My experience last time was very similar to yours. I met a couple of riders at a checkpoint with no GPS and no cell phone signal for their maps app and said they could tag along with me.
One was on a bike with a 12 litre tank, if I remember correctly, so I ended up stopping a lot more often than I needed to. They were also fairly cautious riders, even by my standards, so I ended up doing quite a bit of waiting at some checkpoints while they caught up.
I also lost them somewhere after Te Kuiti as I thought they were in my mirrors, but it turned out (I think) to be a couple of riders from the 1600 ride catching up with me. I pulled over on the side of the road and waited for around 10 minutes for them to catch up. Luckily they hadn't taken a wrong turn somewhere or they would have been seriously lost.
At the last checkpoint I said my goodbyes and gave them verbal directions back to Turangi and then seriously picked up the pace. In the end, I made it back with one minute to spare. My last 100 km in the pissing rain was probably my quickest of the whole day.
It was still a great day of riding though. Despite my comments above it definitely added to the whole experience - I thoroughly enjoyed the last few hours riding against the clock trying to get back within the 12 hour time limit.
Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk
Bookmarks