To the Max! (part 5)
Nov. 23rd, 2009 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hnpccYep, it's that time of year again.
Friday night I headed up to Sydney with Dean. We had booked on a Jetstar flight arriving at 9.20pm. This was good, as it meant we should be able to meet up with my brother, who was driving up from Canberra and would be arriving at a similar time. Jetstar naturally decided to thwart those plans, and our flight was delayed by an hour ("storms in Sydney"). By the time we landed it was 10.30pm, the taxi queue was enormous, the hotel bus desk had shut up shop and so we took the remaining option and caught the over-priced train into the city and to our hotel. Fortunately the hotel had allowed Stu to leave his bags even while he couldn't check in (I'd made the bookings) so he'd spent the intervening time in the pub.
The next morning we all got up reasonably early and Stu and I headed down to register for the Urban Max. The registration desk was open from 7.45am-8.45am - originally I'd suggested meeting for breakfast at 7am and heading down about 7.30am, but delayed that by half an hour because I was quite tired after getting to bed at midnight. So we arrived at the registration desk at 8.15am to discover that the queue for the 'mixed' teams was out the door. *sigh* We joined the end of it and waited. 15 minutes later we hadn't actually moved. The way they had it set up was two queues for female teams, two queues for male teams and three for mixed. The two volunteers doing the male teams had no one left, so we wandered over to ask if they could start registering mixed teams. No, they didn't have the right information for it. So they stood around doing nothing while we all waited.
The organisers announced that the team briefings would be delayed by 10 minutes "while they finished registering everyone". Those of us still in the queue laughed - we hadn't moved yet, it seemed unlikely that they were going to finish registering us in that time. As it was they started the briefings 15 minutes later, while people were still queueing. The main problem was that this year they'd decided to go with giving teams t-shirts, rather than the netball-style bibs of previous years. We'd pre-ordered sizes, but of course sizes are variable, and so people kept trying on the shirts, realising that they didn't fit and then swapping them for a larger size. When we finally made it to the front of the queue there were no sizes larger than M left (I'd ordered an XL for Stu and an L for me) and so we just took the shirts and the map, shrugged and made the shirts fit. I've no idea how the team behind us, both of whom were quite large and broad (we're talking both around 6ft and 100+kg here), made out.
At 9.10am - 10 minutes after we were due to start - they'd finally finished registering all the mixed teams and the race started. "Your clue is - with the volunteers outside!" Stu raced off to grab an envelope while I hung back to the side a bit. Part two of the problem with the t-shirts - everyone looks identical and finding your teammate again was tricky. After a couple of minutes we had managed to reconnect and I rang![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
astrocave in Melbourne to start googling answers for us. One of these years I'll have someone to ring in Sydney, really. Heh.
After some brief consultation and frantic scribbling of addresses on one map we were off to find our first checkpoint - and it was only 9.30am!
The first checkpoint clue had a photo attached and read:
Checkpoint 3: Biggles was a loved friend of the rocks community, find his statue to complete this checkpoint.
astrocave had given us a street address for the statue, which I had written down as "Acherden/Plasair dog corner". The phone connection was pretty bad, as the statue turned out to be on the corner of Atherden and Playfair Sts as well as being hidden behind a market stall tent (the Saturday market was in full swing). We found the cute dog statue, clipped our card and headed for our next checkpoint:
Bobbi would like to invite all participants to her studio on Castlereagh street for a detailed lesson on what goes up must come down!
Againastrocave had come up trumps here, giving us the street address for the pole dancing studio we were heading to. We headed via Circular Quay in the hopes of seeing a Big Issue salesperson, but didn't find one and started up Castlereagh St instead. Well, after we'd worked out from the map that we needed to go up Young St we did. Running along the street we noticed several other teams heading in the same direction. Yay! One team passed us and headed into a building which was not the address I had. We followed them in.
"Are you sure this is right? Cos I've got it as being a poledancing studio at 203, and this is 178."
"Really? This was a guess - we'll go with you."
We headed back out from the lift of the law firm we were in (I don't know - apparently there was a dance studio on an upper level) and kept running along. Near the corner of Castlereagh and Park St we found a Big Issue seller!! After last time this was regarded by me at least as nothing short of a miracle. Not only was he a Big Issue seller but he was the most helpful one I've ever encountered - the minute he saw us he opened the issue to the right page and told us where the location was. We thanked him profusely, bought the magazine and headed up to the pole-dancing studio.
