Training Log Archive: Wally80

Cold was not made better by the race strangely. head was not too bad but the cough was not pretty, especially when I had to run a meeting for an hour with two "cough up a lung" breaks.

I had been trying to shake of a minor cold since Tuesday and I was looking after myself. So when I rocked up to the share house Friday and to find everyone drinking and got offered a beer straight away of course I said No. Robbie coming in later with beers and talking about our dinner at the brewery ruined that clean living image pretty quickly. Interesting accommodation with Woop Woop, Macpac, Maids, FUBAR and MIA all at the same place.

Leg 1, 33 km ride with rollout start
An inauspicious start had us almost penalised before the gun when I made a reference to the chances of the bike rack falling off the lead out car. Apparently still a sore topic with the race organisers :-)
The actual roll out was interesting, not many teams were pushing for the front so we got in the lead bunch of Woop Woop, MIA and Dalto’s Love Children. We seemed to get a bit of a break on the field before the Pile Rd turnoff but it was hard to look behind in the pack so I just focused on the riding. Once on Pile Rd Andy pushed Fran up from the back to the front so the MIA breakaway attempt on the first hill was no surprise but we let it go, by the top of the hill we had let the other two teams go as well when Robbie struggled a little.

Into the single track we could see the conga line ahead of us, after tRicky and Andre fell we were right on the back of it too. I was giving motivational advice to Andre at this point that he forgot to thank me for. Near the end of the Grizzly Woop Woop put in a burst to get out in front and lose the other teams at the trailhead, it worked beautifully and MIA and BB’s were standing around looking confused when we rode past, MIA was smart enough to jump on our wheel and follow. Or, in reality they constantly overtook one of us and split our team so we had to keep waiting for both teams just to stay together. Not a nice tactic and they did it too often to be accidental. We caught up to WW on the butcher trail where Jake did remember to thank me for riding MIA back up to them the all three teams stuck together for pretty much the rest of the leg, we made it into TA first by less than a minute.

Leg 2, 19km trek.
MIA and WW transition faster than us by not putting on long pants, the both took off down the steep hill whilst we went east on the track, we saw WW pretty quickly as they had just taken a short cut through the bush to our track to cut off the bend, I think our way was faster. They left the trail before us to drop onto 11 whilst we went past the hill before cutting in, we then kept dropping into the creek as it was much faster travelling than higher up the hill. Somewhere through here we overtook WW and we saw MIA leaving the control. We followed the creek down to 10 then up onto the road to trot down to 14 where Robbie took one for the team.

We turned up a creek too early to 13 (pace counting fail through laziness) so when we got up above the tree line we took some bearings off the other side of the valley to confirm we were too far south then went cross country to the correct gully, pretty obvious once we had got there. Lost approx 15 mins in this mistake and let WW back past. Up onto the hill where we saw some random team and WW coming down from 12, picked up that and 15 no worries then went cross country to 17, this was some of the nicest bush we saw all race and we got back past WW even with a little bobble a the end with the creek being on the wrong side of the track.

Heading up the western side of the map the controls were easy and we got to see lots of the field, very social and pleasant, more so after I took a salt tab to stop the cramps. We pace counted 400m from the northern track junction then took a bearing into 20 which we didn’t find, but we just paralleled the track for less than a minute before we came on to it. A little lucky on a bingo control.

We just took a bearing to the creek above 18, WW had done the opposite so we approached it from different directions with us just finding it first then a cross country run back to TA after the tracks stopped making sense. MIA were still there and WW came in just after, looking at their legs we did not begrudge the slightly slower transition as the protective pants came off.

Leg 3; 19 km ride
Off on the bikes and it was an easy ride with a few push up pinch climbs till we started up the Munda Biddi on the north side of the river, lots of pushing up and I was sweating bags wearing both my short and long sleeve icebreaker tops. The second CP on the ride was annoying, I was sitting at the back and when the guys overshot the CP I was shouting to stop the team but with my cold my voice wasn’t loud. Thankfully they noticed I was missing and stopped but we wasted another 5 mins going back up the hill. Came in to TA whilst MIA and WW still there, MIA looked a little rough with WW moving well.

