A winning time under 41 minutes. Quickness + endurance. Fast and furious. An impressive effort by the top teams.
Team Peak Adventure did great today, even without a full contribution from yours truly. I didn’t have the speed in the legs to help the team. I was just hanging, even putting a brake on the team on the last run to the finish. James came back to “fetch me” with a bungy cord and pulled me back to the team. Thanks, James. I hope I can return the favor in the coming days …
But enough of that.
I’ll be ready tomorrow.
We’re all excited to have finally got underway. We’re looking forward to tomorrow’s stage that begins with a whitewater paddle and is followed by a long and grueling uphill climb of 700 meters (sound familiar?). The race will finish with an exciting cliff rappel and feature plenty of technical trail running and mountain biking in between. While speed always wins, endurance will play a larger role in tomorrow’s 5+ hour competition.
The opening ceremony
The sprint directly after the gun went off. The street was closed off and spectators watched in the rain.
One of the slightly goofy events in today’s race was the “chair carry” where one team member (the lightest one!) sits in a chair that is carried by the other teammates. We carried it about 500 meters and it was a full “red line” effort!
Approaching the chair, teammates waiting for me for the “One … Two … Three … lift!”
We were the 3rd team to the chairs so we had to navigate through other teams to “exit” the transition area. (I like Nic’s “death grip” on the chair … I guess she didn’t trust us 
)
To save time we kept our running shoes on during this short Prolog race. This meant pedaling our bikes without the same efficiency, power, and balance that you get from bike shoes and clip bike pedals. But all the lead teams made the same choice – when seconds count, it’s not worth stopping to open your gear box and change your shoes.
The other reason we had running shoes was to perform well in the “bike and run” biathlon. Here we have 2 bikes and 4 teammates. Two people start riding with the two bikes and drop them 500 meters up the road and the other two run up to the bikes and bike 500 meters, passing the “running” teammates en route. We “hop scotch” like this until the next transition.
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Here I am passing my “running” teammate Jarad on the bike …
Here I am approaching Nic’s bike and happy to start pedaling and stop running
The rain came pouring down from start to finish today, with mud splatters disrupting my GoPro Footage …
A muddy descent
Nic had a crash today, which was the result of poor teamwork rather than operator error. She was spinning along great and we were right behind Team Tineli (who finished 2nd), but in our haste, James and I tried to do too much. On a little short uphill I gave Nic a soft push on her back (to keep the team’s speed and momentum up) at the same time that James started to pull her with a bungy. The timing was unfortunate and put Nic in a bad position. She flew over the handle bars and took a hard hit.
The start of an accident …
The result of an accident …
Up and riding again … just as Josan of Team Silva squeezes by on the right. We held this 5th place, just behind Team Silva in to the finish – see results list below
But Nic recovered like a true mountain biker– she deftly flicked her chain back on, straightened her handle bars and was off pedaling. She’s licking her wounds and bruises tonight, but she’ll be ready tomorrow …
… and so will I
For a great race re-cap from Emma, Jarad’s partner, plus some pics check out the Peak Adventure website here –> http://www.peakadventure.com.au/store/index.asp
Good night
PS Results list below…
