Training Archive: NSW Stinger

Note
slept:0.0

What a screw up. We would have had a 1hr lead if I'd marked it correctly. And to make things worse Jarad pulled the pin and the team withdrew. I don't know why we didn't complete the next rafting leg, and paddling leg as his ankle shouldn't have affected that. But the others didn't see much point if we were only going to stop on the last 20km trek. I have been spewing about this for days not- I should have shown more leadership strength and made us continue. Kathryn got more and more pissed off over the next few days and Jarad got a roasting the next day when he made a few stupid comments. If it was an acute injury it would have been acceptable. But he injured it back in October, and won't consider resting, or surgery. And in the last month or two he's raced 3days in China and 4days in Spain. And on top of that he now looks stupid because he didn't want to race with an injured Prong, who would probably at least finished.

Congratulations to Mounty and his team for their win. It was certainly unexpected but they held it together when it counted.

On the plus side I really enjoyed racing with Kathryn and Mark. Kathryn was amazingly good, and Mark did well for his first long race, and on only 3 weeks training. Jarad's reputation has been getting a roasting, but I'm sure I'll get sucked into racing with him again in the future. He is amazing on his day- but still hasn't learned to hold him self back and race consistently.

And massive thanks to our support crew- Mum, Dad, Prong and Fatrat (but I wish you had checked my control placements!!)

C • alternatives 5

Trekking race 1:19:00 [4] 4 km (19:45 / km)

Barrington:- This leg involved collecting 3 CP's in any order. It was meant to be 6km but only turned out to be 4km which pissed me a bit as we needed as much on foot as possible.
I was starting to cramp climbing and descending the first hill, so I knew I'd worked a bit too hard on the bike. Meanwhile Jarad was wanting us all to run up the steepest hill in the course.
I screwed up the 2nd control, dropped into the rugged creek line on a spur, but found some cliffs and got pushed off line. Then went upstream rather than downstream. Wasted 15mins. Damn.
Then nice wet rock hop down to the 3rd control before climbing to the road, and 1km back to TA. Wasn't happy to met MD's there, and find Mounty and Austrelaps were 10mins in front.

MTB Cycling race 1:58:00 [4] 25 km (4:43 / km)

Barrington:- Back on the bikes for some nice descending then a big steep climb. We caught MD's at the bottom of the climb, but they then showed impressive strength to keep riding when we walked. Kathryn showed good form on the steep stuff and was not only keeping up, but in front. The descent down the other side was thru very steep farmland with long grass, but the teams in front had cleared a good path. We smashed out the last 7kms and emptied the tank up the last hill to finish in 4th, 14mins behind Austrelaps, 8 behind MD's, 7 behind Mounty but with the 2nd fastest split.

Dad, Jarad and I took the bikes to the next TA, while Mark, Kathryn and Mum headed back to Forster.

Kayaking race 2:05:00 [4] 21 km (5:57 / km)

Forster:- We were bit rushed at the start of this leg, but got away on time. Mark and I were in the Red7 and Kathryn and Jarad in the Mark 2. It was great to have a bit of daylight to work with which made the nav easier. We could see Mounty in front for a long way, and this also made thinks easier. Jarad and K were paddling really well so we sat on there wash for the first 90mins. But wheneve I looked at the map we'd drop off and have to fight hard to get back on.
We started to catch some Geo half teams and went past Austrelaps like they were swimming. Then very surprised when we caught Mounty too, and they sounded tired when they didn't attempt to stay with us. Then in the last few hundred metres we caught MD's who were having trouble after smacking a few shallow rocks. Sweet, we were not in equal 1st place again and had the fastest split! Pretty funny when you look at the size of our guns...

MTB Cycling race 4:40:00 [4] 60 km (4:40 / km)

Wang Wauk:- We had a great transition and were first on the bike. Took it relatively easy to start with trying to get the legs moving and warming up. Stuffed around looking for first CP A (what a stupid description) and got caught by MD's. We were close for 20mins on route to B, but neither could work out the dodgy tracks and we split us, eventually wasting 30mins and being caught by 3 teams at C. From here a few teams split and went different routes. We kept to our plan of taking wider, faster roads rather than getting lost in the forestry tracks. The was the same route as Mounty took, and we put 20mins into them, but came together with APEX with 4kms to ride. Jarad cracked on this leg and slowed greatly. I was pretty strong and towed kathryn and helped the others. We had 2nd fastest split and arrived equal with Apex, 15mins up on Australaps and 40mins in front of Mounty.

Trekking race 6:10:00 [4] 28 km (13:13 / km)

Buladelah:- After another great transition (except for leaving Mark behind while we filled our water) we had to run up Mt Alum, find CP11 and then to the rock climbing challenge. I was very happy to achieve my intermediate goal of being first to the climbing, about 10mins in front of APEX. Good news with no more biking and plenty of running ahead.

Kathryn and I discussed our route, where we still needed to pick up 3 controls on foot before heading to the next TA to start the rafting. We decided to abort the plan to go down the steep, rocky and probably scrubby descent on the other side of the mountain instead dropping back to town and heading the long way round on the road/tracks. The speed was good on the tracks with Kathryn setting the pace, but I could see Jarad limping badly.
We picked up K, then had some bush bashing up a steep hill to the track near L. We actually all worked past this one that was right on the track. Only one more to get, N, which was 6km away, and only 1km from TA. The track we took was overgrown and hard to follow, but better when we got off the hill. We climbed the final hill with Jarad starting to slow down. After searching for 30mins I was certain the control wasn't here. I thought about just heading to TA, but someone suggested calling the organisers. So after 10mins talking to Louise it was confirmed I had marked the CP at the correct longitude, but incorrect latitude- by 3kms. Just unfortunate it correlated exactly to another hill.
We were obviously all shattered, but got moving on the 8km detour. But Jarad didn't really get moving again. He was in a lot of pain and couldn't keep up, even at our very slow pace. We passed a few teams passing the other way, but they were mostly Geo-half teams. I towed Jarad all the way back to TA, but we were still very slow. I could have much harder, but he was in a lot of pain. We finally make it back to TA at 6am and were 100mins behind APEX, Mounty and Austrelaps, and 40 mins behind Keen Torqers.

MTB Cycling race 2:02:00 [5] 40 km (3:03 / km)

Barrington Tops:- The race strayed from its usual format of starting on the coast this year, and headed into the mountains for a MTB leg. Teams started at 10sec intervals based on yesterdays team 5-legged race. We were in 8th place, 70secs down.

The pace was very fast from the start, but with Kathryn taking the descents a bit easier, and the hills very hard (with a lot of encouragement from Jarad). I struggled with the map from the start as our speedo measurements didn't seem correct. We ended up wasting 10mins overriding #1 with most of the other top teams. Soon all the contenders came together, and it was hard to pass due to the small tracks and lots of descending. When we got out to some faster tracks we worked hard to dropped the other teams up a climb and get what I thought would be a mental edge over the competition. Mounty and Katrin's Team Bruno caught us on the final descent and we rolled into TA1 together. I was amazed with Kathryn's riding- a good sign to come.

Event: Geoquest Adventure Race
 

MTB Cycling 1:20:00 [3]

Mt Stromlo:- After spending all day driving with Jarad and 20 boats on a trailer to Canberra, we met a mate of his and did a lap on stromlo. It was my first time riding here, and I loved it. We rode up the World Cup course- holy sh*t now I know what everyone talks about. The tracks we descended on were fantastic. Good to role over the legs.

Kayaking 41:57 [3] 7.28 km (5:46 / km)

Hazelwood Pondage:- Lunchtime paddle with Kathryn.