There was a queue there, and we debated briefly as to whether we should head for the Big Issue checkpoint and come back or stay put. In the end, after checking the map, we stayed put and the queue moved quite quickly into the studio. There were 5 teams going at a time, and one person from each team had to firstly swing correctly around the pole (right knee up against the pole, left leg hooked around it, graceful... mostly) and secondly climb the pole and touch the ceiling. I took this one for our team. The swinging move wasn't too bad, but I had to get a boost from Stu to get to the top of the pole and then I was clinging on for dear life before flailing extremely briefly at the ceiling and sliding back down the pole almost immediately. How the hell do people do this in heels? All this while the course photographer took pictures, which I will of course be buying. Fortunately they gave us the checkpoint and we headed back down to find the Big Issue clue, which was checkpoint 4. The picture was of a statue of a boar's head, which would have stumped us completely had we not encountered our extremely helpful Big Issue seller. On the way back we checked with him again that it was at the top of Martin Place, near Sydney Hospital - something we confirmed with a coffee vendor (or three) in Martin Place and finally finding the wishing well checkpoint right out the front of Sydney Hospital.
On to checkpoint 7: 33o51'50.24"S 15o13'16.94"E Fortunatelyastrocave had been able to get the map to work for this one and had given the location as being "near Woolloomooloo Cove, on Mrs Macquarie's drive." I'd circled it as being probably "The Andrew Charlton Swimming Pool" - we were both correct but it turned out not to be swimming. It was kayaking in Woolloomooloo Cove! Unlike last year there was only 2 other teams there when we arrived, so we were able to jump straight into a kayak and start heading along the course. This time it was a straight up to some poles and back, which was much easier than last year's square course. Also there's a lot less of a current in Woolloomooloo Cove than in Rose Bay so we got that done quite quickly. Just past 11am and we already had 4 checkpoints! Only 10 to go!
Our next checkpoint was located in Kings Cross, so we started running towards it, managing to catch a 311 bus outside Harry's Cafe de Wheels. Finally a combination of studying the Sydways and staying a couple of days up in Sydney attempting to memorise public transport pays off! This was taking us to checkpoint 11:
The Elk was last seen wondering (sic) the streets of Sydney's red light district. Track down the Elk where the potbellies will have a distinct advantage during this challenge.
We jumped off the bus just after it turned off Macleay St and jogged up to Darlinghurst Rd. Againastrocave had come through with an address, which we promptly managed to miss the first time. Seriously, doing this kind of thing gives you a new appreciation for the Amazing Racers - half the time they're in countries which don't have street numbers looking for a shop while seriously fatigued. We had a full street address and still managed to go past it. Fortunately we realised and turned around just in time to see the Bucks Night teams coming out of the Elk. The Bucks Night teams were 4 teams, one of whom was obviously the groom. He'd be the one in prison issue garb carrying the ball and chain then. We'd also encountered them ordering beer in the Rocks, and getting pictures of the buck with the quite busty barmaid there. Less about the racing, more about the social side I think. :-)
The challenge in the Elk turned out to be a choice between balancing two coins on your raised elbow and catching them with that arm, or flipping two coasters up and catching them with the same hand. Stu had a couple of goes with the coins before switching to the coasters and getting them first go. Both of us were also very grateful for the iced water provided, as the day was heating up and very muggy already.
From the Elk we faced a choice. My original idea was to head to Kings Cross Station and catch the train to Edgecliff, near checkpoint 10:
Paddington Bear wants to get away from the hustle and bustle of the Sydney CBD and try his hand at a game of bowls. Come and keep him company and have a go yourself!
But we were also near a stop for checkpoint 6:
The Britstop is an original 1949 London Double Decker Bus. Marked on your map is the circular route and five stops where you can catch the Britstop. Once on board the bus you will be faced with a mystery challenge to complete this checkpoint.
We chose to head for the bus stop, where the Bucks Night crew were already waiting. "We'll need to speed it up a bit" said one "we've only got three stamps."
Given it was approaching 11.30am he was right. We waited for about 7 minutes, then I realised we could head for checkpoint 13 and it was likely to be quicker than the bus, which had to go down Oxford St and was probably mired in traffic.
So off we jogged to the next checkpoint:
"Putt for dough but drive for show" - locate the biggest driving range in the southern hemisphere where your team will be required to launch off the tee, John Daly style."
OK I've no idea who John Daly is, but againastrocave had come up with the location of the Moore Park golf course, which apparently has the largest driving range. Not only that but we managed to catch another bus to it from Taylor Square! This Sydways thing was paying off.
