 Cycle Challenge, she thought it was madness.
The challenge features a brutal 40km descent and 2300m altitude gain and has become known as the toughest one-day solo cycle test in the southern hemisphere.
Attracting more than 1500 riders each year, the K2 travels around the Coromandel Peninsula in an anticlockwise direction through Thames, Tairua, and Whitianga. And sure enough, in 2011 Spence bravely took to the Coromandel coastline to complete what she now considers her greatest achievement.
But she didn’t stop there. From the toughest cycle challenge to perhaps the toughest running challenge, Spence set her sights on the South Island’s Routeburn Track just two years later.
Spence ran the 32km track in just under five hours, placing fourth overall as a recreational runner and second in her age group.
Although inspired by her triathlete daughter Rebecca Spence, who recently claimed bronze in the Commonwealth Games mixed team relay, the mother of two said her decision to start riding and running “arose from pure chance”.
Spence, director and occupational health practitioner for Business Health Services, first began cycling nine years ago after being persuaded to join her friends.
She was quickly hooked by the social side of the sport after meeting new people within the cycling community. But it didn’t take long for her competitive spirit to creep through, as she began participating in cycle tours across New Zealand.
“It was relaxing, it was enjoyable, you got to chat to people you wouldn’t normally chat to,” said Spence, “but I think we all have a PB [personal best] hidden inside us that we want to achieve.
“I never would have thought that I would do this, it never occurred to me, it arose out of a pure chance and then it just kept on going from there.”
One of the first tours was the 40/50 cycle tour, designed for riders over
40. The seven-stage tour covers
350km over three days across the top of the South Island, starting and finishing in Nelson’s Tasman Bay.
Spence said the more she cycled the more she reaped the physical and mental rewards.
“At the beginning, it was all about fun, but then it became about doing a bit more,” she said. “I think it’s the whole thing that you’re doing something, you’re physically doing something, and being active.
“You get out there and it doesn’t really matter what happens in the day, you can forget about it and park it, and by the time you get back, things just take a different perspective.”
All too familiar with the challenges of living a life that juggles work and family commitments, Spence said that rather than taking time away from her priorities, sport helped her to establish a better understanding of balance.
“If you had said to me ‘you’d be cycling and running through your 50s’ I would have said ‘I don’t think so’. It was because of the balance,” she said.
“We all know about balance, we all know we’re supposed to have it and we all talk about it, but making it happen is quite hard. Having to try to do something, not just because you know it’s good for you, but doing it as a pleasure, is a different ball game.
“Cycling has helped maintain the balance in this hectic life, running a business, having children, sitting in traffic, it just makes a difference, it changes your outlook, I don’t know how it does, but it does . . . You get that ‘looking at the upside’ attitude.”
Taking her health services to a range of workplaces across New Zealand, Spence said being involved in physical activity and accomplishing goals, such as the K2 challenge, has become a huge aid when discussing healthy living habits with patients.
She said she has developed a unique understanding for busy people who struggle to keep fitness a priority in their lives and has been able to use her personal experience to “show, rather than tell”.
“Talking to people I can say ‘I know what it’s like to heave yourself up the hill and feel like your going to vomit at the top’,” she said.
“It gave me a much better perspective on working collaboratively with people to help them achieve their health goals for them and their own ability to make a difference in their lives.
“I am no different to anybody else, just an ordinary person and if you had of said to me nine years ago ‘you will run the Routeburn and cycle 200km’ I would have just laughed at you,” said Spence.
“Who would believe that grunting your way up the hills of Coromandel could be called fun, but it is true. Best mental health activity ever and not a self-help book in sight.”