Race Report: 2011 Baise Outdoor Quest (China) - Day 1 (2/4).

Day 1.
Start - Leye Town.
43km MTB
22km Run
incl. 140m Abseil
Finish - Shenmu Sinkhole.

Within 20 minutes of the opening ceremony all 80 competitors were lined up behind the start banner, nervous in anticipation of the start. The bike course commenced with two laps of Leye town before heading into the hills to the east. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous, but we were soon under way and I was able to settle into a good position near the front of the group. Coming into the turn at the top of the town however, some riders came down on a wet, off-camber corner, and despite being in a good position, I had no where to go and hit the ground hard on my left side. As I lay on the ground watching the peleton ride away down the road my heart sank and I just hoped my bike was in one piece.  Fortunately, the damage to my bike was confined to a dropped chain and a bent seat, both of which I was able to quickly fix and get going. My left side was pretty sore, but I kept calm and managed to slowly pull back onto the group after about 2km riding.

Rolling under the start banner - Leye town (www.8264.net)

The bike course headed almost immediately upwards out of town and I was quite worried about how much climbing power I was going to be able to generate. The strong teams started to put the hammer down and a split formed in the bunch, we were riding with the mid-pack teams Kolomb, Exustar and Czech AR. Maria was put on Pavel's tow and we were racing. The bike course had two short climbs, and then a long one (12km @ 3-4%). We made good progress and I started to feel quite good on the long climb. Pavel and I took turns towing Maria up the climbs, although Pavel had to take a larger share of the work because I was still lacking power after the crash. We powered downhill into town, with Pavel and Serge driving hard on the front.

The winning teams GPS track log.

The first run section was only 9 km and had a similar profile to the bike with a few short steep climbs and then a long steep one. I was glad to be out on the run, and my nerves settled as I got into a good rythym (albeit a lopsided one). We were about 20 minutes in when the cloud burnt off and the heat hit, HARD, going from low 20's to 35 in only a short space of time. I was focussed on the pain in my leg, and with what the team was doing but I quickly started to feel dizzy, nauseous and quite out of breath. I dropped to the back of the group, ate and drank thinking that usually solves feeling flat. However, I continued to rapidly deteriorate and was quickly unsteady on my feet. Serge told Pavel to put me on a tow.

I was so confused, could my day get any worse? How was it that a strong trail runner was falling apart despite  nailing my nutrition, not working above my limit and having felt great only 20 minutes beforehand? I soon realised however, that I was overheating. I somehow convinced Pavel to stop (under possibly the only tree in China) and I ripped my race top off, along with my undershirt. I immediately felt a little bit better, and we pushed on knowing that the rest TA was only 3-4km along the trail. I was still in a pretty bad way, and Serge more or less dragged me up the last steep hill and into the TA. In the TA I poured bottles of water over my head and inside forearms, smashed a bottle of half coke:water that I'd premixed and took a gel and some chocolate. We didn't have much time and we had to harness up for the abseil, fit our lights for the caving and re-fill our camelbacks for the next 13km run.

After a short run out of the TA we were at the abseil, an overhanging 140m direct drop into the Dacao Sinkhole. We had a wait for a few teams which didn't bother me (especially as it was timed out of the race). Pavel and Maria rapped first, then Serge and I. My day of bad luck was to continue with the sling connecting Sergey and I getting twisted into my running line below my figure 8 completely locking us up. I had the shits well and truly by this stage and let out a massive F-A-R-K which echoed around the sinkhole. I leaned back in my harness and used all of my strength to lift the 100m of double line below us up over my head to untwist the line, which worked a treat, and we quickly dropped to the base of the sinkhole. Finally, something went right.

The climb back out of the sinkhole was steep and I managed to brush my right leg through some stinging nettles. I thought at that point my day really couldn't get any worse. We took our harnesses off at the top, and continued to climb steeply for another km or so before the first downhill relief for the day. I got on a run, and started to get a bit of confidence back, after a km or so the pace was on. We held onto a good pace from here and caught and passed the Chinese team that had passed us while we were locked up on the abseil.

We were now running on some pretty remote trails and at least one of the villages we ran through was still building their first ever house out of bricks. A very humbling thought.  All of the locals would line the streets, or simply look up from their work and call out (what would be pronounced as) 'Jai-Yo, Jai-Yo' which we were told meant good work, go, go, go. This boosted my confidence a bit, and I was now running quite a good tempo on all but the steepest sections of climb.

