“I got pretty fit while farming. It was quite a big farm, 1800 acres, so that’s big enough. I also played rugby from primary school until I was about 28, I think. I played at high school, local clubs, and I played at Lincoln. I was quite quick over a 100 metre sprint at Lincoln, only one back could beat me. And then when I came back home to Fiordland I carried on playing rugby.
The Kepler Challenge didn’t exist as a race at the time, but there was some conversation about it, and it was going to happen. So once we knew when, three months out, we basically ran around the farm to train. I did the Riverton Half Marathon as preparation too. I think that took me a bit over three hours. Then on the day of the first Kepler they almost didn’t have the Kepler, because there was quite a bit of snow on the top. The ones that run it today wouldn’t recognise it – there was a bit of a track up there but no stairs, so where the overhang is at Hanging Valley, you’re actually down on hands and knees crawling through there. There was a track up top to the Luxmore Hut and then you just follow the poles the best you can. The downhill into Iris Burn was hard on your legs. You just had to aim at something out the corner, hit that and stop, and turn and go down the other way. So Ken Pierce and I, we stuck together and we walked pretty much most of it from there on. And none of this electrolytes or anything like that. Our sustenance was warm water and Moro Bars. The lakes had been high that year too so the boardwalk along the lake was all buckled and twisted and you couldn’t use it. And that joker, Russel Prince, he won the first Kepler in I think about five hours. He actually finished and then came back to Rainbow Reach, which is 10k’s before the end of the race. And I don’t know how many people he convinced to do the last 10k’s, but a lot of people wouldn’t have finished if he hadn’t been there. It was bloody good.
I’ve still got my finishers t-shirt and some photos from that race. I’ll dig them out.
I played a friendly rugby game the year after and I did a knee and ankle injury at the same time – so I did a good job – and I never got back to the Kepler.
I still did a lot of work farming and I did a little bit of local team triathlon – where I did the running and somebody else kayaked and somebody biked. I’ve done quite a few Surf to City’s in Invercargill when we lived there. That’s where Derek Turnbull was doing his thing, and he’d bounce ahead with his stick half a kilometre or so and then he’d come back and encourage some people. That was good.
And then I finished farming and I spent 20 years in IT just sitting at desks, so you sort of have to do something, and that was what it was all about then.
Now I walk this track here. It’s a cycle trail and it’s quite a nice walk, about 3kms from home and around. And then Avis started volunteering at parkrun recently, so that’s been fun and interesting to come along and run too.
I’ll keep running – as much as I can.”
Robin Peters
(Fiordland)
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(Shared and photographed with permission from Robin Peters)
