A trail of triumph

You're out in the bush, miles from civilisation. A sharp twist of a blister begins to niggle the ball of your foot, which has been pounding after its mate for the best part of seven hours.
You've already dodged several thousand tree-roots; there are still many thousands to go. Your lungs are surprisingly fine but the deadening weight of your quads and calves forms its own lasso, firing out at every passing rock, slowing progress, crowding the mind.
What could possibly lift the spirits of an ultra-distance runner at such a bleak time?
For Tauranga's Russell Lake, it was a raspberry jam sandwich, wholemeal heaven nursing red gold in its bosom.
"That was great - it just hit the spot at the right time," Lake says, still mentally chewing it over.
"A lot of people combine it with peanut butter for the salt and the protein but I'm not a big peanut-butter fan and just the raspberry jam was just what I needed."
At the time of digestion, the 41-year-old was 60km into last week's Tarawera Ultramarathon, which takes runners from Rotorua's Whakarewarewa Forest, winding past the breath-taking beauty of the region's lakes, emerging beside the Tarawera River and gliding into Kawerau.
It's a stunning run in every nuance of the word, with options for 60km, 85km or a full 100km.
Lake made his race debut in the 85km section, fulfilling 18 months of careful planning and training, crossing 8hrs 53mins and 4secs later - but only after his rejuvenating raspberry injection tipped him out of a mental fog and towards the finish.
"A bit after the Tarawera Falls aid station, I'd done a bit over 60km and made it up a gnarly, soft forest-trail climb and from there, there were lots of nice, flowing, gentle downhills. It was just great to cruise along, knocking off the kilometres. It just felt effortless."
Effortless? After 60km of beating your legs into a pulp? Surely Lake's lanky limbs were just numb? Actually, this is a bloke who used Ironman New Zealand as a "warm-up" to build some base last year. He shrugs, gives a smile.
"No, they weren't numb at that stage ... I guess they were a bit later on!"
Former Tarawera race winner Kerry Suter believes you run the first half with your legs and the second half with your mind.
It's a simplistic view but it encapsulates the importance of mental strength, of positive thinking, of keeping upbeat. Even rookies can become ultradistance runners, with a little bit of motivation and good head-space.
Four years ago, Mount Maunganui's Heather Andrews couldn't even count herself as a runner; the Christchurch-raised mum of two had a dancing pedigree but that was about it.
On a whim, she joined Mount Joggers in 2007 and did a 10-week beginners course - then her marathon-running dad Mike died that same year and she was dared by members of his Burnside Joggers club to run his 40th marathon in his honour.
She completed the 2009 Rotorua marathon for him, then did the Auckland Marathon for herself, and realised the longer she ran, the more she enjoyed it. The 60km Tarawera distance came last year, and last Saturday, she too got through 85km.
"Every time I've done an ultra, the distances have got greater so it looks like I'll definitely be back next year to do the 100km!" Andrews laughs.
But her 14:28:03 finishing time wasn't her only achievement last week - she also may have unwittingly launched a new career.
Race director Paul Charteris called her a couple of weeks out; the muesli bar sponsorship had fallen over. Could she whip up a few batches?
"I ended up making 1000 of them, all in little cup-cake wrappers so the runners wouldn't get sticky fingers," Andrews muses.
"They seemed to go down pretty well - there weren't many left when I went through - though they did take a couple of days to make!"
RACE DAY dawns crisp and sublime. Actually, dawn is still a good hour away when Charteris and his runners assemble in the midst of the towering Redwoods in Rotorua but at least overnight rain has cleared, the air is fresh and still and sweet, while only the odd drop of pent-up moisture spatters through the leaves.
There's an anxious bustle before the start, a few dozen nervous pees, then they're off, 260-odd headlamps bobbing through the gloom.
By the time the first runners get to the back side of magical Tikitapu (Blue Lake), Charteris is there helping set up the first of the aid stations, adorning a table with lollies, bananas, sticking plasters, hot-cross buns ... and, of course, Heather's Magic Muesli Bars.
The line of lycra-clad figures stretches, elastic-like, as the rabbits out the front leap away from the slow and steady tortoise brigade.
They drift past Lake Okareka, then circumnavigate Lake Okataina. When the leaders get to the Lake Tarawera outlet, hours separate them from the back markers.
As if the overloaded athletes haven't had enough visual stimuli, they've now got to contend with a winding, achingly beautiful 6km trek alongside the Tarawera River, past blindingly clear water tumbling over rapids, disappearing into underground torrents and reappearing halfway down precipices.
"I grew up in Kawerau, my parents had a sheep and beef farm on the banks of the Tarawera River, so that river has run through my entire childhood," Charteris says.
"I have a very special connection to that waterway so when runners come from all over the world to run from Rotorua to Kawerau - I feel like they are running to my home."
The Tarawera Ultramarathon is in its third year. Charteris conceived the idea five years ago while living in Northern California, training for trail ultras over there.
From the start, he knew the route would be exactly the sort of race he'd get excited about doing and he hoped others would too.
They have. A fair chunk of this year's field came from overseas, Germans, Americans, Australians, Japanese and Austrian.
They fly in, exhaust themselves amid other-worldly scenery and fly out, sated.
And like Russell Lake, they'll probably come back for more.
"It's a pretty honest course and you have to do the training.
"I probably should have done a few more longer runs around that six or seven-hour mark but it's easy to say now ... and in reality, there's probably no amount of training that's going to be enough for something like this."
Tauranga results
60km:
Bradyn Smith 7:33:44
Ryan Piddington 7:44:56
85km:
Russell Lake 8:53:04
Paula Gibson-Marshment 13:13:46
Heather Andrews 14:28:03
100km:
Ryan Park 11:44:34
Darren Blackwell 12:52:02
Peter McHannigan 15:12:12