Kathmandu Adventure Sprint - Lysterfield Lake Park, Melbourne, VIC
Sunday 18th November 2007

My First Race

My first race was to begin with an early start and a long drive on a beautiful Melbourne morning. I had arranged to meet my race partner at 06:45 hours (somewhere near race control). I arrived a little earlier than expected, due to a sensational run through the traffic or lack there of. This was great as it presented me with a gem of a parking spot, very beneficial as it turned out for the legs post race activities.

As I sat in my car I watched the other teams arrive, I thought this would be a good opportunity to observe pre race activities, people forcing breakfast down, applying lotion, massaging muscles, dressing in their race gear, testing equipment, removing bike parts out of tiny packing spaces in their vehicles and constructing Mountain Bikes out of them (Made me glad I owned an X-Trail). I decided as I had already had breakfast on the road I should apply my sun screen … and proceeded to use about ½ a bottle … I think it was the nerves. No sooner than this was applied then the rain cam down. As I rolled my eyes, thinking “that was time well spent!” my phone rang, woo hoo, my partner had arrived. So it was off to race control to get our Intel and maps.

We received our race packs and decided to retreat back to the safety of the back hatch of the afore mentioned Nissan X-Trail (to get out of the rain). We discovered that we were to follow the blue course, a 22 Check Point course with a multi run leg in the middle, and were to start with a leg called a “Ride & Tie” … looking blankly at each other (what is a ride and tie? We asked), we figured we would find out soon enough at the race briefing.

Melbourne weather … is there anything more to say about the weather patterns down south, I have lived here only 12 months but there is really some truth to the saying four seasons in one day as we were about to find out. We headed down to the race briefing, as we all stood there shivering in the rain we watched as lightning bolts crack down behind the Lysterfield range. This sparked a few smiles in the crowd until we all realised that that was where we were all about to race head long into. Again I was thinking I was so glad I had put my sun screen on. Soon into the briefing all fears were lifted as many people were curious as to what a “Ride & Tie” was, it was soon explained, along with a suggestion as to how to tackle it. Also the race organisers had a strange request. “Does anyone have a spare helmet or bike?” (some one had forgotten them) … the problem was soon fixed as another competitor had 3 spares? Go figure. There were a few comments passed around the crowd, which provided a few laughs (some one claimed they had a spare race partner in their boot, if anyone needed them).

The race was soon under way and we had decided against the afore mentioned plan of attack (i.e. the ride and tie) this saw us fall behind after the 2nd check point … oh well we live and learn.

After the short paddle which was more fun than anything I thought, came the first Mountain Bike leg, Knowing the area well proved to be of significant benefit allowing us to make up ground on a few teams. We saw one bike crash in a classic style (I can't remember your name dude but from behind it looked fantastic) still makes me laugh today, (sorry dude) I did stop to see if the rider was ok and he assured me that he was and that it was only his ego which was deflated, but as far as crashes go this was a beauty.

It was 11:02 hrs when we hit the run area, again in true Melbourne weather the sun was burning bright and hot, (now I really was thankful for flooding my self with sun screen, finally it payed off), we completed the check point transfers, we were forced to write on the map case as we discovered that our map was saturated (a small hole was found in the map case after the event). We comfortably negotiated this area in the blistering heat, and were soon off, up the hill on the bikes again, as it turned out we walked almost all the way up the steep hill, along with many other teams. The hill was soon forgotten as the next few legs were a most enjoyable technical down hill section with little trouble and our mountain bike skills saw us passing a few more teams.

We arrived at race control and prepared for our last few legs, spurred on by the officials we launched into the last paddle section with new found energies. Unfortunately the wind decided it was time to blow alleviating those new found energies. With waves crashing over the front of our kayak and blasting my face, I was glad I forgotten to take off my riding glasses. We paddled into the wind for what seamed to be an eternity. Finally we reached the last check point and all that was left was a wind assisted paddle back to the finish line.

All in all a fantastic experience we finished in 4 hours and 9 minutes. If prior to this race some one had told me that you could go out and exercise (hard) for greater than 4 hours straight and enjoy it, I would have told them they were nuts, but after having experienced it, they would have been right.

Illya Selmes (Bugsie)