“Rock The Casbah” — XPD 2021, Rivers of Gold

After nearly two years of waiting, it was hard to believe it when the XPD logistics emails started landing in our inboxes. There was a strong mix of emotions at the realisation that we would have to do a 53km kayak as well as the fact that we would essentially be doing a 24hr rogaine mid-race. The sheer length of the course also started to become apparent, with multiple legs looking likely to exceed the 12 hour mark. Each of us dealt with this in our own individual way, with Mathias deciding to traumatise the staff at 99 bikes by spending his entire paycheck on clif bars, Ollie having a mental breakdown surrounded by piles of ziploc bags, whilst Charlie decided he would survive exclusively on jerky and vanilla Up & Go’s (gross). Meanwhile, Hannah spent hours determining just how many different flavours of mashed potato would be required to get her through 5 days of racing.

Our final few weeks of race preparation were also highlighted by a frantic search for team equipment. Thankfully, Michael Reed and Resultz Racing were able to provide us with bike boxes, throw bags and kayak seats. We’d like to thank them and give them a huge shoutout for helping us get to the start line. (Ps we’ll return everything once we get out of lockdown! Apologies!)

Needless to say, with our first team paddle taking place a week out from the race, Capital AR were feeling prepped, pumped and not at all nervous about our upcoming trip to FNQ. Our worries were compounded by the rapidly imploding COVID situation in Sydney, resulting in our flights being cancelled (thanks Jetstar) and as cases gradually crept closer to Canberra, we were sure we would wake up to the headline that Queensland had shut its borders to the ACT. To our relief, our friends the Aussie Battlers and ourselves managed to catch our flight to Cairns on Friday and landed with a measly 250kg of luggage between us, ready to race.

Saturday was spent packing boxes, checking bikes and passing the navigation, first aid and rules tests. We were also given the most terrifying ‘safety’ briefing any of us had ever sat through entitled “Things that will kill you in FNQ.” After what felt like a million slides featuring sharks, stinging trees, jellyfish, killer cows and snake-eating spiders we stumbled into the hot Cairns sun and proceeded to attempt to rank ourselves in order from most delicious to least — just in case we encountered a hungry croc on course. (For those playing along at home, Mathias was unsurprisingly not the most delicious)

With our boxes packed, fears of being eaten exponentially increasing and a song by the Clash firmly wedged in our brains, we went to sleep ready to rock the casbah whether the sharif liked it or not.

Leg 1–22km Ocean Kayak/16km Coasteering — “ (chuckles) I’m in danger”

With the first leg split and having recently experienced a traumatic ocean kayaking leg during GeoQuest that was definitely ‘not kosher’, Oli and Charlie valiantly ‘volunteered’ themselves to be in the boat while Hannah and Mathias dusted off the tanning lotion ready for a beach session. The kayak started brutally as we headed straight into the crashing waves, all while looking nervously into the ocean for crocodile shaped shadows. Soon after passing around the first couple of islands, we re-united with Ferg and Brad from the Aussie Battlers who, coming into a beach landing, managed to epicly capsize much to our delight. With the wind and the swell behind us, this kayak went by extremely quickly and wasn’t as bad as anticipated.

Leg 2–8km Loop Trek — Romantic waterfall walk

Having de-salted and built bikes, we were glad to be all back together and began the first trek leg. With lots of teams all around us, there was a lot going on but it was nice to see everyone’s friendly faces. Our first sighting of ‘wait-a-while’, some cool waterfalls and a rumour there was a local crocodile made the leg fun and we zoomed through it relatively quickly.

Leg 3–42km MTB — Up down, but go up again

Buoyed by the trek leg, we were glad to get on the bikes and got going. A brutal climb up the coastal escarpment took us into our first night where we aimed to make the 9.30 bus. Arriving at the TA, we soon discovered that our bike boxes had not yet arrived so we were told we had been given a half hour time bonus. This didn’t really bother us as we had arrived with plenty of time and wolfed down our various dinners and strapped our feet ready for the trek leg. Before long, we jumped on the party bus ready to go until the break of dawn.

Leg 4–35km Trek — Step Up 2: The Abseil

Getting off the party bus, we started what would be the first big leg of the race. Crossing over the fence line, we realised that this entire leg was taking place on one big property which was cool but also a reflection on the amount of space in rural QLD. Having scrambled to a control on the knoll, we decided to buck trend and partake in a navigationally ambitious bush bash through a ride which most teams went around. While we made ground on other teams, it was pretty hard and slow going and we were very grateful for the sunrise which enabled us to move a bit faster. Having pushed pretty hard, we were excited for the abseil and some yarns with the race officials about how everything was going. Having filled up water, we continued on for what seemed like a very long, hot day of trekking in the savannah like terrain before rolling in to the Mitchell River TA hot and bothered.

