BLOODY NEW ZEALAND! Tales from Auckland

You can't see the outer layer of my leg is missing along with my right butt Cheek scared up!!!

Three weeks ago I signed up for a 10k road race in Auckland, New Zealand, just excited at the chance to race in another country. I didn’t know about the course or the people that had previously raced it, but I knew that the winner had run 33:59 in 2010 so I had a chance at winning. As the day would unfold I would be able to add running up a volcano twice, running through rain and mud, and having a session with medical workers to my list of things done while in New Zealand.

                The day prior to the race I decided it would be best to run from my hostel, to the race site so that I knew exactly how to get there the morning of the race. Sun was actually shining, I had just awoken from a nap and I hit the road in route for “western springs park”. After making it about 2.5 miles the roof just opened up from above and the rain just came by the buckets. All in all I ended up running 7.6 miles in order to find this park and run back in the torrential downpour. The night prior to the race I would once again wake up at 4am and fail to fall back asleep. After my flight through the night directly to Auckland from perth, I managed to not even catch 1 minute of sleep and go right into the Auckland morning. I had been lacking sleep critically, as I have been laying down around 11pm and waking up between 3 and 4am every night. The night of the race was no exception, in fact I just decided to go downstairs and have a small breakfast before the udder fatigue just begin to set in.

                Arriving at the race most likely looking aged by 10 years I had a nice warm-up and the “Run Auckland” set up looked pretty legit surrounding the start/finish of the race. I tucked away my track suit behind some tents and made my way to the starting line realizing that I could not remember the last time I had actually put on deodorant because of all of this back and forth traveling haha. The gun blast off and people all fly out in front of me, but I take my time to aim in on the 2 front runners who have distanced themselves from the pack and pursue. We hit our 1^st kilometer in 3:12 which was all gradual uphill, just a bit too fast for me but I was able to tuck in fairly comfortable. We passed 2k in a slower 3:19 distancing ourselves from 4^th place by a good margin. I took the lead and began to push the pace just as we turned a corner to look at the wall that soon we would be running up. The course was on/around a dormant volcano so basically we had to run straight up the back side of this volcano twice for the 10k!!! After managing to get pretty heavily into oxygen debt the top 2 runners hit the 5k mark just in front of me while I was happily surprised to be a 16:53 with that climb.

                Now for the juicy part of the days racing! I had 2^nd place in my sights as the eventual winner just broke both of us. This time we had to run around all of the 5k runners who were released 15 minutes after our race, what a chore! These people blocked the sidewalks completely so it was a zig zag for literally 5k which slowed all of us down and drained any extra energy that we could have had. As I approached the climb once again, my spirit was broken from the fantasy of winning, I could hear some foot steps behind me, then I heard breathing. Breathing from a little boy or a girl, holy crap! I knew that there was a local woman who had been winning some of the races overall in some pretty fast times but I didn’t think it could be her, it was of course. She just flew up the volcano with her short choppy strides while I looked like a freak extending my legs a bit too long and eventually I began a nice walking pace.           Once I got to the top the woman was almost out of sight, I passed the 2^nd place guy who was bent over at the top of the hill and then heard someone quickly approaching. I found a heart somewhere inside and convinced myself to dig a little deeper and begin with some surges. I was making my way through the hundreds of 5k runners or walkers should I say. Jumping in the grass, sinking my feet into the wet muddy grass then back onto the sidewalk for a few brief steps before 2 more women completely blocked the sidewalk we were racing on. “Ok just 2k or so to go lets rock it man, don’t be a P^$$y, MAN UP!”. I am running downhill between all these people, I glance at my watch as the 9^th k clicks and I am going 4:41 mile pace at this point, woooo. Now to just plan my maneuver ahead between the 5 women half walking and running on this slippery wet surface. “I can make it between them before I hit the power pole, Oh Sh*t, I can’t make it”. So I take a sharp cut right as if I was Barry Sanders and then that’s when all hell broke loose for me.

                I am bracing myself for this mega fall down hill on this rocky pavement, BOOM SKIIDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD. I am sliding on my right side just ripping into my knee and then I basically collapse into two women from behind almost knocking them over. They are in a panic, screaming, “oh my god are you ok, oh no, oh no!!!”. The only thing I am thinking is, “this is going to hurt later but I am not going to lose my 3^rd place, get up Chris!”. I pop up the best that I can and yell to the concerned women, “I will sort it out later!” and continue my onward drive to the finish. The guy behind me of course passes me on this stretch while I am gathering myself again so I pop in behind him. We hit the last 600m and we are running on wooden planks that can carry at the most 2 people wide and from all of the rain, the volcano surface has turned into mud and washed down onto the planks. We are slipping and sliding, at the verge of a fall at any moment, trying to dice between other 5k runners. We both slip off of the little wooden deck into the swampy mud but catch ourselves for one last blast to the finish 100m away. I know I have a lot more left in the tank so I roll past him to the line and wrap up my 3^rd place.

