Team Blogs from CP12 (Mid Camp Tintaldra)

Team 22 - More Training Required
Quite the 36 hours! The trek from Falls Creek to Mt Bogan was through the night having left Falls at midnight. The high plains were freezing (literally) with a strong wind blowing and virtually knocking us off our feet. We finally summitted Victoria's highest mountain mid morning in blowing, white out conditions. Every now and then the weather cleared and the view was spectacular. The climb down to the start of the paddle was hundreds and hundreds of metres and really tough on knees. Having finally finished the 85km trek we arrived at the start of the paddle to be told the top section of the river was too dangerous and we had to walk another ten kms to the start of the next section (and we only had 1.5 hours to do it). There was no way we would make that so resigned ourselves that we would have to walk another 30kms to the bottom of the paddle. We walked through the night, slept for a few hours in a picnic ground (while it rained buckets) and arrived at the bottom of the paddle at 7am. Once again we were greeted with more news - everyone was moving to mid camp due to the dangerous weather high up in the mountains. We've been at mid camp for almost 24 hours and will be racing again this afternoon - can't wait. We are all well - but a little sore. Love to everyone.

Team 26 cyclepath: where to start? Only one team has a chance to finish the course as designed. We climbed nearly 28000 feet in the first 2.5 days in terrible weather. The team is in good sprirts after sleep and food. our feet are pretty much ripped with blisters and cheese feet. our first trek was a great route choice in regards to time but had us climbing down a cliff and fording rivers, but ALL of this was on trail...go figure, Even with getting misplaced we gained about 4 hours on other teams. all three bikes are in various stages of disrepair, we have been canilbalizing parts from cyn's bike.........she is still with us....and missed. We are about to head out..6:00 our time into the snow filled passes. All our love to all who are reading......karl

Team 33 Securify.co.nz Jerome here with another update. Great beer at the pub last night as the race was postpond 24 hours. We got to CP9A (a checkpoint put in at a late stage) in fifth place and gpoing ok - conditions were cold but nothing we weren't ready for - just a reflection of where we train. Have worked out the bike sections were all designed by a downhiller. The up hills were designed for shuttling or charirlifts and some great flowing downhills - unfortunately the logistics team had forgetten to supply the shuttling truck so the bike push was karapoti but 5 times longer. Hope the family are good at home enjoying sleeping in a bed etc. Got the sleepmonsters bad arfter the paddle luckily Colin was sharp enough to take over and did a great job. Anywau off now to do some more journeying...xxxJ Dave here. Loving the 1.5 hour kips. Bit disappointed by the break inthe race, it was painful stopping and will be worse starting again. The team are pulling me through. Jo just did a great job strapping my feet - hope it lasts. Wish us luck (the others are getting excited about being 5th, I'm just happy to be here, alive and still moving. XXX love to all.

Team 10 Starfactor
Hardest part of the race has been waiting 30 mins for this blog
Steve's feet look worst than road kill, nosey sounds looks and tastes like a sick walrus, and Rod was an angel this morning presenting us with coffee in bed. Terry just missed a wombat at 40km/h downhill around 2am. Enjoyed crunching ice on Mt Bogong. Enjoyed a fast paddle. Had many treats at midcamp at Tintaldra and are now about to trek on really sore feat- rogaine coming up which we look forward to. Stay turned to starfactor- we were called to Midcamp from ride at Eskdale.

sUNDAY 23RD 10.20am TEAM GOLDFISH Happy 21st Birthday back home to niece Stephanie. Hope your party tonight is a smashing success, even without us. Goldfish are now supersaturated with sleep, and raring to go. Couldn't quite convince Craig and Louise to re-include our favourite Murray kayak leg as the restart. This was going to be our reward for finishing the 210km cycle, so maybe its fair since we only got 85km through the cycle. That was still two big uphills, and two wonderful downhills. Weather has been particularly kind to Goldfish. Enjoyed the stars while cycling, and the sound of rain and gale-force winds on our tin shelter at the side of the road. Mardi thinks there should have been bigger windows for a 3-star motel, and the junk on the ground made things a little squeezy. Glass in the small windows would have helped keep some hazy rain from waking us. We stepped outside and the rain stopped and wind blew the clouds away for the half-moon to light our morning. Next stop was a puncture repair for Pete. He must be carrying too many snacks and overloading the tyre. Rick filled in time by writing a mulitude of post cards. Pit stop Pete is getting faster at tyre changes after earlier practice the previous night. A few bumps further down the road, and the tandem rear tyre exploded. This seemed like race-stopping disaster. Two teams went by, stopping to help with advice, but unfortunately no replacement tyre. What to do? Could we walk 140km to the next transition? Or find a bike shop? Lets try the locals first. So we called in on Donna and Terry. Terry was out mowing the lawns before the blizzards hit. Donna said she'd never seen the barometer reading lower. They'd already provided their loungeroom for Team Tangerine with tea for an hour's respite. Donna's fishing mate Laurie lived just up the road and she thought he might ride a bike. So Saturday morning wake-up call got us pushing the tandem to Laurie's for repairs. We pressed the doorbell and the gate opened automatically. We were greeted by Laurie and his menagerie, including dog Joe, and Andrew the peacock. In Laurie's toolshed was a tandem pushbike, assuredly the only other tandem in this part of the world. His tandem now has no back tyre and ours is running again. We shared tea and delicious imaginary blueberry muffins with Laurie before heading out for our next uphill. Filled with kindness we cycled up the mountained and enjoyed flying down the valley below. At the base of the valley we were picked up and driven in luxury by Lisa back to the MRC. Great possum stew by the piano at the local cafe beats a cold dinner by the road side.

