Kayak 1:17:00 12.0 km: I was racing Geoquest this year at Port Macquarie with Dave, Damon and Wol as team Mexicans. We had 2 double Red 7s so started the race with a 12km ocean paddle with a slight head wind from Crescent Head to Limeburners. We came in in about 5th place having been beaten by a team in double Mirages..... Run 1:31:00 13.0 km: We headed straight out on foot for a flat 13km of swampy trails picking up a couple of CPs. We caught a couple of teams on the trail and a couple must have taken a wrong turn as we came in to the next TA in equal 2nd place with the Instant Humans and in sight of the Rock Wallabies.
Kayak 1:22:00 12.0 km: We jumped back in to the boats and headed off up the Maria River with CBD Cycles. We paddled with them for about 6kms before the Instant Human paddling machines caught up. We jumped on the side wash of their front boat who had obviously paddled before. Iwas working probably a bit hard to stay there but we were gapping CBD and other teams so stayed there. They then upped the pace and dropped their other boat. We stayed there thinking they'd realise and slow down but they never did. With about 2kms to go I blew a poofer valve and couldn't even straighten my arms, so floated into the TA with their other boat about 90m behind the lead boat. We'd caught the Rock Wallabies on the portage up to the TA at Kundabung so came in to the TA in first place.
Ride 2:53:00 40.0 km: We headed off in first place into the Kumbatine National Park where
we hit a few hills on the way to the first CP. We had a little trouble finding this one and were caught by CBD who then corrected their position before we did. We then had a big climb out of the National Park followed by a big descent onto farming roads and into the TA. We were 8 minutes down on CBD into this TA.Trek 1:10:00 2.0 km: This next leg was a trek/canyon/swim/scramble where we followed a river bed down looking for suberged bottles with letters on the bottom in the 7 large pools of water along the way. We caught CBD in the first pool where neither of us found the bottle. We had to find 6 bottles out of the 7 so the pressure was now on. We travelled down the river together and found the next 6. The water was approx 11 degrees so our wetsuits / shark skins were well worth it.
Run 7:19:00 22.0 km: After a quick change we headed out a couple of minutes before CBD so we could get on the flying fox before them. It was a heap of fun, but a bit of a lame jump out across the river to the other side. We then headed straight up about 300m vertical to the next CP on the summit, where the next tricky bit was down at a creek junction. We'd split with CBD here however met them again in the river junction where Damon led us pretty much straight on to the CP. I think CBD would still be there had we not come along We saw SCAR on the other side who were attacking it from the opposite angle, interesting move! From here things went a little pear shaped as dropped onto a spur one too early (us and CBD) and headed down a 300m descent down super think lantana. Damon, Wol and Dave shared the work breaking the trail as going was very slow. CBD tried to help but kept getting sucked into areas where FNQ’s Stinging Tree’s fairer cousin was in full force. Damon got stung and had the same symptoms as at XPD, however the affects only lasted for an hour as opposed to several months!We finally made it down onto the road and into the TA however SCAR and iAdventure had made up over an hour on us on this section and we were all in TA together.
Ride 4:44:00 40.0 km: We headed out on this MTB 'Adventuregaine' with CBD however we soon went our own ways. We had to get all but one CP so we left the obvious one to the west up a big climb. Damon's night nav proved as good as his day nav as we rolled around getting the CPs until we arrived at a location looking for the punch in a ‘thickett. It had clearly been misplaced so we searched the track junction and nearby junctions for about 30 - 45minutes before locating it in a ‘thickett’ in the wrong junction. This was changed after the first 5 teams went through, but only 2 of us found it, the others got a small penalty. It was getting VERY cold by now - apparently to 0 degrees and a number of teams withdrew with hyperthermia including CBD who never warmed up after sleeping for 20 minutes. They were close to the TA when they slept so I think in hindsight they should have pushed on no matter how tired they were to sleep in some warmth. Damon and Dave were still wearing only bike jerseys and arm warmers! We pushed on to the TA down a couple of cool purpose built single tracks coming into the TA in the wee hours of the night in first place.
Kayak 4:51:00 29.0 km: We headed off on the paddle at the coldest point of the night with frost on the ground. Heading off the boat ramp at the start Damon decided he'd do some fancy draw stroke to protect our rudder. His draw stroke went very badly and he tipped us in. Good one Damon.... AMATEURS! I am taking absolutely none of the blame for this incident, and fault has been proved as it was captured on video! Damon went completely in, and I went in only to my waist - luckily - it was cold! This washow the conversation went as we're both in the water:
Damon: "Just get back in the boat".
............we get back in silence and paddle off....................
Dave: "So, can you let us know when we can start making fun of you".
Kim: "Not yet"
............more silence...................
Wol: "You guys better paddle closer to the shore".
Anyway, it was a very cold paddle, and head torches were useless with the fog coming off the water. We paddled incident free after our less than average start. We portaged for about 1km to cut out about 5km. Dave and Wol were falling asleep as the sun rose however some how kept up despite not lifting their hands above waist level.
Ride 4:47:00 30.0 km: We paddled in and found out that CBD had withdrawn so we took this TA a little easy (~1hr!). We headed off on bikes and soon came to the split leg. Damon and Wol were to get the two CPs in the steep section and Dave and I were to get the two at the bottom of the hill. We both then had to re-group up a massive bike push at the top of a lookout. Dave and I headed off to find the trail head of the first single track. We looked around for about 10 to 15minutes but couldn't find even a sign of a slight trail so decided to ride around a few kms and come in from the other end. The rest was incident free as we carefully nav'ed our way around to the base of the climb. We were a little cautious as our track record with split legs is very very average! We started the bike push and it proved very tough to get traction even while pushing as the trail went straight up. About 2/3's of the way up Damon and Wol met us walking down the hill and helped us push up. We were surprised to hear that they'd been waiting about 30minutes, however were relieved when speaking to the Rock Wallabies afterwards that they'd waited a similar time for their two who'd done the same as us. We then descended down and got a couple of tricky ones on the way to the last TA.
Run 3:16:00 18.0 km: We were still in first place so headed out onto the final beach trek / coasteer to the finish line at Port Macquarie. We were walking the majority of the first half with a couple of short trots on the soft sand. About half way we heard (wrongly!) from a few photographers that the leading all male team were to our surprise only about 1km behind so we lifted the pace a fair bit for the final half. We finished in first place about 40 minutes in front of the next team who had also received a 2 hour penalty for missing compulsory gear somewhere along the way. It was good to finish in day light for the first time in a few years, and very very good to finally win another one after an 8 year drought!
Wol's dad Noel, and my parents did a fantastic job as support crew, despite none of them ever having been to a race like this before. I also think that it's been a while since any of them have pulled an all-nighter Thank you!!!
