Last year I learnt that the Spirited Women’s Adventure race was coming to Alexandra and decided this was some-thing I could challenge myself with and hopefully be able to complete. We got a team of 4 together with a combined age of 235 years and entered the Masters women’s short course option.

The race consists of a mix of hiking 5-10km, mountain biking 15-20km, kayaking about 2km and a mystery event along with finding our route, navigating and checking all 39 check points.

I had never done an adventure race and with knees that have moderate arthritic changes needed to put in some serious training and over the five months after the entry went in. I swam for cardio fitness, cycled over 400km and walked using Forrest Hill as one of my main training places as well as doing some kayaking over the Christmas break. Nordic walking certainly helped with the hills.

On the 14^th of February our team went to the briefing and were given our route maps, dropped our bicycles of at Chatto Creek and then spent time deciding the most efficient routes to take to get from one transition stage to the next and being able to get all 39 check points!

The short course had the last start time at 10.45am and was in two waves for the 79 teams. In all we had 9 transitions and these were all mixed between cycling and walking with the kayaking being at the Lower Manorburn Reservoir. Our mystery activity was also there and this consisted jumping 5.1metres into the dam from a rock face. Our team all completed this and did not incur penalty points.

After 7 hours 31 minutes we completed the race with smiles on our face. We finished 4^th in the Masters section and 43^rd out of the 89 teams that ranged from high school students up to our age group. Over-all pretty satisfied with our achievement as a group with a combined age of 235 years!