Great Ocean Road Adventure Race 2007

Posted on 20 Mar 2007 | 0 comments

A staged race in a beautiful area: the Great Ocean Road and the Otways. Jez is support crew for Marcus and Jude. On the second day we start with a paddle which turns out to be my most scary paddle ever. We leave the Bay of Islands sheltered area to venture in the Bass Strait on a calm day, but my goodness those waves are big!! And the surf is very impressive and hits hard when you break through. Thanks to Marcus we survive… Unfortunately we don’t finish the race, but we enjoy a great holiday following the race and exploring the area.

The 400km Keen Adventure Race took teams of two on an epic five-day, four-stage journey. Each stage had a distinct start and finish, with the field starting each new stage together, with the overall winner being the team with the lowest accumulated time. Each stage had many checkpoints, and failure to reach a checkpoint resulted in severe time penalties.

Prologue – Port Campbell

leg 1 – jump off Port Campbell’s pier for a 400m swim
leg 2 – 800m kayak then into the wind for another 2km to round a buoy before heading back to the beach
leg 3 – 11km run / orienteering around Port Campbell where you had to pick up 10 out of 11 CPs

Stage 1 Bay of Islands to Cape Otway Lighthouse

leg 1 – 16km kayak at dawn from Bay of Islands back to Port Campbell, where several kayaks were severely damaged in the carnage
leg 2 – 20km mtb, along the Great Ocean Road coastline and past the Twelve Apostles
leg 3 – 6km run / orienteering, a stunning, but technically difficult coasteering stretch
leg 4 – 17km river kayak, paddling along the reedy, placid Gellibrand River
leg 5 – 25km mtb
leg 6 – 18km run
leg 7 – mtb to finish at Cape Otway Lighthouse

Stage 2 Apollo Bay – Fairhaven

leg 1 – 35km mtb starting at 7AM
leg 2 – a rope course at Otway Fly
leg 3 – 45km mtb to Blanket Bay
leg 4 – 13km kayak including a swim to a CP at Marengo back to Apollo Bay
leg 5 – 20km trek into the Otways to Sabine Falls
leg 6 – 50km mtb through single track of Yaugher Forest to Jamieson River
leg 7 – 20km paddle to the stage finish line at Fairhaven

In deteriorating conditions, only five teams were able to complete the stage 2 course in its entirety, with the other teams taking shorter leg options with time penalties after missing cut-offs.

Stage 3 Otway Forest Park – Torquay

leg 1 – rogaining near Aireys Inlet with a start at 6AM
leg 2 – mtb to Anglesea, this was set up ‘rally’ style, with teams having to follow detailed notes in order to find each of the 10 checkpoints
leg 3 – orienteering course at Coogorah Park, picking up 8 CPs
leg 4 – ocean kayak to Torquay

Twenty-two of the 28 teams who started the Keen Adventure Race made the finish line at Torquay.