Team TrailBlazers

An account of the AROC Sport Adventures - Lake Parramatta Reserve

16 October 2004

Team - TrailBlazers - Amy Murphy, Paul Kilbane & Shaun Locke
Location - Lake Parramatta Reserve (Excellent spot)
Event - Kayak, MTBike, Trekking & orienteering.

We started off well....... we were in the top 15 within the kayak stage (even after when SL(team captain) tried to flick water into Amy's face & with Paul power stroking nearly rolled the boat. We survived and then it turned south soon afterwards, Paul rolled his ankle within the first 5 minutes of the event and was limping for the remainder of the race....

Paul did remarkably well to continue and we managed to pick up our bikes & ride for 3 points. We then decided to avoid the next TA (Transition Area) and continue on our bikes down a running trek .......we soon double backed when we saw people running without helmets. That was probably the key point of the event as we lost ten minutes and more importantly the other teams...this meant we would need to rely on accurate navigation...(not good)

On the trekking leg we over-ran most points & took over 20 minutes to find out a burnt out car in the bush. SL's navigation should have been better and found it tough to get to grips with the scale of the map (mental note...always check the scale before starting) and for some reason couldn't get his bearings correct on the big day.

After much frustration Paul decided to take over the navigation when we jumped back on the bikes in the rural area of which we found most points effectively barring the one where we started to ride on the freeway and realised it just couldn't be right - Tom & Alina are much more responsible then for us to ride on the Motorway......

The remainder of the race seems to be haze but we managed to get through it...to cut a good story short...... there were other highlights.........
The kayak base was deflated when we returned to paddle and which we had to re-inflate and loose more valuable time
Amy flew off her bike & face planted and received cuts & bruises (ouch) and was more than likely concussed but amazingly managed to solider on.
A Magpie swooped on SL whilst on the bike for over 50 metres
A Duck chased Paul (on the bike) away from the ducklings
SL's knee was re-acting badly on the bike & run legs.

Overall we came in second last and we were happy to end the race...you can't win them all but at least you can learn from the experience. The Aroc events are certainly well run events and a challenge for us all.......for those who are aspiring to be an adventure racer get some navigation practice in!