It’s 11 pm and I’m sat amongst long tussock grass. Though I can’t see them through the night, Aoraki/Mt Cook and the snow-capped New Zealand Southern Alps stretch across the horizon on the other side of the Mackenzie Basin.
Beside me, my bike, dimly lit by a head torch mounted to my helmet. A faint double-track leads back through the tussock to the Tekapo Canal, and 20km back to the small tourist town of Tekapo from where I’d just pedalled. I’ve discovered a disconcerting amount of back-and-forth play in my dropper post and an accompanying knocking sound made when climbing steep pinches seated and pulling large amounts of torque through the saddle.
I have a decision to make. Keep moving ahead, back into the mountains with my dropper on the fritz, or turn back to Tekapo, a town with no bike shop, and hope to find a solution to my problem there.
I’ve been awake and pedalling, pushing and carrying my bike across high alpine passes for the best part of 22 hours. My tired brain is utterly incapable of making a decision. The easiest option seems to be to quit. A heart-wrenching decision given all the time, energy and money it’s taken to get me to this very moment. Unable to decide, I pull out my bivy and sleeping bag, crawl inside, close my eyes and instantly fall asleep.
In that moment I was placed 5th, 840km into the Tour Te Waipounamu: a 1330km single-stage, self-supported bikepacking race down the length of New Zealand’s South Island. The clock started ticking when the 60 riders departed from Cape Farewell — the South Island’s northernmost point — at 7 am on Sunday, January 28, and would not stop ticking until we reached Slope Point, it’s southernmost point.
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Riding 1300km Across NZ’s South Island
As we made our way south through the rugged mountainous backcountry, what we did with that time was up to us. Eating when we were hungry. Sleeping when we could no longer stay awake. Carrying on our bikes only what was essential to make the crossing of the island. We could restock food and supplies only at commercial businesses found in the handful of small towns along the route and not accept any outside assistance.
I am no stranger to ultra-endurance racing. In 2018, I won the Tour Divide, a 4,400km journey from Canada to the Mexican border. In 2019, I DNF’d at the Colorado Trail Race and, in 2020, won the Victoria Divide, which follows the Great Dividing Range from Melbourne to Albury/Wodonga. Since that last race, I’ve been on a bit of an ultra-hiatus.
In the leadup to the Tour Te Waipounamu, this time away weighed on me heavily. The questions, the doubt, the fear. The idea of the Tour Te Waipounamu scared me to no end. But that was exactly why I had toed the line at Cape Farewell. I wanted to take on something that the outcome was truly uncertain. There was absolutely no guarantee of making it the entire way along the route to Slope Point, let alone doing it in a competitive time. The race was a test against the trail and against myself as much as it was against the other riders.
Finding a rhythm heading into Tekapo
It was an arduous, albeit thoroughly enjoyable, four-day drag to Tekapo. I struggled to find my legs on day one. Perhaps it was underfueling, the heat, or just the pressure to perform, but I was cramping just 75km into the race.
Over the following days, while I managed to settle into a rhythm, the power in my legs still never showed up as I pedalled deeper into the backcountry.
Riding alone for 20 hours out of the day, you have a fair amount of time to think. Sure, a lot of that, especially on a technically demanding course such as the TTW, goes to picking lines and placing your front wheel. But your mind sure can wander. Honestly, most of the time was spent trying to keep my jaw from dragging along the ground. The scenery was absolutely mind blowing, and I felt equal parts privileged and ecstatic to be riding alone deep in the mountains.
I was making good progress and having the experience of a lifetime, but I was also slowly watching the GPS trackers of the front three riders slowly pulling away. The insecurity set in. I clearly wasn’t the rider that I used to be. Had I been kidding myself to think I could still be competitive in this sport? I was beginning to wonder why I had even shown up.
My experience told me to be patient. Be present. Keep moving forward as best you can. Everything always comes around.
On the third day, after toiling my way up out of the Rangitata Gorge for hours on end, riding, pushing and carrying my bike up steep farm tracks, across scree slopes and over endless baby-head rocks, I stood atop Bullock Bow Saddle. I looked across at the endless peaks of the Two Thumb Range. Another 900 vertical metre hike stood between me and Tekapo, but a wry grin spread across my face. This was exactly where I needed to be.
Bullock Bow is a proper alpine pass, and the chundery descent down the other side into the Bush Stream Valley is the stuff dreams are made of. The wry grin spread into a manic ear-to-ear beam across my face as I ploughed through scree and boulder fields on my way to the valley floor below.
The next several hours consisted of navigating my way to the top of Stag Saddle. My bike’s downtube resting on my shoulders as I hiked, with only a vague and intermittent foot pad, taking my bearings solely off a small creek line and intermittent marker poles spaced every hundred or so metres if you were lucky. There was nowhere else I would rather be in that moment. I was in my element.
Go light | Choosing gear for the Tour Te Waipounamu
Due to the rugged and technical nature of the course, knowing the need to push and carry my bike on my back for hours at a time, there was one overriding imperative to my bike and gear selection. Go light.
Not an easy task when you need to have everything to survive whatever nasty mountain weather the temperamental sliver of land in the South Pacific might throw at you. It meant paring things down to the absolute bare essentials and eschewing any idea of comfort.
