IT Consultancy and Adventure Racing

http://www.geocentric.com.au/

Billed as "Australia's Premiere Adventure Race", Geoquest is a 48hr race that has been run by Craig Bycroft ( who also runs the XPD expedition race ) for the last 7 years, generally in the area between Sydney and Brisbane over the Queen's Birthday weekend ( strangely the weekend after NZs QB weekend, don't we have the same Queen? ).

Grant and Danielle did this race together in 2007, and rated it as a good training weekend, so Wayne Hodgetts and I joined them in a 4 person 4TC team that got a mention as 'Dark Horses' in the final newsletter.

Flying into Coffs on Friday morning we were met by Danielle, who had driven up from Canberra the day before, and our support crew for the weekend - Danielle's boyfriend Ben, Steve who was on support crew duties due to a recent broken collar bone that meant we also got to use his boat, and a friend of theirs Prue.

Heading to the supermarket, the roles were immediately obvious as the racers filled up their baskets with fat and sugar laden energy foods, Ben and Steve with comfort foods, and Prue with all the camp mother essentials - proper meal ingredients, olive oil and enough toilet paper for a herd of loose bowelled elephants.

Following a couple of weeks of heavy rain, Friday was pleasant T shirt weather, and after an initial briefing and filling out the medical and navigation competency questionnaires, we got to play with and fit our fantastic new Ay-Up lights that we had received in time for this race and Danielle had been frantically charging before heading North.

We decided to go and check out the boats - Wayne and Danielle in Steve's with Grant and I in Matt's ( who was racing the Geo half, who had 'boats' ( see my XPD write up for comments on Sevylors ) supplied ).

The campsite was about a 2 minute walk down to Emerald beach, so we headed down and found a half decent looking rip to follow out, and saddled up, Ben and Steve holding the boats for us and giving us a tow out into the start of the surf.

The first couple of hundred metres had some decent breaking surf, and about the 3rd wave that crashed over us took my hat off, so I was very impressed when Grant started mumbling at me that he had it - I don't think he managed to catch it in his teeth, but that's where it stayed for the next wave, and then we were through the surf.

I'd noticed that Wayne had his cap on backwards during the launch and now understood why - good idea that I should try and remember for next time, but suddenly there was a more pressing issue in front.

A big set was coming through and breaking early, so we paddled hard into it, but the front of the boat went seriously high, and came down canted well over, too far to get back and we were out!

Back up and I grabbed the cowling of the boat, just to have the next wave break on us and rip the boat out of my grasp and send it shorewards at a great rate (literally) of knots ;-( At least I came up holding Grant's visor, so we swapped headgear and started heading into the shore.

Ben and Steve had picked the boat and cushions out of the water and the electric pump (very cool!) was emptying the Mirage before we jumped back in for a 2nd try!

This time we made sure that we were well beyond the break line before we backed off the paddling, and despite the usual bunch of breaking waves, my cap stayed nicely in place ;-)

Joining the others we had a short cruise, occasionally catching site of a killer whale sunning itself in the sea, it's huge dorsal fin sticking up in the air could easily have been mistaken for a small boat's sail, the thing looked HUGE from where we were!

Turning and heading back in, Grant made a few comments about the steering being rather vague, but as a decent swell came through we managed to get on it anyway, and bracing off the inside we fired in towards the shore very nicely, the wave breaking under us about 50m out. Another wave followed and took us right into the shore before we broached and got dumped in about 3 inches of water - probably the most efficient way of getting out of the kayak anyway ;-)

Danielle and Wayne of course had a perfect landing, nicely following a wave in and gliding gently into the shore where they hopped out before the next wave had a chance to grab them ... and we were set for the paddling!

The rest of the day was taken up with the usual - briefing, maps, conversations with the crew and team members about expectations, and before we knew it, it was around 22:00 and the cars were packed and there was nothing for it but to attempt to get some sleep before we headed off to Coffs Harbour for an 07:00 paddle start.

As usual a pretty poor night's sleep ended and trying desperately to stay asleep I got dressed into stage 1 clothes, wolfed down some breakfast and flopped into the car for the drive to Coffs, where the sun was just coming up on the East facing beach and we lined up among the Kayaks and Surf Skis for the paddle out into the harbour.

The swell was still coming in off the ocean, but was settled massively by the natural harbour, so there were no concerns about a repeat of yesterday's dunking as the klaxon went off and we ran down to the water, in, spray skirts on and we were off in the leading group.

