Rebecca at XPD Adventure Race

Those were the highlights of the XPD adventure race I just finished with Australian based team AROC. I was invited down to Tasmania to compete with my good friends from AROC because their team captain Alina is injured.
Racing as a guest on a captain-less team of friends was the perfect way to start the racing season. AROC is well known in Australia and worldwide as one of the best AR teams in the world, so racing with them was an honor. In addition to being fast, they also have the reputation of being very light hearted, silly and a blast to be around. I was not disappointed.

Rebecca Rusch

I went into the race after coming of a great season of skiing in Idaho without much running or cycling. A few spin classes and a lot of Nordic skiing were all that I had under my belt. I was a bit nervous about my fitness and keeping up with these guys. As it turned out, it was a fantastic training week and as the race went on, I think I was getting more fit and getting into the AROC groove.

The race took us 4 days, 21 hours and 55 minutes. We slept 10.5 hours during the race, including one big 4.5 sleep with a bed, a shower, and hot bacon/eggs at the mandatory mid camp stop. We led for the whole race and ended up winning by about 11 hrs, but we didn't really know that during the race. We knew we had a lead, but not by how much. It was not until the mandatory mid camp stop that we could gauge how close the next team was behind us. At that point, we had a 4.5 hour lead, but still with a ton of racing left to go.

Knowing we had a bit of a cushion allowed us time to stop at a few pubs for pies and chips. I even had a swig of a local's ice cold beer at one stop. We also made a few phone calls back home to check in.

The racing had a ton of cycling, about 350km all together including one really long 156km leg. It was great cycling training for me for my upcoming mountain bike races. The race wasn't as technically challenging as most of us were used to, but it was a fantastic tour of Tasmania from end to end. Got to climb Mt. Ossa, the highest point of the course and a very technical rock scramble, in a torrential downpour in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, a lot of the killer views from high peaks were swallowed up by darkness for us.

For me, Tasmania felt like a mix between New Zealand and the Australian mainland. Not as much desert terrain as Australia and not quite as mountainous as New Zealand.
One of the most fantastic parts of the race was the massive amount of wildlife that we got to see. Yes, Tasmanian Devils DO EXIST and they're really cute, but vicious. We saw three of them during the raced and I thought I was getting rushed by one who came diving toward my bike tire. As it turns out, he was just diving into a culvert under the road to get away from me. Each night was like wild kingdom with the sounds of rustling in the trees, red eyes looking at you and furry things scurrying by every few minutes.
Riding the bikes at night was like a video game of dodge ball. We saw wallabies, possum, snakes, Tasmanian devils, owls, an eagle, a platypus and my favorite, the wombats and an echidna. The wombats were like the animal version of a weeble. They were super fat with teeny feet/legs. Basically a furry bowling ball and they were not afraid of us. I was able to get really close to one and just look him in the eye before he wandered off.

Rebecca and team AROC

The last night of the race was a bit of sleepwalk. We had a long, long uphill climb up Mt. Wellington, in the middle of the night, of course. On top we had a great view of Hobart and the finish area, hours away.
We rappelled off the Organ Pipes, an amazing climbing area at the top of the peak. The descent on trails and walk through town to the last kayak leg was a bit of a blur. We'd slept 1.5 hours each for the previous two nights and this was our final push to the finish.

All the Red Bull was gone, we were sick of our race food and smelling the finish line. We all started forgetting each other's names, Tom started making up words to songs, I started panicking that the next team was right on our heels and looking back for headlamps. We ended up running down to the boat launch for the last 30 minutes because I was SURE we'd been passed in the dark and that another team was already on the water. Obviously, it was just our minds playing tricks on us and we still ended up with a huge lead at the finish.

Now, after the boot camp training week in Tasmania, I'm gearing up for my next race, a 70 mile NORBA MTB marathon race in Arizona at the end of March. For me, that's relatively short and the fast pace will be a big eye opener for what's to come with bike racing this year. Since there's still snow on the ground at home, it will be great to get to the desert and get on some dirt.

Read more about Rebecca at www.rebeccarusch.com
Or learn more about the race at Tasmania XPD Adventure race