Lake Macquarie, I could still hear the rain that had been failing when
I went to bed. It seemed like it was going to be a very wet day. The
car had been packed the night before so all that was required was to
get dress and get breakfast.
As I pulled out of the drive way, the rain was still coming down and
it still fell pretty much for the 90mins or so it took to get to
"Rafferty's Resort" on the shores of Lake Macquarie. Plenty of people
had already arrived, some had spent the night at the resort. I met up
with my team mates Dan and Konrad, we were all in good spirits and
ready to go. After registering the team #124 (140 odd teams), we reviewed
the finer details of the event ahead of us.
It would start with a run about the resort, to collect 93 points worth
of control, no more, no less (or penalties were to be incurred). There
was a bit of a fluster amongst us, as our ability to add up seemed to
leave us all :-). Once the points were collected, it was onto the
bike, to the first TA (transition area) then a run along the coast.
This was the highlight for me, it involved crossing 2 inlets that
required us to jump into the surf to cross. The first was about 3
metres, the next was about 15 metres, it was great. Once out of the
water we were to head up the hill to the TA to collect our bikes and
head off to the next TA to another running section. Once this was
completed, it was back onto the bikes to the next TA for the paddle
across the lake. This was interesting in that we didn't have any idea
were the controls were located until we found the first control, that
told you were the next one was. Finally we were paddling (need some
more practice here, but did better than last time) back for the final
(bike) leg to the finish. The tracks all day were muddy and slippery,
it made for a fun day. I managed to stay on my feet all day, although
I can all too close to kissing the earth a couple of time.
While the weather started out gray and wet, by the end the sun had
come out and made for a great afternoon.
We did pretty well, coming in, in 4hr26mins, 33.2kms (Official Results). A couple of simple errors cost us about 15mins, tantalisingly close to the 4hrs cutoff for the bonus leg section.
Happy Trails.