The harbour was formed with a bulbous spit on the northern side, and there was some pretty serious ocean swell breaking against the head, so we stayed well away from that, but still got some interesting cross and reflected waves bucking the boat around as we headed out to sea.

Turning north we had about 2 metre swells coming in at about 60 degrees off our right (starboard?) stern, which quite frankly was horrible!

The 3 teams in front of us were all on double skis, and were making good progress, and considering the way we were flip flopping all over the place, we were doing well to be only slowly losing ground on them. The mirages have faired in rudders that hardly drop below the water line at all, and as the swells came through we were regularly being pushed around with the rudders trying desperately to find some purchase in the air.

Feeling sea sick didn't help the whole 'seat of the pants' experience that was being regularly punctuated with strong strokes trying to keep the boat from tipping, and even the odd low brace to slow us down and kick us off the back of some swell.

Passing the first island the water got really messy again for a while, and it was here that we saw one of the Ski teams stopped trying to get their 4th member back onto one of their boats, and we later heard that even the top teams like Mountain Designs had had multiple 'offs' on this stage.

We concentrated on keeping our paddling as smooth and reactive as possible, and despite a few more dodgy areas, my breakfast stayed inside me, and we all stayed inside our boats, so as we passed 'flat top island' after over 2 hours of bracing, we only had to make it round the final point to have survived.

Once more the waves kicked up quite nastily as they reflected off the heads, but spurred on by having been caught by the Girls On Top team from NZ ( paddling Adventure Duets and laughing at our meandering course ) we paddled a nice wide but increasingly speedy arc into the beach where the number of people running to the boogie boarding seemed to be way higher than the number of boats parked on the beach.

Landing we grabbed fins and boards and headed off to do a very disorganised boogie board section that ended up with us having clipped a couple of checkpoints and we were into Transition proper.

A quick change into running gear and we had a 3K run on a marked course through some small town that was designed purely to keep us off the main state highway as we passed under it on the way to transitioning onto MTBs.

It was during this run ( and specifically during the section of it we repeated while going back to check out of the TA ) that I realised we were surrounded by way more people than we should be, and Danielle explained that all the people on the beach had been those starting the 'Geo half' - shorter course, same time to finish.

Getting on the bikes and soon onto Gravel roads, I wondered where Craig had been advertising this race as we passed a team phoning their support crew, apparently to deal with a puncture, and then we were onto the first hill and a significant percentage of the people we saw were already pushing their bikes!

This short, uphill ride brought us to a check point that we would visit 4 times in total, as it was the start and end of a 6 control foot rogaine, where we had to grab 4 controls at this point, and the remaining 2 near the end of the race. Deciding on the order to get these controls had been a big debate, and we had settled on a route that bagged us what looked like the most difficult control now, and left us 1 simple control and a physically demanding but navigationally easy control for our return journey.

Getting off the bikes we looked for a track marked on the map heading towards 'A', to be confounded ( along with another team ) by it's apparently having disappeared, to be replaced by a bush shelter. An inability to locate the track was compounded by only having the section of map showing the controls - the rest was cut off and sitting on the bike map board having got us here.

The other team decided to go the long way round the tracks and drop back into the control from a navigationally easier direction, but we decided to follow a bearing, and immediately came across water bars - we'd found the track!

We followed it down, and when it disappeared we went bush, soon getting very confused about where the hell we were given there were no mapped spurs heading up in the direction we were following one!

Back into the creek and we decided to bash up onto the ridge following a bearing, and were pleased to find a track at the top, but had no idea where we were on it, so headed up, eventually, after some faffing, deciding to follow a track down that we calculated should bring us into the valley we needed.

Arriving in the stream bed we headed South, and about 20 minutes later ta-da, control A presented itself, and for the first time in just over an hour, we knew exactly where we were ;-)

Now we knew where we were we also knew where we were going ( even if it wasn't actually on the map we had with us ;-( ), and headed straight up from the CP, hitting the main road above us, and thence back onto our map and on towards the next Control.

The other 3 controls that we had elected to retrieve at this point were all reasonably pedestrian, all being close to tracks and on reasonably prominent features, so we tried to jog as much of the time as possible, looking to make up for the time that we had perceived we had lost tracking down 'A'.

The little kick in the guts from our approach was that we would actually run straight past Control 'F' on our way back to TA, but would already have our quota of 4 controls, so would be forced to leave it for later, just with the added knowledge of exactly where it was hiding to make life easier on our return.

