Capital Stamina have been racing together for 3 seasons now, after initially forming in order to race Southern Traverse 2006. When that race never got off the ground, we decided to refocus, and jumped at the opportunity to partake in the next nearest expedition race to NZ, a race that had got rave reviews from it's first 2 runnings - XPD in Australia, this year being held in the Whitsunday's.

After a supreme logistical effort by Barry, Shane and Kirstine, and only a minor SNAFU by Virgin leaving Wellington late and then not bothering to man the transfer desk at Brisbane airport, leading to Liam missing his flight to Proserpine and spending a night in Brisbane ( followed by the next day's flight being over an hour late, and the transfer bus from the airport breaking down - let the adventure begin! ), the team arrived to a lovely flat in the resort town of Airlie Beach along with most of their belongings.

The final box of kit arrived on Monday evening, with all packing to be done on Tuesday, so we had plenty of time to deal with the small amount of stuff that Australian immigration officials had decided was unsafe to let into a country filled with poisonous reptiles, killer sealife, ridiculously dangerous foliage and suicidal marsupials - that wetsuit and pair of gaiters must have been quite something!

The whole organisation was in a lot of disarray as the Logistics manager John Harvey had died in a truck accident driving up to the event, so where Monday was supposed to be spent around race HQ performing competency tests and organising ourselves for the race, we ended up just having promo photos taken and a couple of briefings ( including the well attended seminar on how to treat snake bites ), spending most of the day acclimatising to the Airlie Beach heat.

Tuesday we were told we were to be given the course, and duly rocked up at 0900 to receive our information, and then Kirstine and I headed back to the accommodation to route plan, leaving Shane and Barry to sort out boats - by far the more arduous task as we were actually going to be given the course in 3 stages, the first stage basically being a 24 hr race, and the maps being pre-printed with the check points.

Dropping all the bike and gear boxes back out at the race HQ for the early Wednesday morning start, we retired to Banjo's for a top quality steak meal, and what we hoped would be our last sleep on real beds for about a week.

Wednesday morning started about 0530 with breakfast and a bus trip to PCYC, where we boarded organised buses for the race start, which would be a kayak rogaine between Shute Harbour and Airlie Beach.

We proved to have been pretty lucky with our kayak choices, as after a couple of swaps the previous days, we now had 2 inflatable kayaks that we could inflate and would hold air, unlike some teams that had struggled with patching all the previous days, and those even less fortunate few who were greeted with the sound of hissing on attempting to inflate the boats now for the first time.

We crossed the harbour to Tancred Island, where all of the Wellington teams and a couple of others lined up to head South while the rest of the bunch was going to go North.

Fighting the horrific handling inflatable kayaks across the open sea, we continually hoped for the prevalent South Easterly breeze to start increasing as was forecast, so that we could deploy our home made sails in pursuit of those teams that had headed North in the first place, but it was not to be, and we spent the day slowly plugging back to Airlie Beach, stopping off to get all of the tramping check points ( located on 2 of the Islands ), and one of the 3 snorkelling checkpoints before slogging into Airlie Beach about 10 minutes before the 1800 curfew on the water.

Packing the boats away we donned tramping gear and headed into Airlie Beach to buy several bottles of Powerade which were skulled and disposed of before tramping the Great Whitsunday walk in reverse, a picturesque seeming, well formed bush walk that took us the 20 odd kilometres up to where our bikes were waiting for the 50 ish K bike ride to Dingo Beach.

Before heading off on the ride we decided to grab some more sleep to add to the half an hour or so that we'd had at the start of the night, and so our sleep strategy was born - half an hour at around 2230, and another hour and a half between 0430 and 0600. I think this worked particularly well as it involved me going to bed and getting up at my usual times, just dispensing with all of that time wasting sleep in the intervening hours, instead getting up and doing something useful with it!

Arriving at Dingo Beach in the early morning, Barry had been suffering badly from digestion issues overnight, so we decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and we short coursed the day's paddle, only stopping off at a CP that happened to be a coffee selling resort directly on the route to Bowen, and then at a small Island for a snorkel shortly before arriving at the TA. The evil handling Sevylor's again weaved their way unmajestically across the ocean, and despite several changes of paddling configuration ( mainly to prove that it was the boat with the issues, not individual incompetence ), refused to travel in a straight line, so we probably ended up covering enough distance to grab all of the check points, but the option taken was the safe one - once we had him back on dry land, Barry could be nursed as necessary to continue, though his eating seemed to be fine again during the day.

Remounting the bicycles at Bowen we headed out for a long ride that took us along a number of back roads before depositing us on a station where a combination of following tracks and fencelines brought us to a piece of singletrack that was very difficult to discern in the night, and then turned into a reasonable track that deposited us in a clearing along with several other teams. A lot of milling around followed, with us eventually deciding to head back to the singletrack, and grab our early morning sleep, to start again fresh in daylight.

