Team Xcite raced the Maximum Adventure race at Wildhorse Mountain on Saturday. This event was a line course involving a number of legs of mountain biking, kayaking and cross country running. Also included various elements of hike-a-biking over fallen tree logs, traversing through stormwater pipes under the Bruce Highway with water up to your waist, and plenty of mud. As the announcer said before the race “Embrace the mud!”
The race started from the foot of the mountain 
with a couple of trips under the Bruce Highway to the western side of the road, before finishing back at the base of the mountain. Luckily there was no running up the mountain.
Due to the number of entrants the race start was spilt into a couple of groups, with one group setting off on foot and the other group (including us) starting the mountain bike via a Le Mans style start (i.e. running from the start to your bike). While this had the effect of not everyone starting from the bikes on the same path, everyone did have to go to the same first checkpoint. Needless to say, chaos reigned supreme. Battling our way past the runners, we were able to get to and out of CP1 before too much traffic, although it was starting to look like the Bruce on a Friday afternoon as we were leaving the CP.
Our route had us biking for just under 10km, then about a 3km to 4km kayak, back onto bike four about another 10km, then a run of about 4km, before riding under the highway to the last transition, then a final run of about 5k to the finish. All in all we did about 47km, in a time of 5h 10m. Each of the run legs and the kayak leg had optional CPs worth 15 to 20 minutes bonus (taken off your overall time). Our strategy was to pick them all up (55 min total), which we did, so that gave us a net time of about 4h 18m.
The race conditions at the start were perfect, with no rain, not too hot, little wind. With all the rain beforehand, the course had plenty of mud and flowing water in the creeks. After a while out on the course, it was getting hot, so the flowing water was very refreshing.
Our race went pretty much according to schedule. We got to the kayak leg in good time and about 5th place in our category (that being mixed – no veteran class in this race). The best thing about this year’s kayak – no long portage! The start of the kayak was only about 20 m from the pick up point, not the 100 m it has been. Out on the water, things went OK. We picked up the bonus and got back to dryish land. From there it was routing riding and collecting CPs on the way to the run transition. I overshot a couple of CPs, but with Fi keeping a close eye out, she picked them up and called me back. Good teamwork.
The run leg passed fairly uneventful, except for the feeling of fatigue creeping in already. We got the bonus run CP, which it did not seem like a lot of teams were going for. Coming back to the transition, we beat a sneaky overgrown path to CP16 and that managed to pick up a bit of time over rival teams, who stayed on the better tracks.
From there it was a long ride back to the highway crossing, which required Fiona to fall over in a deep muddy tyre track (and almost being run over by a following team); traversing through a running creek; then onto the western side of the highway. This section of trail consisted of a mostly sandy single track with fallen trees every 50 m. Looked like a bunch of lumberjacks came through, and, no, I was not OK. Hiking and biking through this section, we finally got back to a good riding surface to the final transition to running. It was this leg where we came a bit unstuck, both in terms of navigation and being buggered.
After picking up the run bonus CP, we headed to CP23
. Running (although stumbling would be a better description) along the trail towards CP23 I had a thought (very bad one as it turned out) that we were on the wrong trail as we hadn’t come across the CP yet. After spending time looking for another track that wasn’t there, we just continued along the first track, and found the CP about 50 m further on from where I had my brain explosion. That blunder cost us 10 minutes and 4 placings. After that we hustled on to the next couple of CPs then passed under the Bruce Highway via some stormwater pipes that had waist high (for shorties like Fiona, anyway) water. Although quite muddy, it was amazingly refreshing at that stage.
Back on the eastern side, we just had a small run back round the mountain to the finish. In the end we finished 9th of 36 teams in the mixed category, and about 35th overall of 130 teams. We were happy with our end placing, and our strategy of getting all bonus time CPs which gave us a leg up. Disappointed with a couple of minor nav errors, but otherwise the course went as we planned.