Hey guys, I decided to write some race reports for my Pioneer journey as it was such an amazing week, I feel like it is unfair to just move on never to speak of it again. I will post one stage/day each day as it is a lot of writing all in one. Today’s one is posted quite late, but it is exactly one week since the prologue, so I thought it was only fitting to post each stage on the day of the week that we rode it. If you are at all interested, then please have a read and let me know what I could do better or just what you thought.
The decision to race the Pioneer was a lot less thought out than it should have been. One morning at the bakery after a standard bunch ride, Rohan asked me if I wanted to do an MTB pairs race in New Zealand called the Pioneer with him. My answer; “yeah sure why not”. Little did I know I was going to have to ride 424km with 12,000m climbing in 6 days in the hilly area of Queenstown. After moving to a new coach only about 2.5 months before the race there was not a whole lot of time to prepare myself for what would be the hardest race I have done. Benji (my coach) and I put a plan together and then kept in contact often to make sure I was prepared and long story short, it worked. Before heading out I got my bike fully serviced with some replacements to drivetrain parts to make sure everything was working as well as possible. My bike for the Pioneer was a 2013 Trek Superfly Hardtail. A beautiful racing bike in its time and still a beautiful bike but nowadays the hardtails are a rare sight. This proved to be true at the Pioneer and for a good reason to. Now all that was left, was to do the race…
Pictures were sent to me of Queenstown a few days before we were heading there. Houses and benches in town were covered in a thick layer of snow like you see in movies. This made my nerves skyrocket as I was not looking forward to riding crazy far distances and up to high mountains in snow. Flying over the Southern Island of New Zealand all I could see out the window was snow topped mountains, again I was not happy to see this. Luckily when landing it was all clear skies and warm temperatures. We had 2 full days before the race began so we unpacked our bikes and find some nice gravel road trails to cruise along to get the legs prepared for what was to come.
DAY ONE – Prologue: 21.4km, 977m climbing
The prologue started at the top of Coronet Peak which required a half an hour shuttle trip from Queenstown to the top where we were greeted with clouds, cold temperatures and eventually rain. The format for today was a time trial, with gaps of 20 seconds teams would leave and then be sorted into groups/waves depending on your race time from today. The stage started with 6km of descending and with the conditions being so grim, the race director decided it was safer to make the gaps between teams start time 30 seconds instead of 20 seconds meaning our start was now later than expected. Great, more sitting around getting cold. Waiting around, I saw some familiar faces and chatted for a bit before it was finally time. Rohan and I lined up on the start line, got our names called out over the speaker system, bumped fists and set off on our Pioneer journey. The descent was hectic to say the least. Many teams riding at different paces, muddy single track and some tough sections meant it was more about just getting to the bottom without crashing than trying to go as fast as possible. Some teams were taking it a little too safe and holding us and some other teams up. We finally got passed and had some sections of clear run. We made it to the bottom but not without some close calls. Then the climbing began right away, and we settled into a tempo which was classic Declan, faster than what we should be doing considering this was only the prologue. Rohan did his best to calm an excited Declan which had minimal effect. We climbed some nice single-track trails and for the last 3km or so, we were on the main road. The road slowly became harder to see and more wet as we climbed higher. Eventually we made it back up to the finish on Coronet Peak in a time of 1:32.14 which landed us in 26th place out of 276 teams. Rohan and I were understandably surprised and happy about this result. Although, this did mean that now instead of just riding the Pioneer trying to finish it, we were now in the mix of things and had to race it! (My competitiveness smiling but Rohan probably not as happy as me).
Declan Prosser - Cycling 