Trudging up the hill back into TA we chatted to several other teams that were around us, but generally slowly pulling away from them as we tried to live up to our 'Dark Horse' billing.

Into transition and back onto the bikes

Most of the riding was on well mapped dirt roads, so we managed to maintain a decent pace, decent enough we would later find out to be the joint fastest team through the mountain bike stages, which might have been helped by the judicious use of tow ropes at appropriate times. But for now the tow ropes were redundant as we rode down from about 200m towards sea level, passing through some logged areas before arriving at a MTB park where we were allowed to split into pairs.

Wayne and Danielle had elected to leave the single track riding to Grant and I, so they headed off to grab 3 controls mainly located on the roads while we headed off to hit some fun trails and grab the remaining 5 controls. Riding past the first control gave me a good feel for the scale and detail of the map, and didn't really matter as we'd have to return the same way anyway, so I bit down the failure and we went off to pick up the other 4 pretty easily, spotting a couple of other teams including Girls On Top while we were having fun.

The first ( and now last ) control was indeed exactly where shown on the map, and now that we had dialled into the map, was an easy spot before returning to the meet up point where several other teams were congregated.

Everyone seemed very concerned about the length of time their team mates were taking on the supposedly easier route, and as people started to filter in, they came with tales of horrific downhills and shocking mapping that explained the delays being faced.

Eventually Wayne and Danielle arrived, spitting tacks about the quality of the mapping, and eager to get back onto some more familiar territory ( ie knowing where they were ), we headed out for the last few K of the ride, armed with some knowledge about Rogaine point 'D' that we still had to collect, courtesy of a competitor who had spent far too long looking for it as it was apparently in the wrong place.

Into TA and we were heading out on an hour or so tramp that started by crawling through a culvert under a road, and then following a hand drawn map and a google earth photo towards the next CP, which we eventually found after a bit of collaborative team navigation, and Grant and Wayne played monkeys on the tree it was hanging from to punch the control card.

Another couple of much easier to fathom CPs were collected on the way out of the river mouth, and then we had to wade across the mouth ( boy was I glad I was forced to take my PFD with me - at one point the water must have reached up to mid thigh! ) and then we had a 9km beach run back to the headquarters, and the end of the stage ... thankfully along a beach with a retreating tide, so there was always plenty of firm sand and we managed to pick up a decent pace with the wind pushing us up the golden sand with another team in hot pursuit.

Running through Coffs Harbour we arrived at the familiar camp ground HQ and checked in at the end of stage 1, starting a stop watch.

The Geoquest has a format that I have never come across before where the race is made up of a number of stages, each of which starts with a car journey away from the HQ, and has teams racing back to the HQ, where they have a 15 minute compulsory transition after which they are driven to the start of the next stage.

We therefore had 15 minutes to pack the cars and prepare for departure before we could sign out of the HQ and head off, during which we frantically stuffed food down our faces and prepared as much as possible for the next stage, in order to make the most of the 40 minutes that we had between leaving HQ and starting stage 2 - 40 minutes that would be spent trying to sleep even though it was only just getting dark and we were less than 12 hours into the race.

Leaving HQ after about 17 minutes, I woke up about 30 minutes later as we pulled into Red Rock, where we would first kayak and later run/ swim/ rogaine around the Corindi River mouth.

This race's 'above and beyond' award goes to Prue, who may well have lost her phone to water damage as she waded in to hold the boats as we embarked on our paddle and stepped off a drop to end up waist deep in the water, submerging her jeans over the level of her phone holding pockets ;-(

With a set of Ay-Up lights on the bow of each of the boats, we had remarkably good visibiity for a night paddle, which helped us to pick our way through and around the mangroves, easily spotting the gap that led up stream towards the first CP, where we would find half of our Rogaining map.

Arriving at the CP I managed to overshoot the location of the flag, but we soon found it, unfortunately not fast enough as a team following us was approaching, and as Grant attempted to paddle off before I was actually in the boat I slipped off and ended up sat in the concerningly cold water spitting tacks and swear words!

Back in the boat and spray skirt on I took my anger out on the water which warmed me up pretty quickly, but I was still very concerned about how we were going to manage over an hour in this temperature of water during the 'Mangroves by moonlight' Rogaine - I could see why wetsuits had been advised!

