A few months prior to the race, I was just browsing Facebook and came across the link for Kathmandu Adventure Series. Out of curiosity, I clicked it to see what it's all about. It's an adventure race that involves orienteering, mountain biking, trail running, kayaking and rowing. As this was the sprint series, it's only a short course that will only take a few hours. There's the longer series that could take up to 12 hours and there's even a 24 hour race!!
I thought to myself, this will probably make it a step closer towards doing a triathlon if I do this race. And so, I sent out an email to a few people in my dragonboat team to see who's interested to be my race partner as the race is done in teams of two.
Got a reply back from Chern and so... Team Terrain Terror was formed!!
We were pretty enthusiastic about the race and the prep. In the end, it was more talk than do. We were discussing on how we should do a trial race - hire a kayak and do 3km, take our bikes and cycle 20 odd kms, and run 7km off road. We'll do them all in 3 separate days and then one full thing on another day and see how long it takes us to complete.
In the end, our prep consisted of a day of 3km+ kayak, a day where we ran the spit to manly route which was a decent 10km off road.... and came the day for our bike trial, we were planning to ride from city to bondi... but approximately 3km into our ride, Chern's bike broke and so we had to drag it back to the city and went for brekky. That was the amount of training we had for the bike portion. In the end, we did not even did a full mock race.
A week before the real race, he finally got a new mountain bike. We picked it up on Saturday and was meant to go for a ride the next day but it didn't happen. Which means, he will be riding his mountain bike for the very first time during the race itself!
It has been raining the past few days in the lead up to race day and I was just praying for good weather on race day.
And so... came race day...
Team Terrain Terror left Sydney for the Royal National Park at 6 in the morning. My Toyota Prius did an amazing job by being able to fit two bulky mountain bikes.
Stopped by Maccas halfway to grab some brekky. Took about an hour to get to the bike drop off area. After we dropped off our bikes, we went to the registration area to collect our maps and started planning our race. Or should I say "plan". As we walked back to the car with our maps, we saw other teams reading the maps so seriously and writing notes. Some even pulled out their picnic chairs, sipping cups of coffee whilst planning their race. As for us, we got back to the car, took out the map, grabbed some highlighters and pretty much just trace the lines on the map. We were done in less than 5 minutes. We spent the rest of our time fixing our bandannas and shoes. Chern had a "talking" shoe to start with. We ended up fixing the shoes with rigid sports tape. The race have not even started. Talk about being prepared, huh?
We got to the starting line with our maps feeling so excited for the race. Checked out the pop-up Kathmandu discount tent and had a quick chat with the man over there. We asked him if the tent will still be opened after the race and his answer was: "Depends what time you finish the race." We answered him :"Should be back by 12 of course!" He asked us if it was our first race and we said yes. He chuckled.
9am, the race starts. First part of the race we were given a rogaine map. We had to pretty much collect 5 out of 6 checkpoints in any order. The strategy was to go to the checkpoint with least people first even if it means it's the further away and then make our way back. That, was our strategy. We were pretty good with that. Following the rogaine, it was a steep climb up the Honeymoon trail to our bikes. When we got to our bikes, there were many bikes left. That meant we must be doing pretty well, being at the front half of the pack.
And so, team terrain terror set off on their very first mountain bike journey! It started off pretty cruisy, it was en enjoyable ride. But after checkpoint 3, there was this really steep hill. Having no experience in mountain biking, I was just all over the whole bike trail from right to left, lost control but did not want to brake too much as I knew I would fling myself off my bike. I pressed my brake bit by bit but the bike wasn't going any slower, instead it was going faster and faster because it was getting steeper and steeper. I was on the road to a broken collar bone or a leg, or maybe a head injury. I panicked, my foot came off the pedal, I lost control, but still refusing to brake. A "George of the Jungle" stunt lighted up and I figured, I should just hit a tree and stop. And so, I steered towards a tree on the way down, hit the tree and came out fine. My buddy along with other cyclists' jaws dropped. They were all really friendly and asked if I was fine. We decided to come down the bike and walk our bikes down and carried on in our races.
Throughout the ride, we saw so many people turning back as they missed their checkpoints. You get a 30 min penalty if you miss a checkpoint. And so, we made sure we did not miss any checkpoints. The mountain bike leg of the race involved a lot of pushing the bike down or up any steep hills. My thighs were killing me. Halfway throughout the mountain bike leg, we had to park our bike and do a 2 km run and then it was back on our bikes again.
By the time we got back to the bike drop off area, we hardly had a spot to park our bikes. Most of the bikes were back. This could only mean one thing - we are one of the last team in the race. Everyone caught up to us in the 20 km bike leg.
Next leg, a 5 km run. At this point, we were low on energy. Legs were cramping, we were running low on energy. We didn't pack any food apart from 5 packets of GU gels to share between the two of us for the whole race. It took us over an hour to complete the running leg as we ended up walking most of it. Chern was really running low on energy, no joke, no chant could psych him up. I was worried we won't even make it to the finish line. As we ran pass the bike drop off area and ran down the Honeymoon trail, a burst of energy came out of nowhere. We were speedy Gonzales as we ran downhill, towards the rowing boats.
Got to the rowing leg. It was the only leg where we managed to catch up to a few other teams. We were cruising through the water, nice and easy, gently down the stream. I guess the dragonboat training paid of a little. After parking our boats, we ran 500m or so to the kayaks. We started off rather gung ho and was going at a rather fast pace. For about 100m or so and then died. We got to all our checkpoints and then headed back to shore and it was a 100m sprint to the finish line!!
Crossed the finish line with a time of 5 hours 1 min. Overall placing 136, category placing 33/46 teams. Crossing the finish line was a huge relief. We actually did it and came out alive!! Best compliment of the day? I'd have to say the moment we handed in our checkpoint chip and the lady said to us : "Congratulations, you completed all checkpoints and did not miss any!"
And guess what? The Kathmandu pop up tent was still there! But it wasn't 12pm, it was 2pm. Haha!! Now we understood why the man at the tent chuckled before the race. Because we were simply a bunch of jokers who underestimated what an adventure race was. You are crazy to even think you can complete the race in 3 hours, especially being first timers. It's not your standard road running, road biking race. It is called an Adventure Race for a reason!!
Would I do it again? On first thought, NO WAY!! You're crazy to even ask. But as I woke up the next day in agony, looking back at the experience and the crazy stories coming out of it, of course!! I'd definitely do it again. But next time, much more training will need to be invested. Team Terrain Terror will be back stronger and better next time!
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