Kokoda Challenge 2009

In three years of entering this event I've heard people say that it's something "everyone should do once". Many of those that do line up at the start line will utter "never again" at some point. Of the trekkers who return, there's often a common thread: a goal which wasn't attained the first time. Sometimes it's for an individual to finish, sometimes it's for the whole team to reach the end. Sometimes it's to attain a time goal.

What makes someone come back a third time? Many would say stupidity. And perhaps it is. It's also a mix of obsessiveness, competitiveness and the adrenalin hit you get from pushing yourself beyond where you believed your limits to be in order to reach one goal - the end.

Several years ago the idea of competing in this event was first floated to me, as many truly bizarre ideas are, over a pub lunch. After a moment's thought I declared that surely it should be possible to complete the 96km course within 24 hours. That year Team Vodka were shown that training wasn't going to prepare us as well as we would have liked and we faced physical, mental and emotional challenges along the way. Two of our team retired after 66km and 24 hours, and two continued to complete the course in 31 hours. The following year Team Insanity attempted the same task and finished in 26.5 hours. The lesson learnt was that it doesn't hurt any less the second time around. This year saw Team Fibonacci attempt to break the 24 barrier.

Early.... Very Early.... (4:30am, 2:30 hrs until start time)
Team Fibonacci's race day plan involved the four competitors and our three trusty support crew leaving Brisbane around 4.30am. As per the plan, Brock was deposited at my house at little before 4.30, and in order to kill time I thought I'd check my email (because isn't everyone online that early in the morning?). No email, but there was already a blog post on the Team Fibonacci page courtesy of our support crew. Turns out Matt and Shane had experienced some car issues on Friday night and we had a slight change of plans for the morning and everyone was now meeting at my house. I don't think the excitable chatter on the driveway woke my neighbours... :-)

I was, perhaps, a tad twitchy because registrations opened at 5.30am and we were a little late leaving, but the drive down was hassle-free. So too was the registration process. We walked in, were asked our team number, and directed to a table where we were promptly issued with RFID tags and race numbers before swiping the tags to confirm our starting time (for 7:02am).

After a quick coffee break (for the support crew) we wandered back to the Mystery Machine to organise our gear (and pretend to assist Jenesse with packing all our gear in the van). The first group of teams were scheduled to start at 7am, so at around 6:40am all competitors were called to the start line where we had time to perform last minute shoe adjustments and take a few photos of the crowd. A short starting ceremony with the playing of the Last Post preceded the start of the sub-20 hour teams, and a few short minutes later we too were signalled to start.

Start to Hinterland Leisure Trail (4.6km, 4.6km total): 7:02am - 7:46am (0:44 hrs)
Nicole's Pain Killer Count: 0
We had a simple plan for Section 1: jog slowly from the start to get past the large hordes of people who will inevitably be walking so that by the time we reach the narrow trail sections we wouldn't be caught up in the traffic jam.

The organisers had made a late change to the course for this section so that rather than branch off into a single file trail after 3km, we would cover a little more distance on road and join the trail after 4.6km. They had mentioned that there were a few hills in there, and while I can't speak for the rest of the team, I hadn't expected some of those roads to be quite so steep. That being said, a steep bitumen road is easier to walk up than a steep rocky trail, so who am I to complain? :-) There were a few locals out watching the parade of teams and bidding them good morning, but most of our conversation along the way was with a team we knew - "It's Another Walk In The Park". All of Team Fibonacci had worked with one of the team members before - which is also where our team all knew each other from - as well as having compared notes with them at last year's event. Both of us were aiming for 24 hours last year and came up empty and were trying again this year. As is the case with this event, teams pass each other all the time, particularly if they have a similar finish time aim, so when we arrived at a decent downhill and elected to run we parted ways, said we'd probably catch up again later, and continued on to checkpoint 1.

Hinterland Leisure Trail to Mt Nimmel Lodge (7.9km, 12.5km total) : 7:46am - 8:45am (0:59 hrs, 1:43 hrs total)
Nicole's Pain Killer Count: 0
Why, you may ask, is the pain killer count important? This was the third time I'd entered this event and both years previously I'd ended up knocking back half a dozen ibuprofen to counter the pain from various injuries. It was therefore my intention to not only knock a few hours off our time from last year (26.5 hrs) but to take less medication along the way. So far, so good at 45 minutes in!

After swiping through checkpoint one we tacked our first trail section for the course. The trail was narrow and winding, and really only suitable for single file, and courtesy of our plan to jog a little in the first few kilometres we had managed to put ourselves ahead of the bottleneck that would ensue once the main pack of team made their way through the checkpoint. Despite the short route change, this trail joined onto the "old" course, and we shortly found ourselves in somewhat familiar territory. We never really practice any of the first two sections so at best we have a vague recollection of there being "a hill", "that place where the teams last year came from the wrong direction", "a gate", "a view of the gold coast" and "some downhill before the checkpoint". All the these recollections are accurate, they just miss large chunks of the nearly 8km section, and we suspect the reason we don't remember is we're never in as much pain at this point so it all seems rosy and wonderful (comparatively speaking).

Our strategy of jogging downhill, walking uphill, and picking whichever required less effort for the flatter parts seemed to be working well for us as we ended up passing several teams along the way and despite slowing so Stu could take the first of his many "nature breaks" we eventually found ourselves at a clearing which usually has decent views of the Gold Coast we figured we were about 20 minutes from the checkpoint and sent off a message to our support crew advising as much. They replied, mentioning they were parking the car. But after reaching the top of the next incline we found we were on the last downhill section before CP2 and perhaps had misjudged out timing. Again, one of the guys wandered off into the bush in search of a tree (why, when there's a perfectly good CP right around the corner I don't know), but around 10 minutes ahead of our forecast time, and a good 20 minutes ahead of our expected time we jogged into the first of the major checkpoints and being dazzled by the number of people waiting for their teams slightly missed the roped off competitor area leading to the CP staffers. At least we weren't the only one's to do so, and let's face it, a few seconds here and there don't really matter in a race that can be described in terms of days.

CP 2 break: 8:45am - 8:58am (0:13 hrs, 1:56 hrs total)
Nicole's Pain Killer Count: 0
The first major checkpoint break was always intended to be short: check in, refill water, collect food, change socks and get back out again. We may have also added a few extras like sunscreen into the mix, but this was definitely the most efficient of our breaks. The Support Crew had bagged a park right by the edge of the course, but we still ended up calling them after we swiped in because we couldn't see them (and admittedly hadn't looked far enough around). But we were also 10 minutes earlier than we'd advised them :-)

With our resupplying done, we bid the Support Crew farewell commenting that "if you see us before 1.30pm we're probably travelling too fast".

This is where you find the "work-in-progress" sign... Am still writing the rest up, but in the meantime urbancrag has a write-up from Shane and the Support Crew...