Mudgee Tri Club girls, Lynn Byrne and Kathy Pirie, take the Kathmandu Adventure challenge.

The race was Sunday 24th June. Part of the Kathmandu Adventure Series, it was held at the Royal National Park, South of Sydney, which is the second oldest National Park in the world.
"Will have to go back and visit again, but next time, under more leisurely circumstances!" was Lynn's comment after her adventure. Here is Lynn's colorful description of how our country girls enjoyed their journey.....

Well, we did it! Many were doubtful but we did it. To all those who made Westpac Rescue helicopter jokes, take it back!

The format was run / bike / run / bike / kayak / run / row (yes, row!) / run.
One cannot explain the relief I felt not having to start the race with the usual rock-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach-omigod-I-have-to-swim feeling I always get when doing a triathlon. The organiser said that the start gun mightn't work as it was wet & cold and he was right, so he just yells GO & off we trot. Everyone does the same legs, however, in different orders to prevent bottlenecks at the kayak or rowing sections. Hey, I've got a better idea - next time, just leave OUT the kayak & rowing sections.

The kayaks are made of hard heavy plastic which you sit on top of. They're pretty sturdy & somewhat hard to fall off. We had to wear PFDs (life jackets) and somehow Kath & I manage to pick up XXL jackets. So as I'm sitting on the kayak, the jacket rises up & it feels like only the top of my head is peeping through; I'm starting to feel very much like the Turtle Man from the movie Master of Disguise. But other than Kath saying, "My arms hurt, I HATE paddling" & me whinging, "I'm gonna be frickin' chaffed on my cheeks by the time this is over", we were going pretty good. Anyway, I'm calling out to Kath (I'm in front) "Just time your strokes with mine" which will give us better momentum & keep our direction straight, but as we pass other paddlers along the way, Kath calls out hellos & how ya goings and keeps breaking her stroke. We may not have won any prizes at the end of the day but if there was a Miss Congeniality award, I'd be giving it to her hands down!

The mountain biking was pretty easy as they had to cut out the steep technical areas for safety reasons because of all the rain (yes, there IS a God!) We rode through some beautiful scenery in the Royal National Park which we tried to take in - "Rocks ahead! Mud! Hole! Look, waterfall! Mud! Hole!" We were lucky because our bike legs were early enough to avoid the heavy rain so we didn't come into transition completely mud-splattered like some of the others. Most of our running was while it was raining. I tell you, give me road running any day over the rock climbing we had to endure. Rain, mud & climbing 2km up to the "Rock Platform" where checkpoint 22 was. "Enjoy the view" the instructions on the map said. View? VIEW? Who cares about the view when every muscle in my legs was screaming out in pain! But I must admit, even with all that mud, the view was spectacular.
To think that several days before, I said to Kath, " Maybe I'll take my shoes off before we get into the kayak & tie them around my neck to keep them dry." HAH!

Now we come to the best bit - the rowing (please read that with one's tongue planted firmly in the middle of one's cheek.) If I could have chopped up that dilapidated row boat & set it alight, I would have, but in all that rain, it probably would have come back to haunt me as driftwood. OK, OK, maybe it wasn't that bad...umm, hang on, let me think....uh. Yes, it was. First we tried rowing one at a time but got nowhere. Everyone else was rowing 2 at a time (1 per oar) so we gave that a shot. Now, keep in mind that Kath's many years of recent mothering have given her a powerful advantage in the area of upper body strength. Oh Lordy, we were that Red Bull ad all over again! Finally, we got it worked out.
"Row, row row, Lynn - extra row row, OK, together row row, Lynn again row row, Now together row row...." and when we finally get a rhythm going, yep, little Miss Congeniality starts with the chit chat again!
"GDAY! How ya going? Hey, how far to the next checkpoint?"
When they shout back, "About 2kms" and we reply, "No, really; how far to the NEXT checkpoint?" and they look at us like we're delirious, I was starting to think maybe I should have agreed with Kath when, standing by the row boat, ready to launch, she wisely contemplates skipping the checkpoint. Ah yes, everything in hindsight.

One more thing, isn't there another way of rowing so that you're not going BACKWARDS? We played our little version of dodgems, there on that small stretch of the Hacking River. Lucky Kath was so friendly to everyone because when I took out the shoulder of one of the other girl/girl teams with my oar, she just smiled sweetly through the pain, clutching her shoulder, and cheered, "Yay! Keep going, girls! You're almost there!" (Note: We were later to discover that this team came in 3rd, just 20mins ahead of us. Had I had known that, I would have made sure I did the job right the first time.)

As we pull in to the ramp of the boatshed, we're really pumped because it's only a kilometre run to the finish line. "Quick," says Kath, "I'll row in, you hop out of the boat & pull us in." So I step out of the boat and onto the ramp, and fall right into a muddy hole about waist deep. No hope of getting out of this one gracefully - I flail and scramble my way back up the ramp again. If anything good came out of that experience, in all the flailing, at least I got to wash off any mud splatter before the photo finish! So 4hrs, 54mins & 56secs later, team "Mudgee Devils" comes running over the finish line, fists pumping the air! We were pretty happy considering we were expecting about 5 & a half hours! It was an absolute blast doing that race! We had a ball and it felt like too much fun to call a race! We were 9th out of 23 female teams; 136th out of 210 teams overall. Not bad really. Grrr....Just wait till next year when we decide to become competitive...uh, once we find a race without row boats.

WE MADE IT! Kath (left) and Lynn's expressions respectively show the determination that got them through and the relief at finishing without major injury!