Team Vanuatu Adventure - Hells Bells 2009

Race report from Troy Spann of Team Vanuatu Adventure

Preparation

The overriding story of our adventure in Hells Bells is how helpful everyone was with our efforts and this started right when we hit the Sunshine Coast on Thursday. Greg from AREA51 travelled up to Mooloolaba and spent a couple of hours with us giving us race tips and inspecting our gear. He then came back on the Friday night before the race with a whole swag of stuff that he saw we needed from his Thursday visit. Should this end up on the Geocentric website I would ask you to support AREA51 because it is obvious to me that Greg and Debbie are there to support adventure racing, they are rightly proud of their little business and they are just bloody nice people.

Saturday Morning

Our bike drop went off with-out a hitch and left me feeling confident that I could memorise a google map and find my way to a location. Of Saturday morning that is my only success, everything else I screwed up in a right-royal fashion. Some tips to fellow newbies, don’t be the only one who can read a map on the team, the pressure is intense from the moment you receive your race instructions. Greg had explained to put the race instruction onto the map and then laminate them to save going between the two. When you’re the only member of the team with any knowledge of that, an hour and a half is just not enough. Tip two, take a pen and paper to the race brief. When they say that a checkpoint has been moved to the other side of the road because of an ant’s nest, when you get out on course, you’re just not going to remember those small but very important details. Tip three, don’t leave it until ten minutes to go before deciding what to put into your boxes that will go out on course and don’t be optimistic on the times that you will reach those boxes. I screwed them up so much, I can’t do anything but laugh at myself. In box A, I simply put a snack, water and spare tyres. We reached this checkpoint at 21.50, this is where I should’ve put our major meal because there is no time to eat before you start and we hadn’t eaten anything substantial since 5.30am.
In Box B, I put our really good headlamps, carrying with us smaller versions as the race rules required. We reached this box at 5.00am Sunday morning when the sun was making it’s way above the horizon. In Box C, I put our major meal and fleece coats. We got these when we were an hour away from Bacon & Eggs at the finish line and it was nice and warm at 9.00am in the morning. We got split up in the bus because it was full, got off, walked to our bikes and followed the throngs to the start line.

Leg 1 Mountain Bike 9km

It was exciting on the start line where Craig wished us luck and the 5 countdown started. This was also the start of our problems. We had trained for 3 months for the event and time and time again I had told the boys that we needed to stay as a team but I spent the entire bike ride trying to keep us together, every time we were passed the boys would ride off chasing the teams leaving me behind. I got myself fit enough for the race but I wasn’t a great mountain-biker.

Leg 2 Trek 4-5km

We placed our bikes with the many others and ran off up the canyon, five minutes up there I had to laugh when I realised that we had all left our bike helmets and gloves on. Once again it was very hard to keep the boys together, they were in it to win it and I was slowing them down. We found the first of the checkpoints with ease and then headed out onto the road in search of the correct place to head off to find the next one. This was my first navigational error taking us too far up the road before we turned off and searched a lot of small waterfalls forming part of a larger one. After spending 30 minutes on this, it seemed wise to move on and take a penalty for not finding it. Heading down stream we came across it when we were in search of the next. Right under a small waterfall as promised. Feeling better now that we weren’t going to leave a box un-punched we kept following the creek downstream looking for the next checkpoint at a bend in the creek. Nearing it, climbing over a log, I heard someone call my name and the thought went through my head ‘Who the hell would know me out here?’, I looked up to see the smiling friendly face of Greg snapping my photo. He was doing the First Aid Kit checks and we went through the motions, though I knew that he knew that we had everything because we had bought it from AREA51. Off we went again to where we had left the bikes, this time heading in the other direction downstream in trying to find the last two checkpoint as part of the canyoning section. They were easy to find but highlighted another Troy screw-up. A month before the race I read that body-boarding would not be a part of this year’s Hells Bells and would return in 2010. I remember Craig saying the PFD would be handed out in the canyoning but for some reason that did not register that we would indeed be swimming. You see, I had put the dry bags out in the box before the kayaking. We were just fortunate that I had kept the spare torch batteries with me in a small dry bag and we were able to put our small head torches in with them and that Greg had lent us a waterproof case for the phone. But our warm clothes and wet weather gear became soaked right along with us. The canyoning was good and scenic. I heard as we went through it and at the finish line how beautiful people thought it was and my mind turned to back home in Vanuatu and wondered what they would think is they did some of our canyons. If you are in a remote canyon in Vanuatu you feel like you have slipped into a pre-historic age. We clamoured out of the creek where we could see many before us had and easily found our way back to the bikes for the next leg. Greg had finished for the day and wished us well and promised to see us the next morning.

