Kathmandu Adventure Sprint - Lysterfield Lake Park, Melbourne, VIC
Sunday 19th November 2006..

Sunday 19th November saw over 150 competitors (50% of whom had never done an adventure race before) lining up under the Start banner at Lysterfield Lake Park, Melbourne.

Glorious weather greeted them, which was just as well as the first leg involved one team member from each team swimming 20 meters out to their boat. One they were pulled on board by their team mate, they then had a short paddle (1 km) to the first TA1. Paddles were then swapped for legs and a 4 km run via three checkpoints (CP’s).

Tribal (Greg Hocking & Michael Opie), My mrs's is going to kill me (Jono Schmidt & Neil Monteith) and Running on Empty (Mathhew Tait & Steve Mckay) were first to arrive at TA2, with just seconds separating them.

A quick transition onto bikes then saw teams riding across the dam wall and up into the forest for the start of some wicked single track. A further seven CP’s and 11km of Mountain Biking (MTB) (including a loop of the Commonwealth Games MTB track) saw Running on Empty coming in first. Thick as Thieves (Jeremy Dyson & James Bubbers) were only four minutes behind, having had a slow start and making up for it on the MTB leg. In the mean time Las Locas (Susie Sprague & Liz Mulconry) were creeping up the field and had moved into fourth place.

A hilly 4 km run followed, collecting three more CP’s along the way before returning to their bikes and the second MTB leg. Arriving at TA4 Las Locas had managed to reel in Thick as Thieves and move themselves into 3rd place before the Bonus course.

The Bonus course was available to the first 20 teams to arrive at TA4. It involved a hilly 5km trail run and collecting an additional four CP’s. This proved to be a run to far for some teams opting to skip it and therefore relegate themselves from finishing in the top 20 overall.

A short 3.5 km ride saw teams arriving back at TA2 for the last leg of the race a 2.4 km paddle.

Running on Empty hit the water first closely followed by Las Locas and Tribal. In the end Running on Empty proved too strong on the water for Tribal and Las Locas and they pulled away to win in 3hrs 25 min (by a two minute margin). Tribal also pulled away from Las Locas to come in second.

Thank you to Kathmandu for supplying over $3,000 in prizes.

Click here for a full set of results. We look forward to seeing everyone again in the New Year at Yarra Bend Park on the 10th February ’07.