Fiona Tyler's Kathmandu Adventure race report.
On the 24th June 2008 - 3 HERT team members, Julie, Chris and I headed down to the Royal National Park for the Kathmandu Adventure Series. After an early night, we were ready and raring to go.
 The race started at 9am with the first leg being about a 30min canoe. Julie and I had never canoed before (well not seriously), and neither of us had never had any experience steering one either, this lead to a lot of verbal abuse very early on in the race.. I could really feel the "burn" after the first 5 strokes and this was a concern. We then headed off for a 20km mountain bike which lead us through muddy puddles and rocky terrain, but nothing a couple of hard core chicks couldn’t handle.
The next leg was a 40 min kayak up stream. After feeling the "burn" again….., I can liken the experience of the kayak to rollerscating up hill against a decent head wind, needless to say… we both found this a bit challenging. After a couple of "lay down Sally moments" we finally made it. With all the blood heavily pooling in our arms, we slowly exited from the kayak and began wildly high fiving anyone in sight…..
The last and final leg was a 1hr trail run back to the starting point. With lifted spirits from the copious high fives we ran (yes we were running) past many other competitiors to finish a tidy 5th place. Not bad for a couple of has-beens. Chris and his partner Milo finished in 14th place, 13 places past 1st….
Now this being my first experience with adventure racing, I did have some personal obsercvations. These kinds of events attract more of an alternative type of racer who are not fussed if look they part or not, they are happy to fly the daggy flag (unlike everyone at a triathlon who will always look like they are racing pro even when racing at Star City….) At an adventure race you could see dreadlocks, hairy chick pits, people hanging out of camper vans and may the smell of illicit drugs. Chris of course lifted the standard here, and as usual, had the hair gel happening at 7am in the morning with not a lock was out of place even at race end.
Back to news | 
