I think Ironman is hard! Well, what I witnessed on the weekend at the Great Southern Adventure Race was a real eye opener! These guys were definitely "hard core". The event went over 2 days and was held in the beautiful location of Albany 5 hours drive south of Perth. After arriving late on Friday night, Nat and I met Derek, Emma and Simon at race briefing and Georgia, Lee and Yana arrived shortly after. It was going to be a relatively early start Saturday morning with us getting up at 5am, but this I didn't mind. It was a normal rise for me! It was Sunday mornings start and the previous late night that have eventually killed me I think as I sit here is a bit of a "zombie" mood! It is only 6.40pm but I can see my head hitting that pillow by 7pm! Sorry, a bit of track, back to last weekend!
Teams don't get there maps or find out any information about the event until the end of race briefing at 8pm at night! All they know is they will be paddling, mountain biking or running for the next 2 days with a little bit of sleep Saturday night.
By the time the boys were organised Friday night it was 11.3pm to bed for 5 1/2 hrs sleep before it all began!
The food is all packed and ready to go! It is a feast including yummy home cooked muffins, sushi, "mexican bread!!" (don't ask about that one!) lollies, chocolate, and more chocolate! Don't worry, I had more than my fair share of all of it!
The race started with a 2 members running and one cycling to find various check points through out town. There were 4 in a team but one could rest each stage. There were also a number checkpoints that had to be passed through while cycling or running.
Following the "warm up" stage 1 a 9km paddled followed and finished on the white sands of this secluded beach. A four hour mountain bike, a further 30km mountain bike and we eventually made it back to the accommodation by just after 10pm. Dinner and a quick discussion about tomorrow and the boys were finally in bed by 11pm. So good so far! Until the alarm went off at 3am! Now this is ridiculous! They were up and ready to go! I hadn't done one physical bit of exercise and could have gone back to bed! These guys had been going all day and were ready to do it all again! Crazy!!
Unfortunately Sunday was a completely different day in regards to weather. It came in and it didn't stop for most of the day. The wind was howling, the rain was so hard it hurt and the temperature gauge in the car was showing 7 degrees! Emma and I were quite happy in the car waiting at the the next check point for the guys with the heating on, plenty of food to eat and a good book.
Georgia and Emma all rugged up at the Wind Farm waiting to pass on the chicken, humus, sundried tomato and cheese sandwiches to the "Team"
After the 36km cycle and some Rock Climbing and Absieling for Simon, it was time to work out were the next 14km run was supposed to go?
Stay tuned for part 2 of the "Great Southern Adventure Race"! It is time to SLEEP!!