Back up towards the river mouth to find the 2nd CP and there were a lot more teams on the water now, many of them commenting on how bright our lights were, my favourite question being 'have you got a car battery powering those' pretty damned impressive for a few hundred grams of LED and Li-ion technology!

The entrance way into Saltwater Creek was rather narrow and surrounded by sandbars, but after overshooting it and then trying to run aground a couple of times, we eventually found our way in without having to drag the boats, and once again the compass built into our boat gave us a good indicator of when the river was turning, and therefore when we needed to look out for the CP, and it was quickly located before we headed back into the river proper, and thence back to the transition.

Having been for a swim and experienced the cold, I decided to wear as much warm gear as I could during the Rogaine, so the Neoprene shorts stayed on, and the paddle jacket went over the top of the polypro I was wearing, and then we were off, having some trouble with the initial land based CPs as questions were raised over exact locations, and when was a beach marked as a track not a beach? but eventually we had all 3, and it was time to get wet again!

We ran through a picnic area next to the river inlet, and took a bearing out into the river, the CP was going to be on a sign on an island in the river mouth, but first we had to cross the main channel bringing water, thankfully into, the river, so we jumped in and started swimming, turning our heading further and further towards the sea as we got quite swiftly swept inland. Luckily we're a reasonably tall team, and managed to get a footing on the island and scrambled away in the direction of the checkpoint, unlike some shorter teams we know that got swept back to the transition area and started again!

We proceeded on a large loop around the outside of the area that we had earlier kayaked, and as the tide was coming in at a reasonable rate, we had to do a lot more swimming than the teams that we had seen on foot while we were paddling. Where we had seen them crossing channels that were only thigh deep we were up to our necks, but thankfully as the water was streaming in over the sun warmed sand, the water was a very bearable temperature, and my earlier fears of hypothermia were pleasantly nixed.

2 more swims later and we were on our last CP, and then it was just a final swim across the mouth of the Corindi river and we ran back into the TA for a full change of clothes and to pick up our waiting mountain bikes.

Heading south, we left Red Rock on the main ( read only ) road, and had explicit instructions about crossing the Princes highway, which I was so concerned about getting right that I missed the checkpoint that we were supposed to pick up, thankfully Danielle remembered and Grant punched the card before we rode and pushed along a submerged farm track, following a team's blinking lights to the road.

A brief stint on tarmac and then it was time to test our luck, as there were a number of options of how to get through to the next CP, and there had been an ominous question on the navigation test about 'True or False, the representation of 4WD tracks on the map is 100% accurate', that had left a nagging doubt about choosing a route on 4WD tracks or more established roads.

As it turned out we needn't have worried, as the next 25 or so K passed ( navigationally ) uneventfully, and after a few hundred metres of climbing we eventually popped out by the Rogaine section, and headed off towards a section that had been noted on the map as 'a bit if fun', and had a lot of height loss in a very short hoizontal distance!

Sure enough after picking up the last CP on the bike, and phoning through to tell the support crew we were on the way to the last TA of stage 2, and after I had tried to confuse everyone with some unconventional directing, the trail steepened.

After a few hundred metres of fast, loose descent, there was a blind left hander, and then the trail STEEPENED!

There were big water bars about every 20 metres down a descent that must have been verging on 45 degrees, and even though I'm happy riding down all sorts of steep, rutted nastiness, I got over the 2nd bar and let out an obscenity as I really didn't think I was going to make it to the 3rd in one piece and attached to my bike.

Thankfully I was wrong, and I got to the flat road section at the bottom unscathed and pumping adrenalin - well done Craig, that was indeed a very very serious 'bit of fun'.

Regrouping, we headed out on improving roads until we reached Sandy Beach, an annoyingly hilly little seaside town, and found the car park where we donned trainers and ran off up the road for the final 3K back to the HQ.

This was an odd section, as we passed through 2 nature reserves where we were 'non-competitive', so we had to walk through the section, and, had there been any other teams around, would not have been allowed to catch or pass them. This turned out not to be an issue as there were no other teams, and we were walking into a very strong headwind, nullifying any desire to run until we got back into the shelter of the camp site, where we jogged through to HQ to check in, passing Ben who was returning with our bikes at the same time as we arrived.

Thankfully the car was already loaded up with our bikes, and we just had to add ourselves and all the gear for the final stage, which was to consist of the longest trek, and some more MTBing and trekking. We managed to get everything boxed and in the back of the cars, and I for one was practically sparked out in the back as we pulled away a couple of minutes over the minimum of 15.

