“Huh! We’ll win that easy” said Luke. Hmm, surely there’ll be enough competition to ensure that’s far from a foregone conclusion I thought, but Luke’s confidence was so blatant that I assumed the field must be fairly average at best.
Those were the thoughts that preceded the Kathmandu Adventure Race at Lysterfield. I had never really started a race assuming that we would win before, it was unnerving. My typical pre-race mental game hinges on me being the underdog, “prove the bastards wrong” and all that. I tried to get comfortable with the assumption of a win by telling myself that the event was for less experienced/fit people and that we’d probably be the only experienced Adventure Racers there. The car park at the start however was chockers, with heaps of the usual Adventure Racers that I’ve met over the past couple of years, and these people were neither unfit nor inexperienced! I was sure Luke and I were in better nick than any of the people there that we knew, but their presence meant we could afford no mistakes, and what’s more, with all these people, what of the ones we didn’t know?
Anyway, whatever, go hard and prove to the bastards that we’re the best; aye!?
This is officially the first time I have ever started a race and sprinted into the lead with the intention of dictating the race on our terms. Luke and I worked brilliantly as a team from the outset, with a fluent transition from a short sprint to paddle seeing us already clear of the field. We lead the first paddle from start to finish with a couple of teams reasonably close behind.
The first run was to make Luke re-assess his earlier assumptions of victory when two very fit blokes cruised past us effortlessly, as we laboured along wondering how the hell they managed to make their speed look so easy. They finished the run a good 500m ahead of us, but a poor transition saw us riding out close on their wheels for the first bike. After a km or two of open track we hit the first single track right behind them and watched with glee as they re-oriented their map with confused looks on their faces.
As if the revelation that they weren’t great navigators wasn’t good enough news, moments later we discovered that whilst they were very fit, they couldn’t ride the technical single track as fast as us. Add intermediate navigation skills to intermediate technical MTB skills and the resultant lack of speed in those conditions meant we never saw those guys anywhere near us again, nor anyone else for that matter!
Luke had a great day with the maps, and I was feeling good enough to run ahead (<50 metres!) and punch the control card, then catch up again with the ‘unrelenting forward speed machine’ that is Luke. The race had a lot of transitions (run, paddle, run, bike, run, bike, run, bike, paddle!) and we nailed every one really well, the last run we even managed to smash the rest of the field by several minutes, showing increased speed as the day went on.
In the end we came in about 11 or 12 minutes ahead of second place in 2 hours 43 minutes, proving Luke correct. I think it could have been tighter, but it was a perfect race for us. We never backed off the pace, every transition was seamless, and despite Luke’s insistence that the nav was easy, all due credit must go to him again for never once taking a wrong turn.
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