Sufferage

Well the first night's sleep in a proper bed was interrupted by rowdy
germans and their (often naked) drinking games. Luckily for the one that
wandered into our room at 3am he was light on his feet, as my temper was
shall we say 'short' ;-)

We all woke up and felt massively beaten up - that last 20K of mainly
bitumen walking was equivalent to taking a baseball bat to our feet, a real
shame that the race ended that way and it will take a few days before we
are walking properly, though at least the hobbling is getting better with
practise.

Having just had THE BEST feed at Lilly something cafe, Rach is off to bed
annd Mark and I will try and finish organising stuff, making sure we
haven't lost anything etc. So a slow day leading into the drinks tonight!

BRUTAL!

That's my 1 word report on XPD 5th edition, Cairns. Rachel, Mark and I
hobbled across the finish line at about 12:30 am, apparently in about
11th place!

Almost on the way..

> So prep's all done, boxes in, just got to try and sleep tonight and
> we're on our way at 6am tomorrow ( on the bus!)
>
> Days 1&2 look good, bit of snorkeling and paddling to start, big bike,
> raft and trek, then another big bike to midcamp where we have to stop
> for 6h. After that it gets tough.. 20h or so of remote paddling, a
> nasty 30h or so trek again remote then a mere 130k bike, 15k paddle
> and 47 or so trek to finish...
>
> I'm pretty nervous now, nothing specific just the enormity of it
> all.. Hope i've put everything in the right boxes etc... Hope the
> body (& mind) hold up ;-)

> Look forward to letting you know I'm done!

Learning how to use the spot tracker

Mark & Liam listening intently to instructions.. Spot device on table..

Next up... Maps!

1 day to go

Mon night in cairns... Today was spent meeting the teams, signing in,
competency checking and getting a safety briefing, mixed in with more
packing and sorting..

We're pretty well under control now, and it's time for the nerves to
start kicking in.. Safety briefing didn't help on that front.. Know
how Aussie has all these horrible creatures that want to kill you..
Well sounds like we're likely to find them all.. And to top it off
they also have trees that poison you as well.. At least 10% of us will
come in contact with those apparently...

Wonder how I'm going to sleep now???

Competent!

Well we're starting to get moving now, we've had the race bibs handed out,
had a bit of a yarn to the rest of the kiwi teams and some acquaintances
from previous races on this side of the ditch. We've been introduced to the
"kayaks" (very definitely in inverted commas) that we'll be paddling, swum
a couple of lengths of the pool, and been deemed competent in first aid and
navigation.

Hah!

Hopefully we won't get to prove the truth in the first aid department.

The smack talk has already started between Orion and BlackHeart. Let's hope
the kiwis come out with the world champs slot at the end of the day!

It's overcast today, but still shorts only weather, here's hoping it stays
reasonably civilised!

Hopefully no-one wants to play table tennis today ... Or tomorrow, when
this table will spend most of the day covered in maps.

Home from home

We organised our accommodation a bit late, after the Rydges (race HQ) had
run out of apartments, so rather than cram into their rooms, we booked in
at <a href="http://www.jjsbackpackers.com/">JJ's backpackers</a>.

Tracy and Simon have been awesome, sourcing the boxes we need for the race,
helping out with transport and ideas, and letting us use all sorts of
extras like their freezer and cool bags.

A definite highly recommended from the Tough Like Jelly crew!

And that's a team!

Mark flew in this evening, the food is all bagged, and we've hit the
Woolshed pub to show off the team shirts, eat, and get reminded of where we
used to hang out all the time as students ... Including beer in plastics!

Nice Halo!

I got to mount up and check out the new nitelights.co.nz on my helmet last
night, and i have to say I'm really impressed by the light so far - a nice
tight beam for decent penetration and a wide halo for decent near field
vision, and most importantly for me, to throw a nice usable level of light
on the map, rather than wash it out and blind me!

