Team Kathmandu

I got the call from my team mate Steve on Wednesday he was crook and would be a non starter for Saturday. So three days before the race he sent an email out and got a replacement, Scott Welch, who I met at 7.30am on Saturday morning.

After getting the map we decided that sprinting up the little hill to the east was no way to start so we would try and avoid the congestion and go 4,3,2 and 1 which worked out really well with no queing required and we came back to the transition with the leading teams. Quickly onto the bikes and over to the boatsheds for another run leg, the leaders were out of sight but only a minute or so ahead. A team ran straight past us and straight past checkpoint 7. We got 8 and went up over the little hill and over the road and collected 9 and 10, the pace of the race at this stage was really fast, back over the boulevard and down to the bikes again.

This leg was along the boulevard, we got overtaken by a road cyclist and hung to his wheel for a little while, is that outside the rules? Got to 12 in 3 rd position, but could not find the CP. The MFR Allstars left without finding the CP and we followed about 2 minutes later, found 12 at the next intersection and moved up the road to 13, which we proceeded to go straight past along with a couple of other teams, so back up the hill where a few teams had caught up. Then it was over the bridge to a TA and more running.

We headed off on this run still behind the leaders in second but we had not seen them while racing just at the search for CP12. We had about a two minute lead over 3 or 4 teams, which I wiped out rather quickly by not reading the map properly and looking for CP15 at the wrong track junction. We were now all running together to CP16, which we got and then up the grassy hill, which I later found out a team had seen a snake on, to the road and to 17. We were running with another team and we managed to get to 17 first and ran hard to the bikes and got away to a slight lead over them, still had not seen the team in first for a while.

We got on the bikes and went to the left of the oval and came around down the hill towards the track and the team behind us had gone the shorter route to the right of the oval and we now rode together. After CP 19 we hammered hard on the low track next to Merri Ck, I think some teams took a higher road as we got to CP20 ahead, it was now back to the main TA and the boats.

We got onto the water in second place and got to the overhanging tree at 22, where you almost had to climb into the tree to get the checkpoint the guys behind us were next to us and we were jammed in against and under the tree, so we made a deal we will punch your card if you let us out first, and they did. This racing atmosphere is one of the best things about adventure races. I think this was team Brown Coals. They then proceeded to go straight past us on the water and got to 23 first and returned the favour and punched our card. We saw the MFR allstars coming the other way and figured they had a couple of minutes on us. We then decided we would do a small portage from 23 to try and gain some time, well it was worth a try and we got back in the water about the same distance behind, still in third. There were heaps of boats coming the other way, and this was really the only time we saw a lot of other competitors out on the course.

We got onto the bikes 3 minutes behind in 3rd place, and we decided we would give it everything and try and get even with the teams in front of us, for the last paddle. We could see the team in second at CP 25 and we overtook them just after CP26 when they were checking their map, we rode to CP27, down the rocky downhill and then we could see the leaders ahead of us, and we followed them up the hill and then they slowed to check the map and we rode ahead to CP28 and led the race for 10 seconds, after punching CP28 we were headed again after the MFR allstars punched and got away quickly, we rode up the steep track back to the road and the MFRallstars went a different way and got a fifty metre lead. We managed to peg that back over the last 1km of the ride and we entered the final TA as a group of four.

It was then a mad scramble from the TA down to the boats we got into the water and were about 10 meters behind. We basically held that gap until we got down to checkpoint 30 where we both turned around and headed back for the sprint to the finish we were only 5 meters behind and gaining, all be it slowly, we then hit the mass of boats heading out to get the checkpoint we just got some of them were doing the blue course, on the final bend before the boat ramp we had a boat turn right in front of us and we essentially rammed them, after we got out of the overhanging trees we had a nice line to the boat ramp and we were right behind the MFR allstars. In a final flurry of activity we took off the PFD’s put our race bibs back on and made the dash for the line, we finished 5 meters behind in second. It was great to be involved in such a close finish congratulations to the MFR allstars who were too strong on the day.

It was an excellent race and raced at a very fast pace. Scott did an awesome job after only finding out about the race a few days before and it being his first adventure race. Thanks to Gary and his team who always put on a great race. Thanks to all the other teams that competed and made it such an enjoyable race, raced in such a great spirit.

Thanks Matt