Sure enough once morning arrived we followed the singletrack to, and across the 'reasonable track', through a couple more paddocks and onto the road off the station that was marked on the map. A K down this track we had a chat to a canadian team coming towards us, so we corrected them on their direction and we all headed back to a homestead where we were offered water which we politely declined and headed off to follow the electricity pylons to our next TA.

We passed a couple of teams mending punctures, mended a couple of our own and sweated our way up a couple of valleys that were doing a brilliant job of concentrating the late morning sun, and eventually arrived at the Rogaine section TA around midday, having ridden past at least half a dozen teams heading out onto the tramp.

As it was my birthday, the team took 5 minutes out to share a beer on this scorching afternoon, and pottered around in transition, not really wanting to head out into the harshest sun of the day.

Once we did head out some confusion was caused by the fact that the maps we were using didn't really reflect the truth on the ground, but using the railway line to anchor ourselves we headed out and made our way reasonably quickly up to a Check point at a spectactular high point. Next we were back into the valley, and trying to make sense of the details on the aussie maps which are very different from ours, we made a few mistakes heading south but picked up all of the necessary CPs before getting into the river.

By now it was late afternoon, and so we tried to push to get along to the next CP before nightfall, unfortunately Kirstine was falling asleep on her feet at this point - not a good look for the navigator - and we sailled past the right turn we should have taken, thankfully being corrected by "It's all good" coming the other way. We headed back and rushed up the hill, but to no avail, we arrived as it was darkening, and found ourselves on the wrong hill. Contouring round we found a saddle on what I swore was the correct hill, but no CP. As it was now dark we had a bit of a sit down that turned into a long rest/ map orientation/ frustration because we're here, look, there's the evidence session that lasted for nearly an hour before It's all good came down the hill from above us - we were a saddle too low Aaaaargh!

From here we had pretty plain sailing to a couple of CPs that stood out nicely against the moonlit night, and then we walked a bearing to reach a saddle that we passed through into a river formation where we found our creek intersection with no incumbent CP flag. Investigating the map it confirmed our location, and we spent a couple of hours making damn sure, before Shane pointed out a similar formation several hundred metres short of the CP. We were sure that we were right, but had to head out down the river anyway, so headed off and rewarded ourselves with our early morning kip when it turned out Shane was right and we came across the flag hanging way further down than we had thought it would be.

Daylight should have brought the end of our troubles, but a glitch on the next CP brought us up onto a hill with no flag, and 10 minutes of map work deduced that we were one over and had just climbed 50 metres more than we had to ... ho hum, we re-ordered the last 3 check points and went off to get them, spotting a snake and a couple of other teams in the process, before dropping back down to follow the Pylons into the TA, everyone supping on the last of their water and looking forward to being able to drown themselves at TA.

My rear tyre was nearly flat, but pulling it out I could find no discernible problem, so it went back in pumped up and we headed out to Colinsville just down the road, not making it the 10 Km there before the squishy feeling returned to my rear and we pulled over to replace tube no. 1.

The BP in Collinsville has probably never had anywhere near the number of cyclists pass through it's door as it did in this 48 hour period, and everyone was very grateful for the cold drinks and ice blocks, though not as grateful as the couple of teams we passed that were sitting down to Pizzas at the pub.

After a bit of confusion caused by some changes to the roads in the area we hooked up with another team and were ripping through the long, straight hike down to the Bowen river, joined by another team we were going nicely when it all started going squishy again for Barry and I.

A little swearing was followed by a stop where we pulled an average of about 6 thorns out of each tyre, and ended up with 4 punctures between us, plus a slow leak in my front. We decided to repair these tubes so that we had fresh ones for swapping in when it got dark, and headed off again about 40 minutes later praying that we'd done enough.

Crossing the Bowen river we headed East into the outback, and despite the fact that we were soon riding in the dark, the barren openness was pretty obvious - as was the straightness of the road as we could occasionally see red lights miles ahead of us. Here I got to inform the team that the next CP was just around the next corner - what I didn't have to mention was that that corner was over 20 Km away!

The last 50 Km of this ride was up a big hill that took us to Eungella dam, and then down the other side to the "mid camp" at Eungella, and was very hard work, not helped by the fact that we had missed out on our nana nap at 2230, so Barry and Kirstine were spanked, but kept on pushing through my "not far now" comments. Had I realised that the map I was looking at was using 40m contour lines rather than 20m then I wouldn't have tortured them so much and perhaps Helly Hansen/ MOMAR wouldn't have come ( literally ) screaming past us at the top of the climb.

The mid camp was a compulsory 6 hour stop with power, hot water in buckets, a hot greasy breakfast, and the details of the last stage of the course, all of which we ignored to get some head down time on a nice, comfortable piece of floor, waking up well after dawn to go over the final set up maps, feed up good and proper, and clean ourselves up a bit.

