Photos

Check out a whole bunch of pics from the event at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/donnyt/sets/72157594298882915/

Report

We made it. 23 hours later! It was brutal. The craziest and most extreme thing I have ever done.

The Max 24 Adventure Race is the first time I have done such an endurance event. Over the last year I have completed 3 "sprint" adventure races lasting 4-6 hours so taking on the 24 hour challenge was always going to be a step up. But this was the fun, the challenge. Having some expectations and hopes of what it would be like - but not really knowing until going through them.

The good news is now I know what's it's like. The bad news is it was really tough and most of my expectations and hopes of a happy outcome were shattered. This race was really tough. Physically gruelling as well as mentally demanding. I went in thinking a number of things; how hard can it be? and hopefully we will finish with plenty of time to spare, say complete the course 16-18 hours.

The reality was each leg was really extreme and long, each checkpoint was hard to find and all of it combined added up to the point that we were doing a 50km mountain bike in the middle of the night and then getting on the kayak from 2.30 am to 5 am in the morning looking for some checkpoint on a beach that didn't exist and mangroves were in its place. You can imagine at this point it was well past being fun, way past.

Given the fact we were up to 1.30 the night before the race, so only had 4 1/2 hours sleep the night before and then got lost 3 times that morning trying to find the bike drop off, we were kind of behind the eight ball to begin with. Then to rock up at the start and note we were the only competitors in booties when everyone else had running shoes, I knew this was going to be a learning curve.

Anyways the race played out as follows:

Stages

• Run from start at Bendalong Point Caravan park around to Lake Conjola along the sand and rocky headlands, this wasn't too bad, then swam across the inlet to the kayak start point. About 45 minutes
• Kayak for about 2 1/2 hours on Lake Conjola travel about 12 kms
• Mountain bike from Lake Conjola, up and up and up we go through the 4wd tracks, about 2 1/2 hours
• 3 km run from Transistion Area to abseil point
• Abseil drops us over a cliff down into a valley
• Spend the next 4-5 hours trekking around here and then doing the most gruelling climb out up the cliff back to the transistion area. Back at the transistion area about 8.30 pm
• Set off on 50 km mountain bike ride through the middle of the night back to Swan Lake at Sussex Inlet
• Kayak Swan Lake for about 2 1/2 hours in the dark. Couldn't find one of the check points so spent about an hour search through the mangroves looking for it.
• 6km beach hike back to finish point, finish at 7am

So how did we do it, well to put it simply it came down to mind over matter. My mind went pretty early on, about 9 hours in when we were struggling to climb the cliff in the dark I was mentally done and ready to pull the pin. Ash kept it together a lot better and really kept us in the race. I tried to break it down into small bits, get to one check point at a time, complete one leg at a time but after a while it was pretty overwhelming.

That said and with the relief of it being over, this type of race comes down to 4 key areas:

Mental - without doubt the biggest challenge, my mind went and everything turned to pain pretty easily.
Physical - a large degree of training, conditioning and endurance is essential
Fuel (energy) - this is really important on the day and the difference between making it through legs and not, plenty of times I felt sick or had a headache and eating something would help. Given how hot it was even though I was taking in heaps of water, I did end up dehydrated.
Gear - having the right gear will make the difference

The race was full of highs and lows. The highs were centred around finding checkpoints and finishing legs and finishing. The lows were most of the things in between. Abseiling in the middle was a buzz as I have never done this before and am afraid of heights so that was really cool.

On the pain side there was the physical but as said before it was mainly the head that threw you, I experienced a lot of headaches during the race, periods where I wanted to throw up and different stages brought different responses. At one stage my nose was running out of control and then after the final kayak we were both shivering uncontrollably! So packing warm clothes and keeping dry is critical.

All in all it was a tough challenge, I am happy now that it is done and dusted!