My weapon of choice was a Specialized Epic Evo, a light and efficient rig to pedal and carry up technical climbs, with 110mm of travel, a 120mm fork, a dropper, 2.35in Specialized Fast Track and Ground Control tyres, 180mm rotors and four-pot Shimano brakes, it’s also an extremely confident and capable descender.
Strapped to the handlebars, my sleep system comprised of half a sleeping bag — long enough just to come up to my waist — paired with a synthetic puffer jacket for the top half and then enveloped in a minimalist bivy bag.
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Beyond that, my gear was extremely minimal. An ultralight rain jacket and pants, warm gloves, a power bank, spare batteries for my helmet and bar lights, an elementary first aid kit, a couple of tubes, spare hanger, chainlinks, brake pads, tyre boots, and an upholstery needle and thread for sewing up a sidewall in case of emergency.
A 36-Hour Push | We’re not stopping till the end
I woke up so incredibly stiff. When you’re only sleeping 2-3 hours, your body doesn’t have much time to seize up. Sleep much longer than that, and you wake up in a world of pain.
I decided to roll the dice with my dropper. With Tekapo offering no real solution to my problem, the only choice was to push on.
Throwing my leg over my bike was a mission in itself, but after a few minutes of pedalling, the sun’s warm morning rays helping to loosen up aching muscles and joints, I realised something. My legs had finally come to the party. I was putting out power like a normal day riding at home. Like I was totally fresh, had just slept 9 hours in my bed and eaten a solid breakfast.
What was to follow was one of those magic days on the bike. Where everything feels effortless and easy. Where it all just flows. One of those lighting-in-a-bottle type days that I’ll probably be chasing for the rest of my life.
While I had slept, researched my options and deliberated on what to do about my seatpost, I had slipped from 5th place back to 12th. I had 490km left to reach Slope Point, and the slowest, most demanding terrain was behind me. I was running out of time to chase back on, but with my newfound strength, it was game on.
I’d picked off a couple of riders coming through Black Forest Station. As I rolled into the small town of Otematata and saw two more bikes parked in front of the grocery store, I knew then how strong I was riding and decided there was only one thing to do: send it all the way to Slope Point. One last push. No sleep till the finish.
I rode hard the entire rest of the day. Harder than I had any business doing five days into an ultra-race and even probably harder than I had any business doing for a big one day ride. I was on one.
A lesson in race craft when you’ve been awake for 24 hours
I practically ran up the final big hike-a-bike of the route up onto the Hawkdun Range. After an epic traverse across the rolling, tussocked Tops (quite reminiscent of the Bogong High Plains), I let it all hang loose on the wild, rutted, rocky, 1,200m descent down the Walking Spur Track.
As the sun set on another day, I passed along the Ida Valley through Oturehua and began climbing again. The beam of my lights hitting bizarre rock formations littering the side of the track as I worked my way back above 1000m.
Around 2 am I approached the diminutive Oliver Burn Hut nestled atop the Long Gully Ridge Rd. I turned off all my lights, pedalling constantly to avoid any freewheel noise as I passed the tiny little mountain shelter and the final racer standing between me and a spot on the podium, sleeping inside.
A cold, bitter wind blew all night. I battled hard pre-dawn to keep my eyes open. My vision blurred, and I struggled to keep pushing. But push I did, and as the first light grew in the sky, so did my energy.
My strength on the bike lies in climbing—especially steep, technical climbing. Beyond the final climb over the Lammerlaw Tops lay only 150km of rolling gravel roads through the farmland of the Catlins. Terrain that greatly favoured the riders close behind me.
And so, nearly 24 hours into my shift, I lay all my cards on the table and emptied the tank while the terrain still gave me an advantage. I burned all the matches I had left, and the box too, for good measure. All in the hope that if I could buy myself as big a time gap as possible by the time we hit the final town of Lawrence, I might break their hopes of catching me and slow their chase.
Sometimes one single thread is all you need in the end
A storm rolled in as I descended off the Tops, lightning and driving rain joined the still-howling winds. The weather, my efforts of the Tops and the lack of sleep all caught up with me at once. So close to the end, I always envisioned that stretch from Lawrence as a celebratory procession into the finish line. But with such pressure from the riders behind and the miserable conditions, it was torture.
I was so desperate for it to be over. Every kilometre passed excruciatingly slowly. I gave everything I had to inch into the headwind. What I would have given to stop in that moment, so near the finish that, in hindsight, it seems so stupid. But the desire to get out of the wind. To stop pedalling. To lie down and close my eyes was so strong. My determination to keep moving hung on by a thread. But a single thread was all I needed. I marched on.
In the final hours of my journey, the clouds parted and the sun shone again. Nearing Slope Point, I knew I had managed to hold onto enough of my shrinking lead. I could sit up and enjoy the closing miles, emotion welling up inside me.
Rolling down the final grassy double-track, tears filled my eyes. The end of the road. With literally nowhere else to pedal, I leant my bike against the sign atop the cliffs that marked the end of that island. The end of that alternate world I had been living in for the past five and a half days. I sat slumped against my bike, with no more left to do.
Photos: Anton McGeachen / @antonmcgeachen, Lewis Ciddor