When the Gods of Adventure Racing and all things Outdoorsy decide that you are getting too big for your boots and need to be cut down to size, there really isn’t much you can do to appease them. Laugh loudly and often and most importantly, make sure you have picked the absolutely best spirited companions with which to share the unfolding comedy/tragedy.
Saturday’s Canberra AROC race probably didn’t start on the most solid footing for the Control Freaks. Despite this being the first ever race when we have actually raced with the same 3 team members as had raced together previously (a momentous occasion), on Friday morning I had been very close to pulling out. Having just returned from a weeks skiing trip to Japan where I had been served a special oriental strain of the flu with my “sclambe egg” breakfast, I was still feeling pretty shocking/ The little beastie was proving completely immune to all chemical bombardment and vitamin overdoses and I hadn’t run for over 3 weeks. I suggested that Susie and Sara might prefer to race with someone who hadn’t been so out of it that only days before she had ridden her bike head on into one of the cement balls in front of the Purple Pickle! I’m personally keeping the purveyors of the second-skin in business.
Anyway, having realised that I absolutely could not be in Canberra on a weekend when there was an AROC race on and NOT be competing, all resolve went out the window and I pleaded the girls to nurse me around the course.
And we were off, paddles clashing and all thoughts of “taking it easy” completely gone from my head. Pulling away into clear water and looking out to our left we could see Karl “Outboard” Strode-Penny tearing Terra X along and all 3 of us burst our with laughter. ‘I want one of those”. We were totally flabbergasted to find ourselves 5th out of the water at TA1 – not bad for a bunch of Muppet-arms!
On to the O leg through UCAN and we were now moving along. Reality hit me like a cattle train. I was breathing heavily already and just a little worried about how much running we had ahead of us on this course. Susie and Sara were definitely going to be on control-bunny duty today! I wondered vaguely whether the world would actually end if I had to pull out of a race. The Cockatoo girls went bounding past and inside my head is this little brat taunting me with “You’re just being soft! You’re not really sick. You’re just unfit and lazy and are making up excuses. Stop whinging and embarrassing yourself!”
I was pretty happy to jump on the bikes at TA2; 4 teams were now within seconds of each other (Cockatoos, Acumen Alliance, Knuckles and us). Heading for the single track section, I was keen for us to get a clear run so we pushed hard, almost throwing ourselves and bikes into the start. I wasn’t stupid enough to lay myself under the tyres of Adrian “steamroller” Keough though and we let the boys through ahead of us and watched them disappear quickly into the distance.
Through this section, Sara proved her weight in gold. While certainly in a class of her own on the bike, we’ve worked out that if you give her the control card, this slows her down enough for Susie and I to catch her at each CP. Anyway, this mad push had us come into TA3 in 3rd place!!! Very exciting! We dumped the bikes, grabbed a map and headed off into the scrub.
Back on foot and I was in pathetic mode again. I handed the control card over to Sara and had a wee break on this leg as Susie dashed ahead like a five year old on an Easter egg hunt.
Back to the bikes and we were greeted by a very defensive Tom McQuail who piped up “Susie, your tyre just exploded and I promise I didn’t touch it!”. The Gods had spoken. Out with the spare tyre levers, tube and pump. Sitting there fumbling with a pump which just didn’t seem to want to obey, we watched the Cockatoo girls, then Knuckles and then the impressive Adrenalin Adventure girls all head off on the bikes again. Tube number one just couldn’t be inflated. Sara then found the big hole in Susie’s tyre wall and put our used O map to great use patching the inside of the tyre wall with a wad of folded map (apparently a gum leaf also works quite well). Tube number 2 was pulled out and we started again. This time, the pump seemed to bite and we finally managed to get enough air in to move on. With all the fluffing about, no idea how much time we lost here… somewhere in the vicinity of 5 – 8 mins. But we could still smell the front runners and shot off out of the TA now in 6th ?
