There was some tight racing throughout the field and it came down to the last tramp/trek leg to sort out placings for this year’s Arrow Sydney 24 Hour Adventure Race.

Leg 1. Run leg of approx 5 k
Most of the teams took around one hour to find two checkpoints around the hills near Del Rio resort on the edge of the Hawkesbury River 1.5 hours from Sydney. Team Millie (Matt Blundell, Matthew Acheson, Zoe King and Peter Tedesco) was the first to finish with most of the other teams coming within 10 minutes of the leaders. The checkpoints were easy to find however route selection between the CP’s made the difference.

Leg 2. A return kayak leg of approx 32 k up river to “The Bridge to Nowhere”.
The water was flat for the start of the leg with a light tail breeze, once again Millie set the pace and increased their lead with a time of 2h34min. Team “Just Tripping” (Greg Bacon and Luke Su) had just passed the halfway mark on the outwards leg when Mille glided past them with around 10k to finish their paddle. The racing between the majority of the kayaks was very close with two tight packs within 10 minutes of the leaders. For those at the end of the field the last 30 minutes of the leg was spent dodging speed boats and punching into a stiff breeze and swell.

Leg 3. MTB approx 80 k. North of St Albans and returning on the Great Northern Rd, onto the ferry’s and back to The Del Rio Resort.
Who would have thought that catching a ferry would come into your race plan! The Hawkesbury river is very wide and only crossable by ferry. Competitors were required to catch two ferry’s during leg 3 mountain bike ride.
Teams were given a mandatory 1 hr break after the kayak, for the support crew to transport teams to St Albans for the start of the bike leg. The first 32 k was a fast flat section on the main road north with a steady climb up to the checkpoint on Mount Manning. Teams then turned south and headed down the Great Northern Rd - a rough, fun mountain biking and 4WD trail. It was a good fast ride, even faster for the top teams with a few rough technical sections in between. The quicker teams made it out of the mountains before dark with the remainder having a couple of hours in the rough stuff. When the leaders came off the mountain the race was on to catch the ferry’s. As it turned out, teams Millie, Tronk and Mountain Designs made it to one ferry with Crank catching up to the leaders only to miss the ferry by seconds. This cost Crank around 10 minutes.

Leg 4. Tramp/Trek 35k, mainly on fire trails with a steep/rock descent to pick up the last CP.

Mountain designs (Gary Sutherland, Brett Stevens, Britt Caling and Michael Paige) bolted to the lead on this leg taking around 5hrs with team Tronk (Christie Sym, Hugh Stoddart, Simon Mason and Richard Mountstephens) around 25minute behind. Only 10 minutes separated Crank and Millie for 3rd and 4th place, that’s close racing after 16 hours of competing.
Team Mountain designs finished 1st in 14 hour 3 minutes. Second team home was Tronk in 14 hours and 46 minutes followed by Team Millie in 15 hour 45 minutes.