Leg 3 Mountain Bike 15km

This was another torturous time trying to get the boys to stay together. I parked the bike at the high point on the road and looked around the park sign where I thought the checkpoint should be, with the boys no-where to be seen having headed off down the hill. I think if we had been there together and I was not feeling pressured to try and catch them, the light-bulb might’ve gone off that this was the checkpoint that had been moved. But it was also during this ride where the boys shone, showing their helpful friendly nature. We came across a man throwing up on the side of the road as we pushed our bikes up the hill, his team-mates kept moving, but Tim goes over, makes sure that he is alright and then pushes both his bike and the other guys up the hill. Leg three was also the low point of the race for me. I was ahead of the boys which was unusual and the chain came off my bike. As I was fixing it I sensed a group of bikes go past me. I fix the chain and look up to find that I was by myself. Tim & Max had ridden past me and were no-where to be scene. I found them later at the archery. I was weighing my options at that point wishing that I could just do the race alone but knowing that it was not within the rules.

Archery

We had done a lot of practice with the archery and thought that we were well prepared. We had been taught to fletch the arrow, and they place all four fingers below it, pull the string back to our eye, and site straight down the arrow. The problem that we had was these arrows would not stick to the string and you had to place your top finger over the top of the arrow. In short this stuffed us up, I got the only arrow into the yellow, whereas back home all three of us would get all three of our arrows into the yellow. It was also a long wait for our turn to shoot, with the knowledge that the abseil would close down at 18.30. It was also freezing, we had nothing dry and warm to put on and we wished that the archery was a part of a TA.

Leg 4 Trek/Abseil 2km

We made it to the abseil as the sun was setting and I could sense for the boys that this was their low point realising that when we wrote our names down, that we were in the last ten teams and a long way behind. Max went off to do the abseil and Tim and I headed off to find the other two parts of the map. He wanted to split up and get a piece each and I insisted that we stay within the rules.

Leg 5 Mountain Bike 18-20km

At least the next cycle was predominantly downhill and even though we didn’t know it, we were about to join up with Team Top Dog Designs and have a great time with them. The combination of it being dark and mainly downhill also made it a pleasant ride because I didn’t have to keep trying to keep the boys together. At checkpoint 8, I asked the boys if they wanted to go back the way we had came and follow roads around to the next checkpoint which was also a TA, or did they want to gamble and follow the tracks marked on the map in a more direct route. Daniel from Top Dog Design and his team of Katie and James were making the same decision and we got talking. We decided to form a team of six until the TA. Katie and James asked if we were sure because they weren’t very fast on the bikes, which was music to my ears because it might help pull Tim & Max up if we were trying to stay as a bigger team.
This section of the race has the best memories for me. Mainly because it now felt like we were a part of a team. Daniel was a great navigator and I performed the role of his sounding board, so a lot of that responsibility was lifted. It was also in this section of the race that the most amazing thing occurred. Pedalling uphill, the pedal fell off Max’s bike. We tried several things but in short, it was rooted. My heart sank, because more than anything I wanted to finish the race and I did not think that it would be possible if we had to push one of the bikes through the rest of the course. Even if we were crazy enough to try, the 24 hour deadline was sure to beat us. Daniel (who for the rest of the race I nick-named MacGyver) came up with a plan. He used shoes that clipped into pedals. He removed the good pedal from Max’s bike and changed it with his on the same side. His plan was to ride Max’s bike with one pedal because he could generate momentum on the downward push and pull it up with his clip shoe. Max had one normal pedal and he could put his foot on top of the pedal designed to clip into. I couldn’t believe it. We had been with these people for less than an hour and there was no good reason and absolutely no advantage to them to help us. We were finished and the sensible thing would’ve been to apologise for our misfortune and leave us struggle on. I have one adventure race under my belt, but I would say that the true spirit of the race takes place not up with winners but with average racer who is not doing it to win, but for the experience and for me, the best memory of the event. So, off we went again and Daniel did not seem at all hampered, he still led the charge with his one pedal. Along the way three of us ran over a big brown snake who reared it’s head angrily daring the next 3 riders to try, so that it could bite them. Another Daniel MacGyver repair job followed, fixing James’ tyre which had been punctured, leaving the tube exposed and prone to constant puncturing. We came out of the bush right where Daniel thought we would and then onto a bitchumen road. There was a short gap between the end of this road and a road that led to a pumping station but it wasn’t marked as out of bounds so we went for it, hoping to be able to walk the bikes over the top of the dam wall. We did not come out on top of the wall but instead we were faced with a very difficult descent into a gorge, which we needed to cross and then find our way up the other side. There was no question really. No-one thought that going back was an alternative.
This is where we performed some great team work. Climbing down the gorge wall we formed a line. We then rolled the bikes to each other, caught them, and then rolled them to the next person. Crossing the gorge was easy, and on the other side there was a concrete path which we could get the bikes up onto with ease and roll them to the pump station road. We re-mounted the bikes and rode to the TA.

