They did it!! Shelley and Team Stromlonauts finished the AR World Champs. Unfortunately though, Dan Hovenden had to withdraw after 2/3 of the race while Shelley Bambrook, Rohan Kilham and Sean King pushed to the finish.

Every day was a battle – they faced a broken packraft, running out of food for 12hrs, Shelley getting stitches in her head after getting hit with a paddle in the rapids. They got stuck in 3 ‘dark zones’ (where you have to wait until it’s light because it’s too dangerous to paddle at night), they did a 106km 7600m vertical 3 day trek including going off track through the jungle, canyons, abseils up to 70m high, intense heat near the coast and cold on the peaks, pouring rain and it’ll take a good few beers to catch up with the rest of the stories. Phew!

If I needed inspiration this month, their effort definitely provided it. They did so well despite a really tough lead up to the race. Nature is so unpredictable (and so are adventure race organisers…). It throws anything and everything at you and the only way is to keep an open mind and deal with the situation as it is, instead of what you think it ‘should’ be (or want it to be!).

Awesome work Stromlonauts, kudos to you!!

Here’s a taster of what they faced for the first couple of days: