He did it, he did it, he did it!

I made it to Bluff at 12:17 pm today, having left Cape Reinga at 10 am on the 10th. If my numbers are right, that means I finished the TA in 19 days, 2 hours and 17 minutes. I'm very happy with that, as I'd been hoping to finish in under 20.

Here are a few interesting statistics from my recent Tour Aotearoa 2016 ride...

 I rode 865 km for my warm-up ride from Rotorua to Cape Reinga, 3,104 km on the TA itself (including the boat trips and extra diversions off-course to buy supplies and find accommodation), and 155 km for my cool-down ride in Southland to meet Katie and ride back with her (this also includes my ride from Bluff back to Invercargill). That makes it a total of 4,124 km riding in 27 days.
I averaged just over 150 km per day. On average, I was riding for 12 hours a day, and was moving for just over 10 of those hours (the other two hours were typically spent eating and charging my phone at a cafe).

 I climbed a total of 42,419 metres, for an average of 1,571 metres of climbing each day. The biggest climbing day was 2,668 metres of climbing on the day I rode from Ahipara to the Top 10 Holiday Park just north of Dargaville. The least climbing was the day I rode from Miranda to Matamata on the Hauraki Rail Trail (just 208 metres).
I also ate a huge amount of food during my ride. I was averaging around 5,500 calories a day (it might have been more -- I'm not sure I wrote down everything I ate), which is around three times my ordinary food intake. I ate a total of 15 sandwiches, 7 burgers, 9 muffins, 21 pies, 5 pizzas, 5 potato fritters, 4 spring rolls, 4 scones, 5 cakes, 20+ muesli bars, as well as numerous other meals and snacks from bakeries, cafes, dairies and petrol stations. I drank 6 regular coffees, 18 hot chocolates, 8 iced coffees, 19 containers of chocolate milk, and 19 milkshakes. That's one heck of a lot of not-very-healthy food!  Despite eating all that food, I lost almost 5 kg in body weight.

Hot chocolate at Kitcheners Cafe, Martinborough

I also took a total of 993 photos, camped 19 times, stayed with family once during my warm-up ride, and stayed in a cabin three times (mainly to dry out my gear after heavy rain). I stayed in a motel once during the actual TA ride (to catch up with my family) and spent the night at the Big River tramping hut after a VERY long and tiring day.