Bern Dornom and Simon Ronalds - The Pioneer, NZ

Elevensies

We've had an amazing week and are pretty much exhausted after racing for nearly 40 hours (39:58:45).
We finished 10th in mixed, and 52nd overall.
The mixed winners, Mark Williams and Kate Fluker, both from NZ, finished in 29:59:53 (they were fifth overall). The top open men's team finished in 26:50:53.
Thanks for your support ... it helped to know you were willing us on.
And now we are heavily into recovery mode

The profile LOOKED downhill.

Rough and challenging riding with nearly 5 hrs in the saddle. Stoked to have successfully finished the 7 days

Final Day!
25 min to race start feeling great

Well, we're almost there ...
Today was relatively short - 67km from Hawea to Snow Farm, NZ's only cross-country ski area. But that didn't mean it was easy. A furious pace was set from the start, but the race really started on the climbs, a total of 2022m.
Given we've racked up a really tough 35 hours over the six stages we're doing well. Can't say the same for Alli, who had a mild panic attack when she noticed us tracking nowhere near the course and then saw we were deleted from the participant list. But all was good: we'd left our GPS at an aid station. We're back on the list now.
We're sitting ninth in the mixed at 35:05:08, a couple of minutes behind fifth to eighth. Overall, we're 47th.
We've now finished the big climbs and are spending the night at 1200m above Lake Wakatipu. We will be racing down to the finish line in Queenstown tomorrow morning.

Simon unleashed the beast today and climbed like an animal up to the snow farm. Think we will have jumped a place or two up.

This is what Bern and Simon rode yesterday ...

The Pioneer - Stage 5 Lake Ohau to Hawea The Queen Stage of this epic event!!

The penultimate stage tomorrow. Hawea to Snow Farm 67km and 2000 m of climbing. An easier day (apparently) but we've slipped to 10th place by 90 sec due to the mechanical. We'll see if we can get back that time tomorrow.

A bit of bike love is needed - the tireless mechanics will replace Bern's rear tyre & fit new rear brake pads and disc to Simon's as he cooked them in a descent

Even the bikes are tired (but loving it)

First mechanical: puncture 2km into day, rode back to start to get new tyre, gave the field 20min head start.
First medic visit: Bern a little cut on elbow after rock touch on river crossing.
First day riding with cloud cover and under 30 degrees
First day with close to 9hrs30min in saddle: 117km and 4+ major climbs, well over 3000m ascent.
First time Bern pushing 2 bikes up hike a bike hill.

Bern and Simon are currently pushing through Stage Five (we assume)