We were blessed with great weather and tailwinds for our final stage into Bluff at the bottom of the South Island.

A few of us decided to tack-on a very steep climb up Bluff Hill at the end. How steep? We had three Kona-qualifiers walk sections and a fourth flipped his bike over backwards and landed on his head. Thankfully, no injuries. The scariest part for me was riding back down!

We then rolled to Land’s End for photos and backslapping! I was surprisingly emotional down there. Likely from a mixture of: fatigue; exhaustion; endorphins and the removal of stress.

I have a feeling that this trip will mark a closing of a chapter of my life – I wanted to give Molina a big hug but thought that I might start crying so just sat there working on my breathing! Everything that I achieved as a triathlete is due to Scott taking an interest in me.

A few changes in the overall today as folks stepped up for the swim/bike/run bonus.

PROVISIONAL

Those of you on my blog feed will have seen that I quoted Clas' advice yesterday. In Swenglish, "better to enjoy your life".

Yesterday had it all at Epic Camp - sun, rain, hot, cold...

We started the day with a classic Christchurch run around Godley Head - Clas and I took a route that had a few extra hills - if you ever get out there then we took the High Trail that goes over the mtn tops along the crater rim. The faster way (still tough) takes the road from Evan's Pass down to Godley Head/Boulder Bay.

Think that I’m back under -100 TSB. Feeling about as smoked as when I arrived at Turangi on the North Island.

More things that happen with the big training:

Didn't contest the KOM and felt great on the bike today. I think those maximal efforts _really_ take it out of the body. The guys that smashed the climb were pretty smoked by the end of the ride.

Very strong headwinds today that you can see in my bike file at TrainingPeaks. 3794kj, plenty of drafting and it still took 4.5 hrs to go 129KMs - that's a challenging ride.

With the rest day (yesterday) and the completion of the North Island (the day before that), a lot of the guys had themselves jazzed up to take-it-out fast. I'd been feeling a slight illness coming on so made an advance decision no to contest the KOM. Turned out to be a VERY good call as the pace was ON from the edge of town and that would have left a big mark (my CP120 was 246w, incl 0s) for my ride as it was so that might still overload my system. Time will tell!

Did a Greg Bennett main set on the bike -- alternate songs on the iPod -- 1 song threshold, 1 song steady. You can see that from 2.5 to 4.0 hrs in the file.

Morning was a favorite swim of mine from Monica...
500, 5x100
400, 4x100
300, 3x100
200, 2x100
100, 100

Third person rest interval and for the 100s we did odds IM. Felt really good in the water (always do when I swim often) and Lordy let me lead.

Snuck in a nap on arrival and have an easy run scheduled for just before dinner. Some of the lads are out doing mega runs - my jog to the Seal Colony, and back, will be plenty.

HUGE day scheduled for tomorrow - 180K to Christchurch with some tough rollers.

I want to share some thoughts on Weenie Training at some stage. I've had them in my head for a few months. Perhaps tomorrow -- need to get my legs up for a bit.

One last observation -- we saw SNOW today down to about 400meters on the mountains outside Kaikoura -- pretty cold today with weather coming direct from Antarctica. I was bundled up all day!

Putting my Day 10 blog in the bag as I sense that tomorrow could be a bigger training day than scheduled. Plenty of folks talking about doing double swims and runs!

I wanted to put on record my thanks to Johno for organizing this trip.

There is a TON that goes on behind the scenes here at Epic and John's been putting the camp before his own training and enjoyment. A true professional. I just read in his blog that he's planning on opening it up a bit more on the bike so that might be interesting over the next few days. He crushed me on the KOM yesterday!

The route that we did down the North Island was excellent! I had no idea that there were roads/routes that great. I've been riding the main highways for years and missing out!

Day 9 is neutralized so there won't be any changes from this.

OVERALL

TOTAL
Steven Lord 100.50
Mark Pietrofesa 96.25
Gordo Byrn 94.00