Bethels Beach Rogaine - July 8, 2011

Some ideas seem awesome in the comfort of your office in the middle of summer like a 12 hour rogaine in the Waitakere Ranges with a mid night start. Thoughts like that's cool, a midnight start will be really neat, wow how adventurous, I can't wait to do that event ... etc etc.....

However, last Friday as I sat in the comfort of my office and looked out the window at torrential downpour after torrential downpour and gale force winds hurling debris across the viaduct the soft side of my personality said ... mmmmm maybe this is a bit too adventurous - maybe we should just flag it and stay indoors.... but that was a momentary fleeting thought before the stubborn staunch side of my personality said HTFU Debbie it IS going to be awesome ... bring it on yehah and all that ....

So at 11pm there we were (Cath, Anne and Me) at Bethels Beach huddled in the car out of the howling wind trying to work out our route choice for the next 12 hours. Midnight hit and off we went - we decided to head directly for the coast and got a bit of spray and surge up to our knees for our efforts to collect the coastal controls by running along Bethels and Oneils Beaches, then we climbed up on to the ridge line and got blasted by the winds as we travelled towards Goldies Bush along the TeHenga walkway. At some points we were completely blown off our feet - what a buzz - this track is sensational during the day but it is also magic at night with howling winds and the sound of crashing waves and pounding surf. Apart from a stop to change batteries we made steady progress along here and soon got to Goldies Bush where things quietened down and warmed up considerably as we were out of the wind. We headed up the stream to collect a few controls then back tracked to the bridge as we knew the stream was pretty hard going. Here we bumped into Hannah and Andrew who had taken a wrong turn and got a bit discombobulated. From Goldies Bush it was a massive road trek to the Cascades - we thought about a short cut down some driveways but after discussing the possiblity of being chased by Rottweilers or irate residents decide against it. We then headed up Long Road and took a track through to the bottom of the Cascades track - headed up onto Cascades and Robinson track - what a climb - it's funny how our memories block out the nasty climbs and lull you into a false sense of "yeah it's a climb but it's not that bad....What ever ! From here we headed down or should I say slopped and slipped our way to the Tramping hut, down RGB, Chateau Mossie, Pig stream and all those famous Waitaks names before deciding to drop two controls and bail down to Lake Wainamu and the massive sand dune. We stumbled a bit on our second to last control on the sanddune as we took a bearing but due to sand being driven into our eyes by the wind we couldn't see properly so headed off the bearing too far left and missed the control - luckily we had time to faff so scouted around and eventually found what we were looking for - we picked up our final control and made it to the finish line with 15 mins up our sleeve. What an awesome night out it was. We did 2187m of climb and covered 52.7km and finished in first place :)

Taking on the beast that was the Geo Quest 2011

As an adventure racer you are always striving to have the perfect
race. With so many factors coming into play such as pre race
organisation, teammates, equipment, gear, the weather, skills and
terrain, the perfect race is extremely hard to achieve. The lead up
to and the execution of this year's a geo quest certainly did not go according to plan - yet I wouldn't change it for anything. I guess overcoming challenges is something adventure racers get a buzz out of and this race was full of them.

Anne Lowerson, Ally Davey, Craig Stevens and I set off for Aussie from Auckland first thing on the Thursday morning before the race. We landed bright and early fired up to make the most of the day and keen to make our way to race headquarters in Nambucca heads (a 6 hour drive north of Sydney). The plan was to get there do our shopping and spend the day relaxing in the sun!!

On arrival we discovered that not only had the camper van we were to pick up not been confirmed but also that the vehicle we were borrowing to get our kayaks and bodies up to race HQ had overheated and needed repairs. After a long day of mechanics and stress we finally got a vehicle sorted and left Sydney at 5.00pm right on rush hour. Needless to say it was a long drive and early morning when we arrived at our destination. Not the start we were after..

Friday dawned cool but sunny and we spent the morning getting our bikes and gear sorted before the race briefing and competency checks at midday. I had a cold so I kept a low profile and grumped my way around the various tasks that needed to be done. The course was released at 3pm and much to our relief the checkpoints were pre-marked which meant the navigators could focus more on choosing the best routes between checkpoints and it also meant we got a reasonably decent sleep.

Race day dawned overcast but dry. The start was a beach start and required us to get out through some reasonable surf. The first wave of teams that left the beach, including us, managed to get out over the breakers unscathed but apparently the second wave of teams got munted in a big set and many teams fell out of their boats and were forced to start again.

We had a reasonably good paddle with a following wind and a side to rear swell. The conditions were quite challenging but we were happy as in our Adventure racing duet boats - some of the teams on surf skis weren't quite so comfortable and spent a lot of time getting on and off and not by choice !!Things changed a bit for Anne and I when we arrived at Hungry Head Surf Club and headed in to land. We found ourselves in front of a massive swell and ended up taking a quick swim before being washed up on the beach.

The next leg was a 13km mountain bike plus raft where teams could split up in 4 directions. We decided to split into twos with Ally and Craig taking the hillier longer route and Anne and I taking the shorter more direct route and carrying the rafts. The plan was for us to get to the river and start blowing up the rafts before the other two arrived. We ended up arriving within minutes of each other and set to blowing up our three rafts and loading the bikes and our bodies onto them before heading off on the 2 km or so paddle to the other side of the river. We made good time on the raft leg and ended up being the fastest of all the teams.

This leg was followed by a 11km kayak on quiet waterways. It was bliss after the messy sea paddle. Before we knew it we were at the next transition and off on another raft followed by a 6 km beach trek. The beach was stunning even though running on the soft sand was a little frustrating.

The next leg was deemed as one of the longest legs of the race and we set off to mountain bike and trek to find four of six letters in any order of our choice. Not far into this leg the rain arrived and we found ourselves traipsing around in the dark and the wet searching for some of the more tricky checkpoints.

The rain had really started to fall now which made the next transition a bit trickier for our support crew. They did well to keep our gear dry get us changed and push us back out onto the course into the next 15km trek that took us up 600 vertical metres onto the Dorrigo Plateau. The track was steep and slippery making for tough going in the rain it was a pity it was night as I am sure the views would have been quite spectacular.

The next leg was adjusted due to the weather conditions - instead of riding down a massive descent off the plateau we had to get in our support vehicles and get a lift down to the bottom of the hill. The only problem was there was a traffic jam on the road out of transition as a car had slipped on the muddy road blocking the way. We were forced to wait until it had been cleared and a journey that should have taken us 1 hour took over 2 hours. Eventually, we dragged ourselves out into the night and rain to complete what was left of the mountain bike ride. The rest of the ride was relatively straight forward and before long we were back at the support vehicle getting ready to head out on the next 19km trek leg.

Daylight had dawned by now and we were all starting to come back to life. We made good time on this leg getting faster and stronger as the day progressed, unfortunately the rain was still pelting down but we were so focussed on what we were doing we hardly noticed it. We arrived at transition in good spirits ready to attack the next bike ride and the final paddle. Unfortunately at this point the race was cancelled and we were told to call our crews to pick us up. I'm sure our jaws hit the ground in disbelief. Wow what a disappointment .... but once we had registered how hard it was raining we realised that the race organisers made the right call and it would have been foolish to have teams out on the course in those conditions.

We called our support crew and headed back to our accommodation. we had been racing 30 hours and ended up 6th overall.