AROC 24 Hour Adventure, South Coast, NSW

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Anatomy of a 24hr, Dude, Where’s My Compass?

Phil Walker / 12.02.2007

Enough days have passed now that I can sit and put my thoughts down about what was a formidable, challenging and wonderful 24 hour AROC adventure race last weekend.

After each of the last two AROC 24 hour races, I wrote a blow by blow description of our race. This year I thought I might look at the race a little differently. Firstly,a look at our team.

Leigh and Neil are strong, healthy, resilient and positive thinkers – just fun to be around and perfect team mates for an adventure like this. We are “mature� - Leigh and I are close to the big “five oh� while Neil is just forty something! Like me, they hold down hectic jobs and are busy raising their families, so time to train and take on a race like this is always going to be at a minimum. But they have dedicated themselves to this race for the past few months, and we have spent lunchtimes on the lake paddling, days and nights riding bikes and hours pounding the pathways and trails around town. We raced the Canberra AROC sprint series as we have done for the past three seasons as preparation for a longer haul.

The race brought out the best in our team.Our plan to start conservatively and move through the field, as we have on previous years, worked well, at least for most of the race. We each have our strengths and weaknesses, and at various times one or two of us fell behind or pushed ahead to the extent that we could. We stopped when we had to, pushed hard when we could, and paced cautiously with one eye on the clock and the other on the maps.
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