Leaving this TA we went straight to the pub for Tea, cold drinks and ice cream blocks, before heading out on the very lush Mackay highlands great walk, taking us to a transition onto MTB, where we pushed through in order to get out onto the bike with as much daylight as possible - this was actually our fastest leg of the race, we managed this transition 2nd fastest out of any team ;-)

The next mountain bike was billed as a big downhill, but it seems that this country is tilted quite badly, as there was a hell of a lot of up involved in this downhill! Anyway, we reached the first CP just before dark and then the real fun began - rutted and rock strewn downhill sections for which our lights were hideously underpowered ;-( Eventually coming out on the road, we made our way to the TA, pumped up a couple of kayaks and decided to sleep through till 0330 before hitting the river. This was probably a mistake, as it became horribly cold at this TA by the river, and when the alarm went off we all decided "sod that" and hit snooze for 2 hours.

Getting up and heading down to the river with daybreak, Helly Hansen arrived having slept in a bus shelter 10Km away, and we had a very enjoyable paddle down the Pioneer river with them, portaging around 2 weirs and bouncing down between rocks in the narrow, shallow sections below the 2nd weir.

There was a nice surprise for Shane at the next TA as he was met by his wife and kids, but we didn't give him too long to savour the moment, though we didn take the opportunity to give Jill a bag of wet clothes so that they could get a little airing over the next few days rather than festering in a bag while we finished the race!

By now we were in Mirani, Sugar Cane central, and after a quick trip into town to stock up on Coke and crisps, we headed off on a relatively flat road ride, stopping off only to pick up the check points, and a 2 litre bottle of Coke at the Calen Newsagents, a fantastic little shop on the Bruce highway that could supply you with not just one, but 2 different sizes of hula hoop ;-)

Crossing the Bruce we finished the ride into Cathu State Forest, with Barry running over a snake that was thankfully already dead, and we headed out onto the tramp at a good pace, passing a couple of teams on the big climb out, grabbing the first CP, and locating the river ( that we wanted to follow next as we headed bush ) before spotting the time and realising that it was time to get into bedclothes again.

A little bit of a lie in in the morning saw us arise at about 0615 and head straight down into the river, where we accurately followed our progress down the river - not easy to do on a 1:100000 map scale - and met up once more with Helly Hansen. Together we rounded a corner to find ourselves at the head of a massive valley, a map check confirming that we were at the top of a cliff, so we scooted off before HH could follow us, up a 4WD track we had just passed and straight off the side of the ridge back down to the river.

Rounding the next corner we could see the CP a couple of K away, so a route reappraisal took us up a ridge line, round a bit of a plain and then up another couple of ridges straight to the CP - taking us around 4 hours from waking up, pretty efficient as it turned out!

We now dropped off the side of the ridge into a bit of a valley and while the team tended to feet and filled up on water I dropped the navigation ball, costing us about an hour as we wandered off down an unnecessary diversion before coming back to the next CP, where Kirstine took over to get us out.

The exit was somewhat delayed by meeting the station owner and being invited to fill up with water at his place, which turned into a long conversation about visiting New Zealand, how excited the land owners were about having all of us idiots crawling all over their property, and comparing weather patterns between Wellington and the Clarke Range.

What followed should have been a fast 23K walk along a predominantly flat well surfaced road, but turned into the most hellish experience for most of the teams, and we were no exception. This was the section where all of our blisters came up, and where Kirstine developed Tendonitis in the shins that reduced her to a crawl by the end of the walk - the first half over rougher ground took us 2 hours, the 2nd, smooth, flat half took us over 4, and had us coming into Transition looking over our shoulders for the team behind us who's lights we had seen for a couple of K.

A reasonably relaxed transition had us out on the bikes for the final leg, that only involved us getting lost for about 2 hours, throwing the first real strops of the race, and getting hosed on for about 10K before riding into the PCYC in Airlie Beach at 0545 for a good long sit on the finisher's couch.

Photos, champagne, Pizza, ice cream, Jill and Shane's kids and a good chat about the race made for a nice relaxing end to it all, especially as no other teams came in for the good hour or so that we sat there chilling out before jumping back on the bikes to ride to the accomodation.

So that was that, Capital Stamina and I have finally finished an Expedition Length adventure race, doing far better than we had expected, coming right on the cusp of the top 3rd, only a couple of places behind fellow Wellington team SQLServices.com.

In a dramatic final trek, Orionhealth.com took the win from the (New South Wales) Mexican Stingers Carboshotz team that had led the race from start to nearly finish, and the third ( or first I suppose ) Wellington team, Norsewear, took 3rd, showing once again the depth of AR talent in NZ - all 8 NZ teams in this race finished ranked, including 1st and 3rd in the premier class, at the same time as Kiwi teams took 2nd and 3rd ( behind Nike ) in an AR stage race in China.

I'd like to thank my sponsors inov-8 and Burkes cycles for providing me with all of my traction for this race, and the team would like to thank Shoe Clinic, Go Fast and Fergs kayaks for their continued support, as well as all of those people that have supported the Capital Stamina events run around Wellington this year.