Places you'd rather be! Mountain Designs ARA Noosa

We started the day with a drive out to Yurol Forest to drop off our bikes at 6.15am, then returned to HQ at the Teen Mission Camp near Noosa for map handout at 6.45am……it was a tight schedule. We soon found out why as we were not starting the race at HQ, we were to be bussed out to Pomona!  Gary and I did most of the map planning while Sloshy, made sure we had all our gear sorted…..time was tight….and we were still contacting our maps as the briefing was getting under way……

These races usually have a twist or two….so in this race it was the option at the start! We could either try to get some of the 5 CP’s in 20 mins or get straight on the bus and leave after 10 mins and get them all at the end…..and if you were not back in 20 mins….there would be a penalty! We raced around and managed to get 3 CP’s in 20 mins and made it back with about 30 secs to spare….before long we were on the way out to Pomona…where we would do a 7k trek in Yurol Forest. We nailed the first few CPs crawled through a narrow tunnel and found ourselves in very thick bush looking for CP J….lost a bit of time….but made it up again do to some excellent nav by Gary……Onto the bikes we were to get 11 CP’s before we were to paddle……but again a bit of a twist……we had a foot rogaine thrown in at CP 9. We made good ground on the bikes, catching a few teams and making our way near the lead…..the trails were awesome to ride and for us a bit of local knowledge was a bonus! At Cp 9 we arrived in 3^rd place – leading the Premier Mixed, but trailing two all-male teams! We make a great start and just one CP to go……we become a bit bamboozled by the unmarked trails, and we have a hard time finding P on the west side of the creek…..we did lose a lot of time here but we finally found it...  So back on the bikes and a quick blast to Lake McDonald where we were to paddle. I was quite surprised to find that we were the second team to arrive….we thought we had lost heaps of time (obviously others did too)….so because we had a team of three, Sloshy had to paddle a double TOYBOY SOLO……”he just loved it”……there paddling and  “living the dream”….. We made a bit of time on the boys ahead…but not enough! We exited onto the bikes for the ride back to HQ 7 mins down, and to our surprise came across Gigantor and Guy at CP 14, they had overshot it……so the race was on! We both had the same CP’s to collect back near HQ, and after doing the mud crawl under the cargo net it was a sprint for the line……how was I meant to keep up with MONSTER, SLOPPY, TUFF-GUY, and GIGANTOR???? Well I couldn’t, but I followed these Gladiators down the finish chute, and watched them wrestle for the title……but we were both winners of our category!

Rogue 12hr & Team Mountain Designs

Our day started with a 4:30am car trip and steady rain which didn’t stop until the race was finished at 9pm.

We received our maps at 7:30 with only 1.5hrs to plan our course for the 12hr Rogue. After reading through the notes and looking at the maps, it was apparent to us that the course was not able to be cleared and the majority of points were in the final leg of the course. So we planned our course backwards with specific time cut-offs for each leg to maximise our chances of reaching the big points towards the end. 

 

A short run to the kayaks saw us onto the water first and blazed a trail through the weed and tree’s. We had planned to drop CP5 on the kayak but we had 5 mins up our sleeve so we went for it and arrived at TA 7 10mins behind schedule. Onto the trek we sped around dropping C8 which to us looked like a sucker CP as it would burn up 50 mins for only 70 points reward. We got back to the kayaks back on schedule and just behind spin city cycles, but with an extra CP and 30points up on them. We let them stay in front as we had a sneaky portage planned across a saddle to access CP 16and cut off 1.5k, but unfortunately they saw us and change course when they figured out what we were up to. 

We finished the kayak 30min ahead of time in 1^st place over Spin city cycles by 30 points. Off on the bike into the single tracks and we were having so much fun we decided to get CP 27, which was not part of our plan with the time we had saved during the kayak. The ride was fantastic, and even though it was wet the travel was generally good .I was obviously having a good day as it seemed nearly all downhill. We dropped CP’s 32, 33 & 37 on this leg as planned. Amazingly we went out onto trek at 5:41pm four minutes ahead of schedule, but soon ran into what we thought was going to be slow travel with steep drops into slippery creeks and a steep long climb up onto the ridge holding 230 points, but once on the ridge a unmapped track soon bought our pace back on track, we then took quite a few punts on tracks heading generally in the right direction that bought us back to the Transition area.  A quick slosh and slip up to CP 40, which unfortunately had been eaten by a starving motocross rider and then onto the finish, yes sometimes CP’s mysteriously go missing in events! 

Hooray…… finally I get the socks and pants off which were a bit like wearing a jar of pins with all the grass seeds, why didn’t I wear my Moxie gators? A nice feed, couple of beers and a bottle of red shared with the Tri-Adventure girls, topped of a fantastic weekend of adventure. 

Report written by Gary Sutherland