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Reports from last night and paddle from Telegraph Point

Michael McMahon / 21.08.2010

More stories are coming in about the difficult conditions teams faced last night. One of the lead girls teams are reported to have used plastic bags to keep feet and hands warm. Alan from team Rogue was another who said it was fiercely cold on the bike last night. I saw him peeling off two pairs of gloves this morning as he explained that he tried to use a paper bag as an additional layer. He also had trouble keeping food down over night which would have added to team issues as they worked through the difficult navigation on the trek and bike legs and battled lantana through the trek.

Fortunately the sun has come out in full force now for the next leg which is a paddle from the beautiful river put in at Telegraph Point down all the way down to Wauchope (pronounced War-Hope) almost 30kms away. This is a long paddle leg by most anyone's standards and I heard that even the Mexicans who feature some of the strongest paddlers on the course found it tough.

Hopefully the beautiful scenery and good team dynamics will help to keep teams in high spirits as they traverse this leg through the day today. The top teams are out there presently, while Mexicans and iAdventure/iRule have both finished the paddle leg and are off on the bikes. I just saw iRule ride past the cafe where I'm filing this report from in fact.

The rest of the course is now fairly spread out with some teams still completing the Leg 7 trek, so it will be interesting to see how they go through the day today and tonight. Pacific Survey are leading the half course field and are on their last trek before paddling to the finish at Race HQ. Hardtale.com/Fully Loaded Can aren't far behind either and are looking pretty good for a 2nd place finish.

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