Tuesday 22 May 2012

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 3rd 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!

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