Soon after the cave appeared in the valley below us, and we were all pretty excited to get out of the heat. I had my Ay-Up lights and went to the front to navigate our way through the cave. The Leye caves are the largest in the world with an area of over 20,000 sq. meters. Moving through the limestone caves was quite hard work with lots of scrambling, at times having to crawl through sections as wide a my shoulders. In all, we must have been in the cave for 30-50 minutes.

As we emerged from the other side, we knew we were on the final stretch for the day but also knew we had lots of climbing still to do. I was getting stronger every minute, and soon found myself at the front trying to push a good tempo. Unfortunately, Pavel was now starting to struggle with stomach problems. The last 6k followed a similar pattern, up, down, up, down, up, down. The finish seemed to take forever, and every time we climbed into a saddle we'd get exited that the finish would be on the opposite side. However, as soon as we saw the final mountain range dotted with traditional pagodas, we knew.

Crossing the finish line. Spent. (Courtesy Jocelyn)

We finished in 7:45hrs which was scaled back to 7:05 after the timed out sections were removed from our time. We were in 14th place, which was a disappointing but, given how much had gone wrong, hardly surprising. The run course had been simply brutal, 22km in about 4.5hrs, if that gives you some perspective. I was pretty disappointed with my day, I'd had more things go wrong in one day than the rest of my racing career combined and my international début had been a veritable disaster.  On the flip side, I was feeling positive that I'd finished strong and tomorrow was another day...

Hopefully, some photos will come through soon.

Guy Andrew's (Peak Adventure) Blog for Day 1
http://www.guyandrews.tv/?p=1212

Dougal Allan's (Chiru Pro) Blog for Day 1
http://www.sportzhub.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12175

Race Report: 2011 Baise Outdoor Quest (China) - Racing in China (1/4).

Well, what an adventure...

As seems to be the norm with Chinese Adventure Races I got an email in mid February asking if I was interested in joining a team competing in the Baise Outdoor Quest to be held in China during late April.  After a reasonable season of racing in Australia I was keen to step up and give an international adventure race a go and opportunities like this just don't come up every day. So what was it all about? Where was the race? Were the people friendly? Read on and find out...

The Place: LeYe, Guangxi, China
The race is based from a large rural town called LeYe (pronounced Loy-Yeah) in the Guangxi Province of southern China.  To give you some impression, I would describe the town to be somewhat similar in size to a town like Colac or Morwell. The city itself is a six hour bus trip (at breakneck speed with lots of horn beeping) from the nearest airport (Nanning) that is itself a hour and a half flight from Guangzhou (Canton), the major city in the south of China.

The main street of LeYe. We would be racing down here the next day.

The region is known for its vast, and STEEP, vegetated areas of limestone karst interspersed with small rural villages and agricultural production.  I would go a step further and say that anything even remotely flat enough was under agriculture, and even some of the steepest slopes imaginable were being logged (by hand). Having grown up in a farming family I was amazed at how intensive the agriculture was; everything was done by hand.

A farming valley on the outskirts of LeYe. Note the rice that is being bundled and dried by hand.

Having arrived in LeYe a few days before the race we had the opportunity to spend time walking the streets and taking in what I like to think was the 'real' China. A friend explained on our return that this particular area of China is rarely visited by even the Chinese, let alone westerners, which partly explained why we were treated almost like celebrities by the locals.  Everyone was very friendly and apart from some kids throwing rocks at us on the first night I felt very safe just wandering the streets.

The team with the local kids, who would stand out the front of shops we were in  and wait for us to come out.

The food involved rice, rice, and more rice usually served with a variety of stir-fried dishes based on chicken, duck, beef or pork. We found in the more rural regions 'meat' usually meant ribs or fat and it was very rare to see actual meat in dishes. This wasn't too much of a problem for carb loading but meant that getting in adequate protein to recover muscles between days was quite difficult.  Next time I'll definitely be taking a box of cereal or oats, if only to break up the rice...

The Race: Baise Outdoor Quest
The Baise Outdoor Quest is now in is 4th year and is organised by the Chinese Mountaineering Association on behalf of the Chinese General Administration for Sport. 20 teams from across the world are invited to compete in the event, that is contested over three days for a prize pool of about $US40,000.

