Tour Te Waipounamu rider: Hana Black

Hana Black is one of around eight women who have signed up for the Tour Te Waipounamu bikepacking race. It starts in Golden Bay in less than two days’ time! From 2016-2020 Hana and her partner Mark were on an epic biking adventure from Alaska to Patagonia. When the world started to shut down with COVID lockdowns last year, they made the tricky decision to return home to New Zealand. They wouldn’t have known it at the time but the inaugural Tour Te Waipounamu route was about to be released and would come to consume their summer, providing a whole new challenge and big goal to work towards. We caught up with Hana around a week ago to find out more about her riding history, training for the TTW and what she hopes to get out of the event.

Hana Black, a 49 year old adventure-lover from Lyttleton has spent the Kiwi summer preparing for New Zealand’s newest bikepacking race, the Tour Te Waipounamu.

For the past couple of years, Hana’s life has revolved around bikes. In 2016, along with her partner Mark Watson, Hana started an epic biking adventure from Alaska to Patagonia. “We went through 16 different countries, following the continental divides of North, Central and South America – an amazing 45,500km journey through different climates and cultures.” In early 2020 their big adventure was cut short when COVID started exploding around the world and they made the tricky decision to return to New Zealand.

“To fund our four years overseas we sold our house and invested in some rental properties and used the leftover cash to fund the journey. Previous to going overseas I worked for Kathmandu as a product technician. I trained in fashion design many years ago and have worked for many of NZ’s outdoor clothing and equipment companies.”

Mark wrote a blog page summarising their trip and an article for NZ Wilderness magazine: ‘How giving up everything to cycle 45000km gave us the world’ They’re regular contributors to bikepacking.com and have inspired cyclists from all backgrounds from all over the world. Check out this great 6 minute video, which was put together by Kathmandu over halfway through their epic journey:

Prior to this long overseas adventure, Hana completed many bikepacking events in New Zealand including the Great Kiwi Brevet, the Le Petit Brevet and the Tour Aotearoa. In 2016 she completed a shorter version of the Great Southern brevet after developing acute tendonitis on Grandview Ridge. She has also been a keen tramper, rock climber and mountaineer for most of her adult life. 

Some of Hana’s more recent Andes traverses involved a lot of hiking with a fully loaded bike. These sort of trips provide a great foundation of fitness and mental strength for the conditions riders will face traversing the South Island on the Tour Te Waipounamu route. 

While it’s a bummer their big overseas journey was cut short early, we’re all happy to have Hana and her partner along for the inaugural Tour Te Waipounamu. What a welcome back to New Zealand! We caught up with Hana to learn more about her riding background and to hear how preparation was going for the Tour Te Waipounamu. 

Riding background

How did you first get into riding bikes?

Hana was never the athletic type when she was young. “I was the kid that didn’t learn to ride a bike until I was seven, shown up by my little brother, four years younger than me. The girl that dreaded school sports days, always pleading with my mother to write me sick notes. The teenager that rode a bike to high school only once, got a flat tyre and was late – and refused to ride again. I always had an excuse to avoid anything too physical – it was hard and I hated it.”

“I first got into cycling by going on a 5 month cycle touring trip around the north island with Mark back in 1992. After that we started mountain biking on fire trails and singletrack near where we lived in Wellington, and also did some longer trips exploring tramping tracks as potential overnight rides. I first rode the Heaphy track in 1993. It wasn’t called bikepacking back then.” 

This is a brilliant, inspiring blog that Hana wrote for Revelate Designs. It includes some more insights into her cycling background. 

What’s your favourite style of riding? Do you have any fave trails or places to ride?

My new favourite ride is the Paparoa track – You’re in an amazing location with fantastic views and diverse ecology up on the range, and then the descent is super fun and just keeps on giving. I love longer cross country rides and overnight adventures, exploring new routes and rides with friends. My forte is probably long distance style bikepacking. I’m not a super skilled technical rider, but I hold my own on very long days and love flowy tracks and interesting four wheel drive roads. 

Training and build-up for the Tour Te Waipounamu

What has your build-up for the Tour Te Waipounamu looked like?

I started my training with a 5 week tour down to Lyttelton from Tauranga to build endurance. We’d spent six months there after having to come home from South America due to covid, but didn’t ride much over winter. I followed this with the Kahurangi 500 – which I wasn’t really ready for, but finished within the 3 day time limit, very tired but pleased to have done it. After a week of recovery I did about 10 weeks of more specific strength, interval and endurance training roughly based on training programmes by Jesse and Sarah (Touring with a Sense of Urgency) and Kurt Refsnider. It’s great to be living in the South Island and have access to some great multi day rides as well as parts of the route. TTW has been a great excuse to totally focus on riding and training and the buildup has been a lot of fun as we’ve explored a few rides and locations that were new to us.