And then there were 3

After a morning getting out for a spin on the local trails, and tracking
down Danielle and a box full of Liam's gear that has been living in
Australia for a couple of years now, we headed into town in search of food,
fins and tick removal tools.

We found food, fins, tea tree oil to spray on the ticks that apparently
encourages them to vacate, and our 3rd team member Mike (and his cairns
based mate Matt). Mike flew in last night, and we managed to run into him
just before he doubled up on a couple of things we'd bought and forgotten
to tell him about.

OK, back to the hostel now to bag up a load of food and then maybe another
swim to test out the fins!

The temperature reached 29 yesterday, and is supposed to do the same today,
so we'd better spend a bit of time by the pool getting used to the humidity
;-)

Shopping

One of the biggest logistical issues of these races is sorting out the
food, so after a couple of hours walking round coles laughing at the coon
cheese, and trying to find all the highest calorie food we could, this is
the resulting pile - feeding a family of four for a week for the bargain
price of 645.71 aussie.

Now to begin the labourious process of splitting it all up into 3 hour
portions.

Acclimatising

Well we made it!

All the bikes got loaded, we got upgraded to business class - our last bit
of luxury for a couple of weeks - the plane didn't crash and air NZ didn't
manage to lose any of our gear.

We checked into JJ's backpackers, the bikes have been put together and seem
to work fine, and we've done our first lap of Cairns (it didn't take long
and we've met our first drunks) and located the site of race HQ (a 5 min
walk from JJs) and a gelateria ;-)

Will they make it?

Bike boxes awaiting loading, apparently the luggage hold is already a bit
full!

NZ adventure racers slumming it

Thankfully the 3 Wellington teams have got enough frequent flyers between
us that we're getting to celebrate mr rudge's 50th in auckland koru lounge
before heading off on a 5 hr trip to some serious heat and humidity!

Osprey Packs/nitelights.co.nz

we're proud to announce that not only will be using fantastic packs from Osprey, world leaders in pack technology, but we'll also be using the awesome 900 Lumen dimmable bike lights from nitelights.co.nz. Not to be confused with Nightlightning from Christchurch, these high quality, low cost no nonsense LED lights are a new product shipping out of Auckland, and we'll be spearheading their first major foray into Australia, the home of Ay-Ups.

New Name? New Logo!

XPD is being raced as (Osprey packs/???) Tough Like Jelly, and as
we've invested in the logo, 'One Night Stand' may be retired in favour
of 'Tough Like Jelly'.

Boxes done!

Apparently it takes 2 people about 4 hours to cover 2 boxes in Duraseal,
strengthen the handles, number/ name them, and hopefully make them
distinctive enough to stand out in transitions.

Shame they'll probably only last 1 race ;-(

Thankyou Osprey packs!

we're currently going into XPD as Osprey packs/ tough like jelly (though
we're hoping to announce a joint naming sponsor very soon), and were very
pleased to take delivery of a box of very nice Osprey Talon packs from New
Zealand distributor southernapproach.co.nz today. With tow rope loops and
shoulder holsters already built in, these could be the first packs I've
been able to take straight out of the box and race with!

The insect repellent, gaiters and potable aqua water purifying tablets will
hopefully keep us pretty safe in the harsh environment that we'll be racing
in.

Well apparently it's not too bad

Despite trying to ruin XPD 2 weeks out by having a reasonably big off at
the crazyman on saturday, my wonderful physio reckons that keeping up with
the compression and a bit of gentle massage should see it right by the time
we head off to Cairns in less than 2 weeks time!

Another trophy for the collection ;-)

Despite serious pre-race jitters, and the horrible weather forecast, the
hutt valley turned on a stunning morning, with the weather deteriorating
while 'local adventure racing standout' rachel demolished the women's field
to bring another trophy home.

I think I might have been part of the winning mixed team with a mana
paddler called Kayla setting jamie stewart up for the run, before I limped
home on the bike.