XPD
AROC/Mountain Designs wins XPD
Rosi / 16.08.2004
Alina McMaster, Tom Landon-Smith, Nigel Aylott and Adam Hunter put on an impressive show of toughness, strength, consistency and as always - good spirit.
According to Tom the team worked fantastically together. \"Adam worked out really well. He doesn\'t say much but he just kept on going\" Adam Hunter\'s effort was particulary impressive, being a new addition to the team and an unknown quantity, having never competed in any race longer than 12 hours!!
Big grins all round from the team on the finish line, with Adam not saying much, but he couldn\'t get he smile off his face! I spoke to him - he sounded shattered. Was it tough? \"Ah . . . yeah.\" What was the toughest aspect \"The long bike rides when really tired\" Did you fall asleep riding \"ah . . .yeah.\" Crash? \"Ummm . . .nearly\"
What was the the highlight? \"The first trek, coming over the mountain ranges in the late afternoon light - awesome . . . also the historical info and mines etc - that was all really interesting\". How was your food \"we used up all our food, there\'s nothing left over, every transition . . we were eating everything we had\"
The team had planned on finishing the course in three and a half days, and had included enough food for that. Like all the teams they hadn\'t accounted for the ruggedness of the terrain and the challenges of paddling on the Darling with low water.
What was the toughest aspect? \"Sleep! Pretty tough going without all that sleep\" How much sleep did you get \"9 hours in total\". He might not be saying much, but doesn\'t really need to his performance speaks for itself!
Tom was laughing as he related one of the less impressive parts of his performance when the team was portaging kayaks and he heard a commotion, turning to see Adam face down in the mud with a kayak on top of him, having just tripped up. He just got up and kept going, no fuss!
\"Yeah he did really, really well\" said Tom \"Adam got a bit of heat stroke early on, but he did the right thing and let us know so we just rested up for a while and he came good.It was also his first time with the sleepmonsters and that\'s always tough when you don\'t know what happens\"
[\'sleepmonsters\' is a commonly used term in adventure racing to describe the condition of sleep deprivation. Often accompanied by hallucinations, and other strange effects!]
SleepMonsters
