2nd place! Epic race day, Super hot and cool to be racing up the front of the field. Even better to have made the podium.

Stage 1, 2nd place! That is not me, Hamish filled my spot because I was in hospital…

We were pouring water  over ourselves while standing anxiously at the startline.

Day 1 Race layout

My team mate is Marcel Hagener,  our team name is THULE Adventure Team 2

2km run with heaps of steps, followed by an 8km Biathlon. Biathlon means the two of us only get one bike. We must ‘leap frog’ each other. We chose to run/bike about 1km each. Then Straight into a 36km Mountain bike. a mix of road, single track and balancing on stock bank like dirt mounds that separate the rice fields. Amongst all that was a least 6km all up of bike carrying because of unridable sections, mainly rocky streams. then we were in the town river on sit-on-top kayaks. Carried them 400m to water(sucked) and a 9km paddle. averaged around 8kmph so very slow boats.

To end I had to climb up a rope ladder from the water to the centre of a bridge while team mate Marcel paddled to shore and met me where we ran 500m to the finish in 3hours 45mins.

We could not bridge the gap that Team THULE adventure set on us during the mountain bike but we could see them for most of the last Kayak in the distance. We raced the biathon amongst the top teams (see photo below) TBC, Team Redbull Outdoor (china), Tasmania, Thule Adventure .

Redbull china had a puncture in their tubed tyres and were set well back. We rode ahead with Team Tasmania for about 30mins into Mountain bike who set the pace for us. we were in 2nd and 3rd place. Tasmania had a bad chain suck on an rocky uphill bit. So Marcel spent the rest of the race by oursleves maintaining second and trying to gain some more time.

Race List of our competitors:

Open Male Teams

I had a wee crash on start of mountain bike. Blood everywhere! found out at finishline that my elbow has a very deep hole in it and flabs of skin hanging around. They sent me to hospital to clean it up and had a tetanus injection.

After today’s finish with the camera crew

Body in good nick otherwise. Found it hard to push myself hard in first hour due to lying in bed in hotel being lazy all week!

More photos to follow hopefully.

Jo Williams in a NZ mixed team: SOS REHYDRATE NZ with Will Sams had a nasty crash and has broken her wrist, a horrible thing to happen.

Results so far:

Today’s results and splits

Here is tomorrows plan:

Day 2 Layout