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It was a long time between drinks. My last adventure race was the Geoquest last August, and my last sprint length adventure race is a distant memory, perhaps the Kathmandu race in the Blue Mountains about 14 months ago?
Needless to say, I was nervous about my fitness. I was racing with Grant Welsh who I met at one of my events (the BlackHeart Events 8hr in Northern NSW in May last year), an up and coming adventure racer, keen as mustard and, as I keep reminding him, the team “whippet”.
I arrived at race registration with the big red trailer in tow, as Max Adventure was hiring our ‘iAdventure’ fleet of kayaks for this event. I found Grant and we set about discussing today’s game plan. There were a lot of serious looking contenders hovering around and I gave my first hint of an excuse for the day: “Let’s just mosey around like we did at Geoquest….have fun!”. (We had entered Geoquest last year just for fun with a rookie team, and won Men’s and only missed the outright win by about 15 minutes).
Map hand out revealed a fairly straight-forward course, with most checkpoints located at strong catching features such as track junctions or at least beside tracks in most cases. The first run leg was going to be the trickiest, not so much for the checkpoint placements, but more-so for ensuring we got to the obvious checkpoint B fairly quickly to avoid the inevitable line up of competitors waiting to clip the checkpoint.
We decided on the most obvious route B-C-D-E-G-F, missing CP A at the top of White Horse Mountain. Why any teams went to CP A still escapes me, but each to their own I guess. Some people must just love hill running. My main instruction to Grant was “You take off quick and get to the CP, and I’ll try to stick close, and I’ll meet you just past the checkpoint. As it was, my ‘sticking close’ ended up being right behind Grant, and as he arrived at the first CP in around 7th place, I tapped him on the shoulder and said that I’d meet him on the track up ahead.
We picked up B and C easily and had settled into a comfortable pace, noting that Mountain Designs, Gu and Injinji were working off the same game-plan and were just ahead of us. We waded across chest deep water to get to D, and after initially intending to cross straight back to the northern side of the creek, found that the creek had widened and deepened and we now needed to revise our crossing point. I caught a glimpe of Guy Andrews and Narelle Ash disappearing around the track, and a quick look at the map revealed a road crossing further along the creek. We then picked up E, G & F with no issues and arrived at TA1 with Gu & Injinji.
Leg 2 was a mountain bike ride to pick up 3 checkpoints before arriving at the next transition. There was a reasonable amount of route choice thrown in to this leg, coupled with trying to second guess which trails would be easily rideable, and which ones would be overgrown and slow going. I envied the back markers, who undoubtedly would have had some pretty wicked single-track after the first teams had bashed a path for them through the high grass. We picked up Gu & Injinji again by CP3 after losing some time in transition as Grant had insisted on using bike shoes during the race, and then on arrival at TA2, we had picked up Mountain Designs who were now riding with Gu, and had built a small lead on Injinji. I also noted at this stage that another all male team had made up significant time on the bike and were snapping at our heels.
Onto the next foot leg, which once again mainly followed trails, however offered two serious options to leave the trails and bush bash between checkpoints. The first of these came after CP6, where you could elect to bash about 300 to 400m across country, or run around approx 2km. Initially the bush bash didn’t look too bad, and we picked up on an elephant track left by one of the teams in front of us. As I weaved my way around this new trail through the bushes, I reminisced about stories of Brett Stevens throwing himself on top of bushes to flatten them, with little regard for life and limb. Shortly afterwards, we came up behind none other than Brett Stevens, playing a serious looking game of leap frog, throwing himself on top of the thicket, jumping back up and doing it all over again. The going slowed down and Brett mentioned that he was starting to get tired, so I took the lead, stomping my way through the thicket and blazing a trail for the other 3, expecting more teams to start piling up behind us. No one came, and we eventually broke through onto the road about 80m from the checkpoint. We hit the next few checkpoints with ease, however had lost a little bit of time to MD’s with our bush bashing adventure, and still had Injinji and the all male team right on our tails.
We once again lost a little time in transition with the shoe change, where the other male team managed to sneak ahead of us. We caught back up and collected CP12 & 13 together with the male team and Gu, but it was at this point where I noticed Grant really starting to struggle to keep up the pace. It was becoming a bike race to the finish, and the wheels were literally starting to look a little wobbly. I was trying to get Grant into my slip stream but there wasn’t much response, so I started trying to ride ahead hoping that he’d lift.
I really hoped that the kayak would give us the time to rest our legs that was required to bring us home strong, but when we arrived at the kayak TA we were told that there were probably Bull sharks in the area and the kayak had been abandoned. Damn!
So it was back onto bikes, marking CP 24 onto our map, which was only to be revealed after the kayaking leg. The confusion at the kayak TA had been accentuated by teams seemingly disappearing, reappearing, missing checkpoints – the works! MD’s were now comfortable in the lead, Guy and Narelle had missed CP 15 and had to double back, we were still racing neck and neck with Brett & Britt from Gu and, coming out of CP20, noticed the other male team had somehow wound up behind us again. The sprint for the finish was on.
We started losing time to Gu after leaving CP 20, and the male team wasted no time getting out in front. It was a case of just hoping Grant could get his legs working for the final 7km or so. As I came around each corner, I noticed the mens team had stopped and were checking the rear tyre on one of their bikes. I tried to lift Grant by telling his that I suspected one of them was having some sort of tyre troubles. I rode ahead to collect CP’s 21 and 22 while I told Grant to just keep going while I was off the bike. Jumping back onto the bike at CP22 my left calf cramped and I spent 20 seconds trying to move forward by pushing myself along ‘scooter style’ with my cramping leg while trying to shake the cramp out at the same time. I started to suck down on my bottle that I’d loaded up with Shotz tablets before the race, hoping that this would freshen up the legs enough to finish without more cramping. It did the job.
We turned South and it was the final stretch home. We came around the first corner in the track, and there was the mens team with their tube out fixing a puncture. I was really giving Grant the rev up now, knowing that any time we could put into them now would mean the difference between 1st and 2nd in category. By the time we were riding out of CP 23, the other lads was riding into it so, getting onto some firm firetrail, I stuck my hand in the middle of Grants backpack and pushed him along to try to maintain the distance. We arrived at CP 24 approx. 10 seconds up on the other team, and as much as we tried we couldn’t hold them out, and with only about 400m to go watched as the other team took the final corner and hit the finish line about 30 seconds in front of us.
Special thanks must go to BlackHeart Industries (www.blackheart.com.au) for the Salomon gear and their ongoing support of Adventure Racing. The Salomon XT-Wings just astound me with how well they perform in this sort of event. They make me feel like I’m cheating in a way! The Merida 96 Team D performed flawlessly in trying conditions towards the end of the event when the tracks were turning to mush – the best bike I’ve ever had the pleasure of riding. Shotz, and Darryl Griffiths – thankyou for a fantastic product that’s palatable and really brings out the best in training and in racing, the Electrolyte Hydration tablets are perfect and the Shotz gels are yum!
Thanks Gary, Todd and the gang/volunteers from Max Adventure for making my long awaited return to sprint distance adventure racing a memorable one. I’m sure it was a fun day for everyone, and I hope the fantastic crowd gets down to one of my iAdventure races later in the year. Thanks to the Red Bull girls who have a habit of turning up in all the right places, and special thanks to my wife Amanda, who manned the kayaks while I was out having fun!
Matt Koerber