We were on the second level of the driving range, and our aim was to drive a ball past the 100m signs. This was probably the funniest checkpoint on our race. Neither Stu nor I have played much golf - actually I've played none - and we were abysmal. Fortunately there were no other teams there at the time, so we could both fail simultaneously. Stu sliced consistently off to the side, while I managed to miss the ball every second go. After about 5 minutes the volunteer told me she'd give it to us if we managed to roll the ball past the 100m sign.
"Cool!" I said, and missed again as Stu hit the side nets with a powerful drive. She gave up and gave us the stamp when we finally got it past 50m.
"We were terrible!" said Stu.
"You're not the worst" said the volunteer. "We've had some teams lose the clubs over the edge."
We giggled and headed back out to look for the next checkpoint:
Checkpoint 12: Make your way to Centennial Park where you have to track down the Urban Max crew located at the "Education Precinct".
On our map was a track marked "learners cycleway circuit". So that's where we headed, catching a bus down Alison Parade and crossing a footbridge and bushbashing our way over a dune towards it ("this is the Urban Max?!"). When we got there we found... no one. No other teams, nothing. Well, a lot of families having BBQs or picnics, racegoers heading off to Randwick, cyclists and inline skaters galore and a surprisingly high number of people playing sport or doing Boot Camp sessions in the midday heat - but no race people anywhere. This was worrying. We started trekking along the roadway, searching for anything that looked like it might be the checkpoint. Finally we spotted another team, who had completed checkpoint 12 and were now very lost on the way to the golf. We swapped checkpoint locations, pointed each other in the right directions and headed off again. The checkpoint was nowhere near the learners cycleway circuit (which we never managed to find, incidentally) but was hidden behind trees and a toilet block near the fly fishing pond.
This checkpoint required one person to be blindfolded and "ride" a bike around a circuit while the other person guided them. Stu "rode" - actually walked while seated on the bike as it was impossible to ride without running into things - while I guided, carefully remembering which way was left and which was right. As I'm left/right blind this actually took more effort than you'd think. Fortunately Stu has the innate left/right thing happening and doesn't need to look at his hands while remembering which way to turn. I started giggling midway through when I realised that trying to do this withkirstenfleur would have been much trickier - neither of us can tell left from right without assistance. Heh.
From here we started bushbashing our way back through the park to find checkpoint 5:
This State Heritage listed Reservoir was constructed between 1866 and 1878 and was part of Sydney's third water supply system. Locate the reserve that was built on top of the reservoir where a pair of clowns awaits with your next challenge.
astrocave had given us the address "Paddington Oxford St Res Gardens" (that's how I'd scribbled it down anyway) and our map marked three reservoirs at the top of Centennial Park, one of which was near Oxford St. So we headed in that direction, emerging at the top of the park near Ocean St where we encountered another team who were heading for the learner's cycleway. We set them right and asked about the reservoirs.
"They're miles away - up on Oxford St."
We could have headed up Ocean St to Paddington Bowls club, but thought that we could complete the activity at the reservoir and get back to the Bowls before the checkpoints closed at 2pm. By now it was around 1pm and we were racing the clock a bit. We ran up the first listed reservoir. Nothing. We ran up the second listed reservoir. Still nothing. Nothing at the third either. We grabbed a map of the park (and filled up our water bottles again) and tried the third one again. By this point it was 1.20pm and we were seriously in doubt as to whether we could make it to the bowls club in time or not. We decided not, and instead caught a bus heading back towards the city.
Naturally 5 minutes after we'd done this we saw the Britstop bus heading past in the other direction. *sigh*
Another team boarded the bus and we asked if they'd managed to find the reservoir clue. "Oh it's another two stops up - follow us."
It was next to Paddington Town Hall on Oxford St, about 1.3km away from where we'd thought it was. We jumped off the bus when they told us to, and headed down to find the clowns. The clowns wanted one of us (Stu again) to make a balloon poodle. After bursting three balloons - two by the clown while demonstrating, one by Stu - we had a very cute poodle and another clue. Back onto the bus we headed to look for checkpoint 8:
According to a 14th Century legend, the Barcelos Cockerel became a symbol of faith, justice and good luck. Today it is the symbol of a famous restaurant chain who's (sic) flavour, service and quality is legendary. Find the Surry Hills restaurant and have your photo taken with the Barcelos Cockerel.
