Training Log Archive: Georgia

A slow transition again after Bobby and Anna's lights both failed. Managed to sort Anna out with the spare and Bobby rode with his backup tiny light for the rest of the race.

This felt like a pretty hilly ride but again we were going strong and made good time. Stopped for a 2hr sleep when I was having trouble keeping track of where we were on the map. Managed to fit this in and packup before the rain started proper which helped with efficiency. I didn't sleep for more than probably 20min of the time stopped probably as usual. We may have been better to push onto transition and get a sleep in the tents there.

Should have stopped at a feature because when we got going again I only knew we were somewhere along the road with the control being off a bend. Overshot the control slightly until the downhill started which seemed the best way to attack it given I didn't really know where we were.

We all struggled with sleepiness on the downhill into transition.

After a surprise and sad reunion with Yealands in transition and still feeling like we were in the game things went to custard fairly quickly on this trek. We lost the track on the way up and bashed around for while in some serious bush picking up leeches and ticks in the process. Yay. Managed to relocate the track when we saw some tourists taking photos of us bashing around in the bush below them. Doh. Maybe an hour or so wasted here.

After we got up onto the plateau I lost some more time when I was convinced we had taken a wrong turn because the track wasn't doing what it said on the map. Backtracked and then re-travelled the same track. O well, now the plan is to just follow the track with an eye on the map. This worked well and we had no more issues with nav for the rest of this section. Progress was slow though as the urgency we had on the bike seemed to disappear and I got told off for walking out the front of the group. Fair enough. We seemed to move quicker if I made an effort to stay just in front. Anna had very sore feet and we all had pruney foot. We probably should have dried our feet out after the mtb before putting on fresh shoes and socks. Stopped a couple of times to dry our feet a little and this did help.

I made another couple of mistakes getting confused by tracks going missing or going in the wrong direction but fixed both with a bit of confident bush bashing. Still probably lost another hour or so maybe more.

Slow finish to the stage along the road. I was getting sleepy and going slow was not helping. We wanted to get to transition for a sleep thinking there were tents there (there weren't) so we probably should have just slept on this section of road.

I was feeling pretty negative about how things were going on this stage but we still seemed to be outsmarting some reasonable teams.

Off on the mtb in the dark. Headed out with a few teams about 5-10min infront and managed to catch them all at the first slightly tricky road junction where they were stopped. We decided to pretty much just ride our own ride for this one and made good pace. Bobby is a machine on the bike.

This was probably my favourite leg of the race being around a lot of other teams all who seemed quite annoyed to be around us "what team are you?", "the sneaky weasel gang"....blank, slightly frustrated look.

We were a bit slow through the hike a bike section but otherwise pretty good. Happy to make no nav errors despite the map being very hard to read. Had to stop a lot at intersections to check it so it probably wasn't the most efficient to have me as the navigator on this section.

Stopped for a wee break of about 10min to get some food in later in the leg as we had all been struggling to eat properly in the night. About 5 or 6 teams went shooting past (including Thule) while we were stopped so somewhere in the night we must have passed a lot of people!

Coastal trek.

Started in the early morning. We jogged parts but mostly walked. No major issues except for a silly route choice once around the rocks when we should have gone inland. Beaches are pretty but you really don't need 40k of this to appreciate it. A bit of an urban stage and made the feet a bit sore with all the sand and roads at the end.

Got an icecream and coke near the end which was awesome and managed to out smart Colombia (?) in the bushes.

As for Godzone the sneaky weasel gang turned out to be a stronger paddling and biking team which always is a bit of a surprise to me. It leaves me working quite hard on the bike but being a little frustrated on the treks but I guess the opposite is probably happening for the rest of the team!

We were slow transitioning onto this stage as I guess we were all feeling pretty stuffed. Should have been quicker knowing that the tide was coming in and we could have just sat and eaten some food in the boat for a bit while making progress.

Anyway eventually got into the boats and made good time again on the paddle taking turns towing each boat. Happy to get this section done in the light.

First paddle. In the ski with Anna, Mitch and Bobby in the Toy Boy. The boat speed differences turned out perfectly for our team with this combination we were roughly the same speed and we seemed to be one of the fastest paddling teams there which was not really what we expected!

Went out too hard at the start and suffered a bit towards the end of this paddle but finished in a good group with T7, bivouac, GZ and some other speedy teams.

A quick run after a bit of a slow transition. Didn't go as hard as the rest of the teams around us and dropped back a few places. I was fine with that. Faster transition after this and managed to get past Colombia getting into the boats after they had come flying past on the run.

Another speedy paddle. This time the boys were a bit quicker as they realized we were gaining on the team in front and started paddling pretty hard. We had the boats tied together for this which worked well paddling as a K4. Didnt feel like I went too hard on this leg and had a bit more energy by the time we got to transition so managed to be a bit more efficient.

Got dark about half way across the lake but no issues finding the river due to some nice lights marking the channel. I need to find a better way to read the map in a kayak though. The case around the neck technique is a real pain.

C • Map reading in kayak 4

C • Map reading in kayak 1

Event: AR World Championships - XPD Shoalhaven