Each year the course changes, but generally takes in many similar legs, particularly for the abseiling etc. This years course was as follows:

Day 1. 43k MTB, 23k Run, Abseil (~6hrs)

Day 2. 53k MTB, 9k Run, 20k Kayak (~9hrs)

Day 3. 9k Kayak, 20k MTB, 3k Orienteering, Ropes, 20k MTBO, 23k Run (~8hrs)

The terrain is insanely steep and each year's course seems to include at least 6000m of climb over the full distance. Where these organisers are concerned ‘run’ legs are known to include things like caves or endless stairs and MTB legs have included 3hr uphill sections etc. In general, they organise events not for the feint hearted.

Part of a run leg at last years BOQ. Can you see the red race bibs? (www.cnoutdoor.com)

The Team: #10 www.adventurejunkie.com.au

I was fortunate enough to have been invited to race with the experienced team previously known as 'Team Russia'. Sergey Kurov is the team captain and between himself and his wife Maria they have competed in many (if not most) of the different expedition and multi-stage adventure races across Europe. Maria has also previously captained the all female team 'Arena' and had high finishes in a number of expedition length races. Pavel is a highly experienced rogainer, having competed at numerous world championships competing more recently in expedition AR races.  I brought sprint AR experience, and bad jokes to the team, but the latter didn't help too much when Pavel and I were paddling together, as he doesn't speak any English.

The team (L to R): Pavel Syseov, Sergey Kurov, Maria Plyashechko, Aaron Dodd (me) and Jocelin.

Each team was also assigned a volunteer interpreter from the nearby Baise University to translate for us and ours was a lovely girl named 'Jocelin' or 'Lee Ching' in Cantonese. Her English was fantastic and she was always very enthusiastic to help us out. Having someone to run around each day and do small things for you makes a huge difference when you're backing up to race day after day and we are very appreciative of Jocelin for her help.

The road west from Leye. We raced through the tops of these hills on day 3.

The Opening Ceremony: Huge.
On the morning of the first day we had a 'grandly opening ceremony' in the main town square. It was at this point that it became apparent how big a deal this race was to the Chinese. I'm talking Chinese dragon dancers, swathes of Chinese media, traditional music, hot dog vans, lots of local dignitaries and the vice president of the Chinese Olympic Committee. It was quite a humbling experience actually and definitely pumped the nerves up a bit.  After a number of official speeches, Mark Thirwall from Chiru Endurance took an oath of fair play on behalf of the athletes and wowed the crowd with his Chinese. With that, the race was officially opened, fireworks launched, and we were straight into transition with 20 minutes to race start.

Us standing at the opening ceremony between Team Chiru Pro and Team Adidas TERREX (www.8264.net).

So, now that the formalities are out of the way, lets race!

Race Report: 2011 Bullen Merri Challenge

Hi there again sports fans,

Its been longer than usual since the last post as I've been spending nearly all of my spare time training and desperately trying to keep up to date with work.  As most of you would know I'm heading to China shortly for the Baise Leye International Outdoor Quest so since the high volume training block in January the goal has been to keep up a consistent training schedule, punctuated by a couple of short, hard races to keep me 'race fit' but with sufficient endurance for a multi-day race late in the 'season'.

Consequently, a fortnight ago we headed down to Camperdown for the inaugural Bullen Merri Challenge at Lake Bullen Merri on the outskirts of Camperdown (in Victoria's western district).  The race is deliberately scheduled for a late enough start that those that want to head down from Melbourne can do so on the morning of the race.  Arriving at the lake we were confronted by a typical Autumn morning, crisp and cool, with the hint of a light mist in the air.  The drive in had revealed that the bike course was going to be considerably hillier than I had expected, but that didn't particularly concern me and made a nice change from dead flat triathlon circuits.

Jarad, Alex and I leading the group away.

With all of the formalities out of the way we lined up for a typical deep water multisport start (read: regardless of the advertised start time the gun goes when the boats are in a line) and we were soon away. I settled into Alex's (Polizzi) wash early and he was similarly sitting on Jarad's (Kohlar) wash in front of him.  Luke (Haines) chose a wider line to the left and sat wide for a good portion of the first few km's.  After about 2km I started to drop off the pace and chose to let Alex and Co. go rather than blowing my shoulders apart so early in the race.  I soon had two teams competitors in K1s come past and I was able to tuck into their wash an maintain a comfortable tempo.

Coming out of the water at the end of the paddle.