Againastrocave had come up with a street address, and we headed towards Crown St on the bus. At the intersection with Crown St we realised that we were at least 300 numbers away from the restaurant, so stayed put and headed to Central Station for checkpoint 2:
This site was founded on 4 February 1989 to commemorate the contribution of Spanish and Portuguese speaking people to Australia. The Lord Mayot of Sydney, Cl, Frank Sartor, officially opened the new Ibero-American Plaza on 7 September 2000.
astrocave had told us it was "near Central Station" and we hopped off the bus and started following other teams right to it. Once we got near it was really obvious what it was - the statues were very... Spanish. And imposing. While clicking the checkpoint we overheard one team ask another how far the Nandos restaurant was.
"Oh it's just up the road there".
We promptly followed the team straight to the exhausted looking chicken, who was sweltering in the costume in the 35oC heat and really over having their photo taken every two seconds. Together with two other teams we headed for a bus stop and took stock of where we were at.
It was after 2.30pm so we couldn't do either the Paddington Bowls checkpoint or checkpoint 14 whose clue was:
Solve the anagram to give you the location of checkpoint 14. A challenge of marksmanship awaits.
The anagram was: VEE3LL DEHHBRUSOIAR PNIOSGPS NRCETE, which we'd solved as "Level 3 Harbourside Shopping Centre" (took us a while to get 'Harbourside').
We might just be able to do checkpoint 1, whose clue was firstly in Chinese and then had the additional information of:
Comprising of a dead yellow box tree, 23 ct gold leaft and terracotta tile, it stands 10.7m high. Find the tree to complete this checkpoint.
I asked one of the other teams if they'd been to it, and was told "Oh yeah, it's right next to Paddy's markets". We waited briefly on Crown St for a bus, then decided to bail and head for Cleveland St where there was definitely a bus heading towards Central Station again. Just as we approached the street a bus came, so we frantically ran through the moving traffic and managed to catch it just in time. 2.50pm.
We arrived at Central station and started running downhill (thank God) to Paddy's markets. There on the corner of Hay and Ultimo Sts (I think) was the tree! The volunteers were just packing up as we panted up at 2.55pm, but they stamped our cards and we sprinted back up to George St to catch a bus back to our starting place, Wharf 8, where our final activity checkpoint awaited, checkpoint 15:
French "Quai huit terminal d'expedition" or if you prefer Italian "molo otto terminale di spedizione"
Yeah I can read French. :-) First two words and I knew where we were coming back to.
We came in to find a large bouncy castle activity route, which Stu promptly charged into while I pulled together our gear to check in.
Checkpoint 16 was:
"Spot the tourist" - to complete this checkpoint, you have to bring foreign currency of any amount or type to the finish.
"Damn" said Stu when we'd first read this "I just palmed off that NZ dollar I had too."
We hunted through his wallet and found 5 Singaporean cents. En route we'd seen teams exchanging money, both at legal exchanges and with accented tourists. Our fallback plan was to ring Dean and get him to meet us with some of the US coins in my purse.
We'd also bought a "Fast Forward" Red Cross pass at the start of the race, which allowed us to skip one checkpoint. We checked in at 3.05pm, having just missed all the presentations and speeches but achieved our aim of completing our 14 checkpoints and finishing within 6 hours. Just ahead of us were one of the teams we'd left at the bus stop after the Nandos checkpoint, and who'd ended up walking all the way back when the bus failed to arrive.
All of us headed over to grab some food (Nandos - did you guess they were a sponsor this year?) and crash for a bit.
So after a bit of a shaky start and some quite lost wandering around Centennial Park we ended up having a really great day. Thanks toastrocave for some spectacular googling - all misspelled words and places are due to me not hearing clearly on the phone line (it was a bad connection, at least at my end.) We headed home via the icecream shop - both of us were absolutely soaked with sweat by the end (although we'd dried off from the kayaking where we'd been soaked with sea water instead). Incidentally when I was telling Dean about the day I pulled out the map of Centennial park we'd picked up while looking for the reservoirs and discovered that the fly fishing is actually in a part of the park called the "Education Precinct". Who knew! Obviously having a map on a smaller scale helps a lot.
The other thing that helped (surprisingly) was the 8 sessions of training I'd done the week before - we ran a lot during this course, and would have been much further behind and not been able to finish otherwise. Both of us were a lot fitter this year. And studying the Sydways finally paid off... heh.
Next year we'll hopefully do it all again. Only maybe faster. I'll be interested to see how long (not) the winning teams took, and how the Bucks Night crew fared.
And I really want to see the photos.
