A Beautiful Day at the Beach...

AROC Sport

Fabulous weather, beautiful sea conditions and an amazing course sums up the AROC Adventure held at Umina Beach on 16 September 2006. It was a spectacular start for all the locals who came out to watch with a wave of yellow bibs running along the beach before jumping on a flotilla of big yellow kayaks and paddling out through the waves and around the point to Pearl Beach. Here teams faced their first challenge, a swim out to a buoy and a dive down to obtain the details of a checkpoint further on in the course. Then it was into the lush forest and a trek to some beautiful creeks and waterfalls where the Australian movie Lantana was filmed. Teams returned to the cheers from on-lookers at Pearl Beach and collected their bikes and headed along the fire trails past Wallarah Lookout and views of the Hawksbury to leave their bikes at the start of the Great North Walk and run down into the quaint town of Patonga. The beach was a hive of activity as teams paddled, excitedly swam and waded across the channel and coasteered along the rocks. For the first 20 teams there was more as they were given a surprise bonus leg taking them on a paddle to Little Patonga Beach and a run up over the hills at Broken Bay. This gave those faster teams a bit more of a challenge and gave other teams the feeling of leading the pack as they biked their way back to the finish over the escarpment and some unique slab rock. “It was like a natural skate park. It was so much fun” said one of the competitors. It really was the highlight of the event being the talk between teams when they crossed the finish line. For many it was the first time they had ever ridden on such terrain.

Race favourites, Sydney team, the Ultimax Stingers (Rob Preston, Any Hill and Ben Ratray) looked like they had been doing some paddling practice over the winter and came first off the kayak into the first transition. It looked all smooth for the Stingers but then a crucial navigational mistake put them 10 minutes behind. They managed to fight their way back to first place in 3 hours 50 minutes. Only 4 minutes off the pace were Canberra team, Adrenalin Adventure TerraX (Matt Koerber, Wayne Bradbury, Tony Bond). Local Central Coast team and first time adventure racers, Team Daracon (Casey Miles, Johathon Webb, Sam Pierce) were a surprise team in the lead group. They had an amazing race, maintained their position against experienced teams and came in a close third only another 4 minutes back. Acumen Alliance (Mark McDonald, Selina Stoute, Alex Ramsey) showed their experience with a convincing win in the Mixed Category and a fifth place overall. Local ranger Dave Kelly led his first time adventure racing team, The Hard Workers, to a well deserved second place in the mixed category. Afterwards it was discovered that Dave had to take a short stop during the last bike section but was revived quickly when a passing team gave him some apricot delights to boost his blood sugar and energy levels. It was then a race to the finish with xtreemo coming in only 8 seconds behind to round out third place in the mixed category.

Must Have Fun (Danielle Winslow, Orla Murray, Amanda Gross) did just that and showed winning came easily when you were having fun. Girls doing it for Roche (Ash McDermott, Nicle Risely, Rachel Turner) wore their company on their sleeve and with big smiles all round came in second in the female category. Five and a half kids, with one pregnant team member came in third showing that adventure racing was something that everyone could enjoy- just decide your own pace.

With Berghaus packs, technical t-shirts, Sea to Summit carry bags, dry bags, map cases, technical socks, Princeton Tec lights, heaps of bike gear from City Bike Depot and Endura hats there was thousands of dollars of prizes given away to the category winners as well as a tonne of special giveaways provided by local businesses. Team Bigfish and their counterparts, Bigfish Fingers proved that big grins and bribing the volunteers and spectators with plastic sea creatures can be beneficial winning the Happy Pants prize. There were special prizes for local teams in need of hair care and body treatments, compensation prizes for bike carnage, crotch rash, good singing and anything else thought up on the spur of the moment.

The aim of the day was fun and just getting out there. Everyone did have a great time and felt such a sense of accomplishment that they are now gearing up for the next event on 29 October at Narrabeen Lake, Sydney. Anyone can enter the AROC events – what ever size, age or ability. All you need is some friends to make up a team of 3, a mountain bike, sense of humour and basic fitness. Don’t delay. Check out the details and get ready to AROC’n Roll!

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