Training Log Archive: fletch

Short loosener with Tooms and MTBJen when the weather had cleared up a little. Wind still cold, but not as penetrating as when we returned to Middleton in the morning to retrieve pieces of surf ski.

Well - 7am start and it looked like the perfect leg for us - 3 people needed to navigate, 2 on foot and one on the bike. Split the controls up into 3 groups and then the stuffups began. Tooms spent 10 minutes looking at how to get to a control that was behind locked doors, and I missed my first turn up Mt Clarence before I got into the scale of things and had to run pretty hard afte rthat. Took 25 minutes, much of it crawling across a wet granite slab that I shouldn't have been on to get to the first control. Finally got back on the trail and got the first one, then charged up to the top of the hill to collect controls on the war memorial and lookout and was amazed to find that there were still teams there.
Had to double back on my way into transition as a road that I thought went through dead-ended and I wasn't prepared to do the backyard / garden bed dash that some apparently chose. Added a few hundred extra metres on that really wasn't needed by that stage. Amazingly there were people heading up the hill as I came down, and despite being last in on my team by some 10 minutes, the fact I was sitting out the next paddle leg meant they were all ready to hop onto the boats and amazingly we were still about 5th out of 50 onto the water.

The worst news for me at this point was that my knee had started to hurt after about 15 minutes, similarly to State champs last weekend, so one support crew car was despatched to buy nurofen en route to the next transition.

Glad to be sitting this one out. Missed the excitement and scariness of nearly being cleaned up by whales and also missed the escitement of coming to grief in the shore break on the way in. Pete lost his hat, but at least they didn't get smashed like a couple of the teams in the presentation dinner photos. Quick transition ad ready to head out on a substantial running leg.

Out onto the second run of the day. This one much longer and navigation a little more serious. First couple of controls were in some seriously thick pine forest with lots of fallen pines in the way. Had some company for a while but they disappeared in the second half. Then out into some farmland which was all good until we attempted to cross a big muddy paperbarky tea-treey smelly cow-pooed marsh. We had to backtrack then go 200m or so upstream before we hit an unexpected cattle track and we used the sucky, slimy, smelly, shin-deep muck as a better path across! One more CP and back into TA3 about 40mins down on the leaders and in 4th/5th spot.

MTB leg on John's old bike, with Tooms sitting out and MTBJen doing the nav. She was awesome and we had a really great run through except for the control in the middle where we had corrected the location in our planning and then stuffed up and put the old description, not the new one. Once we had chatted to another team and found out whythings didn't make sense, we went back to where we started and ducked straight into the paperbarks and found the evil control. Cost us about half an hour, which funnily enough was how far we were behind the fastest team for the leg. I began to suffer badly on this leg after starting it feeling good and trying to share the wind-breaking duties early on. By the end of the leg I was toast and couldn't even sit in on Jen's wheel. Bif trouble seeing as I was down to do the next run and 60km MTB legs before a break...

Run leg in the Porongorups. Knew it was gonna kill me, but figured I had to push through it and get towed when I cracked totally. Got up the first big climb OK and cruised down the other side to the first control and the shoe cleaning DEC stop, where Big Tom told us we'd cop a 4 hour penalty but stay on the long course if we dropped the next 2 controls to make sure we made the time cut-off for the climb. Pity he changed his mind before the presentations.
Survived the jog along the road to the next checkpoint and got there in plenty of time (thought we had to be off the ropes by 5pm, not at checkpoint 32). Hitched onto the tow rope for the climb up to Castle Rock, and Tooms and Pete shared the load of dragging me up hte hill. The abseil came and went with me only barely aware of what I was doing. Pity really as the photos from afterwards made it look pretty cool. Probably should have looked around and enjoyed the view.
Highlight of the race from a sadistic view was seeing the look on Christie's face when we ran past them as we descended and they climbed up to the ropes, asking if we were still on the long course (of course we were - didn't mention the fact that we'd dropped two controls).

