Tarawera Trail Ultra. (NZ)

Gidday UK Fell Runners

Warning, this post contains some gratuitous name-dropping and a shameless plug :-)

A couple of your fellow countrymen whom I ran with in June in California (namely Nick Ham and Jez Bragg) suggested there might be a few of you that would be interested in a race I am organising here in New Zealand. It is a part of the country characterised by volcanic landscapes, forest, lakes and very strong Maori culture.

Here's the website: http://www.taraweraultra.co.nz/

The Tarawera Ultramarathon is a 50-mile (80km) point to point wilderness trail run in the Bay of Plenty New Zealand on March 21, 2009. The course starts at The Rotorua Redwoods then meanders around Lake Tikitapu (Blue Lake), Lake Okareka, Lake Okataina to Lake Tarawera. From the Tarawera Outlet it's all downstream as you follow the river past the Falls and on to the township of Kawerau. Very little time will be spent on roads, with the majority being spectacular wilderness trails.

There are two distances - the 50 mile (80km) option or the 56km option which finishes at the Tarawera Falls. You can complete the event as a solo runner or as part of a relay team (2 and 4-person relay options for the 80km course and a 3-person relay option for the 56km course).

Let me know if you have any questions.

Cheers, Paul Charteris

oh... my... GOSH I would so love to do this

I even have some friends who live near Gisborne

sadly, my chances of raising the air-fare to transport the Slug Family down there are negligible... :(

I'm a slug runner too Daz,

I just got the Tarawera ultra. course maps from my mapping gurus and they are sooo cool, I wanted to share them.

http://www.taraweraultra.co.nz/course/index.html

The lakes are all formed by volcanic eruptions. The Mt. Tarawera eruption of 1886 caused that huge fissure you can see in the bottom right-hand corner of the 3D oblique map.

Enjoy! (sorry, I just had to share this - I love maps and I think these are pretty cool).

Cheers, Paul

now this isn't fair, i'm in New Zealand from January 9th for two months but looks like i'll miss this race...maybe I try and run it anyway:)