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Home / Hawkes Bay Today

It's just one Goodwin after another

By Jolene Williams
Hawkes Bay Today·
4 Mar, 2011 06:30 PM5 mins to read

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THE logical assumption would be Hamish Goodwin is a bit mad.
"My friends think I'm a weirdo," he concedes, before outlining in a matter-of-fact tone his training regime for the epic multi-sport event, the Speight's Coast to Coast.
But the hours of training got the Raukawa farmer exactly where he wanted to
be on race day: right at the front of the pack.
He, and some 135 other mad men and women, slogged it out across some of the country's most rugged terrain in the one-day solo event last month.
His day started at 6am on the West Coast's Kumara Beach with a 3km road run to his bike. The rest of his day was spent running the 33km over the Southern Alps, 140km on his bike and kayaking 67km down the Waimakariri River. He finished 12 hours and 43 minutes later at Sumner Beach near Christchurch.
Hamish knew he could complete the race. It was his 13th time competing and by his estimation had "reasonable endurance". But a milestone birthday last year meant he was bumped up to the 50-59 years category and he had his eye on an age-group win.
"When I went down I told everyone I wasn't going to win, but secretly I was hoping I would... I'm pretty happy I achieved my goal," he says.
He reckons he is now "able to put it to bed" and the only way he'd do another was as part of a team, maybe with one of his kids.
"It hurts too much. I've had a lot of injuries over the last five years. It's just too frustrating. You have to stop and start. And if you're going to do something you want to do it proper," he says.
After the 243km race his body was "completely buggered". "I'd given everything and your body's saying it's had enough. I had to lie on the ground for a couple of hours and drink lots of fluid for about a week."
Hamish talks about the race with that old-fashioned Kiwi stoicism. He's bare with facts, downplays his achievement and waves off the suggestion that he's done something even slightly remarkable.
He also trained largely off his own bat. No coach, no fancy nutrition plans, no expensive expert advice - just dogged determination and a home-made training programme.
"I read a few books when I was younger and you're always learning things. I get by."
He described kayaking as "a necessary evil". For training he would paddle the circumference of his neighbour's pond. It took three minutes for one lap. Training sessions were three to four hours a time.
Cycling training involved road racing with the local Ramblers club, plus a few long rides of up to 100km on his own. The mountain run was typically his strongest discipline, but this year he was hampered by a torn ligament in his foot.
He'd been having physio for months. "I couldn't do any run training. I didn't know if I was going to enter two weeks up to it," he said.
"About halfway through the [first] run up to the bikes, my foot was like a whole lot of elastic bands. It was pretty agonising."
He describes this all with a shrug of indifference. "There's not many races that go perfectly. I've had a couple of DNFs [did not finish]. One year I got hypothermia, another year I had a bad knee injury," he says.
This year high winds were a blessing and a curse. They pushed him out of his boat, but gave the cycle home a tail wind and saw his speedometer hovering about 40km/h.
He remains "pretty focused" on the race throughout, and only in the last two kilometres could he relax. "I looked behind me and nobody was there. I gave that sort of fist-punch," he says.
Hamish credits his age-group win and overall 23rd placing to his family's help in transition areas. Wife Louise and his daughter Jamie would meet him in the change-over stations where they'd rack his bike, help him dress, undress and thrust sultana cake in his direction.
"Some people, they come in, they'll sit down, they'll eat and that'll be at least 10 to 15 minutes over the whole day. The guy behind me, I bet him by 2 minutes and probably the difference was, my crew got me out of transition first."
He also credits his family for their support during his three months of training: "My family gave me a lot of time. They make the sacrifices, not me".
Now he's crossed the age-group win off the list, he's looking forward to catching up on chores around the house. But there's still the Ramblers, and tramping, and maybe the national rogaine champs in March.
And if that's not enough there'll be another challenge, he says. "There'll be another sport waiting for me."

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