Teams who do the whole course have the best stories

There’s some great stories from the teams who pushed on with the 210km MTB.

Nga Rakau struggled through the first section (which included a climb of over 800m with a fair amount of bike push – which was testing Fi’s injured knee severely). They eventually arrived at the small town of Eskdale late at night, stopping at the pub only to have Mary O’Leary from the pub tell them that the kitchen had just closed…but .. they could come to her place.

She made them hot food and coffee, and offered them beds. They felt they couldn’t take the beds in their filthy state, but gratefully accepted the offer of the lovely soft shag-pile carpet on the lounge floor. They planned to sleep for an hour and a half, but when Fi woke them, the rain was bucketing down, and they decided to sleep for another hour. Mary woke them just after to say that they’d had their hour and a half, but they told her they were waiting another hour. She apologized and tip-toed back out, and when they got up an hour later (around 3am), she was just taking the chocolate croissants out of the oven, and pouring out cups of hot chocolate.

And, earlier, when they’d been eating Mary’s dinner, the town drunk stumbled across the road from the pub, leading the Girls on Top, and slurred to Mary that he’d ‘found three more’. She welcomed them in too, and they snapped up the offer of the beds.

While everyone had been sleeping, and the rain had started, she’d moved her car out of the garage and brought all their gear and bikes off the lawn and into the garage.

As Nga Rakau were about to leave, the Yogi Bears arrived. They were wet and filthy, and said they couldn’t go in her house in that state. But as Nga Rakau left, they were stripping off their dirty gear, and taking up the recently vacated spot on the lounge floor.