Ryan's Twenty-fifteen experiences

Another adventurous year gone, and this time with more awesome experiences than ever!

Experience 1: The Oceania orienteering championships

And we were off to Australia, on another one of our orienteering adventures, this time to the Oceania Orienteering Championships in Tasmania. It was an orienteering festival week an a half, with 7 events over 10 days. It was a great series of events, and I got third place in one of the middle events!

Experience 2: My geocaching birthday
On the days leading up to my birthday, I spent ages thinking on what it was going to be this time. It had to be better than all my others, (ukulele festival, mountain-biking, secret code treasure hunt, action world) but I ouldn't think of anything. Then my dad came up with the idea of a geocaching weekend birthday party, which I thought sounded great! I had a great time, indeed better than all my other birthdays! You can read about it in more detail here.


Experience 3: Mathex 2015
At my school, since term 2, I had been chosen for the school Mathex team, along with thirty or so other people. Mathex is one of the only academic competitive sports in the world, a bit like sprinting crossed with puzzle solving. You are given a hard maths question. Once you solve it, someone on your team has to sprint 100 metres to the judges, who then give you the next question. Each question gives your team 5 points. First to 100 wins! Anyway, I made it into the team of 4 and on the night (with over 100 schools competing) our team came third, my school's first time to get a place in over 10 years!

Experience 4: The P6 adventure race
This year was my fifth P6, and my friend Cameron came with me to do it so we had a team of three. Of course it was better than all the other P6's I had done, because they just keep getting better. After 6 hours of hard work, plodding, pedalling, pushing, and tubing, we were rewarded with first place in our category and about 8th overall! Yahoo!

So overall, another great adventurous year, better than all the others before it!

-- Ryan

Alan's highlights (& a lowlight) of 2015

The High 5-0 Challenge

In February-March "Chief Nutter" Mal Law spent 50 days running an off-road marathon and climbing a peak each day. My training included a multiple of ascents of Mt Wellington in Hobart, running the Mt Graham Circuit at Freycinet and completing the 75km Hillary Trail over 2 days. I was a support runner for the 2nd day of Mal's challenge, a 42km, 3000m of climbing, 12hr epic in the Kaimanawa ranges. One of the toughest days ever but for Mal just a stepping stone as he continued with 48 similar days. It was an incredible adventure to be a small part of and Mal's fundraising of over $505,050 for the mental health foundation is astounding.

The Crash

Back on the bike after all the running training was great until I managed a head-on collision with another bike. The resulting broken finger slowed my training somewhat and put me off the bike for six weeks. As this happened about 5 weeks before the Curekids Great Adventure Race, I had a problem. However some rapid recovery and and understanding specialist got me to the startline with the finger protected by a splint. Team Theta had a great race and managed to win the IT cup as well as raising $16,000 for this deserving charity.

The ups and downs of orienteering

A great year of orienteering in a variety of locations. The ups were the experience of running at Oceania in Tasmania, first M40 at two of the NWOC rogaines and managing to get round a whole week of events at the Australian Champs without being hideously lost. The downs came from being lost in the maze of rocks at the NZ champs and a DNF due to not being able to locate controls in the thick forest on the last day of the JAFA Queens birthday weekend.

10 Years of the P6!

It's now 10 years since I started in this mad crazy world of adventure racing. My first event was the P6 in 2005 with Julia; a memorable event involving gale force winds, hailstorms, riding the bike leg with no seat and a broken chain. I've been back every year since making 2015 my 11th event. Once more, Lactic Turkey Events put on a memorable event this time at Shakespear Regional Park. This year competing with Ryan and his friend Cameron, we were running, biking, climbing, shooting and swimming our way round the park. We celebrated the 10-year anniversary with custom-printed tshirts and presented shirts to the race organisers Shaun & Maddie as well.

kyla's highlights of 2015

by Kyla

Jafa

Jafa is a orienteering weekend with four days of orienteering Jafa is a highlight because I came first over the weekend.

My birthday

My birthday party it is a highlight because it is one of the most exiting things of the year this year it was a ice-skating birthday party.

P6

This is a highlight because our team The Two Elephants (my mum and me )won 2 person family prize.

Gymnastics

In October I started gymnastics at Waitakere gymnastics the first thing we did  was to do a backwards flip and it is my favourite thing to do right from the start I can also practice for gymnastics at home because I have a trapeze at home. 

School play

This years school play was called 'Disorder In Court'.I was one of the main characters alongside Goldilocks, the three bears, three little pigs and the Big Bad Wolf.

The reason why I put the school play on is because it was the end of school celebration and Christmas celebration.

Game-making

Throughout the year I have been making several mini-games on a programming website on scratch. I have devoted a lot of my time to making games this year, and you can view my profile on scratch here, or go to my games website here. I also spent 8 weeks programming a huge platformer-style game (called "simple") and you find a blog on me creating this game step by step here. You can veiw the final game as well, here.