Adventure Race Australia 2010

Jon and I entered the race as a duo – Marital Bliss… sounds good doesn’t it?

Sunday morning early in the caravan park in Pinjarra we try to sneak out without waking up Karen and Marty, but I don’t think we succeeded. Lucy came around to our caravan as she needed a ride to the start at Nanga Bush Camp.

Drop the bikes off and registering was done quickly so we could have a look at the maps and decide on a route. This year it was much more an adventure race without all the random challenges. Challenge this time was figuring out each time you got to a control to see if they had managed to put it in the right location…a bit frustrating…

Course was awesome, weather was fantastic and our navigation was (mostly) spot on. 500m after the start we were already up to our neck in the Murray River and we had to wade through the river another 4 times that day, twice with our mountain bikes, twice on foot. A bit nippy!

Teams did the course in different order, but for us it was a little orienteer to start, followed by a Canadian canoe leg up the river and back down again, a mountain bike on both sides of the river, a rogaine to collect 100 points again on both sides of the river followed by another mountain bike leg on the north side of the river which finished at the TA north of the river, but we then still had to cross the river with our bikes to get to HQ for our last challenge on foot – another little orienteer where Jon got very wet again to get the second last control. Unfortunately they had placed the last control in the wrong location (or put the circle on the wrong location on the map) so we nearly got overtaken by a number of teams trying to get that last one. But we managed to stay ahead and take out 3rd mixed – winning $100 voucher each from Mountain Designs (I have already ‘spent’ it 5 times I think).

Unfortunately no photos from this event as we didn’t take any during or after the race… if you have any let us know!