                After the race I look down and see blood running down my leg and people begin asking if I am ok. The medics luckily were on hand and took me inside the ambulance to begin cleaning my wounds and wrapping them up. The outer skin layer of my anterior tib was pretty much removed completely and my knee has a few nice slices that will be some sweet war wounds to talk about in the future. After waiting around for 90 minutes for awards, they do not give anything out and I may point out that they provide no food at the finish, only one bottle of water! It was a long 3.5 mile walk back to my hostel with my leg all banged up and the on again off again showers. What an experience!!!! Up next is a hiking adventure over some snow capped mountains, hopefully I can stay on my feet!

Thank you, Thank you! Farewell Party + Big Fun 5k

  After speaking with Rebecca Thomason just weeks ago about my departure to Australia, she offered to host a "farewell" party in my honor at her household. She basically set up everything on her own, with giving me freedom to invite friends to enjoy the gathering with. I am so thankful and most importantly fortunate to have so many amazing friends like Rebecca to celebrate my journey with.

  Once at the party, we all realized that this scavenger hunt was some serious business, as it involved a lot of running around all the way to the uptown area and back, all the while in costume! I decided to pass and stick around to catch up with some old college buddies to play catch up the best we could in an hour's time.


As the farewell gathered more and more people, I was very delighted to see that so many people showed up to enjoy just a last hoorah for me. Check out some of the pictures below to see how much fun it was!

I just want to say thank you so much to everyone who came out to have one last laugh with me. It was a very special time for me and I don't take my friendship for granted with each and everyone of you. After the scavenger hunt was complete I was greeted with some cash in hand from the proceeds of the party, which made me pretty excited knowing that this would more than likely be enough to ship my bike down under! Thank you thank you thank you


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As a conclusion to this post, I woke up saturday morning bright and early after about 2 hours of rest and jumped into a 5k that started directly across the street from me in the Blakeney Shopping center...The event was amazing in fact, one of the best local 5k's I have ever seen put on in the area. I knew that if certain precautions weren't made, that the course could be cut slightly short simply by taking a few corners a certain way.  The course is USATF certified but I think a few of the turns were taken sharply to trim the course down a bit. As a disclosure to all interested/current clients of PRC, my preparation for the race was extremely against the rules of all recommended advice I would typically give.

  My warm-up included, waking up, walking across the street to get my packet, walking back and then taking a 15 minute hot shower, followed by a 4 minutes run in the treadmill, then a 15 minute rant with various people before realizing the race was to start in a mere 2 minutes. As the bad decisions piled up, I decided to go ahead and take off my shirt, it was only 40 degree's out, why not? Arm warmer's and a hat, fun times. In short the gun fired and everyone took off directly uphill out of the shopping center. I was getting left right away by young kids, old men, women and maybe even a few baby joggers. there were 2 things that I realized about a 1/2 mile into the race;

1. I was behind Justin Breland and Kent Morris by a fair amount, just basing off of our current 5k times, I should certainly be in front of them, as well as the grey haired guy in front of them with basketball shorts. 
2. Pezz was pretty far up the road on me, crap I need to pick up the pace or I will get rolled by a girl!!! She is legit, yes I did have an excuse to fall back on from my lack of sleep and wealth of hops in my stomach, but I had to man up. 

I managed to pass Pezz at the mile mark, debating on whether to help her pace or to continue on, I decided to catch up to some other guy who was sporting triathlon gear and went out "balls to the wall" with the ballers.   I was feeling surprisingly great, so I decided to just basically sprint for about 200 meters to lay the law down so to speak. After I hit about the 1.5m mark, I realized that the rest of the race I would be completely alone, maybe I should push it? na cruise control to stay in front of Pezz was all i really cared about, so as I approached the line not having wore a watch, I was completely surprised to see 15:49, 50, 51...15:56!

Big South 5K 2010
                         Charlotte, NC 10/23/2010
             UNOFFICIAL Results by Queen City Timing Services
                 RESULTS POSTED ON www.queencitytiming.com

Place Div/Tot  Gen/Tot  Name                Ag G Bib   City         St Chiptim Guntime Pace  
===== ======== ======== =================== == = ===== ============ == ======= ======= ===== 
    1   1/23     1/420  Matthew Elliott     25 M   858 Rock Hill    SC   14:45   14:45  4:45 

    2   1/11     2/420  Ricky Flynn         23 M  1472 Lynchburg    VA   14:53   14:54  4:48 
    3   2/23     3/420  Jordan Kinley       26 M  5621                   15:33   15:33  5:01 
    4   3/23     4/420  Chris Lamperski     28 M  1058 Charlotte    NC   15:56   15:57  5:08 
    5   1/51     1/435  Stephanie Pezzulo   28 F  1486 Waxhaw       NC   16:17   16:17  5:15 
   

My new approach to racing will not involve a garmin but by racing off of feel alone as it seems I have been able to adapt to paces much more appropriately in that manner. 

Pictured with the Eagle is a good friend, Scott Helms who left from uptown Charlotte with a headlamp on in the early AM to make it in time to run the course in order to complete his 20 miler along side PRC member Dusti Jensen. great to see both of them knocking 20 miles out like it was nothing!