As we did a 270 degree turn around the second last can I was able to make an assessment of where I was in relation to both Luke and Jarad, but more importantly Alex and the nearest competitors behind me.  I was only a few minutes down on Alex, and had a small 10-20 second lead on the next group of chasers being pulled along by Deanna Blegg. I used the opportunity to take a gel but my hydration tube was tangled up and I lost the small lead I had over the group while I stopped paddling to sort it out.  I entered transition at the same time as Deanna (as a side note this is the third time Deanna and I have finished a paddle split together in three races), and nearly fell A over T running up the wet grass into transition.

Adventure Skill: Arabesque.

Out onto the bike and I was quickly able to get into a good rhythm and pushed hard early knowing Alex was only about three minutes ahead.  As I'd worked out on the way in the bike course was considerably tougher than what I had expected and had two decent climbs each lap and a long power section on the flat however, I was well prepared riding Merida's new aero road frame (the 'Reacto').  By the end of the first lap I'd pulled Alex back to within a couple of hundred meters and was feeling pretty solid but not amazing.

The second lap of the bike was more controlled and I eased back slightly so as to not destroy myself for the run.  At this point I was also concerned about some tightness in my left shin that has been a recurring problem for me over many years and often flares up when I run off the bike. Regardless I push on, and decide that I'll worry about that if and when it happens. Shortly after Rohan Creed flies past in the aero position and I drop from fourth to fifth place.  Alex and I are still playing cat and mouse with me taking time out of him on the two climbs, and him powering away on the descents.  Finally, after turning onto the flat section along Cross Forest Road I pass him and hold a small lead into T2.

Up the hill into Camperdown for the second time.

Heading out on the run Alex and I settle into a comfortable tempo with Rohan only about 150m ahead.  Normally, I'd be in my element in this position but I felt quite tight generally in my lower body (hip flexors down) and was cursing that I hadn't had a massage prior to the race. The first 3k of the course was a slow uphill along a fire trail punctuated by cattle grates every few hundred meters which were a real pain to cross. Alex was starting to pick up the tempo, and I unfortunately was having trouble getting my legs to respond.  I stopped to quickly stretch out my shins which were now starting to bother me with the hope that I'd still be able to run out the remaining few k's of the run leg.

The start of the descent down to the finish.

The back section of the run course was along the lakes edge which was very similar to beach running but with more weedy vegetation that is quite inconsistent underfoot.  I can still see Alex in front and feel like I'm making some headway but I get passed by the fast moving Rhys Newsome who looks like he's on a mission (he is, and runs into third place).  We soon climb steeply up from the lake and head through a small forested area to make the spectrum of terrain complete. From there a quick run to the top of the hill felt a lot easier than it should have and similarly the final downhill stretch was quite enjoyable. Crossing the line I was in 6th place.

So what do we take away from the race?

Positives:

My paddle split was the real highlight of the day.  I'm still slower than the top boys, but I'm now within a sensible deficit that will allow me to compete more competitively for the places. This is 'positive positive' because it was one of the deficiencies I highlighted in my Lorne race report. I felt strong on the bike as well and toughed the day out despite some niggles on the run.  As with my Anaconda de-brief I'm still really happy with how my race nutrition is coming together after it plagued me last season.  Therefore, hard hit-out goal met!

Areas for improvement:

I obviously paid for not having my usual massage in the week leading up to the race and with the amount of trail running I've been doing that was a definite oversight.  I probably pushed the bike a touch too hard at the very start and this may have contributed also. Fortunately, both of these issues are easy fixes.

Progress from Previous Action Plan:

• Program more time in the open water to polish the ‘specific’ skills - N/A
• Properly establish target times - Much better this time around
• Use my support crew to keep me informed about my overall position - Done

New Action Plan:

The action plan from here is to:

• Incorporate massage into pre-race shedule (Wednesday/Thursday)
• Keep a lid on the pace until the legs have warmed up
• Program time in the open water to polish the ‘specific’ skills
• Properly establish target times
• Use my support crew to keep me informed about my overall position

So, where to from here?  As mentioned earlier I'm shortly heading to China for the Baise International Outdoor Quest which will be my first International Adventure Race. I'm feeling pretty positive because I've managed to maintain a strong and consistent training schedule since Lorne and I'm really looking forward to the challenge. I'm also grateful for the ongoing support I've received this season from Foz and the Fluid Movements / Peak Adventure coaching staff, Merida and the Melbourne Bicycle Centre - Clifton Hill without whom I wouldn't be as well equipped on race day. I'm sure there'll be lots of stories for the next blog.

Until then train smart, rest smarter.