Leg 5–53km Kayak — Episode V: The Portage strikes back

Now over at the temple (the Mitchell River TA) and after a long, hot trek, we were potentially a little bit excited (??) to get on the water, get cool and take some pressure off the legs. This excitement quickly dissipated as we realised that Craig’s favourite part of kayaking is in fact, portaging. Having dragged (i mean, ‘carried very carefully’) kayaks for what seemed like an age, we eventually made it to the main estuary of the Mitchell River. While our paddling: portaging ratio started to pick up, our pace was somewhat slowed by the tight, overhanging branches that made the small rapids on the Mitchell quite treacherous. While we crashed and bashed our way through for a while, it was getting reasonably late and by 3am we had enough and decided to have our first ‘big’ (3 hours) sleep as dictated by our highly thought-out sleep strategy. Naturally, Mathias positioned himself so that his teammates were between him and the river to safeguard against any reptilian friends.

Spirits were much higher in the morning as we awoke to sun and warmth and began the second half of the paddle, only complicated by the loss of both our waterproof maps in rapids and our reliance on a rapidly deteriorating paper map. It was at this point of the paddle that Mathias and Charlie spotted a freshwater crocodile on the bank and terrifyingly realised that the river they had been floating, trudging and swimming in for the past 10 hours did in fact have crocodiles in it (Potentially we should’ve realised this prior, but didn’t think crocodiles swam up the Great Dividing Range). Sped on by fear and hunger, we made it to the next TA, ready to mine some niche crypto (Turns out gold is actually valuable, who would’ve known)

Leg 6–50km MTB/15km Trek — Gold Rush or Toad Rush?

While the Sheik’s may have been interested in oil, these 4 hungry desert stragglers were interested in gold as we began this leg on the late afternoon of day 3. With a number of teams around us, we had clearly found ourselves in the ‘mid pack’ and spent the next 12 hours or so making many friends, most notably Directionally Challenged who we had numerous yarns with about the accuracy of contours and fun but undoubtedly terrible, sleep deprived banter. While apparently dotwatchers at home wondered and were concerned why we seemed to take a slightly longer, more southerly route to M2, this was actually a conscious decision to take a flatter, ‘easier’ route where we could just sit and spin on the bikes and regain some morale. The only problem for Mathias was that we encountered significant numbers of cows which he did not like.

It was also at this point that we began to encounter numerous cane toads and we competed in the actual ‘mystery discipline’ of toad kicking which Hannah and Mathias took to with great enthusiasm while Oli and Charlie practiced trying to squish them while riding.

Alas, after getting our first three bags of gold and heading towards our 4th bag, the sound of the yellow-brick pinging and the accompanying message regarding covid made us a bit nervous as we headed back to the TA. Luckily for us, our decision to fly on the later Brisbane to Cairns flight proved a good one as we narrowly missed a potential mid-race quarantine.

Having averted the crisis and with the sun rising only a couple of hours away, we made the decision to go fast through the TA and try and get 45 mins of cycling done in the cool of the night before a quickie nap. While the thought of a tent was appealing, another night in our bivvies in bushes was definitely the right one in keeping us going and wasting time.

Leg 7–86km MTB — The Day the Devil made me sweat

Another sunrise on Hurricane Station had us back on the bikes. Realising that we had a narrow window to make for the final paddle on Friday, we knew that from pretty much here out we had to kick it into overdrive if we had any hope of finishing. As such, we flew through the hot, dusty roads with the seriously impressive Mt Mulligan looming over us. We enjoyed a fun history lesson about the Day the Devil Wept, the kind assistance of the local roadworkers who had just smoothed a large section of the road and the sick descent into the small, oasis like TA that was Kingsborough.

Leg 8–60km Trek — Hit it or Quit it

Having put the foot to the floor on the bike for 12 hours, the fun kept coming with potentially the single biggest leg of the event, a 24hr rogaine within an adventure race. Having been informed by the ‘Dirty Possum’ (http://www.dirtypossumaust.com.au/index.html — this is not a paid advertising opportunity, just trying to hype up bike racks) that ThoughtSports were close to finishing as the sun set on Day 4, we strapped on packs and gaiters and delved into the night. Despite the enormity of the leg, our backgrounds in rogaining had us well prepared with Charlie and Mathias teaming up well to conduct some navigational surgery through some very thick bush and make rapid pace past a couple of teams.

