The 2007 Mark Webber Pure Tasmania Challenge
A Different Challenge
Richard Ussher / 29.11.2007
The journey started near Cradle Mountain in Tasmania where we were issued with gear and instructions before the first of many spectacular dinners was set upon by all present.
Prologue
This warm up stage was designed as a bit of a blow out and also to seed teams for the first real day‘s racing. A quick MTB along the road with some short rises and some screaming down hills took us to a short run and then onto Lake Barrington for a quick splash down to the finish and our camp for the next 4 nights. With everyone starting in groups at minute intervals Elina and I were on the chase from the outset and it wasn’t until the kayak when we finally glimpsed the front of the field.
We passed Mark Webber and guest racer Greg Rust from Channel 10 along the way. Greg wasn’t looking as comfortable on the bike as on screen but Mark was giving him a good push on the bike and they got through in good time. We slipped by into the lead with a bit of help from the front team ‘All Aerobics’ who were having some troubles working out how to put the rudder down and probably paddled an extra 500m. Once finished we spent a stunning afternoon of swimming and socialising at the lake and were treated to the site of Olympic Swimmer Michael Klim cruising around in the water.
Day 1
Starting on Dove Lake at the bottom of Cradle Mountain we set off in 3 waves, 15mins apart on a short kayak orienteering challenge before returning to tackle the climb up the Mountain. Olympic Pole Vaulter Tatiana Grigorieva and top Australian Adventure racer Jarad Kohlar were first back to land before the final wave had even got under way. Once we’d whipped around the lake we also set off up the long climb.
Someone had told Elina (unbeknown to me) a body had been pulled from the rough ground near the top and was somewhat tentative on the maze of twisted and broken rocks with huge gaping holes between them. Once around the summit cairn we raced back towards the transition via a different ridge. We struck some confusion about the same time as we caught up to Mark and his new guest Olympic rower James Tomkins when a track we’d been directed towards didn’t seem to exist and other tracks weren’t marked as passing the lake we were heading for. Cross country seemed like the only option and without too much of a delay we found the lake and headed on. Teams all took vastly different routes with some finding tracks and others missing it all together
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