Edited to add the link to the route (all 26km of it) that we covered:
http://www.mapmyrun.com/route/au/sydney/528125920116468818
Friday night I headed up to Sydney with Dean. We had booked on a Jetstar flight arriving at 9.20pm. This was good, as it meant we should be able to meet up with my brother, who was driving up from Canberra and would be arriving at a similar time. Jetstar naturally decided to thwart those plans, and our flight was delayed by an hour ("storms in Sydney"). By the time we landed it was 10.30pm, the taxi queue was enormous, the hotel bus desk had shut up shop and so we took the remaining option and caught the over-priced train into the city and to our hotel. Fortunately the hotel had allowed Stu to leave his bags even while he couldn't check in (I'd made the bookings) so he'd spent the intervening time in the pub.
The next morning we all got up reasonably early and Stu and I headed down to register for the Urban Max. The registration desk was open from 7.45am-8.45am - originally I'd suggested meeting for breakfast at 7am and heading down about 7.30am, but delayed that by half an hour because I was quite tired after getting to bed at midnight. So we arrived at the registration desk at 8.15am to discover that the queue for the 'mixed' teams was out the door. *sigh* We joined the end of it and waited. 15 minutes later we hadn't actually moved. The way they had it set up was two queues for female teams, two queues for male teams and three for mixed. The two volunteers doing the male teams had no one left, so we wandered over to ask if they could start registering mixed teams. No, they didn't have the right information for it. So they stood around doing nothing while we all waited.
The organisers announced that the team briefings would be delayed by 10 minutes "while they finished registering everyone". Those of us still in the queue laughed - we hadn't moved yet, it seemed unlikely that they were going to finish registering us in that time. As it was they started the briefings 15 minutes later, while people were still queueing. The main problem was that this year they'd decided to go with giving teams t-shirts, rather than the netball-style bibs of previous years. We'd pre-ordered sizes, but of course sizes are variable, and so people kept trying on the shirts, realising that they didn't fit and then swapping them for a larger size. When we finally made it to the front of the queue there were no sizes larger than M left (I'd ordered an XL for Stu and an L for me) and so we just took the shirts and the map, shrugged and made the shirts fit. I've no idea how the team behind us, both of whom were quite large and broad (we're talking both around 6ft and 100+kg here), made out.
At 9.10am - 10 minutes after we were due to start - they'd finally finished registering all the mixed teams and the race started. "Your clue is - with the volunteers outside!" Stu raced off to grab an envelope while I hung back to the side a bit. Part two of the problem with the t-shirts - everyone looks identical and finding your teammate again was tricky. After a couple of minutes we had managed to reconnect and I rang
astrocave in Melbourne to start googling answers for us. One of these years I'll have someone to ring in Sydney, really. Heh.After some brief consultation and frantic scribbling of addresses on one map we were off to find our first checkpoint - and it was only 9.30am!
The first checkpoint clue had a photo attached and read:
Checkpoint 3: Biggles was a loved friend of the rocks community, find his statue to complete this checkpoint.
astrocave had given us a street address for the statue, which I had written down as "Acherden/Plasair dog corner". The phone connection was pretty bad, as the statue turned out to be on the corner of Atherden and Playfair Sts as well as being hidden behind a market stall tent (the Saturday market was in full swing). We found the cute dog statue, clipped our card and headed for our next checkpoint:Bobbi would like to invite all participants to her studio on Castlereagh street for a detailed lesson on what goes up must come down!
Again
astrocave had come up trumps here, giving us the street address for the pole dancing studio we were heading to. We headed via Circular Quay in the hopes of seeing a Big Issue salesperson, but didn't find one and started up Castlereagh St instead. Well, after we'd worked out from the map that we needed to go up Young St we did. Running along the street we noticed several other teams heading in the same direction. Yay! One team passed us and headed into a building which was not the address I had. We followed them in."Are you sure this is right? Cos I've got it as being a poledancing studio at 203, and this is 178."
"Really? This was a guess - we'll go with you."
We headed back out from the lift of the law firm we were in (I don't know - apparently there was a dance studio on an upper level) and kept running along. Near the corner of Castlereagh and Park St we found a Big Issue seller!! After last time this was regarded by me at least as nothing short of a miracle. Not only was he a Big Issue seller but he was the most helpful one I've ever encountered - the minute he saw us he opened the issue to the right page and told us where the location was. We thanked him profusely, bought the magazine and headed up to the pole-dancing studio.
