Week 10

10 down and 6 to come, thus some nervous must do big days are coming, i am planning full race simulation block session at Easter.
This week was good as life has settled back down after travelling the country. Especially after a good result on Saturday.

Aroc Adventure Race - Nelson Bay
It started Friday night with a 3hr drive to Nelson via Maitland to drop off my kayak for a repair, this does not seem bad but i opted to leave late as wifey had been crock so i want to get a boys sorted for her. I arrived 11ish scrubbed the teeth and jumped on to the fold out which was a substitute for a bed for the next 7hrs. This bed was very hard, like sleeping on a table and i found out next day the carpet offered greater comfort, gutted!. So after getting around 3hrs sleep it was time to eat and prep (6am). To rego, got the maps and modified them due to strong easterlies they removed 3 x 8+metre cliff jumps into the ocean.
The weather was crazy with great sun shine then a heavy down poor and blistering heat again? everything was a little delayed as the buses did not arrive on time, due to this some teams started 15mins behind everyone else.
We started on the large stockton sand dunes 40min bus ride south of nelson bay with a aerial photo rogaine then a sand dune run to the waters edge, total run was around 6km but felt more like 8-9k we were lucky the last shower made the surface quite hard. The first rogaine (took 3mins) we made a hash of it and left that area in the bottom 25% of team, so we had to run ourselves back into it. Onto the bikes for a 11km blat through sandy 4x4 tracks, so we were regularly pushing bikes up sandy tracks. We made one nav error to put us back into the lead bunch. This bike finished with 2km riding along the beach, with a short hike-a-bike. We were all riding well and pulling away from the lead bunch. Onto a short run where i swam to an island to hit one CP, this was great to drop the body temp, but did weigh down the shoes.
By this stage it was down to 2 team, and we were one of them as we had cleared out from the bunch. A short ride to the start of the kayaks where we paddled across from Fingal Bay to the spit which we lead off the boat as we headed from the coasteer around the head land, by the tip of the headland after some crazy rock jumps we were both together. They were running better than us as cramps started to set in so they pulled away as were headed back to the boats. Given that we left the boats so far down the beach we opted to run ours along the shore as it was only about a 500m paddle where they went out through the surf. We came off the kayaks beside each and they were off on foot the a 1.5km beach run. Leg cramps set in so we backed off and cruised in as we were well clear of 3rd. Finish the run and a 500m ride brought us in to finish 2nd 1min 30 in 2:56:08. This was one of the most intense races i would have done, the pressure was on teh whole race. In the end the body felt good and i was running well thanks BMMC! i even went for a ride yesterday.

Swim 2.1k, Mtb 28k, Run 11k, Ride 20k,Paddle 8k (new PB) Race 3hr