Kawhia, New Zealand
14-15 April, 2007
The team was Wayne Oxenham, Stu Lynch, Anna Berthelsen and Brent Edwards.
We had never all raced together as a team before. With Anna a fairly new addition to the team and Wayne laid out after ankle surgery for the last 6 months. This was to be a good tester for the newly constructed ankle as well as how we perform as a team.
With the Adventure Race World Champs only 5 weeks away the ARC is a perfect time for a good hard workout, and there was expected to be some good competition in the form of Team Horleys.
The ARC events are always run well and we knew that we would be racing for a genuine 24 hours, this year Andy and Keith were dropping hints that the race would not only be a test of fitness, and teamwork but unlike the last couple of years would be a real test of navigation.
We received the course instructions on Friday and spent the next several hours drawing up maps and deciding on route choices. The course looked interesting and as predicted would be a real test of our navigation.
Leg 1 involved Kayak Rogaine with a 6 am start. Teams were allowed to split and must get 6 Rogaine points between them.
The start hooter went (with several teams jumping the gun), and the kayaks fanned out into the dark mostly paddling on a bearing, and waiting for dawn.
Our paddle went fairly well, with me and Wayne off our bearing a bit and having to readjust, but it all worked out fine, meaning we got to paddle mostly as a team of 4.
There was a time bonus to be gained if you could roll your kayaks at one of the checkpoints. Stu and Anna had no problems, me and Wayne weren’t too confident after doing some practice the weekend before and swimming every time. Somehow when the pressure was on and everyone was watching we managed to pull it off. Needless to say we were pretty stoked with this and enjoyed the rest of the paddle to come into transition with about a 5 minute lead on the field.
Leg 2 was a mountain bike with a few interesting moments. The track we rode had turned into a slippery mess after the previous week’s rain and it felt like we were pushing our bikes through the mud for most of the leg.
We rode/pushed along with the 4 man team Turnip, Turnip, Turnip and Swede for most of this leg and there were a few interesting passing manoeuvres going on here, which generally involved falling into the mud.
Leg 3 was the highlight of the race for me. A run up-stream through the bush and a spooky natural tunnel (no torches allowed), where we were all tied together with a bit of rope and felt our way through the dark.
Funny moment: I was running along in the font along a small track next to the river. We were going fairly quickly, suddenly a slippery hole opened up in front of me. With images of tomos and plunging for hundreds of meters to my death in my mind, I teetered on the edge for a couple of seconds before falling in, to land in some water about 2 meters down. I then was stuck in this hole and had to be lifted out by a laughing Stu.
Leg 4 involved an easy road bike to Leg 5 which was a wicked 80 meter abseil with spectacular views and then a caving section about 45 minutes long.
The clock was stopped for this section so that we wouldn’t be racing the abseil or cave (safety and environmental issues). So we took out time through here admiring the views and checking out the caves. There were a few wet moments in the cave where we had to hold out breath and swim through small gaps.
Out of the cave and onto rifle shooting, this wasn’t our best discipline and we missed a few shots here.
Leg 6 was another fairly easy road bike to the beginning of the longest trek section of the race.
Leg 7 the longest leg of the race was a trek through bush tracks. We had a few small problems here, where the track didn’t go where it showed on the map; we ended up searching for it, finding it a short time later. It was dark by this stage and at times it was difficult staying on the track. We were moving along fairly well running most of this leg.
Leg 8 was a short river kayak, its always tough picking your way down a shallow river at night, and we had a few near misses with startled looking swans. But made it to the next transition fairly unscathed (except for a few new scratched in the boat).
Leg 9 was another trek through farmland with some tricky navigation; we did a bit of gorse bashing and then navigated well to the next several checkpoints hardly putting a foot in the wrong direction.
Leg 10, the final leg (unfortunately the scheduled last Kayak was cancelled due to high winds) was a mountain bike over some tricky ridges; we managed to get through this leg without loosing much time except to clean some of the mud off our bikes. We rode into the finish at 2.30 a.m. Over 2 hours ahead of the next team.
Thanks to Andy and Keith who one again put on a wicked race. It’s always good to have a course that really tests the whole range of adventure racing skills.