While our number 1 supporter Phil was speculating about what pop culture phenomenons would be discussing from the comforts of his home, it was at this point that conversation turned to the topic of which Shrek character each of us encapsulated. As the quick talking, funny guy with a huge dome, Mathias was clearly Donkey while Charlie was clearly Shrek with his multi-layered personality but overarching crankiness. With a unique ability to deal out incredibly stinky fumes from his body at night but a pinnacle of health and fitness during the day, Oli was clearly Princess Fiona while Hannah’s recent experiences defending our nation meant that she was of course, skilled sword fighter Puss in Boots. This terrible chat and a quick sleep saw us continue zooming, with the Bicentential national trail aiding our speed before we popped out on a huge flood plain.

While enjoying the leg up to this point, the Slaty Range was a pretty brutal way to finish a leg with its steep unrelenting nature inflicting some pain. Aware that there was a potential 6pm cut-off for the full course approaching, we made the ‘interesting’ decision to run the last 11km of this trek leg into Mt Molloy where our next TA awaited. (also Craig, why were so many of the controls on gravestones? Added a nice gothic touch to the course but was just surprising)

Leg 9–60km MTB — this was fine jks

Having downed some hot food and being aware that we essentially had 12 hours until we needed to be on the water, this bike leg was always going to be hard. The fact that we were hike-a biking up steep, muddy ‘singletrack’ (very generous description) in a rainforest while hallucinating due to a lack of sleep just made this leg shit. Like, really shit. The blue dot singletrack took us a long time, and it was only really when we got the last control and were able to grab pies from the servo that we started to feel better again. (There was also some cool sunrise riding through hills with low lying fog).

Upon reflection, the decision to push all the way through the night was not one we wanted to make but the right one. It was hard but we did it and got to the kayak.

Sometimes it just be like that.

Leg 10–39km Kayak — how Capital AR learnt to white water kayak

Having emerged from the hellish night, the strong current and cool of the mighty Barron River was a revitalising, god send. With our spirits rising and Dave Forit turning up to cheer us on, we took to white water kayaking like overseas tourists take to surfing — falling off lots, looking uncoordinated but having fun. While Charlie spent the whole day feeding Mathias Cliff bar after Cliff bar, Oli and Hannah started the day with some steering issues but the snapping of a pedal soon improved their turning circle. Unsurprisingly, we were not game enough to do the big rapid section with another portage as a result. We were essentially kayaking with a number of other teams by this time and it was nice to see other humans after a long night by ourselves. Having gone through rapid after rapid and with Charlie’s coccyx sore from a portage gone wrong, we had our fill of white water kayaking by 4pm and were glad when we rocked up to the TA to the smiling faces of the race officials.

Leg 11–17km Trek — Send it

With the sun setting on a magical day on the Barron River, Capital AR was catching whiffs of that crazy Casbah jive and could almost taste the finish line with only a 17km trek to go. Quickly stripping off our wet clothes while singing the same Clash song once more, we all took a different approach for rapidly fuelling for the last leg. Charlie opted for a coke, vanilla up and go and vanilla gel combo while Hannah went for a quinoa berry radix smoothie with coke. Mathias opted for more cliff bars (the man spent $200 on cliff bars and didn’t have enough) while Oli decided that the prospect of seeing a cassowary was all the fuel he needed. With only 17km to go, a couple of teams just ahead of us and the prospect of a dinner time finish on the table, we decided to pick up our heels and get running. Climbing up past the Cassowary house and on top of the ridge line overlooking the lights of Palm Cove, the fact that we were actually going to finish dawned on us and made this last leg so enjoyable. Descending down, we kept our pace up as we ran along the foreshore and were surprised but touched when we got a rousing reception from the finished teams and race officials having dinner at the Surf Club.

Running into the end, after 130 hours, was a pretty magical moment for us.The customary bottle of champagne, a live-streamed interview was all a blur but it won’t be something we’ll be forgetting for a while. While the landscapes are epic, the most special part of XPD for us was by far the people and friends we made along the way.

From the moment we were picked up late Friday night at the airport, we felt a part of something special and can’t thank everyone enough for making it so. Huge shoutout to Craig and Louise for organising such an event and to Keith Conley for the years he’s put into getting youth teams up and going.

Guess we’ll see everyone again in 18 months.