Team 27 Blackheart Salomon
Hi all (it's Matt) - Well the race has been stopped and everyone is now at midcamp (somewhere I can't remember!) The weather looks pretty ferocious up high and we'll probably still be here tonight at a rough guess. We scored cheap accommodation in a bunk house behind the local pub.. $5 per night including a towel.. Awesome. I just have to stretch out my last $20 until we can get back to Thredbo. We had a pub meal last night and got a good 10 hours sleep. Everyone's body has hit recovery mode and we're feeling pretty washed out and sore. We were the second of three teams to make the end of the 210km ride, arriving at the end at about 1pm to be told that the race was being suspended. I sort of wish they'd found us earlier as we'd spent about 60km of that ride pushing bikes uphill (and that's probably exaggerating, but not by much). Anyway, we have a captains meeting at 10am to discuss options for continuing the race... Should be an interesting debate. We are just waiting for our big brekkie here, and Wayne is drawing a schematic of the last leg of the race on the tablecloth. Maria has just woken up with a blood nose and Andy is wandering around looking to acquire some coffee for the team. I hope everyone is enjoying the coverage... These blogs are apparently going down really well! We will probably get a chance to write again before restart... ciao.

Team 24 Tangerine
Hi everybody! Without banging on about the weather too much - it was bad. Neat for a while to be riding around while it was snowing but the novelty wore off about the time our extremities went numb. Some highlights along the way include a 90min kip on the front living room floor of Donna's house at 8:30pm Friday night before we headed out into the anticipated blizzard - we even had a hot cup of tea! We were glad to hear later that her husband finally got around to mowing the lawn on Saturday morning (she'd been pestering him all afternoon). Happily camped at mid-camp now and looking at our puffy feet and hands contemplating having to get on with it again. Otherwise we're all well and pretty pleased with how we're going. Andrew has been a revelation and by far the strongest on the team. He's been carting multiple bikes up all the hills and giving us the hurry up look quite a bit. On the home stretch now, assuming the race kicks off again through a small weather window, but we can almost smell the finish line from here. Only a geo to go... Love and kisses to all at home.

Team 18 Austrelaps
All novices at expedition length, we're marvelling at our puffy hands and feet and 3 second goldfish memories. Fortunately the other effect seems to be nearly all situations seem funny, so there has been a fair bit of hysterical laughter. A 24 hour holiday in the middle of the race seemed like a great idea when we were told, just short of checkpoint 9A on the epic bike leg, but having stopped we can feel our motivation ebbing away pretty quickly. We were actually enjoying ourselves on the bike leg - the stay awake game was spot the sleeping team (two tents in the bus shelter, one at the school, one in a carport, one in the hayshed...). Chris is still feeling great - towing and extra load carrying and still leading us all through. Nathan has been a star navigator - at least we havent had extra distance by nav issues thus far. Bleeksie and Lib are in survival mode - in fact we should have been seeking sponsorship from voltaren and called ourselves Team Voltaren...our biggest crisis thus far has been when the voltaren and drugs bag was mislaid for several hours. So now we are trying to recuperate, sleep, self massage and re-group sufficiently to take off and at the very least survive to the finish line.

Team OUTDOOR AUSTRALIA
Well lots has happened since last time. After leaving Falls Creek we trekked up the hills towards Victoria's Highest
point Mt Bogong. Feet hurting and very cold and sleepy we tried to get some sleep at Roper Hut.We spent a cold 3 hours sleeping on the floor because all the fire wood was to green or wet. At about 4am we continued along the trail stopping for breakfast then making our up to ridge to the trig. The weather up top got worse and worse with sideways rain and sleat. The trail down was a knee killer and everyone was hurt by the end of our 6km, 2.5hr desent. We made goodtime along the road trying to make the paddle in time. We made it with only an hour to get to the first cut off bridge. We paddled the hardest that we had ever done, our legs were so sore that we were all keen to stay paddling and not miss the dark zone. Finishing the paddle we decided to get some sleep and start in the morning in to the mountains again. THEN the race was put on hold. Now we are in mid camp, we have found ourselves a cabin in the caravan park with lots of rain and snow around us. Recovery is going along well, with everyone suffering from foot fatigue and sore knees. We are all keen to get going and get to the finish now and the rest has served us well. With still alot to go spirits are high and we can't wait for the restart at 6pm this evening.