3 Out Of 3 At The Mountain Designs Geoquest
Craig Bycroft (Geoquest) / 24.06.2005
Team AROC Mountain Designs has won the 2005 Mountain Designs GeoQuest 48hour adventure race for the third year straight. This world class team dominated the event and completed the grueling race in 29 hours and 13 minutes. Taking an early lead they never looked back and blitzed their nearest rival, Team Torque Land Rover by almost two hours. Tom Landon-Smith of team AROC Mountain Designs said "We had a great race, strong paddle legs, no problems with the navigation, lots of singing and tube rafting was our secret weapon!". He also said "This race had one of the most competitive fields I have ever raced in and is definitely the premier race in Australia."With over $10,000 in prizes, this annual event is the grand final on the Australian adventure racing calendar. While team AROC Mountain Designs convincingly won, there was hot competition amongst the next five teams who at the finish were only separated by two hours. In the end, Team Torque Land Rover took out 2nd, Crank 3rd, Tangerine 4th, The Mexicans 5th and Team Mountain Designs 6th.
As well as the elite, the event also attracted a large number of participants keen to achieve their own personal goals just by conquering the course. 2005 had the biggest Mountain Designs GeoQuest field to date with 54 teams of four. Race Director Craig Bycroft said "the sport is growing at a phenomenal rate and all sorts of adventurous people are getting involved".
Operations Manager Louise Foulkes described the course as "Over 200km of non-stop adventure", "It had four legs and each one better than the leg before". Leg one started with a 14km ocean kayak and included a launch through the surf. Transitioning to an 8km trek, teams climbed a 490m mountain, before descending back to sea level. Their team work and construction skills were then tested with a 3km raft across a lake.
To complete the leg teams then had to run 7km, carrying their rafts, back to race HQ. Leg two included a fast 21km mountain bike section, followed by a 500m water crossing, another raft section, then a 5km beach run. Leg three was completed at night and in intermittent rain for most teams. It included a grueling mountain bike ride of 60km, as well as a difficult navigation trek where teams had to use strategy about scoring points for different checkpoints. One of these checkpoints had a surprise abseil section where teams had to descend a 50 metre overhanging cliff.
Most teams found Leg four's 23 km canyon trek, 24km mountain bike and 18km river kayak tough going after little sleep and having been on the move for 20-40 hours. With the finish line in sight teams had one last 7.5km beach trek before they could feel the elation and personal achievement of conquering the 2005 Mountain Designs GeoQuest course. Overall 62% of teams finished the full course in a ranked position and 88% finished the half course.
The Geo-Half which fielded close to 70 competitors, covered half the distance of the full course and was brilliant choice for those new to adventure racing.
The event ran from the 10-13 June 2005 and received enormous support from its sponsors Mountain Designs, Land Rover and Hammer Gel. The Mountain Designs GeoQuest will be back bigger than ever in 2006.
For more details and full results go to www.gar.com.au
