Wildside Race Report

Pre race:

From the outset, we had planned on approaching this race a little differently to our previous ones. Most significantly, we were keen to see how our bodies and navigation would hold up if we tried going faster. Also, at the suggestion of Lee, we were planning a major tactical change by sleeping in transition and only carrying minimum mandatory kit (sufficient for power naps) while on the trail.

Preparation:

As always, we arrived at the briefing with excitement and anticipation. Our first thought after seeing the course was that there were LOTS of legs. Time spent in transitions would play a critical role in the race, and with no epic legs, the influence of logistics, planning and pace would would overshadow that of mid leg decision making. The crux of the event seemed to be focused around a few very hilly mountain bike rides and a canyon trek, a combination that would likely play to our strengths.

The briefing also unveiled a mystery start location and distance for the first leg. In other words, we didn't know when or where we were starting or how long the first leg would be. Interesting comments included, “I can tell you that you'll be getting wet” and “I'd be getting some sleep tonight (planning night) if I were you.

With so much resting on logistics, planning was slightly stressful. Especially as it became apparent that some gear such as shoes would have to be transferred between different crates and bike boxes throughout the race. The alternative would have been to spend a lot of time carrying necessary spare shoes and equipment in our packs. While planning all this proved to be a big challenge, we managed to get a reasonable amount of sleep and maps marked up to a reasonable standard. There was even time at the end to quickly dash to the supermarket for up and go, which we added to our crates to try and further speed up our transitions.

Leg 1

We hopped on the bus, and after a pleasant journey spent chatting to the other teams we arrived at the Great Lakes winery at around 5:30pm. There it was announced that the race would begin at 1am and that the first leg would be a longer than expected 38km trek (and swim). Apparently most of the other teams had been expecting to start immediately, but we were well prepared as we'd previously asked the race director to confirm whether we would need sleeping equipment prior to the start. Tents were provided, but I think we were one of the only teams that had mats or sleeping bags, for which we felt slightly guilty. It made little difference however, as most of our team had not managed to sleep at all when the 12pm get up time arrived.

The first leg started with a pleasant jog across farm land before reaching fire roads to carry us through dense forest. Travelling close to fellow Canberra team and friends IB Bandits, we navigated easily to the first controls. As the terrain became more hilly, IB Bandits showed their superior foot fitness by slowly pulling away on the uphills. We stuck to our plan to run the downhills and actually managed to make up some ground on them as we descended to the river. We were efficient in swimming across the river and with the help of some good nav choices managed to sneak our way in front of IB Bandids and Mountain Designs. We thought there was a chance that we were at the front of the race, but later discovered that Tiger Adventure were a little way ahead, not that it mattered, as Mountain Designs and IB Bandits soon passed us again, along with the other Canberra team (and also good friends), Stromlonauts.

We tried to keep the pace up for the rest of the leg making our way to the start of the paddle just after sunrise.

Leg 2:

Our plans for fast transitions got off to a good start, with only an 11 minute stop before Leg 2. For anyone reading who doesn't Adventure Race, that's about as fast as it gets. We passed two teams in the process and were quickly under way with Tiger just in front of us and Stromlonauts just behind. We knew that both of those teams could outpace us in kayaks, so focused on pacing ourselves and enjoying the magnificent lakes and estuaries. The Stromlonauts caught us at a particularly special moment, in a beautiful stretch of river surrounded by mangroves and oyster leases and a pod of dolphins swimming within 20m of our kayaks!

At one point we almost caught Tiger when they made a small nav error, however they quickly pulled away again.

The leg seemed to drag on a little toward the end, and Minh-Tam and Michael were both wishing that they'd done a little more paddle training as they struggled with sore arms, however we were well on track for making the short course cutoff and happy with our progress.

Leg 3:

This leg took us a little by surprise when its long steep climbs combined with some minor nav errors to rekindle our concern for meeting the short course cut-off. We had a couple of low points, firstly having to exercise diplomacy with an angry land owner whose house we accidentally rode in front of (out of bounds, oops!) and later when we spent 35 minutes searching for a control in a very scrubby steep gully only to later discover it a little further up the track in easy view of the road (and not in the circle!). At least the mozzies in the gully got a good feed. Despite that and the increasing time pressure, the leg was pleasant, with nice forest and an incredible view from a mountain top checkpoint/lookout.

