Fitta Bodies entered 2 teams in the latest AROC adventure race on Saturday 18th April at Lake Macquarie.

What a race it was, orienteering around beautiful Lake Macquarie, running, mountain biking, kayaking and swimming. Taking in beach, lake, rocky ocean outcrops, dense bushland and suburbia, we covered it all.

My team – Fitta Bodies 1 came in in 34th position out of 199 entrants in 4 hours 14 minutes. We are happy with that result, putting us at 17% from the top of the field.

Team Fitta Bodies 2 came in in 141st place in a time of 5 hours and 28 minutes. Well done to Gwen, Rachel and Tom, they did really well.

Our goal of beating Jeff from Addventure Training didn’t come to fruition on this occassion with his team coming in in 19th place in a time of 3 hours and 52 minutes.

The race started with a dip into Lake Macquarie to bring back items from 3 buoys. Once we handed in our collections, we were given a map of the nearby development with 22 checkpoints to find. When we handed in our completed checkcard, we were on our bikes and the race officially began.

The mountain biking was tough on this leg with very steep rutted trails which everybody had to walk their bikes down. We had 3 checkmarks to collect on our way.

The next leg was coasteering. Running along the rocky coastline, jumping in and out of the ocean as required in order to collect 5 checkmarks and then it was back up to the bikes.

We rode to Caves Beach to crawl into a very small cave to retreive a checkmark, then into suburbia to park up our bikes and run approximately 1.5km along soft sand to the next checkmark.

We ran through the suburbs collecting 2 checkmarks on our way to the kayaks and paddled our way along the lake to 2 more checkmarks. 

The paddle back was not so pleasant as the rain and howling winds picked up. It also didn’t help the run back to the bikes as we collected 1 more check mark on the way.

Back on the bikes, it was the dash to the finish. We had 3 more checkmarks to collect and we went for it. I had 2 crashes on my bikes, but no injuries. We completed this leg 16th fastest out of the whole field. We passed 5 teams on the 2km single track from the final checkmark to the finish line. Not an easy feat when it is single track!

This was one of my favourite races so far. What an adventure, I can’t wait for the next one!

Yours in Fitness

Troy Shipsey

Your Group Training Specialist Come see me in Centennial Park