There was a queue there, and we debated briefly as to whether we should head for the Big Issue checkpoint and come back or stay put. In the end, after checking the map, we stayed put and the queue moved quite quickly into the studio. There were 5 teams going at a time, and one person from each team had to firstly swing correctly around the pole (right knee up against the pole, left leg hooked around it, graceful... mostly) and secondly climb the pole and touch the ceiling. I took this one for our team. The swinging move wasn't too bad, but I had to get a boost from Stu to get to the top of the pole and then I was clinging on for dear life before flailing extremely briefly at the ceiling and sliding back down the pole almost immediately. How the hell do people do this in heels? All this while the course photographer took pictures, which I will of course be buying. Fortunately they gave us the checkpoint and we headed back down to find the Big Issue clue, which was checkpoint 4. The picture was of a statue of a boar's head, which would have stumped us completely had we not encountered our extremely helpful Big Issue seller. On the way back we checked with him again that it was at the top of Martin Place, near Sydney Hospital - something we confirmed with a coffee vendor (or three) in Martin Place and finally finding the wishing well checkpoint right out the front of Sydney Hospital.
On to checkpoint 7: 33o51'50.24"S 15o13'16.94"E Fortunately
astrocave had been able to get the map to work for this one and had given the location as being "near Woolloomooloo Cove, on Mrs Macquarie's drive." I'd circled it as being probably "The Andrew Charlton Swimming Pool" - we were both correct but it turned out not to be swimming. It was kayaking in Woolloomooloo Cove! Unlike last year there was only 2 other teams there when we arrived, so we were able to jump straight into a kayak and start heading along the course. This time it was a straight up to some poles and back, which was much easier than last year's square course. Also there's a lot less of a current in Woolloomooloo Cove than in Rose Bay so we got that done quite quickly. Just past 11am and we already had 4 checkpoints! Only 10 to go!Our next checkpoint was located in Kings Cross, so we started running towards it, managing to catch a 311 bus outside Harry's Cafe de Wheels. Finally a combination of studying the Sydways and staying a couple of days up in Sydney attempting to memorise public transport pays off! This was taking us to checkpoint 11:
The Elk was last seen wondering (sic) the streets of Sydney's red light district. Track down the Elk where the potbellies will have a distinct advantage during this challenge.
We jumped off the bus just after it turned off Macleay St and jogged up to Darlinghurst Rd. Again
astrocave had come through with an address, which we promptly managed to miss the first time. Seriously, doing this kind of thing gives you a new appreciation for the Amazing Racers - half the time they're in countries which don't have street numbers looking for a shop while seriously fatigued. We had a full street address and still managed to go past it. Fortunately we realised and turned around just in time to see the Bucks Night teams coming out of the Elk. The Bucks Night teams were 4 teams, one of whom was obviously the groom. He'd be the one in prison issue garb carrying the ball and chain then. We'd also encountered them ordering beer in the Rocks, and getting pictures of the buck with the quite busty barmaid there. Less about the racing, more about the social side I think. :-) The challenge in the Elk turned out to be a choice between balancing two coins on your raised elbow and catching them with that arm, or flipping two coasters up and catching them with the same hand. Stu had a couple of goes with the coins before switching to the coasters and getting them first go. Both of us were also very grateful for the iced water provided, as the day was heating up and very muggy already.
From the Elk we faced a choice. My original idea was to head to Kings Cross Station and catch the train to Edgecliff, near checkpoint 10:
Paddington Bear wants to get away from the hustle and bustle of the Sydney CBD and try his hand at a game of bowls. Come and keep him company and have a go yourself!
But we were also near a stop for checkpoint 6:
The Britstop is an original 1949 London Double Decker Bus. Marked on your map is the circular route and five stops where you can catch the Britstop. Once on board the bus you will be faced with a mystery challenge to complete this checkpoint.
We chose to head for the bus stop, where the Bucks Night crew were already waiting. "We'll need to speed it up a bit" said one "we've only got three stamps."
Given it was approaching 11.30am he was right. We waited for about 7 minutes, then I realised we could head for checkpoint 13 and it was likely to be quicker than the bus, which had to go down Oxford St and was probably mired in traffic.
So off we jogged to the next checkpoint:
"Putt for dough but drive for show" - locate the biggest driving range in the southern hemisphere where your team will be required to launch off the tee, John Daly style."