High Ropes

We received the bad news that we had missed the cut-off for the High Ropes by 20 minutes and we would not be able to tackle it. This was very disappointing because I think the boys would’ve really enjoyed it and it would be a once in a life time experience for them. Good byes I had been thinking and hoping since the demise of Max’s bike that at this TA we might be able to borrow a bike part that would get Max’s bike going again from a team that had pulled out. We got the last two lonely boxes and Top Dog Designed tuckered into a well thought out feed while Team Vanuatu Adventure had a small piece of Mum’s fruitcake and an energy bar each. I found out that this was the point in the race where James and Katie would bail on Daniel if they didn’t think they could continue. It was very sad to learn that they would be saying goodbye. We went off to tell the race officials that Katie and James were pulling out and that Daniel would be travelling with us. We were informed that we would be unranked if we continued in this fashion but for us it was the only logical choice. Without Daniel, we wouldn’t have gotten this far and he was a huge asset in navigation. We had no problem to agreeing and set off onto the orienteering.

Leg 6 Trek 3-4km

We did very well with this leg. We had seen people in the water on the way to the TA, Max and Tim found it quickly and Max was in the water retrieving it in a flash. We had been asked by search and rescue to drag it in which we gladly obliged. We headed off up the country roads at the run and we made good time at collecting the CP’s and were back to the TA in no time. James and Katie had sorted the bikes for us and Max was off on Katie’s bike, leaving his behind to come back with the race officials.

Leg 7 Mountain Bike 30-35km

We were the last team to leave the TA and it was very pleasing to pass a team along the way in search of check point 13. We got it with the team we had passed hot on our heels. They started to ride past us not realising we were boarding our bikes after having found it. Max in true Ni-Vanuatu spirit calls out to them pointing wildly to the park where it was hanging. It was now time to enter Parklands for some single track mountain biking. Oh at this point I should also mention that as well as Katie’s bike we had taken possession of Katie & James’ helmet lights. We would have been in a world of trouble without them, with our good large headlamps still out on the course in front of us. It was my first single track experience, let alone being in the middle of the night. I soon discovered if you looked at something you didn’t want to hit, you hit what you looked at. Knowing that you should look past the danger and actually doing it proved to be two different things. We went down to (A) and then back up the track. The boys wanted to know what we were doing. We had told them that we had basically been eliminated but Daniel and I intended to finish the race and get every check point required and complete the race with the knowledge that we had done it, no matter what the official race results would say. (B) was an easy find but (C) proved to be a little more difficult, but once we had found the powerlines we knew where we were again and collected (C). This is where the boys started to twig that we were going up and down tracks and as we turned off them wanted to know if we would be coming back up. When I told them it wasn’t in the spirit of the race and that we needed to stay within 100 metres of each other, it was lost on them because they couldn’t get past the notion that we had been eliminated. We decided to miss (E) and go for (D) and then see if it was possible to scoot down the nice flat road we could see on the map. All of which worked perfectly. On our way to (F) is where I hit the wall. Not to the point where I was going to give up. It was 3am and I was tired. I wanted to let my brain sleep and asked Daniel if he could make the decisions on his own for awhile and I was more than prepared to just follow along. I know after (F) Daniel told us we were going to (H) we ended up getting (G), I was going machine like at this stage and I don’t know why he changed his mind. I do know we helped a team find G and Daniel pointed out to them where they would find (H) as we were on our way to exit Parklands. It was bloody cold cycling down out of the Sunshine Coast hinterland to Bli Bli where we would start our Kayaking. Having nothing dry to put on made it worse, but it did serve to wake me up. We got into the TA at around 4 in the morning and we actually used our headlamps for awhile as we ate a good meal, once again provided by Daniel, pumped up our kayaks and prepared for that leg.

