Kokoda Finisher
Last week I competed in the Kokoda Challenge and through a large amount of bizarre circumstances I finished. My group consisted of a teacher from my school and 3 of my friends. We had been training for a few months with a few other people from school, without knowing how big the challenge would actually be.
After a 7 o'clock start we headed off into the Gold Coast hinterland. We decided to bypass the first major checkpoint (support vehicles can help you here) without realizing that it would be 10 hours till we would see them again.
This was the most challenging section of the walk for me as I was the only one without enough food. It was a great feeling getting to that checkpoint as it marked the end of the long sections. One of our team members were so overcome by the thrill, that, he died..........just kidding, he was just not emotionally ready (I've seen too many chick-flicks). So with one member down we headed of into the nightness where we face the biggest challenge of all.
This.................Just without the snow and the clouds and the hill=(
So with this bump in the gravel out of the way we made our way to the next checkpoint but as we were about to find out not everyone was doing it so easily! About 20 km back another group had lost their teacher so we had to wait for their stragglers. So 4 hours later we were on our way with severe craps, soreness and complete hateness towards the other teams. But this didn't faze us as we looked great.
Everyone was saying how good we were doing because we still had all five team members ( it took 15 people to get those 5 but we were happy to accept any compliment in hallucinogenic stage). The next section was the hardest for all but me, as I was hyped up on powerade. Alot of people were saying that it must have been frustrating waiting for them, so I do the normal thing and say the normal thing and say how It was a great thing what they had done for me earlier so I would happily wait for them ( but deep down inside I knew the truth, how I had been deliberately abandoning my team just to sneak in a few seconds of sleep with no consideration of the tortures the rest of my team were going through).
But all this hard work paid of at the top pf this final tough spot, it wasn't the typical story about the feeling of completing something you've spent months training for but it was something much more satisfying, something some people go their whole life without fully experiencing it! Yep, you guessed it, that home made soup.................
You will never fully understand this obsession until you walk 75km in the hinterland. But back to the walk, that last 20km is supposed to be the hardest part but their is no way! We could smell that hamburger at the finish line, so we pushed on until we finally made it.
We finished in 29 hours and 36 minutes. We recovered in 29 days and 36 hours.
Chow for Now
After a 7 o'clock start we headed off into the Gold Coast hinterland. We decided to bypass the first major checkpoint (support vehicles can help you here) without realizing that it would be 10 hours till we would see them again.
This was the most challenging section of the walk for me as I was the only one without enough food. It was a great feeling getting to that checkpoint as it marked the end of the long sections. One of our team members were so overcome by the thrill, that, he died..........just kidding, he was just not emotionally ready (I've seen too many chick-flicks). So with one member down we headed of into the nightness where we face the biggest challenge of all.
This.................Just without the snow and the clouds and the hill=(
So with this bump in the gravel out of the way we made our way to the next checkpoint but as we were about to find out not everyone was doing it so easily! About 20 km back another group had lost their teacher so we had to wait for their stragglers. So 4 hours later we were on our way with severe craps, soreness and complete hateness towards the other teams. But this didn't faze us as we looked great.
Everyone was saying how good we were doing because we still had all five team members ( it took 15 people to get those 5 but we were happy to accept any compliment in hallucinogenic stage). The next section was the hardest for all but me, as I was hyped up on powerade. Alot of people were saying that it must have been frustrating waiting for them, so I do the normal thing and say the normal thing and say how It was a great thing what they had done for me earlier so I would happily wait for them ( but deep down inside I knew the truth, how I had been deliberately abandoning my team just to sneak in a few seconds of sleep with no consideration of the tortures the rest of my team were going through).
But all this hard work paid of at the top pf this final tough spot, it wasn't the typical story about the feeling of completing something you've spent months training for but it was something much more satisfying, something some people go their whole life without fully experiencing it! Yep, you guessed it, that home made soup.................
You will never fully understand this obsession until you walk 75km in the hinterland. But back to the walk, that last 20km is supposed to be the hardest part but their is no way! We could smell that hamburger at the finish line, so we pushed on until we finally made it.
We finished in 29 hours and 36 minutes. We recovered in 29 days and 36 hours.
Chow for Now
posted by Harry Sinclair at
12:54 AM
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