Leg 4:

We made it into the rogaine with only an hour to spare before the shortcourse cutoff, which made us a little concerned that the IB Bandids might miss it. Mountain designs had put a lot of time into us, having already started the paddle, and Tiger and Stromlonauts were neck and neck, about 2 hours ahead of us. Michael was really struggling at this point, so the decision was made to ease back the pace slightly now that we'd reached the short course cutoff and that it was likely there was no one behind us to chase us down. We strolled casually around the rogaining course at dusk, which was set in a mountain bike park with great looking single track. We finished the leg in under 3 hours, which was a surprise given that Mountain Designs had taken 2 hours and had the benefit of daylight. At TA we also discovered that IB Bandits had made the cutoff afterall and were just behind us, while Tiger and Stromlonauts had left for the paddle leg together. The race had been running for 16 hours and it was still really tight!

Leg 5:

Approaching leg 5, we had extended discussions about whether to sleep before the paddle. However, Michael made a full recovery during the slower paced rogaine, so the decision was made to continue. IB Bandits arrived in transition soon after us, and had apparently been discussing the same thing.

We set off in this paddle expecting it to be tough. It was dark, there was a small amount of nav to do, some of us already had sore arms and some us were already getting really sleepy. The serenity of glassy water under a full moon got us into a better frame of mind, however it took just a few minutes in the boat before Minh-Tam and Michael were fighting to stay awake. The simple task of keeping moving and having someone paddling at all times was proving to be difficult, so we popped our first No Dozes for the race and carried on.

Throughout the leg, Minh-Tam's sleepiness got worse. He provided ongoing entertainment for Mike (sitting behind him) by only managing to paddle for a few strokes in a regular rhythm, before moving to a more sporadic rhythm, then to full on air paddling before finally starting to fall over and waking himself up in a start before hitting the water. This cycle repeated many hundreds of times over quite a few hours towards the end of the leg. In the other kayak, Lee was also putting on a fine show. He seemed to possess an ability to keep paddling while falling asleep, but unfortunately this ability did not extend to the rudder, and his kayak was constantly veering 45 degrees off course, usually crashing into the other kayak or an oyster lease pole, at which point would wake up in a start and say “sorry”, in the very hushed and slightly paranoid voice typical of someone talking in their sleep.

Fortunately, Charlotte managed to stay alert and naved the entire 5 hour without any hint of a mistake, a very impressive effort.

We limped into transition, where Tiger and Mountain Designs were sleeping. Apparently Mountain Designs had struggled with hypothermia and had been in transition for over 6 hours. Regardless, Stromlonauts were now in the lead! We managed to force ourselves to get ready for the upcoming bike leg before lying down for a 2 hour sleep.

Leg 6

2 hours of sleep makes the world of difference when you're really tired. We finished the previous leg completely dysfunctional, but all felt really good heading out on the bike at dawn. This leg had almost 2000m of climbing in just 50km, so we decided to soft pedal all the hills, knowing that minimising walking was all that was needed to finish in a decent time. Mountain Designs passed us early in the leg and looked to be going really hard. We were envious of their ability to do this, but not of how painful it must be for them when they find themselves in the hurt locker.

We collected some really nice controls including one from another spectacular hilltop lookout. A brief detour up a big hill 180 degrees in the wrong direction was quickly rectified and we made good time to the foot ascent of Big Nelle. Mountain Designs had just finished when we arrived and we made the 10 minute rock scramble to an incredible panoramic view from a rock spire bound by tall cliffs in all directions. Michael was not impressed by the quality of the anchors used for the fixed ropes, not that he used them. The short scramble was doable in bike (touring) shoes.

On the whole, the dirt roads and scenery on this leg were sensational, with impressive rocky peaks, stunning views over the plains and deep rain forest filed valleys, all while seeing only 2 cars.

