Rat Race Melbourne
Rat Racing Down Under
Bruce Duncan - Aberdeen Asset Management / 12.12.2008
During the UK rat race series, the AAM team had put in some solid performances and managed to take an unassailable lead into the London race. This meant that the team had won the prize of a trip to Melbourne to compete in the first international Rat Race.
Bruce went out a bit earlier to get acclimatised and check out Melbourne for a week before the event, with Nick and Iona flying in on the Friday before the race, hoping that their jet lag would not affect the team’s performance.
Bruce had a great time checking out the city, going to the cricket, watching some international track cycling, and checking out the best cafés in town, which did certainly play a part in the team’s ability to race a bit faster around the streets on the Saturday night.
After a team recce on Friday in hot sunshine, the rain set in, and the temperature plummeted. Breakfast on Saturday was accompanied by a very heavy hail storm! Was this going to be the first ever truly wet Rat Race?
As we arrived down to the event village all wrapped up against the cold, many local teams were thinking that surely the event would be cancelled. We however, were relishing the cooler temperatures as it would not affect our performance as much as the heat possibly could. We were also thinking that the huge stocks of Nuun we had brought with us to prevent de-hydration might not be needed at all.
With a great turn out for the first Antipodean Rat Race, Saturday night began. We only had 30 minutes to mark the map up, and every nearby café was bombarded with rats marking up fast, and trying to waterproof them too. The pace was fast off the line, with many checkpoints nearby it was crucial to get there first to avoid queues. 3 hours of racing passed quickly, with trips up to the top of the highest residential building in the southern hemisphere (40seconds in a lift!) to swimming in outdoor pools, tennis games against the Victorian veteran champs, and trips down some very dodgy alleyways to secret hideaway pubs. A mass scramble was had at the finish for the 4 checkpoints available there, and we flew through all of them and finished a few minutes over the 3 hours, but the penalties were worth the bonus we had got for being late.
After a hearty meal cooked by our team helpers, Lou and Kyle helped us spend more time on the map, we rocked up on Sunday morning to see a very windy day making the water where we were due to paddle very choppy indeed.
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