my bike went on the roof (after fixing a flat!) and later that night I picked up the other bikes ready for the early drop off at Campbell Park offices...Race HQ (start/finish) was at the footy oval at RMC...
it turned out to be the perfect day for the race, not too hot and not too cold...this was also the first test of my GoPro camera on the headstrap...I switched it to the bike as well as needed...
we were doing the RAW course while the HARDCORE course had started 90mins before...we started right on 10am and we started with a foot leg...firstly we had to race over to some maps on trees to see the location of the first three controls which weren't marked on our races maps - we could visit these in any order but we had to find them before we hit Checkpoint 1...
at control C we had to crawl through concrete pipes connecting shipping containers and negotiate various obstacles within the shipping containers before we could visit the control at the end...inside the second last shipping container was a "minefield" to be negotiated without setting off the sensors - this was very cool...
from there we had to cross Fairbairn Ave at the pedestrian crossing (Checkpoint 1) and then head across the ovals and paddocks to visit one more checkpoint before we hit the bikes at Checkpoint 3...
we then had to ride from Checkpoint 3 to Checkpoint 7, visiting Checkpoints 4, 5, 6 in order...this took us along part of the Bush Capital route from last weekend, which included going up and over the saddle...
next came the hardest foot leg as we had to visit Checkpoints X, Y, Z in any order before returning to Checkpoint 7...just before the race started we had receive a bonus for raising funds for Soldier On in that we could elect to miss one of the checkpoints on the race (although not all Checkpoints were eligible for selection) - in this case we chose to miss X...this leg took as up the side of Mt Majura...
then it was back on the bikes to Race HQ, visiting controls 8-11 along the way...
at Race HQ, there was a map for a mystery leg (again not marked on our race maps) where we had to visit 3 more checkpoints (Bronze, Silver, Gold) in order before finishing...
Silver turned out to be at the pool where there was a ropes etc obstacle course over the water!...firstly we had to have a mandatory 5mins stop to rinse any mud off shoes and legs, then put long pants on (we were required to carry these) and read the instructions for this part...once the 5mins were up, you had to swim 25m fully clothed (including shoes) then wait to negotiate the course...if you fell off at certain points you had to wait out a time penalty depending on how far along the course you got (apparently only about 6 or so over the two courses managed to complete the whole course - we only saw one person do it while we were there)...there was also a choice to opt out but you had to serve a 20min time penalty to do so before moving on...
we all completed the swim (in various style!) then waited for our turn for about 20mins before in the end opting to take the time penalty as we would not have finished before the time cut off of 2:45pm...it was a shame really as we all wanted to have a go!
the remaining Checkpoint visit was easy and then we finished holding hands just like the teddy bears on our shirts!
The complete course:
we had something to eat and then were getting changed/packing up the bikes when they started the announcement for the podium finishers for each category (male, female, mixed) on each course...we headed over just as they were announcing the female winners for our course...3rd place then 2nd, then amazingly, our name was read out as the winners!....we ran over (despite complaints from the other team members!) and jumped up on the actual podium!!...how cool!...to top it off, we each received a $100 voucher for Mountain Designs!
hopefully I'll post some pictures from the race...
my camera with the battery bacpac managed to last until we crossed the finish line!...the footage of when we are on foot is quite funny as you get the audio as well (there's no audio on the bike)...
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