Leg 7

After so much climbing, we were all happy to be moving onto another trek leg. We stopped for a quick snack at a cafe in Comboyne then made good progress along the 10km stretch of road toward Ellenborough gorge, again by jogging on most of the downhills (Note for the future: a cafe is not a place to get food in a hurry - the fastest thing they make, banana bread, still takes 10 minutes). Charlotte finally had something resembling a low point here and we experimented briefly using a foot tow rope before deciding it was not particularly helpful.

As we approached the Ellenborough gorge, Minh-Tam and Lee were worried for a while by some fires off in the distance, but we were reassured that they were controlled burns.

The descent into Ellenborough gorge was very steep, but we still managed a half shuffle down most of it, almost treading on a large red bellied black snake along the way. We made steady progress along the river and into the gorge as river walking and rock hopping slowly gave way to more challenging scrambling and climbing as night descended. Mike found himself really struggling again toward the end of this leg, with a very sore stomach, which he later attributed to having a tick and tiredness leading to vivid hallucinations. At one point he screamed at full volume when he thought a full sized snake had jumped onto him, however it turned out to be a small leaf.

We also saw lots of eels, a beautiful diamond python and thousands of bright yellow frogs with impressive jumping skills.

After what felt like forever, we reached Ellenborough falls, which were incredibly spectacular even at night. A slow but steady climb of the stairs led to TA, and to our surprise, Stromlonauts and Mountain Designs were still there. We also found out that a new short course cutoff was being put in place and that we would have to get out on the bike leg within 50 minutes to make it through... so much for our plan to sleep.

Despite being very tired, we somehow managed a sub 40 minute transition, which included eating some sausage rolls that were being sold on site. Mike was in severe discomfort with his stomach, and it took some persuasion from the team to get him on the bike.

Leg 8

We left TA just in front of Mountain Designs, with the the intention of riding just a little way before finding somewhere to sleep. However, 15 minutes into the ride and we all seemed to be going pretty well. We didn’t make any active decision to change our plans, but after a series of discussions there seemed to be some agreement that we would try and push through until daylight to avoid an unpleasant sleep in the cold, despite the fact that Mike was still feeling really bad. After an hour or so, we passed the Stromlonauts camped on the side of the road, and soon after that, Mountain Designs passed us. Again, they looked to be going pretty hard. The highlight of this section, was without doubt the koala that decided to cross the road in front of us. This was exciting enough that we completely stopped, and watched it for half a minute while it slowly left the road and climbed a tree.

We made a turn down overgrown road to get a control, which was our first significant hike-a-bike of the race. While in this section Mike noticed a solid lump on the back of his neck and straight away identified it as a tick. Lee removed it, and it was immediately clear that it had been contributing to his illness. We also saw some leeches while filling up our water bottles from a creek. We continued through until daylight, battling the sleep monsters, and still very much in the thick of the logging truck area that was we were meant to have vacated by daylight. We were passed by numerous trucks and followed the preface instruction to dismount bikes and get off the road.

At one point we dropped down a very steep long hill to a control. We had to walk a few short sections on the decent, but it was full on hike-a-bike on the way back out. At the top of the hill, we were completely spent and we decided to have a 15 minute power nap on the road. We got up feeling largely revitalised, apart from Charlotte who didn't think she had slept. Immediately after this Stromlonauts passed us in the other direction, later informing us that we looked like complete zombies. They estimated us to be an hour and 45 minutes ahead of them at that stage.

The rest of the leg was a hard slog, but largely uneventful. We saw the Stromlonauts again right at the end of the leg, this time only a few minutes behind us.

Leg 10 (there was no leg 9)

Upon arriving in TA, we were surprised to hear that we were now in second place. We knew we were just in front of the Stromlonauts, but Tiger had reportedly got lost in the last section of the ride and were showing no signs of recovery in the near future. This was motivation for the team, and we hurried through transition to get on the next leg, a 7km trek followed by 7km of down river tubing.

