Team Mitch Buchanon 3rd report on the Maximum Adventure Race
Blue Mountains - Sunday 14th January ’07
Michael & Nick

How to Do an Adventure Race on One Piece of Toast

It was Nick and my second adventure race. In our previous attempt we made about a million navigation errors and so we were determined to have another crack.
Arriving at the event location (on the banks of the Nepean River) there were cars and people everywhere and I had to look around to find Nick. He flagged me down as I drove by and we began unpacking our cars. At this point he mentioned he’d only had time to eat a piece of toast for breakfast. Yep, just one solitary slice of bread, toasted. Not exactly the breakfast of champions!

We set up our bikes in the transition area, leaving some food and water there for later. 2 litres on our backs for now and another 1.5 left in transition that should be heaps… or so we thought

After a quick race briefing the event was underway. The first leg was a short run around the block through the suburban streets of Leonay to pick up some easy check points. There were some bemused looks on the faces of locals who had gotten up from their Sunday morning breakfasts to take in the spectacle from the front porch. A couple of hundred green bibbed crazies running amok in a quiet suburban street on a sleepy Sunday morning is not something you see every day!

Once we had all those checkpoints we ducked back down to the riverbank to pick up another map and a kayak. Kayaking was never going to be our best leg – we are mountain bikers not paddlers after all – but we managed to hold our position on this leg, overtaking one other team and being overtaken only once. As we reached the end of the leg we noticed the trekkers running along the riverbank, they were on the other part of the figure eight loop.

Reaching Glenbrook gorge we ditched the kayak on the shore and set off up the gorge. Scrambling over rocks and across the creek here and there we quickly realized that slow and steady was the way to go. No point risking a slip on one of the numerous slimey rocks just to gain a few minutes. Progress was slow but we eventually got to the checkpoints and then began a steep climb out of the gorge to the ranger station at the top of Glenbrook ridge.

Reaching the top of the ridge we stamped our control card and immediately descended back down to the gorge from whence we came, only this time we were going to a place further down. The next checkpoint was at a place marked on the map as ‘Jellybean Pool’. The name of this spurred me on a bit. I mean I knew there weren’t going to be real jellybeans down there but some part of me was still holding out a glimmer of hope! (and I was sure Nick wouldn’t have said no to a jellybean or two right about now – his stomach had to be grumbling for sure!)

Reaching the bottom of the gorge we were confronted with a large natural rockpool about twice the size of a backyard pool, and deep. Only problem was, the checkpoint was on the other side of the pool and the only route across was the aquatic one. Nick quickly offered to hold by backpack and stuff while I swam across. Nice, I thought, but who says I’m the one taking a dip! We will rock, scissor paper this one buddy!
Well, Nick went scissor I went paper and suffice to say a minute later I was in the water. On reaching the other side of the pool I tried to lift myself out of the water and up the rock ledge to where the CP was. First attempt, didn’t quite have the strength, with all the water in my clothes etc, and I fell back in.
Second attempt I will try harder.
Oops, tried too hard and scraped my nose on the rock wall. And then fell back in.
Not admitting defeat, I noticed an alternate place to get up the ledge that looked a lot easier and I managed to scramble my way up to the checkpoint. As I was swimming my way back across the rock pool I noticed my nose was bleeding from the contact with the rock. Nice! Injury number one for the day!

Nick checked the blood on my nose as I clambered out. Just a scratch, it’s stopped bleeding already!

Heading off up the gorge again we reached the causeway. We were now somewhere familiar having ridden past here numerous times on the way back from Sydney’s famous mountain bike trail “The Oaks”.
Next checkpoint was halfway up the opposite ridge from the causeway. And was to be the site of injury number 2 for the day.

So far we hadn’t made any navigational errors but this next checkpoint almost got us. There seemed to be a trail that wasn’t on the map which confused us (and others).
Eventually we pulled the compass out and found our bearings enough to work out which way to head. A few minutes later we knocked the checkpoint on the head. Unfortunately I managed to also knock myself on the head on a rock overhang here. As I bent over to punch the control card I didn’t see the rock and….. D’oh!! Somehow I managed not to swear out loud, but boy was I rubbing my head a lot and grimacing. A nice sized egg was appearing!
I mentioned the egg on my head to Nick and quickly added that I wasn’t referring to my naturally shaped ‘egghead’ before he could respond with such a quip.

The next two checkpoints were easily found and not a lot of navigation required. The difficulty came from the steepness of the ridges we were going up and down and the fact that it was also starting to get quite warm. It was about now that I noticed Nick was flagging a little. I think the energy provided by the one piece of toast was almost used up!

After some more trekking and running down a LOT of stairs we arrived back at the Nepean River and the awaiting kayaks. These kayaks had been left here by the competitors that were on the other side of the figure eight loop (i.e. they were doing the course in the opposite direction to us). After some untangling of the rope we managed to get a kayak free and push off from the bank. Someone wished us Bon Voyage as we paddled off down the river.

This was a long kayak leg, into a bit of a breeze. It was pretty darn hard and we confirmed that kayaking is not our specialty. The river seemed to go on forever and ever and the arms and shoulders did ache a lot. But we pressed on… and on… and on, and eventually we got there – back at the entrance to Glenbrook Gorge!

