Teva Adventure Race

Sam strategising

Billed as an introduction to adventure racing, I teamed up with John and Sam to form team Adventure Possums. Set at the Scout headquarters near Jarrahdale we were pleased to note the field was mainly friendly and amateurish.

On collection of our race pack we found we had some rather fetching safety orange bibs, course maps and info, the obligatory complimentary energy bars and a copy of Mens Health Magazine. Clearly fire lighting was to be one of the tasks.

We had about an hour to work out our race strategy and plot a course. The day consisted of a mountain bike (interspersed with tasks), some more bigger tasks, a run (with tasks) and another mountain bike with lots of tasks. It all took quite a long time but I'll try and summarise everything we did.

• Right, first off our team captain John was locked in jail. Sam and I had to run around the race HQ searching for 3 get out of jail cards. At this point we did briefly debate about leaving John behind but we needed a lift home from him.
• Onto the bikes and 12km of easy mountain biking collecting several orienteering style checkpoints.
• At a manned checkpoint we had our compulsary first aid kit and waterproof phone checked. We then completed a series of challenges which were memorising a chapter of Mens Health, a movie quiz and a rogaine on foot.
• Back on the bikes we had to do a diversion around an angry lady and her large dogs, whilst collecting more checkpoints on our way back to HQ.
• Now we hand to scramble under a cargo net (with our helmets and rucksacks on) before choosing between making a catapult to fire a soft toy into a bucket or completing a challenge that involved sliding on a soapy sheet and playing netball. We went for the latter.
• The run leg was more orienteering but some of the checkpoints were only revealed upon arrival at others. I mainly forgot to write these down.
• Halfway round the run John completed a flying fox (death slife thingy) and then we all went crawling around some dark, wet, smelly tunnels.
• The final surprise challenge was revealed to be the rather unoriginal more mountain biking. After finding a couple of checkpoints we were then tested on our Mens Health knowledge from earlier and had to find a checkpoint that corresponded to the answer.
• Now we had to ditch one bike so that one person ran whilst the other two cycled to find 5 more checkpoints.
• Re-united with our bikes we were finally on the last cycling section. However this was around the twisty singletrack of Langford Park which was more than a match for our navigational skills.


Team Adventure Possums

Despite finishing in the middle of the award ceremony we were pleased to have completed the whole course. Nearly half the teams were either short coursed or dropped out. We came 12th out of 26 mixed teams. More importantly it was a fun day out.