Leg 8 Kayak 10-11km

Daniel had checked the tide times before the race and we knew it wasn’t going to be an easy task because the tide was now going to be heading in, against us. As we prepared, the sky lightened and a new day had begun. Though for me, all day on Monday it felt like Sunday, because Saturday had just been one long day. One of the tips Greg had given us was to listen for leaks when we blew up the kayak. Tim & I were going to be in one and Max & Daniel in another. When Tim and I had ours up I was sure that I could hear a leak, which I pointed out to Tim, who I thought could hear it but chose not to. He blew the floor up and was very unhappy when I pointed out that we had a very floppy side just in that time. He suggested that we take a pump with us, I told him that we should just start again. I’m sure he didn’t want too, but eventually, we did in fact blow another one up, that this time stayed up. There is only one word for our 3 hours on the water against the tide, torturous. We got our two checkpoints and at the second I got my only sleep in the race as Max and Daniel found and wrote down the letters on a pole. It was a good few minutes though. Here was Box C, our warm fleece coats which were useless because the day was now quite warm and a good feed of salami and cheese sticks we wrapped in pita bread. It was something that I had seen on one of Greg’s XPD videos and they were good, even though we were now within five km of nice flat going to the finish where there was bacon & eggs waiting for us.

Leg 9 Trek 4-5km

I wondered if we would run this last bit or walk, but the unspoken decision was that walking was the go. The first checkpoint was easy, as was the walk down towards Mooloolaba and the finish. We caught up with a team that was frustrated in finding the last checkpoint but Daniel found a sign on the beach that was on the map, which meant that the checkpoint was further south. After that it was an easy find. And right to the end it proved that the boys didn’t understand team work and staying together because there was no sign of Max. Tim told me that he had stayed up top because he had just put dry socks on and didn’t want them to get wet. Luckily we found him at the top and the finish line was just around the corner.

Finish

As we approached the school gate with the other team we had caught up with at the gate, I heard my brother call out to me and out of the corner of my eye as we walked across the oval I could see my sister-in-law sprinting to get to the line first to take our photo. As we strode to the line I could see Greg & Debbie, my brother Craig and his wife Kerre and a crazy lady waiting for the boys (that’s another story, sorry Craig and Louise for having to put up with her all night, I had been telling the boys for months to be wary of her and they finally believe me now as she stuck her tongue down one of their throats at her apartment, she’s in her 60’s and Max in his 20’s). Crossing the finish line was a great feeling, the greatest feeling. We didn’t win, but the most important things I had set out to do, were accomplished.

Conclusion

The race had taken us 21 hours and 10 minutes to complete. But for me, this race had been going for nearly 4 months. Getting to the start line was a challenge in itself. And this Adventure Race journey is far from over. For those of you who read our story in Outer Edge, you would know that we planned to train hard and we wanted to be at the pointy end, we could only be considered to be at the pointy end if you held the knife upside down. How do I feel about that, I felt great. I had achieved most of what I had wanted to.

- Learn as much as I could about what is required to run an adventure race
- Promote Vanuatu, I’m sure the good nature of Tim & Max throughout the race won many over. The stories in Outer Edge also go towards promoting Vanuatu to a new market, getting away from the honeymooners and families and showing what is out there to see, if you venture a little bit further.
- Promote the Vanuatu Adventure Race. If half of the people that have shown interest that we met through Hells Bells came to our adventure race it would be a huge success.
- Win Hells Bells. One look at the race results would show you that we didn’t even get close, but we feel like winners. And that surely is the most important thing.

I sent out a thank you before we left for Oz, to thank everyone who had helped us get that far, but I would like to once again thank some and add one champion of a fellow. Chris from Outer Edge, who did an amazing story on us, that I will treasure forever. Chris’ story told everyone who we were and I am sure that it paved the way for all the generosity that followed. Greg from AREA51, went out of his way to make sure that we were prepared for this race and his help with our Adventure race here and all his insights are going to ensure that our race is ‘The one not to miss’. Daniel from Team Top Dog Design. Daniel you are the most unassuming man but the salt of the earth. The boys have a ‘man crush’ on you. We would not have finished without you and your unselfishness renews my faith in human nature. I’d like to the thank Craig & Louise and the volunteers from Geocentric who allowed us entry in the race. All of you were so positive and supportive of our efforts and did not abate as we fell further and further behind.

Troy Spann