We ran portions of the way along the road and made our way to the river just before sunset. At this point we thought the hard work was done for this leg, but boy were we wrong. Physically, paddling a tyre tube proved to be quite easy, though somewhat ineffective. The far greater challenge, was staying awake in the dark, on flat pool after flat pool, in a position that more or less forced us to look straight down into the water. This section really dragged on, and after a time became completely torturous. Mike recalls,

Getting cold and desperate to finish, I would convince myself to get into a paddling rhythm. However, I would paddle for a short time, then, the next thing I knew, I would be floating behind the others, not paddling. Clearly I had fallen asleep or lost consciousness, but my body was completely unaware, with only the vaguest inkling that I might have been dreaming. The sleep monsters were everywhere and I was becoming increasingly detached from reality. The despairing comments of the others indicated that they were suffering a similar ordeal. After an eternity, I spotted the bridge that signalled our take out. Not trusting my eyes, I got Charlotte to confirm that it wasn't a hallucination. It wasn't, and I let out a sincere cry of joy.

While on the river, we also saw (or rather hallucinated) houses, cars, a big party float with Santa’s sleigh on it and reindeer, and remnants of a crashed airplane. We also think we saw a heap more eels and a platypus. We’re 85% sure that the eels were real, but only 50% sure about the platypus.

We hurried back to transition, ate and lay down for 3 hours of much needed sleep.

Leg 11

We started the next 87km bike leg with the Stromlonauts, IB Bandits and the Chick and Three (now two) Token Blokes all sleeping in TA. We made our way quickly through the first control in Glocester, then made good time along a significant stretch of bitumen. We left the bitumen just after first light, with a short pause to confirm that we were going the right way along the slightly confusing dirt roads (they weren't quite as marked). Once we were confident we were going the right way, we set into a steady rhythm up a series of climbs on rough road, with some small sections of hike-a-bike.

At the top of the ridge, the roads improved and we made good progress down the other side before hitting an awesome section of muddy single track on old overgrown fire road. The tracks had clearly been built and maintained by dirt bike riders, but it was surprisingly well suited to mountain bike and felt like the most isolated single track we had ever ridden. Towards the end of this section, we got a bit confused again by tracks that weren't as marked. In Mikes tired state, he identified the correct route, along a thoroughly overgrown track, but convinced himself that it wasn't actually a track. Minh-Tam had apparently said that it was a track, but a serious miscommunication had us thinking the opposite. We faffed around for a little longer before the Stromlonauts caught us. They solved the problem pretty quickly, but we waited until they were gone before retracing our steps and figuring it out.

A short while later, we made a more significant nav error, a detour down a long hill in the wrong direction. We retraced our steps and then took some time to figure out what we'd done. We eventually got under way again, confident that others would have made similar mistakes. We found out later that Tiger had become completely lost here, but that Stromlonauts had made it through cleanly.

Soon after we lost another couple of hours, looking for another control that wasn't in the circle. We were quite frustrated when Minh-Tam found it, but pushed on determined to get the leg behind us.

Leg 12

The next leg started in Bulahdelah, making its way up Alum mountain, then down to the shores of Myall lakes via a couple of high points. I ran into a family friend (a Bulahdelah local) in TA, but was unfortunately in a hurry, so didn't have much time for a chat. We started out at a good pace and made our way steadily to the summit of Alum mountain, or so we thought. We had got a bit carried away leaving TA, and had assumed we were climbing the main peak, but when we reached the summit, we realised the sad truth that there was a minor summit 500 away that we were meant to climb instead. In retrospect, we realise how badly our nav had gone that day, but in our tired state during the race, we honestly didn't feel like we were doing too badly. Either way, the view from the top of the mountain was sensational and had we not been so close to Stromlonauts at the end, it might have even been worth the extra time and effort. After fixing our mistake we descended the mountain as the sun set for the last time. We made good time through the rest of the leg, despite Mike forgetting to change the batteries in his torch and having to spend most of the leg following other people's lights.

