2012 Tullah Challenge

Saturday, 10 November 2012

The only thing I don't like about the Tullah Challenge is that Tullah is a 5 or so hour drive from Hobart. And it's not easy driving, it's tough tiring driving!  That's the ONLY thing I don't like about it though - everything else I love about it starting with..

It's a beautiful place. Surrounded by proper west-coast mountains. Jon went for a warm-up run this morning and skipped some stones across Lake Rosebery.

We stay at Tullah Lakeside Lodge - which sounds flashy but it's totally not!  It's $120 a night and we get to have this view:

I love the paddle because it's short (4.5k) - this was particularly important this year given my lack of paddle training! The course down a cool little gorge then back across the open parts of the lake.

My leg starts at 12 noon - which means a leisurely morning, then a frantic 25 minutes of racing - then I'm all done for the weekend! I get so nervous before these races that the sense of elation when I'm done it huge! 

Once all the paddlers have finished and had time to get changed, the cyclists all line up for the start:

That's Jon looking towards the camera there. Last year he came home in the middle a bunch sprint for first place (which was great!) so he was careful to position himself at the front at the start to give himself the best chance of staying at  with the front group again despite not having ridden his borrowed road bike since the Winter Challenge in August.   

I didn't get any photos of Jon in the run as I was too busy cheering. He was a bit dissappointed not to improve his run time from last year but having done more than 12 hours of running already this week it's not surprising. He was only a few seconds down on last year.

After the race there's still time to play in the lake with the kids. Oh and I should mention that while we were busy the kids played on the free jumping castle, rode their bikes around the bike path, played by the lake, hung around with us during the changes of each leg, then finally watched a dvd in our room while the presentations were on.   Easy.

Here's Jett having a test paddle of my boat:

Last year Jon and I went pretty well. I set a record for fastest female vets paddler but the opposition team set one for fastest female vets runner and we were just beaten by 17 seconds overall so we left empty handed prize-wise!

This year though, we really brought home the loot.

This is more due to the organisers giving out more prizes this year than last year but I am happy to report that our team No Logo has finally pulled out a WIN in the mixed teams category - since we started No Logo (basically when I took up paddling) we've chalked up four  second places (Freycinet Challenge 2011 & 2012, Tullah 2011 and the IceBreaker 2012) and 2 thirds (Winter Challenge 2011,2012) - and we'd been beaten by the same opposition team in three of those four second places, generally just by a little bit!  

So you can guess how happy we are to finally get a win! Amazingly my paddle leg was actually 15 seconds quicker than last year (so I lowered my record) despite my aforementioned lack of training, Jon did manage to come back in with the first pack of cyclists, and his run leg was good enough to win him the fastest veterans run time which this year (due to the generous prize pool) meant that both of us picked up fluffy red towels for our individual efforts!  Then with the team wining we also picked up arty earthenware mugs, and glass trophies! Yay!

This event is a great event regardless of our result - it's really well organised, all the gear is scrutinised for safety, the volunteers are great, it's a great area, and just a really relaxed friendly day.  

Even though we love it we've decided not to come back next year though, as the Tullah Challenge clashes with the Huon Show (which the kids love) and also Jon really needs to return to defend his 'Best Cake Baked By A Male' title that he won two years ago.  We'll be back for sure the year after though I recon.