Sara’s patch was holding and all was going well on this leg until we hit CP 31 at the base of Gossan Hill. Sara’s rear derailleur had had a bit of a thrashing from a large stick at the 24 hour and the $15 fix-it didn’t appear to have worked too well. Just as we’d passed the Adrenalin Adventure girls, Sara’s chain locked up and had to be realigned and threaded back onto the bottom fly wheel before we could head off again. The shuffle was just beginning as Danielle, Grace and Amanda went flying past us again. Moving quickly, we caught the girls again heading through UCAN and were seconds ahead of them coming in to the next paddle.
Off the boats having punched CP 35 and we were holding our place having seen Knuckles and then the Cockatoos heading off on the bike around the lake as we paddled in. We still had a chance to catch them. We roared out of the control on this easy, fast bike leg around to the other side of the lake. Just coming up on CP36, the most sickening hissing sound started emanating from behind me. First thought was, oh no, Susie’s tube has blown again. Nope, Sara’s turn. The Gods of Adventure Racing and all things Outdoorsy were truly out to beat us into submission today. Most likely culprit here was thought to be glass on the road as Sara had quite a slit in the tyre. We were down to our third and last spare tube. I moved my bike off into the shade and pulled out a muesli bar. There was now no point trying to further antagonise the Gods. Looking at our time for this leg you could be forgiven for thinking that we stopped for a picnic along the way. We’re introducing a new session into the weekly training program, tyre-changing!!!
Back on the bikes again with no more spare tubes and 2 patched tyres, we pushed on to the TA.
Last 2 legs of the main course were a run around the lake to collect and return a boat to race HQ. I was truly suffering now and poor Sara even resorted to pushing me up the hills. Oh the shame!!! We thudded into the TA and I was once again glad to get off my feet and into the boats (everything was truly screwy today!!!).
Into the finish and we were now out of touch with Knuckles and the Cockatoos and about 5 mins down on the Adrenalin Adventure girls going into the bonus leg. Could we catch them?
A quick stop at the rego table to pull out the highlighter and mark up the bonus leg and we were off. This next leg was truly brutal… an increasingly steep climb up through the burbs to Mt Rogers which finished with a scramble over rocks to the TA. The heat and humidity was taking it’s toll and we were all slowing a little on the final climb.
At the TA and the map and instructions were a little out of the ordinary. 5 rocks, 4 punches, 2 pits, one punch. It took a few seconds to locate all of the features and the first thing I noticed was that 2 of the rocks were way out on the north western edge of the map while all the other features were clustered on the eastern side of the map close to the TA. Biting the bullet, I rationalised that we would have to go to the out of the way rocks anyway so we might as well get them out of the way and come back by the features close in to the TA. Having spent the first 3 hours of the race beating us over the head with a big stick, the Gods finally reached out an olive branch. This decision proved to be a stroke of genius. We were certainly not moving fast by this stage, walking most uphill scrubby bits but going clockwise meant we picked up all of the CP’s without having to visit the 2 control-less features. Made up a few minutes here on the girls and left the TA hot on their heels. We passed them again on the run in to the lake again and with one last hiccup finding the “brown post” and CP 54, we were down to the lake for the final bike shuffle to the finish. We could see Acumen still out on this task with Knuckles heading back with their boats and the Cockatoos heading out to collect theirs. We had no chance of catching any of them so it was finally just down to brute determination and we were finally across the line.
So, 5th in the end and what a rollercoaster ride it was. I can’t speak highly enough of my fellow teamies who were so patient with me and did a sterling task of avoiding my bush-blowies (lol). They giggled and laughed their way through the entire race and I can’t think of any2 characters I’d rather get screwed over by the GoARaatO with! Big thanks to Susie and Sara, what classy birds!
Also big thanks to all the other teams out there keeping us honest. It would have been easy to let the GoATaatO win but then I’d have had to come up with some new and sadistic way to punish myself for being soft. With such fantastic competition keeping us going right to the end, we can walk away with lessons learned for next time and still feel that we didn’t let the Gods have it all their way.
See you all out there for the 12 hour… I hear it’s a point-score. Another curly from Tom???
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