A lot can happen in 48 hours, just ask the teams who crossed the finish line of this year’s Mountain Designs Geoquest Adventure Race.
Racing in teams of 4, they had paddled, navigated, mountain biked and trekked through cold weather, high winds, choppy seas, flooded trails, and surf swept beaches, on a course up of to 223km. They raced without sleep through 2 days and nights, the outside world totally forgotten, living for the moment and racing only to achieve their own goals, and for their team mates.
This year was the 20th anniversary Geoquest race. It’s Australia’s original and premier adventure race, and one of the toughest sporting challenges in the country. The race has a new venue and course on the NSW coast each year, with a unique, and very addictive, mix of coastal and inland adventure racing.
Shoal Bay was a new venue for the 20th race and 39 teams of 4 set off from there to kayak across to Hawks Nest on the first stage. They included both novice and elite teams, and they would race the same courses, either the full distance, or a half course route, both with 48 hours to get to the finish.
With a severe weather warning in place for high winds, it wasn’t an easy start. The start point for the opening kayak was moved away from the mouth of Nelson Bay due to the wind and surf and Ange Tokley of the all-female ‘Team All Talk’ described it like this.
“White caps on the water everywhere. After a quick briefing from the Race Director we were told we now must start the kayak leg about 1.5km north towards Nelson Bay to allow for the hazardous conditions (so that we don’t get ‘sucked out to sea’ were his exact words!).
Adventure Racing often takes athletes out of their comfort zone, but not usually from the start line! Liz Woodgate, one of Australia’s most experienced racers, was leading the ‘Vortex Diva’s’ team with two inexperienced racers, Kate and Fiona, and said, “I think they were terrified, wondering if they could go the distance, survive the cold and stay awake. It was all quite overwhelming.”
As trail runners and inexperienced paddlers, they worried about the kayaking the most, and the 32km stage up the Myall River and across Bombah Broadwater was challenging, even for experienced paddlers. “It was dark, cold and choppy and we had our heads down, just getting through it” said Woodgate. “I was aiming for a green channel marker and we had to keep going. There was no plan B.”
The courses made a circuit back to Shoal Bay, heading inland and gaining height through Nerong and Myall River State Forests, before turning south to Karuah, with the full course teams having another long paddle down the Karuah River. There were foot navigation stages on the way through the Wallaroo State Forest and then long cycle stages south to rejoin the coast at Fisherman’s Bay, before a final coast and beach trek back to Shoal Bay to finish.
No stage was easy and Ange Tokley described the mountain bike on the Goring Ting Trail as “one of the hardest mountain bikes I have EVER done. We passed through swamplands (so much icy cold muddy water as the trails had been decimated by rain) to ascend to the high point at 517m. The best way to describe these hills is that they literally looked like walls upon walls. They were relentless.”
Laura Newton with the ‘Three Points of Contact’ team described the final coastal stage. “We were hoping to rock and beach hop along the coast, but a very high tide and 4m waves put a stop to this pretty quick. Instead we had to walk on sand dunes and push our way through some very dense coastal scrub. The size of the ocean and the pure force of the waves was insane! We were unable to safely walk along the beach due to the surging mad sea and some waves were breeching the top of the sand dunes!”
Her team finished in third place, have disputed the lead with the eventual winners, Thunderbolt AR, for much of the race. A difficult Rogaine stage split the teams and Thunderbolt went on to win and retain their Mountain Designs Geoquest title in a time of 35:52:19, the second longest winning time in the history of the race. ‘Team AlpineQuest.com.au’ were second and ‘3 Points of Contact’ third.
These elite teams completed the full course and in the conditions only 7 teams were able to do this, including the winning All Female team, Mountain Designs Wild Women (who also finished 5th overall). The quickest Half Course team were the all-male team, ‘Time Wounds all Heels’ in 22:58:57, and the majority of teams chose to miss some checkpoints to enable them to finish within 48 hours.
The ‘Vortex Diva’s’ team were among the last few teams to reach the finish line and Woodgate said, “I think the achievement took a while to sink in with the team. Half way around Kate said adventure racing wasn’t for her and she was pulling out. We pushed on, determined she was going to finish, and she did.
“All the interaction we had with other teams around the course kept us involved and engaged, and there were a lot of female racers this year. We never really felt we were struggling alone. At the finish Kate was already making plans for the next race! ”
For the majority of teams finishing the course is their aim, and despite the conditions all but 6 teams managed to get across the finish line. Some teams were racing for a cause and had an even bigger incentive to complete the course.
Kylie Royal was racing with the team ‘Every Mila-Meter Counts’ and explained the team name and objectives. “Mila, my 6 year old niece, has been diagnosed with stage 3 mid-brain stem Glioma and I wanted to tackle something extreme to raise funds and awareness towards brain cancer.
“GeoQuest was our team’s first ever Adventure Race. None of us had done anything like it before. The race was definitely tough and we all had our weak moments along the way, but knowing we had a purpose and sooo much support kept us pushing. At each transition area we went live to pull in as many donations as we could. $10K was our target and we hit that right as the very moment we crossed the finish line. It was an unbelievable moment and we want to thank everyone for their support for Mila and The Mark Hughes Foundation.”
There were also three teams racing from the Melbourne based Kaiarahi Cultural Collective, aiming to raise awareness of male suicide and mental health issues in the Maori community. (Kaiarahi means ‘guide’ in Maori.)
The teams were organised by Jeremy Nikora and he explained; “I was inspired by watching the “World’s Toughest Race” with the kiwi team led by Nathan Fa’avae.
“When my brother in law was struggling with depression, I came up with the idea of us attempting Geoquest. He is 67, and not very fit, so he wasn’t confident, but decided he wanted to try and use it as a platform to talk about depression and suicide. That was in December 2021.
“I put a call out to our community and all of a sudden we had people, putting their hands up to do the event or support us. We entered 3 full teams and had a support crew of 10 family and friends.
“We went into it as completely naïve novices, but we met up once a week to train, trying to focus on paddling and biking and doing our best to understand how AR works (transitions, logistics etc).
“We also fundraised as hard as we could, approaching organizations and our community. No one had any idea what “Adventure Racing” was, so this was a first for all our community and obviously as we were all first timers, we needed to buy appropriate gear etc.
“In the end we had 2 fathers and sons competing, 3 women, and 4 under 25 year olds, with our youngest racers being 20 and 21.”
“We finished with a belief in ourselves, that we could overcome the challenges that many wouldn’t have thought possible previously. We also inspired many others from our community to try to push their boundaries and want to enter next year and helped to raise important awareness for suicide prevention and mental health.
“I think the other teams loved the sense of family and culture that we brought to GeoQuest. We were such a big group, but we moved as one, and we were open and positive to everyone who came across us. We felt so much inspiration as well and hope left a great mark with all the other competitors, especially those who were there at the finish line to witness the Haka performed by our family.
“We learnt a lot about preparation and what it takes to be competitive, but it will not change the family approach that we have to adventure racing. It just means we will start training sooner and be more organized for the next race!”
More information and the full results of the 2022 Mountain Designs Geoquest are available at https://www.geoquest.com.au/
Geoquest is organised by Wild and Co. who run adventure sports competitions throughout the year (https://www.wldnco.com/) and is part of the ARWS Oceania series (https://arworldseries.com/arws-oceania/).
The first Mountains Designs Geoquest in New Zealand will take place at Hawkes Bay from Jan 20-23rd 2023.