Glad to have a good break after this one and face the prospect of now being subbed into the final paddle instead of the MTB leg...

Leg 6: 60km MTB. Evo, MTBjen and Tooms. With a bit of time up our sleeve we knew we'd make the start of the canoeing leg cut-off, but the end of the paddle leg (10pm) still looked dicey so we dropped one more CP and barelled deliberately down the out-of-bounds highway (another 2hr + 2hr penalty) but we were first into the TA with 30mins to spare. Perfect tactics so far to stay in the race - figuring any teams behind us trying to collect all the CPs would certainly miss the paddling cut-off.

Leg 7: 22km river/ocean paddle. We started in the dark with teams who were paddling with no glow sticks - against the rules but not enforced. Surprisingly warm and MTBjen and I coped well with the dark, the obstacles and the other two teams (Elderfield/O'Neal/Mundell/Newmarch in the lead) and (Finucane et al paddlers who'd already missed heaps of CPs). Jen didn't even seem grumpy about being sent onto an island to bash through thick scrub for 10 minutes before realising we'd stopped a tthe wrong island. Last checkpoint was missing, but there were a couple of other teams there that had had a good look for it already, so we just kept going without bothering to look around too much. We got to Emu Point with 20mins to spare and knew we'd now sewn up 2nd place as Christies team was nowhere to be seen ie. missed this cut-off and short-coursed! Woo-hoo. Having knocked off the first 15km of dark river paddling we were now confronted with the prospect of paddling another 7km from Emu Point to Quaranup on the other side of the shipping channel. With all of us a bit wary of our relative instability on open ocean we had a chat and decided to continue on and check out the conditions just around the corner before deciding whether to continue or not. It was pretty calm with a massive offshore wind so we stayed about 50m outside the small break zone and paddled along the coast towards Middleton. Extra time for doing the curve of the bay was no issue as we knew we were on the full course and time was now irrelevant. Jen and I fell in once for no good reason and despite coping bette rthan expected we were pretty apprehensive about taking on the shipping channel, even though it was only exposed for 7-800m.

The swell was virtually nil but it was very very windy off the shore. Then, out of nowhere, a big wave came though and the surge tipped us off. Jen was halfway back on, and I was still in the drink thinking how this was getting progressively less fun the further we went, when we saw a wall of whitewater about to smash us as the second wave in the set broke on out heads. Never been gladder to be wearing a PFD. Jen got hit by the ski and said something along the lines of "I don't want to do this any more" and I thought immediately - Yay - neither do I. The third wave helped wash us towards shore and we got out onto the beach OK, although shaken up and wondering where Tooms had gotten to, as his light had disappeared.

Walked 50m up the beach to see Tooms. Thought - oh did he realise we got smashed and stop for us? then realised that the ski next to him was only about 1.5m long. Oh crap - he got done too. Ah well - that's it for the night. We'll getthe double up on the beach, get picked up and use the Fenn tomorrow. Went back, grabbed the double and found it surprisingly difficult to drag up the sand - to be expected, I thought - I was knackered. Tooms saw I was struggling and picked up the other end. The middle stayed on the sand. Bollocks. Now just one single left for three paddlers tomorrow - slight issues.

Began a slow and cold walk down the beach 400m to the surf club and used a public phone to call our crew. Very glad to be picked up and taken back to warm accomodation.

Game over. According to official rules the same skis have to be used for the whole event, so we were done. Turns out the liberal way rules were interpreted we could have borrowed a couple more skis and continued, but the weather Sunday morning was rubbish and it would have ended up as s run leg in all likelihood anyway.

Next day we rang Tom at 330am to see if the paddle had been cancelled (as a storm front had hit, 7m swell etc) but no, they modified it instead. So we went back to bed as the paddle was first. 3hrs after race start teams were still walking along the beach infront of our accom completing the "40 minute paddle leg". Several skis blown out to sea, amazingly no one missing. Shocking weather, course shortened markedly.