I have done triathlons, multisport races, mountain biking, rogaining and even recently some paddling but I had never done an adventure race. My long-awaited debut in the sport at the AROC Paddy Pallin race could not have been more perfect - a lovely all-girl team, an inordinate amount of mud, navigation challenges and a podium finish!
The race was held in the Wallarah Peninsula National Park on Lake Macquarie. I drove up to Newcastle on the Friday night in torrential rain and stayed at casa pug with my team-mates. In the morning after dropping our bikes off and lining up to get our maps and instructions, we had less than an hour to plan, which was a bit rushed. We just had enough to time to mark a suggested route in highlighter, waterproof the map and control card and get ready to start.
Leg 1 was an foot orienteer to about a dozen checkpoints within a small area with a detailed map, and at each CP you had to solve a crossword clue. We moved around pretty quickly finding them and solving the clues, which was fun and soon we had a completed crossword. I couldn’t help letting out a "woo hoo" as we sped to the first transition.
Leg 2 was another orienteer but the CPs were further afield and the map much less detailed. We came a bit unstuck in this section and spent a lot of time trying to find the CPs. At this point we didn't have a clear plan for who was navigating and I didn't have my bearings at all. After what seemed like ages we finally got the 3 CPs and headed to transition to the paddle.
Leg 3 was a simple paddle down the lake, with a stop-over to collect one CP up a rocky scramble. For the first few minutes the conditions were calm and we got a good rhythm going. But soon we were out in the wind and it became extremely arduous! I was literally paddling as hard as I possibly could trying to keep us straight, but it was never hard enough. The other girls were brilliant at staying cheerful but I was struggling to remember that we were having fun and I was very glad when the paddle was over.
Leg 4 was another foot orienteer on suburban streets, so the navigation was simple and we found the CPs easily. I was feeling a little spent at this point and not keen to run very quickly. Without a sense of how long we had been going and not knowing how long we had to go, it was hard to measure how much energy to spend and how much to keep in the bank.
Leg 5 was onto the bikes (yay!) and within meters we were knee-deep in the first of many huge mud puddles. I had a mapboard (home-made with clipboard, cable-ties and bulldog clips) on my bike so I took possession of the map. It took awhile to adjust to being on the bikes, moving more quickly and working out how that translated to where we were on the map. But we managed to find the first CP fairly easily and just keep picking them up from there. The trail was very muddy which slowed things down a lot, but it was good fun, with some nice single track thrown in.
Leg 6 was a short out-and-back foot orienteer section collecting 3 CPs. On the map it looked hard because the terrain was hilly and the CPs were not right on a track, but we seemed to find these ones quickly and I think we made up some time on other teams here.
Leg 7 was the home stretch on the bikes to the finish. We had problems finding one of the CPs in this section. The track we were supposed to turn off on was half-way up a rather large hill and I think we missed it in our struggle. After standing around shrugging our shoulders with some other teams we back-tracked and eventually we found it. It might have helped to look at the contours on the map and pay much closer attention to how far we had travelled - a bike computer would help with this. With around an hour to go until the cut-off of 5.5 hours and still 6 CPs collect, we started thinking that we might have to sacrifice some of the CPs. We picked up our pace and kept passing other teams on the nasty hills. I felt a bit guilty about hogging the map, but I really enjoyed navigating, it adds a whole new dimension to racing. I just need to get a lot better at it.
With less than 20 minutes to go we still had 2 CPs to get and so we had to decide whether to go for it and risk getting a time penalty. We decided we would prefer to complete the course so we pushed onwards. The very last section back to the finish looked simple on the map - a nice straight line along the water. In reality it was a muddy, slippery, hilly and technical single-track, but we fanged it as fast as we possibly could and then cruised into the finish about 3 minutes late. We were shocked to hear from our support crew that we were the second all-girl team to finish. This was the icing on the cake as we had heaps of fun together and learned a lot for next time.
2 hours later after the BBQ and presentation I was driving home and it had started raining heavily and there were still teams out on the course. I felt so sorry for them - that would have been super-tough.
The next day I had a sore neck (from the paddling I think) and I was too tired to do the run I had planned, but apart from that I pulled up well and am keen for the next adventure, whatever that may be.
