1997 Eco-Challenge
Competitor's diary, August 11
Pre-race hoopla begins at national park
By Robert Nagle
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Robert Nagle
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It's a little after 2 p.m. on Monday, and we've just arrived near the start line in Undara — a national park to the southwest of Cairns famous for its lava tubes.
In the last 24 hours since we received the race instructions, we've spent our time deciding, re-deciding, and examining decisions, and also putting together what we hope is a good strategy for the race.
The first leg looks tough and long. And one of the issues we're going to have to deal with is water, specifically the amount of water we're going to have to carry.
On the map it shows it's almost 60 kilometers to the first running water. Fortunately we'll be travelling that at night, so it will be less of an issue.
When it comes to food, we expect the first leg — which involves trekking, canoeing, rope work, canyoneering, and biking — to take three days, which means we've got to carry quite a bit of food to get through the whole leg.
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Nagle and his team look over
maps of the course
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Because of the way the race is organized, we'll only get access to our resupply bags three times during the course of the race. This is complicated by the fact that we get our mountain bikes at different times, so we never have access to any gear that's with our mountain bikes and our resupply bags at exactly the same time. This proves to be both an opportunity and
a bit of a liability.
It's an opportunity in that we can stash some more food and extra equipment and make some clever drops and pickups.
But it's also a liability that will cause a bit of chaos if we miss one of the transitions, in terms of getting equipment into the right place so that it will be available for us much later in the race. I think that could be a little complicated, especially when we get tired in the later stages.
Next step here is to have a final race briefing from Mark Burnett, and then get underway in about two hours.
Everyone is eager to go, as the last three days have been hectic and difficult.
Robert Nagle leads Team Eco-Internet in this year's Eco-Challenge.
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