Leg 4 ~20km paddle, 8km trek, 7 bloody hours.
Anti clockwise loop, Jill and I in one boat, Robbie and Cam in the other. We were always going to clear the course so we could have gone the other way round the loop, things may have turned out differently. The moon started to rise just after we took off and made it really scenic for the first section. 23 was no problem, at 24 Jill and I cramped trying to get out of the boats so we were a little slow following up the hill, which was great since I didn’t take a bearing from the boat and we struggled to find them even with us all strung out. At least we went back down the correct side of the hill.

We took a bearing and had a good idea of our pacing as we looked for the tree, it was fairly easy to find in the bright moon light but I am impressed with the teams that found it in the fog. We took a bearing towards 27 which nicely lined up with the rising moon, we met MIA on the way down who were complaining that it was a tricky CP, we just followed the moon to the top and it the CP wasn’t there. I called out the grid pattern to search by then after two steps saw the flag.

28 was simple, We took off towards 29 and saw MIA’s boats pulled up a bay early, I never did find out why but they didn’t lose too much time from it. We pulled in at 29, got that one then took off towards 31. We missed the first track I was aiming for so I adjusted the bearing and just went straight for the knoll, finding a couple of tracks on the way but they ran out quickly. Saw WW coming down and figured they had ~25mins on us. Aiming for 30 on a “Broad Knoll” We actually found tracks, but they didn’t help us. We set up an emu bob across the knoll to find the CP but found it by just wandering around. I really need to practice some more effective techniques for finding bingo controls. I got a little confused on the way back to the boats since I tried to pick up a track, after cam told me it was heading one way and Robbie saying the other I just guessed, I dropped us down to the creek a little early which was slow, but not as bad as WW.

A nice paddle up to 33 with tendrils of fog starting to curl across the water, we could see MIA hunting for the CP on the way in and had a quick chat with them on the way up, Cam walked straight onto the CP and we went off quickly.

We pick up 32 on the way south then met the fog on the way to 26, didn’t cause us many problems and we caught up to MIA, Kris was looking smashed. We tried all sorts of things looking for this CP, in the water, up in the tree line, praying but no joy. Everyone was getting very cold so we made the call to head back to TA, 2 minutes too early apparently. The paddle back to TA was concerning since we couldn’t see the lights that were very bright when we left. Saw the lights finally when we were about 500m away and slightly off bearing. Back in TA Marcus confirmed the punch was there and WW had got it, we took off straight again and found it after a shorter search. Annoying. Back to TA again and my shoulders were letting me know about the lack of long paddles recently, elbow was OK though.

Leg 4; 35km ride.
We weren’t fast through transition and WIl’s team came in which put a rocket up us, The rocket sputtered out on the first climb after I had fairly roughly called for track on Juffy’s team. He didn’t look happy. We were moving OK but not fast through this section until the start of the Munda biddi downhill which was a blast, wheee. The ride up the other side was a low point, I was hurting on the bitumen but by about halfway up the gravel road I was really hurting. The road was steep enough to put me in the granny gear but not steep enough to walk.

The team was starting to worry about me but at the next CP I opened the pharmacy and took 2 nurofen, a no doze and a pile of jubes. I sparked up a bit after that and was feeling OK by the time I got to where I thought he last CP should be, after a search we went back to the previous junction and rode it again, then hunted. The distance was too short but all the junctions were lining up and we had just decided to move on when Wil’s team caught us, we followed them straight to the CP. We were pretty annoyed by this and put it in the big chainring and flogged it all the way to the finish. Cam got on the front once we hit the bitumen and we all tried to hang on as he held 30 the whole way. He was strong all race. We put about 5 mins into Wil but later found they got an extra 10 min credit for getting leaky boats. Damn. Can't really complain as it was our mistake that let them get that close to begin with.

It was a good course, not much route choice but some tricky route execution. Team worked together well but I felt my nav was a little below last year, possibly because I was working much harder to keep up. First time I have raced with a team that was so evenly matched, we flogged the downhills well and were well matched on the paddle.

Muz was saying how afterwards how he had set/mapped all of the tricky ones (broad knoll, tree among tree’s, f’n tree stump) with his GPS. Which the rogaining setters course specifically pointed out as bad course setting. If you need your GPS to find the location you shouldn’t be using it. We only had problems at one but I could see a lot of possibility for trouble.

C • which CP? 6

C • GPS setting 5

Event: Espresso 24-Hour Adventure Race
 

day 1

which meant I would have ridden home. wasn't feeling too good with the start of a man cold.

I think I rode to work last week