Team Thunderbolt AR Win The 6th Edition of X-Marathon Adventure Race

Press Release / 13.03.2017

“We were just waiting till Peakadventure.com.au made a mistake”- admitted Hugh Stodart, team captain and main navigator when he was asked about their race.   “It was very smoothly ran event, course was suitably challenging, we managed to pick a pretty good route through the trails up in the hills, ended up a good result for us”, he said.

Peakadventure was leading the whole first day but did not retain their position on the tough mountain bike leg in the middle of the night.  Jarad Kohlar and Ian Franzke, teams navigators were pushed hard by their super fit teammates and ended up suffering and not being able to avoid mistakes.

There were few other dramatic changes over the night, when fatigue after the long hot day started to take its toll.  Going third into the longest mtb leg team Tiger Adventure French Connection led by Trevor  Mullens  dropped into 7th position. Trevor said: “We were feeling good and travelling well then we got the flat. 4 tyre levers and two tubes later, we finally got it repaired. 4 teams passed us while we were doing that. Then Laurant, our lead navigator, was sick and then we made a navigational error that cost us a lot of time. We lost momentum and were unable to recover the lost time. That’s racing”.

Again low water level created additional challenges for the teams, the  packraft section became more like a trekking with the packraft, especially for those who were there in the dark.  Bern Dornom from team Thunderbolt AR said , every time when she saw water she was hoping it was it, but after 10 meters of paddling they had to get out again and drag  their packraft, which was just  frustrating.  All sort of strategies were put into the action, team Dynamite Adventure had their girl paddling along packraft while 3 of them walked along.  Peakadventure.com.au tried to hit another river, hoping there were more water in it, others just got out of the river and carried their rafts without even attempting to paddle.

Third teams at the finish line was BMX Bandits, they were stoked to have the 3d place trophy in amongst their piles of gear. “ The adventure racing stars aligned for us this X-Marathon. It was fast and furious race. After 27, 5 hours we crossed the finish line knackered, smiling and in third place- one of our best races ever”- they said.

Race directors Adventure Junkie Serge and Maria were pretty happy how the race went. “There were few sketchy from organizing perspective sections- quite remote Mitchell river national park, with zero reception and very limited road access, rough mountain bike trails but that is the nature of adventure races- to bring teams into some amazing places, so we have to go in no phone reception zone with limited access. We tried to make the course suitable for all levels of teams and it seems to work, only one team pulled out due to mechanical problems and everyone seemed to be having fun as far as you can call it fun in expedition races”, Maria said.