OK I've no idea who John Daly is, but again
astrocave had come up with the location of the Moore Park golf course, which apparently has the largest driving range. Not only that but we managed to catch another bus to it from Taylor Square! This Sydways thing was paying off.We were on the second level of the driving range, and our aim was to drive a ball past the 100m signs. This was probably the funniest checkpoint on our race. Neither Stu nor I have played much golf - actually I've played none - and we were abysmal. Fortunately there were no other teams there at the time, so we could both fail simultaneously. Stu sliced consistently off to the side, while I managed to miss the ball every second go. After about 5 minutes the volunteer told me she'd give it to us if we managed to roll the ball past the 100m sign.
"Cool!" I said, and missed again as Stu hit the side nets with a powerful drive. She gave up and gave us the stamp when we finally got it past 50m.
"We were terrible!" said Stu.
"You're not the worst" said the volunteer. "We've had some teams lose the clubs over the edge."
We giggled and headed back out to look for the next checkpoint:
Checkpoint 12: Make your way to Centennial Park where you have to track down the Urban Max crew located at the "Education Precinct".
On our map was a track marked "learners cycleway circuit". So that's where we headed, catching a bus down Alison Parade and crossing a footbridge and bushbashing our way over a dune towards it ("this is the Urban Max?!"). When we got there we found... no one. No other teams, nothing. Well, a lot of families having BBQs or picnics, racegoers heading off to Randwick, cyclists and inline skaters galore and a surprisingly high number of people playing sport or doing Boot Camp sessions in the midday heat - but no race people anywhere. This was worrying. We started trekking along the roadway, searching for anything that looked like it might be the checkpoint. Finally we spotted another team, who had completed checkpoint 12 and were now very lost on the way to the golf. We swapped checkpoint locations, pointed each other in the right directions and headed off again. The checkpoint was nowhere near the learners cycleway circuit (which we never managed to find, incidentally) but was hidden behind trees and a toilet block near the fly fishing pond.
This checkpoint required one person to be blindfolded and "ride" a bike around a circuit while the other person guided them. Stu "rode" - actually walked while seated on the bike as it was impossible to ride without running into things - while I guided, carefully remembering which way was left and which was right. As I'm left/right blind this actually took more effort than you'd think. Fortunately Stu has the innate left/right thing happening and doesn't need to look at his hands while remembering which way to turn. I started giggling midway through when I realised that trying to do this with
kirstenfleur would have been much trickier - neither of us can tell left from right without assistance. Heh.From here we started bushbashing our way back through the park to find checkpoint 5:
This State Heritage listed Reservoir was constructed between 1866 and 1878 and was part of Sydney's third water supply system. Locate the reserve that was built on top of the reservoir where a pair of clowns awaits with your next challenge.
astrocave had given us the address "Paddington Oxford St Res Gardens" (that's how I'd scribbled it down anyway) and our map marked three reservoirs at the top of Centennial Park, one of which was near Oxford St. So we headed in that direction, emerging at the top of the park near Ocean St where we encountered another team who were heading for the learner's cycleway. We set them right and asked about the reservoirs. "They're miles away - up on Oxford St."
We could have headed up Ocean St to Paddington Bowls club, but thought that we could complete the activity at the reservoir and get back to the Bowls before the checkpoints closed at 2pm. By now it was around 1pm and we were racing the clock a bit. We ran up the first listed reservoir. Nothing. We ran up the second listed reservoir. Still nothing. Nothing at the third either. We grabbed a map of the park (and filled up our water bottles again) and tried the third one again. By this point it was 1.20pm and we were seriously in doubt as to whether we could make it to the bowls club in time or not. We decided not, and instead caught a bus heading back towards the city.
Naturally 5 minutes after we'd done this we saw the Britstop bus heading past in the other direction. *sigh*
Another team boarded the bus and we asked if they'd managed to find the reservoir clue. "Oh it's another two stops up - follow us."
It was next to Paddington Town Hall on Oxford St, about 1.3km away from where we'd thought it was. We jumped off the bus when they told us to, and headed down to find the clowns. The clowns wanted one of us (Stu again) to make a balloon poodle. After bursting three balloons - two by the clown while demonstrating, one by Stu - we had a very cute poodle and another clue. Back onto the bus we headed to look for checkpoint 8:
According to a 14th Century legend, the Barcelos Cockerel became a symbol of faith, justice and good luck. Today it is the symbol of a famous restaurant chain who's (sic) flavour, service and quality is legendary. Find the Surry Hills restaurant and have your photo taken with the Barcelos Cockerel.
