Although my build this year lacked the mileage, I'd done plenty of shorter faster work, an area where I always tend to be weak. I knew Rich & Elina had managed some good training in Europe and Stu was fit as he always is making for us being another solid line up. What follows is a brief account of the race as I saw it.
Prologue: Waking on the morning of the prologue my belly gave an all too familiar rumble. Not a rumble to be proud of. A visit to the toilet revealed an acute intolerance to "chinese grease". Determined not to dig my hole any deeper I swore myself off the hotel food until the race was over.
The prologue itself went much better than the dunny. Consisting of a 1km uphill run, 500m chair carry (bamboo chair, boys carry girl), 4km Biathlon, 6km bike, and a 1km run it lasted all of 42mins. Although not the sharpest team there we worked well as a team coming in 7secs behind Toread and 35secs behind Adventure Sport NZ. Dougal, Braden, Glen and Jess were again in great form and would be the team to beat.
Stage 1: 6km run, 8km kayak, 40km bike (including blow dart challenge), 6km run/abseil.
With my belly still not feeling 100% I had no idea how day 1 would pan out. I had my fingers crossed for a good day.
The day started deep in a canyon dwarfed by the 100m cliff tops overhead. A mad start is nothing out of the ordinary in Wulong but when Rich stepped into a thigh deep hole (masked by murky water) and wrenched his knee it wasn't what I had in mind. For us the pace rapidly slowed as Rich got his leg to work again and we established a new rhythm. Entering transition to the boats we could see the lead teams no more than a minute ahead which was good under the circumstances.
With the kayaks being a place where we were all happy it was good to get underway on the reservior. In the safe steering hands of Stu I focussed on paddling hard while allowing some brief moments of amusement at the steering misfortunes of others. I've been there before and its a sure thing method to add distance and time to your day. To complete this section we needed to paddle two return lengths of the reservior to exit where we started giving a couple of opportunities to time check on leading teams. As it happened we stayed the same distance behind ASNZ and Toread and worked our way into third.
Quickly onto the bikes we managed to out transition Peak adventure who had paddled like madmen to stick around giving a vital gap. Peak adventure challenged on the main climb for the day but didn't reach us in time for the rugged downhill that would lead into the blowdart challenge. Our plan for the downhill was simple....ride fast but within ourselves. Let the other teams take risks. Passing Toread with a puncture part way down the hill was not only pleasing but reassuring that we weren't too far off the pace and before long we glided into a carpark for the blowdart challenge. The task - 10 darts, one balloon. Pop it! Rich quickly took control and before I'd opened my food he'd popped the balloon with his second dart. Awesome. Back on the bikes for another 90mins....or so they said. The remainder of the ride went to plan apart from the fact that 90mins became 105. Such is China.
The planned cave section for the day had been cancelled due to high water so we were left with pretty much the same run but without the cave and a 40m abseil at the end. I suffered through this section and by the abseil I was only too happy to dangle off a rope and take a load off even if just for a few seconds. Off the abseil we had a 15minute run down the gorge on slippery Chinese steps. Toread were close behind so we pegged our ears and secured 2nd for the stage and 2nd overall. It had been a solid day and we were happy with 2nd.
Stage 2: 20m abseil, 40km mtb, 9km Gorge run, 16km paddle
Different start today. Two of us needed to abseil and swim off a bridge to meet the others at the mountainbikes. Not being the greatest swimmer I certainly didn't fight for the role so Stu and Rich did the honours.
The boys had a good swim and ran up soon after Braden and Jess. Transitioning smooth again we took off after them sneaking ahead of Toread. Full credit to them, Toread were moving well and had soon overtaken us and had set a new pace. Until Marcel rode off the road dropping 2m into vegetation. Quickly checking he was ok we set about maintaining pace with Black Dirt Adventure, reflecting on how peaceful it was. The organsised this stage as a big 700m climb. Try 1500m! 2/3 of the way up Toread caught us once again and after some impatient moments started easing ahead. I was suffering by this point and just doing enough to stay with the the team. The downhill when it finally arrived was bliss and I managed to recoup some vital evergy.
With Toread only seconds ahead we headed transitioned and headed into the gorge for 9km of rock running, abseiling and swimming. It was great too cool off and do some bombs for a while. It was the type of stage I love the most so spent plenty of time in front route finding and setting pace. Despite moving smoothly through the gorge it was clear that we'd lost time on Toread and ASNZ in front of us. They were all slick runners in the rough.
With Black Dirt Adventure hot in pursuit we transitioned into the boats for the stage's final section. 16km of flatwater reservior paddling. Paving the were truckloads of polystyrene, plastic and and floatable rubbish imaginable. Welcome to China.
Hardly a word was spoken over the next 90minutes. We all set about a rhythm and worked through the distance praying for breeze at times and thanking its arrival at others. Despite the heat and humidity the end came as predicted and we finished the stage 7minutes behind Toread for 3rd. They had been too quick in the gorge. We were now 3rd overall, but only 80secs behind Toread in 2nd. Tomorrow would be another hard fight!
Stage 3: 2km run, 12km downriver paddle, 22km mtb, 24km run.
After 3 days of racing everyone is sore and tired. Everyone knows what needs to be done. With a staggered start on overall ranking we were 3rd to start 30secs behind Toread for the 2km run to the kayaks. Again transitioning smoothly we overtook Toread as they put on their spraydecks. The river was large volume with plenty of big boils and eddy's to spin you off course. With Stu steering well as usual and no problems for Rich and Elina we entered TA with Toread and close behind ASNZ.
Today was to be another big climb on the bikes. In the heat we all suffered initially and having committed a schoolboy error of forgetting my food I took donations from Stu and Rich. Toread stayed close ahead until they had valve problems again and had to change a tube. Although now in 2nd for the stage we maintained pace well aware that blowing up would seal the deal and Toread yet again hunted us down and passed. This time it would be the last. We were running out of gas.
As we cruxed the climb and enterer TA Rich was having a tough time of it. It was going to be a tough run regardless with well over 1000m of thigh crushing descending and 6km of road running to finish. Our run was not great. We got ourselves through, but not podium material against competition like this. After what seemed like a long enough of running we finished 4th, 20minutes behind ASNZ, 18 behind Toread and were 3rd overall.
Ah well, not as good as winning but I'm happy with 3rd and even happier to be sitting down!!
