Our day started very early with us meeting at Nicole’s place at about 5am.  We were all in high spirits on the way down the coast thinking that 30kms should be pretty easy after we’d knocked over 40kms without too much trouble last month.  Little did we know that the pirate code was going to be in put into practice for this outing …

The Mini Kokoda as an official training event for the actual Kokoda Challenge.  It’s a fun little 30km hit out that is held over stages 6, 7 and 8 of the Kokoda Challenge course … you start at Numinbah Hall and make your way to the Environmental Centre, then head over Paige’s Pinnacle (or Polly’s Hill as most people call it) to Polly’s Kitchen.  You then get to turn around and go back over Paige’s Pinnacle before following the waterfall loop across a number of creek crossings back to Numinbah Hall.  Easy …

Due to a bit of a mix up when we registered we ended up being a team of 3 named Fibonacci minus 1 (Shane, Stuart & Nicole) and a team of 1 (Brock).  Basically Brock thought we were all signing up separately and registered a week or so before the rest of us got organised.  To add to the fun, teams got to start the event 20mins before the individual competitors.  Brock declined our offer to just start with us, and told us he’d probably catch us around half way.

At the start we ended up near the front and decided to jog to the first major trail so that we wouldn’t be holding up the teams behind us.  This sort of worked, Stuart took off like a hare and Nicole and Shane got stuck behind a group who gave up running shortly after the track narrowed down to single file.  We then proceeded up a dirt road, jogging bits that weren’t too steep, or covered in fallen trees and branches.  We slowed to a walk when we hit the main hill, but as soon as we hit the top Stuart set off again and we followed.  Not far from the Environmental Centre Stuart turned right at an intersection.  We asked him what the hell he was doing, and he said that he was following the team in front of us – he’d caught a glimpse of them heading that way as we were coming down the hill.  As the other team was out of sight, we headed the other way and wondered how far they’d go before realising they’d gone the wrong way? 

We took it fairly easy from the Environmental Centre to the bottom of Paige’s Pinnacle to save our legs for the climb.  We didn’t have too much trouble going up the "easy" side of the hill.  However the first of the individual runners did start to pass us … so much for the 20 min lead.  We were still pretty confident that Brock would have trouble catching us as we’d been moving a lot faster than any of our previous training runs.  Nicole declared that the pirate code was in affect and it was every man for himself and it was Brock’s own fault for not joining us. 

After 40 odd minutes of up hill we reached the summit and headed straight down the other side.  Every now and then there would be footsteps behind and someone would run past.  About 2/3 of the way down we heard some footsteps and all shuffled out the way.  We were stunned when we looked up and realised it was Brock!  He just smiled and said "and now the sequence is complete".  So as a full team we made our way to the bottom of the hill and confronted the river crossing.  Shane and Stuart went for the shoes off approach as there was no way to keep the feet dry, while Nicole and Brock just wandered straight through. 

As Shane and Nicole headed for the check point at Polly’s Kitchen, Brock ran back the other way saying "I’ll see you at the end".  So back to a team of three.  We made our way back across the river and stopped for a quick sock change before heading back up the hill.  The pace had definitely started to drop off by this stage.  We had a short break at the top of the hill and then started on the way down.  Nicole’s knee was starting to play up a little.  On the first trip up the big hill she introduced here knee to a fallen tree, and now it was paying her back.  We still made decent time down the hill, but at the bottom Nicole spotted some people from her work in very conspicuous yellow shirts and picked up the pace to beat them to the next checkpoint.  She won the sprint up the last incline and looked very pleased with herself.

On the way out of the Environmental Centre, Stuart and Nicole put a bit of a lead on Shane while he was eating an apple.  He wasn’t running down the hills while eating … that and his legs were starting to complain about the pace.  After a couple creek crossings, Shane caught up to Stuart and Nicole.  Shortly after Shane caught up, Stuart and Nicole started running.  Shane couldn’t convince his legs it was a good idea to move any faster and watched the others disappeared out of sight.  The pirate code had struck again.  After an hour or so of slow plodding and slow downhill jogging, Shane reached the finish line and found Stuart and Nicole waiting under a tree.  After collapsing on the ground, Shane found out that despite the running, they’d only arrived about 10mins earlier.  Stuart and Nicole also apologised for instituting the pirate code, but just as they were about to stop and wait, they spotted Nicole’s yellow shirted friends and decided they could beat them.  Somehow they found the energy to surge up the last big hill and managed to secure the office bragging rights for the IT department.

In all of this none of us had spotted Brock.  On the way back to the car, Stuart and Shane took a detour to sit in a very cold creek to help the legs recover.  Despite their best efforts they couldn’t convince Nicole it was a good idea.  After getting dry and changed, free food was high on the list of priorities.  After collecting their burgers and drinks they went looking for a somewhere to sit.  Nicole walked straight past Brock, who was lying on the ground, while stating, "Where the hell has Brock gotten to?"  Brock was rather surprised that we’d all changed.  He hadn’t seen us finish, but he had seen someone who looked like Shane, but figured, since he was on his own, it couldn’t be … damn pirates!

So in the final wash up we’d covered the 30kms a lot faster than we thought we could.  Brock finished 26th in 4:17:55, while Fibonacci minus 1 finished in 41st place in 5:03:57.  Luckily for Shane the event organisers don’t recognise the pirate code and based the team time on his finish, so the fact Stuart and Nicole finished in 4:47:04 gained them nothing … other than those all important bragging rights!