Yesterday 4 of us competed in the In2Adventure Mountain Designs adventure race at The Cattai National park.

Myself, Darrin, Tristan and Jack all competed in the solo division.

Tristan did awesome and took first place!

I took 5th place, Darrin 7th and Jack 10th.

The race was awesome, we started with a sprint to the beach where we had to check a map and mark down our 3 first checkpoints.

From there it was over to transition area 1 and we had to swim across a very cold creek. We made out way on foot another couple of km’s via a couple more checkpoints to the bike drop.

After a quick spot inspection to ensure we were all carrying our first aid kits, we made our way on bike via another checkpoint to the kayaks.

A 5km kayak via 3 checkpoints brought us back to our bikes and we were off again for another 3 checkpoints which would bring us back to the creek crossing. This time however, we had to cross with our bikes. Thankfully there was a rope to hold onto as we crossed the creek carrying our bikes. Bear in mind, this creek was much deeper than we were tall. Swimming with a bike whilst fully clothed is no easy task!

We made our way back to race headquarters where we were given another map with 4 more checkpoints to collect on our mountain bikes.

This again brought us back to race headquarters where we had to mark down another 2 checkpoints on our map to collect on foot. Another nice little 3km run to top everything else off!

I crossed the line in 3hrs 45 mins. Darrin came in 2 mins after me and Jack about 15 mins later.

Tristan of course finished in 3hrs, smashing everyone!

I am going to take this opportunity to tell you how I carb loaded (not) before the race to give me the energy to take part in this 3+ hour race.

For breakfast I ate 2 boiled eggs, 3 pieces of eye bacon, 1.5 cups grapes, 2 mandarins and 20 cashew nuts. I also ate about 1/3 Purefit bar 30 mins before the race. I would have eaten the whole thing, but I wasn’t hungry.

So, 2 points to take away from this;

1. Adventure races are awesome! They are so much fun and a great way to test your fitness and navigational skills.

2. You don’t need to carb load. Get all of your nutrition from your food by combining good carbs with good protein and good fat.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 6th, 2011 at 2:18 pm and is filed under adventure racing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.