- Gorgeous day for a full day kayak rogain
- Kayaking from island to island doing runs up to the peaks to get checkpoints, or swimming along shore snorkeling to obtain other checkpoints
- We had a strong first day
THE BAD
- We got 4 flats and one broken pump which sets us back a lot of sleep time
So day 1 went great. The day was sunny and wind was low, we didn't' have one long brutal paddle ahead, it was broken up constantly by treks up to the peaks of the islands, and be 3 swim/snorkel checkpoints. We had to obtain as many checkpoints as we choose but got penalised for those we missed. Although missing some checkpoints was accounted for into the sleep strategy for the next night. We had to serve these penalties at the end of the second day paddle in transition, so we decided to miss 2 cp's and take the 1.5 hr penalty to use to plot stage 2 maps, or sleep, or eat, - lots of options.
We hit the main land after about 8-9 hrs of being out on the islands and went into the 30km trek strong. Although soon to feel the onset on nagging injuries already, both Mark and myself were in some serious pain with our ITB tendon. We tried the best we could to run the flats and downhills, and were extremely concerned at how this will affect the long race ahead.
We still made the next TA in good time, and hit the bikes where we felt strong and worked well together. Catching teams and making great time, we get 20km from the end of stage one and a good 3 hr sleep ahead of us before day break where it was a 6am start back in the kayaks. Then Gary's tube blew, we stopped to fix it, we had a broken pump and borrowed those teams now passing us. Nick's tube then blows and within minutes, mine goes. We put in a rubber layer between our tubes and tires to protect from the thorns in the outback stages to come, but they failed to work and actually caused these flats. We then get into transition over an hour later to loose that in our sleep time.
Day 2 - 42km kayak/snorkel/coasteering and 140km mountain bike
We were back on the water for sunrise at 6am, but because of our late arrival into transition after the 4 flats, we decided to take the extra hour sleep to get 2-3hrs in total, and we departed for our full day kayak at 7.15am. There were long stints of paddle sections today, and by the end of it some patients were running thin with those god dame boats not steering straight !! Mark and I had it down pat at the beginning of the day (maybe something to do with having the newer better boat!!), we felt like we were on a cruisy sunday paddle and still keeping in front of the other two.... ha ha, but all that changed when we decided to swap up boats to get it more even in speeds, well I found it not so cruisy then, especially when we hit those hit on strong winds, it was a long haul to mainland at the end of the day !! We had another snorkel, a run/walk up the coast through the day too. We got into Bowen about 4.30pm at a marina, we headed straight for the shop and ordered a big plate of fish and chips !! and plotted our maps for the next legs.
A supposed 105km mountain bike ahead through the night I think ended up being about 140km. Navigating our way through many cattle farms and fainted trails in the dark with a few good climbs. We ran into a bunch of other teams, and after a 2hr sleep on the side of the road we arrived to a point of about half a dozen teams waking up at sunrise, they all made it to that point through the night and couldn't find the right trail to continue on ........... to be continued .........
Apologies - I never did finish this race report ..... Got too busy :-(