Running in the rain
It was about 30 kilometres into one of the most bizarre runs of my life that the words from the pre-race briefing rang in my ears.
‘‘Just remember, you’re in Fiordland and right now it’s more fiord than land,’’ the race’s medical director had told us before we set out for the 60km Kepler Challenge.
Never a truer word was said, I thought, thigh-deep in glacial water, desperately trying to figure out where the track finished and the river began, and wondering if there were eels.
All year, my Dirt Church
Radio co-host, Matt Rayment, and I figured there was no way Te A¯ nau could turn on conditions like we had at Kepler last year, when sunburn and heatstroke were the biggest hazards as we ran along the ridge of Mt Luxmore.
And so it proved – in recent weeks, the region has been lashed by wind and rain.
In the end, race director Steve Norris and the committee of locals who organise this most community of races made the call to go ahead, but with an alternative course – which meant runners weren’t out on the exposed alpine section as long as normal. It was only the third time in the race’s 32-year history weather had forced a change to the course.
It still meant we had to wade along flooded sections of track, listen as thunder boomed, and feel stinging, freezing rain until our legs went numb.
Sounds horrible, huh? Nope. I loved it. Why?
I’ll remember Kepler 2019 as a time when shared suffering begat shared joy; a time when, confronted by misery, all I could do was get silly and run; a time when, faced with puddles and mud, the only thing to do was go straight through the middle.
In short, I acted like a kid. And how often do we get the chance to do that?
It does mean I owe a few apologies. If you were one of those unfortunates on the track at the same time as Matt, our friend, Seawon, and I were