Not the Larapinta Stage Race - Day 1

Saturday, 18 August 2018

I think I have blogged about this before, but about this time last year I decided it would be a great idea for Jon and I to enter the Larapinta Stage Race which is a 4 day running race held over stretches of the famous Larapinta Trail which travels through the McDonnell ranges near Alice Springs.  My motivation wasn't to race at all, but to get to cover a fair bit of the trail without having to carry a heavy pack, and also to have all the logistics taken care of. There was a shorter version which I was going to enter (11k, 20, 22, 30km), and a longer version which Jon would have done.  

When entries finally opened 6 months later I realised to my horror that the entry fee was going to be $1700 for both of us.  That was crazy, so I immediately ditched that idea and decided instead that we should just go there at the same time and simply hire a car and do our own thing (since I'd booked leave for those dates and all).  With this new plan in mind I immediately booked flights.  Not more than 2 weeks later we received Emma and Rory's wedding invitation and had to adjust all those flights by a few days.  Anyway -the end result is that we are here in Alice Springs, not doing the Larapinta Race.   And it's been great so far. We arrived at about 1pm, went to the supermarket, then checked into our nice AirBNB accommodation.  After a late lunch (we were starving after the early start at the caravan park), we headed out to Telegraph Station and went for a run around some of the trails there.  

After being burnt by being too organised and booking the trip too early - thus having to change flights at great cost when we got the wedding invitation, I hadn't really made any more plans for this trip (which is unlike me). In fact once the new flights were sorted out the only preparation actually I did was to buy the Larapinta Trail map and to book a hire car - the cheapest hatch possible.  

So when I finally opened up the map on the plane to Alice Springs I realised that one of the destinations we'd been told not to miss was only accessible by 4wd.   Oops.  That meant or Toyota Yaris probably wasn't going to get us there.   Once off the plane we decided we'd just try our luck at the Budget counter and ask the person behind the desk if she thought we'd be able to make it there in the Yaris.  As we expected she said we'd need a full size 4wd for that trip but before we could even begin to ask how much it would cost to get one, she offered us a FREE upgrade ! Free!  yay!  So that turned out really well!  So the funny thing is, if I'd done the research before we left I would have probably booked a 4wd (at 3 times the price probably), so being un-organized has saved us money! Just like it would have if I'd been a bit less organised with booking the flights in the first place. Hmmm.  Whilst you can't rely on getting a free upgrade for being unorganized I do think I need to learn from these experiences and try NOT to lock everything in the moment I think of a great plan!