Reaching the shore, we managed to find the trail back to Leonay after climbing over a few boulders. It was at this point that we noticed that we were running quite low on water. The 2 litres in our hydration packs was almost all gone now. The day was turning out to be a hot one, but still, we were loving it.

Arriving back at the transition area after being gone for about 3hrs we decided to take a 5minute break to re-hydrate and re-fuel. No toast for Nick this time, instead, it was a power bar and some electrolyte drink.
At this stage of the race we thought we were doing Ok. Our previous adventure race had taken us around 5 hours including all the navigation mistakes. So far in this race we hadn’t made any nav mistakes. From that decided there could only be probably another hour or so left to go. And given it was the mountain bike leg that was left (our specialty) we were feeling pretty happy with our efforts. The fact that we didn’t have enough water to refill our hydration packs completely didn’t occur to us to be an issue. We will be back in no time we thought!

Mounting our bikes for the final leg of the race it felt good. We were in our comfort zone. That was, until we got to the first hill. We soon realised that we didn’t have as much energy left as we thought and were forced to push our bikes most of the way up to Lapstone Station. Nick was looking a little tired at this stage and the seats at the station were inviting. After a short break here we continued on across the railway bridge and up the road to the start of the mountain bike stage proper. Picking up another map and a second control card we headed off into the bush on our bikes.

It was at this point that Nick handed me the map, suggesting it was my turn to do some navigating. Which was fair enough -- he’d been carrying the maps most of the way up to now.
I took the map with some trepidation, commenting that I bet I make a mistake straight away. True to my word I mistakenly took a solid black line on the map to indicate a road that we had reached. As Nick pointed out a solid black line was actually a firetrail not a sealed road. Oh yeah, it says that on the legend doesn’t it! Oops!...oh well, you live and learn, this orienteering type stuff was all pretty new to me!
Fortunately we didn’t get too far off course before realising something was wrong.

Back on track again we were faced with one #@*%! of a climb up to the top of the hill! This was probably the hardest part of the course, up a long and steep rocky track that was impossible to ride up and not much easier to push a bike up. Given that it was now the middle, and hottest, part of the day I don’t think anyone could say they enjoyed this section too much. But we persisted and eventually reached the top after what seemed like about an hour. After a quick look at the map we decided we would pick up the 12 checkpoints in an anti clockwise direction and headed off to checkpoint A at Marge’s Lookout. Reaching the checkpoint we were too tired now to really appreciate the view but it was at least satisfying to look down from the lookout to see from how far down we had come up.

On to the next few checkpoints we found the going a bit easier, with the terrain less steep and plenty of stops/rests to check the map. After picking up checkpoints B,D & E we made a special hike, carrying our bikes through the scrub to link up to the track that had checkpoint F. We then proceeded to blindly ride past checkpoint F on this track!
Realising our mistake, I offered to quickly pedal back to get it and then we were on our way again to H & I.

The rest of the checkpoints were a bit of a blur as our hydration packs had well and truly emptied by now and dehydration was setting in. We had been on our bikes for well over 2 hours by now, much of that without water. As we were approaching the last checkpoint C, I noticed that there was still another blank square on our control card – checkpoint L. What about checkpoint L , I asked Nick. Checkpoint L ??? What the?
Looks like we had missed a checkpoint that was way down in the bottom corner of the map – easy to have missed it really. Well there was no way we were going to ride the 4K round trip from where we were now to go back to get that checkpoint. So we decided to skip it and head back to the transition instead.

Not long after this I thought it would be a good time for injury number 3 for the day. Bending down to pick my bike off the ground, I somehow managed to stumble and drop the bike again. As I dropped the bike some part of it (not sure what) decided to slice into the soft skin at the base of my right hand, near the wrist. That’s quite a deep cut Nick remarked. Later confirmed by my local GP after he put three stitches into me. Thankfully, it didn’t actually hurt that much, but it did look pretty good. And talk about a freak accident, don’t think I could repeat that if I tried!

After a bit of first aid to stop the bleeding we headed back down to transition, stopping just to get the last remaining checkpoints including a ‘mystery’ checkpoint (just when you thought it was almost over they throw another checkpoint at you!).

Anyway, the last downhill trail back to the transition area was a bit of fun, mind you I rode it rather cautiously not wanting to add to my injury tally.

Finally we reached the bitumen streets of Leonay and rode into transition. A quick photo op, and handing over of control card, and then it was directly to the water barrels where we proceeded to drink like fish. The chicken and salad went down well also, followed by a slice of fruit cake, all provided by the organisers.

Despite how tough we found it and despite being intent on doing myself all manner of injuries throughout the day I can say we definitely enjoyed the challenge of the race and will be back again.

On Monday morning we had already started discussing what we will do better next time and what we will do to train better. Oh, and that next time, probably two pieces of toast would be a better idea than one!

Thanks to the organisers and volunteers for a fun and challenging event.
Already looking forward to the next one in June – will be a lot cooler I’m sure!

Mick
Team Mitch Buchanan the 3rd