I was vaguely aware that there were issues with directions, but as we were in the following car, we at least got to sleep, unlike Danielle who ended up doing a fair chunk of the navigating to the next CP. A failure to communicate effectively when we arrived also meant that when our 90 minutes in jail finished we were still nowhere near ready to go, so an unnecessary length of time was spent trying not to freeze in the very chilly early morning air, and we wasted nearly 15 minutes before finally getting off on the long trek.

With Danielle navigating, I didn't spend much time looking at the map, so it's a bit difficult to visualise exactly where we went, but we spent the rest of the darkness heading over some hills and dropping down into a river valley that we then followed along for 3 CPs, occasionally crossing the river and fighting through the detritus of the last flood that spread a pretty serious way from the water course, indicative of the power of this river when it gets properly fed!

Some interesting CP descriptions meant that we spent a lot of time in deciphering mode, and then looking out for features like 'open area', so going was pretty slow as we didn't want to walk past a control, but eventually daylight started to spread into the gully, we found the control we were most concerned about, and our pace increased.

The last control in the valley was at a fantastic location with the water opening up in front of us, and then it was time to head back into the hills, thankfully a few teams were in front of us and there was a path being worn straight onto the ridge we would follow all the way back up to the track network.

The river section was part of an out and back loop, and as we climbed back up we saw about 3 teams heading down into the section, knowing that they'd probably have some terrific scenery to look at that we had missed in the dark was nicely tempered by knowing that we were also about 3 hours ahead of them!

We had gone into this stage in 6th, and we discovered that we had gained a position when we reached the intentions sheet at one of the CPs, where we signed in to say that we were a fair way behind the 4 teams ahead, but it was nice to know that somehow we'd sneaked in front of another one though!

The last few CPs on the trek were despatched reasonably efficiently, and as we returned to familiar territory on the way back to the TA, about 6 hours had rolled by and it was time to get back on 2 wheels.

The last big bike ride was mainly on forestry roads, up and over a large hill warmed us up nicely before an 11k downhill improved our average speed, making up for the short break we'd had to take fixing Danielle's chain when it had wrapped itself in a knot.

A bit more climbing out of the valley and we dropped down to a bridge where Grant dropped down to grab the CP. Unfortunately after he had done so, I spotted the flag on the other side of the river and called him back up. This delay was enough for us to be caught by Richard Mountstephen's team, so we wasted no time and headed out iin front of them.

The rest of this ride, that took us back to the foot Rogaine, consisted of 2 long uphills, so there was a lot of anxious looking back during these, especially the 2nd, straighter one, where the team could be seen grinding up behind us.

We clipped the last CP f the leg, and approached the transition with the aim of getting out onto the foot section without seeing our pursuers, which we managed to do, dumping bikes and running off down the hill.

There were quite a lot of bikes here, as the Geo half teams were also making their 2nd visit to the site, and we were soon jogging past people on our way to the CP at the bottom of the hill. Snagging that, we headed up a stream bed towards the 'problem' check that we had been warned was further up the valley than marked, though 'in an area with similar features'.

It was no surprise therefore when we arrived at the location on the map to find nothing, and so carried on up. Sure enough about 10 minutes later the ground looked familiar and the flag appeared, so now it was time to head out!

Up to the road and we tried to jog up the hill but it came out as only a mild speed increase, but whatever it was, we had arrived back before Richard and that was good enough!

Packing quickly, we were off to repeat the end of stage 2-a 'bit of fun' followed by a beach walk.

There was an optional section of singletrack on the ride that we had intended on doing 2nd time through, but that plan went out the window as we were really racing now!

5hrough the descent with no injuries, we closed up for the road ride and the tow rope was again out, before the return to Sandy Beach.

Running and walking along familiar territory, we kept looking back and seeing only emptiness, but kept up the intensity to cross the line in daylight having raced for 32:13 and coming 5th, 45 minutes ahead of Richard's Blackheart.com.au team.

A ton of thanks again have to go to our support crew, especially for the slap up feed after the finish (we'd been promised extra if we finished in daylight) and the help washing and clearing up, especially given the weather as the rains returned.

Thanks also to inov-8, Go Fast, Burkes Cycles and Bikesmith who help us in various ways, and AyUp lights who have joined us this race and provided some very sexy, adaptable lighting systems.