Again
astrocave had come up with a street address, and we headed towards Crown St on the bus. At the intersection with Crown St we realised that we were at least 300 numbers away from the restaurant, so stayed put and headed to Central Station for checkpoint 2:This site was founded on 4 February 1989 to commemorate the contribution of Spanish and Portuguese speaking people to Australia. The Lord Mayot of Sydney, Cl, Frank Sartor, officially opened the new Ibero-American Plaza on 7 September 2000.
astrocave had told us it was "near Central Station" and we hopped off the bus and started following other teams right to it. Once we got near it was really obvious what it was - the statues were very... Spanish. And imposing. While clicking the checkpoint we overheard one team ask another how far the Nandos restaurant was."Oh it's just up the road there".
We promptly followed the team straight to the exhausted looking chicken, who was sweltering in the costume in the 35oC heat and really over having their photo taken every two seconds. Together with two other teams we headed for a bus stop and took stock of where we were at.
It was after 2.30pm so we couldn't do either the Paddington Bowls checkpoint or checkpoint 14 whose clue was:
Solve the anagram to give you the location of checkpoint 14. A challenge of marksmanship awaits.
The anagram was: VEE3LL DEHHBRUSOIAR PNIOSGPS NRCETE, which we'd solved as "Level 3 Harbourside Shopping Centre" (took us a while to get 'Harbourside').
We might just be able to do checkpoint 1, whose clue was firstly in Chinese and then had the additional information of:
Comprising of a dead yellow box tree, 23 ct gold leaft and terracotta tile, it stands 10.7m high. Find the tree to complete this checkpoint.
I asked one of the other teams if they'd been to it, and was told "Oh yeah, it's right next to Paddy's markets". We waited briefly on Crown St for a bus, then decided to bail and head for Cleveland St where there was definitely a bus heading towards Central Station again. Just as we approached the street a bus came, so we frantically ran through the moving traffic and managed to catch it just in time. 2.50pm.
We arrived at Central station and started running downhill (thank God) to Paddy's markets. There on the corner of Hay and Ultimo Sts (I think) was the tree! The volunteers were just packing up as we panted up at 2.55pm, but they stamped our cards and we sprinted back up to George St to catch a bus back to our starting place, Wharf 8, where our final activity checkpoint awaited, checkpoint 15:
French "Quai huit terminal d'expedition" or if you prefer Italian "molo otto terminale di spedizione"
Yeah I can read French. :-) First two words and I knew where we were coming back to.
We came in to find a large bouncy castle activity route, which Stu promptly charged into while I pulled together our gear to check in.
Checkpoint 16 was:
"Spot the tourist" - to complete this checkpoint, you have to bring foreign currency of any amount or type to the finish.
"Damn" said Stu when we'd first read this "I just palmed off that NZ dollar I had too."
We hunted through his wallet and found 5 Singaporean cents. En route we'd seen teams exchanging money, both at legal exchanges and with accented tourists. Our fallback plan was to ring Dean and get him to meet us with some of the US coins in my purse.
We'd also bought a "Fast Forward" Red Cross pass at the start of the race, which allowed us to skip one checkpoint. We checked in at 3.05pm, having just missed all the presentations and speeches but achieved our aim of completing our 14 checkpoints and finishing within 6 hours. Just ahead of us were one of the teams we'd left at the bus stop after the Nandos checkpoint, and who'd ended up walking all the way back when the bus failed to arrive.
All of us headed over to grab some food (Nandos - did you guess they were a sponsor this year?) and crash for a bit.
So after a bit of a shaky start and some quite lost wandering around Centennial Park we ended up having a really great day. Thanks to
astrocave for some spectacular googling - all misspelled words and places are due to me not hearing clearly on the phone line (it was a bad connection, at least at my end.) We headed home via the icecream shop - both of us were absolutely soaked with sweat by the end (although we'd dried off from the kayaking where we'd been soaked with sea water instead). Incidentally when I was telling Dean about the day I pulled out the map of Centennial park we'd picked up while looking for the reservoirs and discovered that the fly fishing is actually in a part of the park called the "Education Precinct". Who knew! Obviously having a map on a smaller scale helps a lot. The other thing that helped (surprisingly) was the 8 sessions of training I'd done the week before - we ran a lot during this course, and would have been much further behind and not been able to finish otherwise. Both of us were a lot fitter this year. And studying the Sydways finally paid off... heh.
Next year we'll hopefully do it all again. Only maybe faster. I'll be interested to see how long (not) the winning teams took, and how the Bucks Night crew fared.
And I really want to see the photos.
Edited to add the link to the route (all 26km of it) that we covered:
http://www.mapmyrun.com/route/au/sydney/528125920116468818