A few memorable training rides from the past few months 

Lewis Pass to Lake Sumner – scouting a section of the TTW

I scouted this section of the TTW back in October, while relocating by bike from Tauranga to Christchurch. It’s a beautiful section of beech forest after you leave the Lewis Pass highway, with some nice riding interspersed with hike-a-bike. As Brian says in the course notes “If it’s all proving a bit hard, now is the time to pull the pin”.

The hardest parts involve pushing and carrying over roots, rocks, stream gulches and tricky swing bridges. For me It was only about 50% rideable with a more heavily loaded bike than I’ll have in the race and took me about 9 hours to get to the head of Lake Sumner. Whenever I’ve been making a decision about a piece of kit for the race I think back to that ride and what I can do to save weight.

Hope Kiwi Lodge was a very welcome refuge for the night, in a beautiful spot – I’m looking forward to staying in at least a couple of the huts en route.

Banks Peninsula – a door to door backyard adventure. 

I’m lucky to have the Port Hills and Banks Peninsula on my doorstep, and have done several training rides out there. This one involved riding from my home in Lyttelton up to Evans Pass then following all the Port Hills MTB tracks along to Gebbies Pass. From here we followed the single track up to Packhorse Hut for the night. The following two days involved a ton of climbing as we made our way round to the Double Fenceline track – which is perfect training for bike lifting technique as there are at least ten stiles to cross! It was another good reminder to make careful decisions about every bit of gear you pack on your bike.

Marlborough 250km loop

This was a linkup of high quality singletracks over three long days, including the Wakamarina Track, Nydia Walkway, a short section of Queen Charlotte and back to our start in Renwick over the Waikakaho Walkway (aka Linkwater Longcut), which is a real gem.

The tracks are a mixture of both technical and flowy riding, with a fair bit of hike-a-bike which felt like ideal prep for TTW. On all of these rides I have been carrying more or less the same equipment I’ll carry in the race: this gives me the opportunity to get totally used to exactly how my bike will feel, as well as how I’m packing it and managing my gear. It’s been a process of refinement, because what might have worked well overseas is not necessarily the same as what works in NZ. This goes for clothing as well as gear and how I carry it. 

Riding the Tour Te Waipounamu

What’s your bike set up?

Otso Voytek carbon plus bike, with a super light Fox 34 Step Cast suspension fork. 1 x 12 Sram Eagle GX drivetrain (30/50). 27.5 x 2.6 Vittoria Mezcal tyres. Seat dropper. Watson Revelation titanium handlebar. Revelate Vole, Pronghorn front harness, Framebag, Magtank and Mountain Feed bags. Mostly, this is the same set up I had overseas and it’s built for comfort and to cope with a wide variety of terrain. The seat dropper, fork and hydraulic brakes are conversions for NZ-style bikepacking which is generally more technical than what I was doing overseas. 

Do you have a riding strategy / plan for how you’ll ride the TTW?

Nothing other than to keep going to the finish by maintaining a steady pace and getting enough sleep and nutrition. I think good decision making will underpin how the race pans out for everyone, as there are so many variables and factors to manage. 

What are you most excited for?

The TTW is a great opportunity to see some remote parts of the country you rarely get the chance to see. In particular I’m looking forward to the Dampier Range, plus Otago and Southland as I haven’t spent much time there. I’m hoping the fresh scenery will take my mind off my tired legs. I love being in the mountains, tussock and beech forest so it sounds like there will be a lot of sections on the route that I’m going to enjoy.

What are you most apprehensive about?

The physical demands of hike-a-bike, dealing with previous injuries, and the long days. I’ve had plenty of experience pushing a loaded bike over high mountain passes in the Andes on our recent Alaska to Patagonia trip, but always had the luxury of shorter days and long nights for recovery. I’ll have to see how I go and moderate how many hours a day I spend pedalling versus resting as the ride progresses.

Do you have any specific goals for the TTW? What do you hope to get out of it?

My goal is to get to the finish, within the time limit and to finish it feeling proud of myself and what I have achieved. I wish the same for everybody who turns up to the start line. I know I’ll enjoy the immersion in the outdoors as well as being in a focussed mode throughout the ride. 

Links to check out

Note: some of these links were included earlier on. But here they are, in one spot! 

• Highlux Alaska to Patagonia blog (a never-ending source of inspiration)
• Kathmandu mini-doco filmed in Peru. This 6min video is about their Alaska – Patagonia journey.
• A recent wilderness magazine article about how they packed up their lives in NZ for a four year Alaska to Patagonia trip
• Revelate Designs BikepackHer blog
• Hana’s Instagram

You can follow Hana’s progress on the MAProgress live tracking map. Live tracking starts at 7:00am on 14th February, NZ time. Other blogs we’ve written recently linked to the Tour Te Waipounamu:

• Learn more about the Tour Te Waipounamu (route, race history, what to expect)
• Meet Caleb Helkenn, one of the only internationals signed up for the TTW
• Meet Kath Kelly, one of eight women currently signed up for the TTW
• Meet Andrew Trevelyan – hear about a training ride through the Two Thumb Range