Last Saturday saw the final event on the Aroc adventure racing calendar and what a race it was!
We had every type of terrain you could ask for and we had 4 awesome teams participating.
Fitta Bodies 1 – Myself, Matt, Jack
Fitta Bodies 1.555^ – Darrin, Adam, Nelius
Fitta Bodies – Scott, Pat, Sprat
Last Minute Fitta Bodies – Rachel, Jason, Danielle
We started off in the sand dunes at Stockton Beach finding checkpoints attached to flags waving in the distance before heading into the biking sections where we found ourselves riding along the sand at One Mile Beach. Such an awesome thing to do and I can’t think of another opportunity I will have to do it either. Part way along the beach we had to pick up our bikes for some coasteering along the rocks. The rest of the mountain biking trails were pretty sandy, so we found ourselves pushing the bikes almost as much as pedaling them!
We then did some more coasteering and even had a quick swim out to a check point in a rock pool just off shore before heading back to the bikes and making our way to the kayaks at Fingal Bay. We battled the huge swells to cross the bay, dragged the kayaks on shore and did a massive coasteering section. Pretty gnarly too if you ask me, right on the edge all the way.
When we got back to the kayaks, the tide was so low that everybody was carrying their kayaks to the next checkpoint rather than paddling them, so we took a handle each and jogged it the 500m or so. Those babies aren’t light either!
It was onto our final beach run of about 1.5km’s and then we pedaled our bikes to the finish line.
Woo Hoo, we came in 3 hours and 28 mins in 29th place out of 178 teams. Not bad, but we were on track to make it much better than that before our silly mistakes…I’ll explain below.
So where did we go wrong?
We rode straight past CP16, when we got to CP17, we realised and had to ride back. There’s 5 mins atleast.
On the way to CP20, Jack got a massive calf cramp. I have never seen a man scream like this before, his calf pulled up into a ball. So Matt was holding his leg up, I was trying to massage it when a guy came along and quote unquote said “stand back, I’m a massage therapist” As funny as the quote is, he did an awesome job and it was so nice of him to stop and help out. Let’s say another 10 mins lost there.
We completely missed CP25, so we had to go back for that one as well. There’s another 5 mins.
So we know that at CP16 we were in about 12th place and guess what, if we took 20 mins off our time, we would have come in at 12th place…
But, we had a ball!
Well done to team 2 for coming in 3 hours and 33 mins in 38th place! Awesome, must have been that 3 hour, 35km training session we did last weekend!
Awesome result for Team 1.555^ coming in 4 hours and 6 mins in 89th place. They had a goal to come within 1 hour of my team and smashed that by coming in 38 mins after us, well done!
Last minute Fitta Bodies is so named because they only entered 2 days before the event, after entries had closed, but thankfully Alina allowed us 1 more entry into the race. They had a some navigational problems around CP’s 24 and 25 which set them right back and they ended up coming in 4 hours 48 mins in 145th place. They were tracking really well prior to that CP stuff up too!
Other memorable moments of the race…
Matt copping his bike in the jaw whilst carrying it over the rocks
Jack’s turet type outburst when he was cramping up
Of course the quote of the day “Stand back I’m a massage therapist”
Adam, Darrin and Nelius capsizing their kayak in the huge swells
The heavy downpour of rain soon after we all finished the race which saw about 50 people huddle under the Red Bull tent and then the flooded ground to get back to the car
And after it is all said and done, there is always enough energy to overhead squat something at a random location…
So who’s joining us for the next adventure race? It’s time to do something with your new fitness levels!
