Noah's ARC

Our first actual adventure race of the season, the ARC! (Adventure Racing Coromandel) For this race, all the adventure racers from New Plymouth split to make 3 even teams to give everyone more experience for the bigger races coming up. I was captain of our team, which included (from left to right) me, Bronwyn, Hannah and George.

George's dad is pretty much a pro photographer, so most of the pictures in this post are from him.

My ARC this year went pretty much like this:

Friday night:

Check in and race briefing

receive maps

plan route and final packing

Studying the maps and planning a route

sleep

Saturday:

Race kicked off with a raft building and paddle leg

   

then a short bike

  

a run/trek on a sick coast trail, including a stream bash to a waterfall

 

a long bike section, including a optional section through the local bike park, a rifle shoot, and a 300m tunnel!

 

a run/trek, including a zipline thingy across a river and a swim to get 2 checkpoints.
 

This was by far the most exciting part of our race, as the trail we took ended just short of the zipline due to a rock slide, and rather than run back and around to the track on the other side of the river, we decided to slide/fall down a 5m cliff/bank, cross the river and climb a equally as foreboding cliff on the other side. We made it with only minor scrapes and bruises, but everyone was pretty scared, because we dislodged some pretty big rocks, I caught the two girls after falling down the bank, and then we had to use a rope to get up the other side! It certainly made for a good post-race story though!     

one last final bike

finish!

dinner and debrief

The three teams from New Plymouth took first, second and third, and Danny and Oak's junior teams cleaned up as well, so we were all pretty happy and exhausted on the way home :D

A massive thanks to our support crews (i.e our parents) and our amazing coach, Mr. Hewlett. We couldn't have done it without you!!!