Leg 13

We were barely functional when we arrived in TA. None of us felt too bad or realised what state we were in, but it was obvious from the way that TA officials were responding to us that we were largely incoherent. The officials thought we were crazy when we announced that we were going to have a 15 minute power nap before heading off on the kayak, and they were probably right. 15 minutes passed, and Mike didn’t think he’d slept at all, though Minh-Tam and Lee clearly did as indicated by their extreme snoring.
We got going and made our way efficiently through the portage. However once back in the boats things started to get a little interesting. Minh-Tam and Lee were falling asleep a few times a minute, with Minh-Tam reverting to his previous air paddling techniques. Lee also revisited his inability to steer, which was most unfortunate as it made it near impossible to follow a bearing. To compensate for this, we opted for a more conservative route choice following the shore line, but it didn't stop Charlotte and Michael wasting an hour paddling us in the wrong direction out of a bay. There was a bit of tension in the team after this mistake, but we recovered from it and pushed our way through the rest of the leg.

Approaching TA, Minh-Tam had his closest call falling asleep in the boat, collapsing backwards and into the water above his elbow, before waking up and just managing to save himself from falling in. We coasted into TA exhausted, but full of determination entering the last leg of the race.

Leg 14

We made it through TA in reasonable time and began shuffling along the road. Mike got us off to an interesting start to the leg with some interesting nav.

I started out on nav, but had to pause when something didn't feel right. I looked down at the map, where I was thumbing the last place I remembered being. I looked up, and it was obvious where I was. There was 5 to 10 minutes of terrain separating the two places, but to me the journey had been instantaneous. Clearly I was not fit to be navigating, and I handed the map over to Charlotte. Soon afterwards we got to a control which we sighted from a distance and I ran in to stamp it. However, when I arrived at the site, there were flags everywhere, or at least I thought there were. I was hallucinating flags! How inconvenient. A brief stop and a few blinks and all the imaginary flags disappeared.

Next we arrived at the stand up paddle boarding, which we were expecting to be a swim (I guess we missed the memo). “Damn, we carried dry bags all that way, but no matter, this looks fun”, and it was.

We pushed on through the rest of the leg, but our pace slowed at times when people started falling asleep. Lee later announced that despite being tired, he hadn't slowed down. If only he had seen himself. Minh-Tam also lost his temper for the first time ever in this section, briefly declaring that he wasn't going to nav if no one was going to listen to him and shoving the map into a pack. However, a minute or so later and he was back to his usual calm self, with map in hand.

As we approached the end of the leg, it was obvious that we would struggle to make the 6pm cutoff. We started running whenever the terrain allowed. This included a slow shuffle almost the entire way across 7 mile beach. When we got to the other side, we ran into a friendly photographer/race official (sorry, despite having met you so many times throughout the race, we don't know your name!) who told us that we didn't have to finish by 6pm, phew! He then followed up by telling us that Stromlonauts were only just ahead of us and that we still had a chance of catching them. While technically unfair that he told us that, we were still motivated by it and got moving again as quickly as possible. The rest of the leg was largely uneventful. In one section with difficult nav, we thought we could see the Stromlonauts looking confused and retracing their steps, so we ducked down low and tried to sneak past them. It later turned out that it was actually Tiger, who had been moved forward in the course after getting lost. Nonetheless, we thought Stromlonauts might be just behind us, so we made good pace through the rest of the leg, including running the whole way along 1 mile beach and the last few kilometers into HQ, arriving 1 hour after Stromlonauts and 4 hours after race winners, Mountain Designs. We walked in to the presentations to  a round of applause and were immediately greeted by a nice warm meal, which we enjoyed while exchanging tales of our adventures with IB Bandits. What a great way to finish, and what a great race!

Some race statistics:

Distance: approximately 490km
Time: approximately 115 hours
Sleep: 5.5 hours
Longest transition (excluding sleep): a bit over an hour
Shortest transition: 11 mins
Average transition: I'm guessing, but between 30 and 40 minutes.
Time lost to nav errors: Approximately 3.5 hours + 2.5 hours looking for controls that weren't in the circle
Bike crashes: 2
Ticks (including post race): 6

Hallucinations: countless