Wild women up for challenge

MORE than 100 “wild women” will be in Noosa this weekend to trek, paddle, mountain bike and navigate their way around the Hinterland.
The intrepid women are taking part in the Wild Women Adventure Race which was the first of its kind, and now the largest gathering of Adventure Racing women in Australia and it all kicks off on Saturday 15 October.
The event was conceived back in 2012 by Jan Leverton and Kim Beckinsale, from Noosa-based coaching business Tri Adventure, who wanted to provide women with an opportunity to participate in an adventure race in an all-female environment.
This meant planning their course, doing the navigation, carrying the packs and driving the event themselves instead of just being on hand as the “token female” – which can be the case in adventure racing mixed teams.
Tri Adventure have now taken over the management of the event so Jan and Kim can take a step back from racing and put their years of experience to work so that the Wild Women Adventure Race continues to attract new women to the sport.
Girls from as far as Canberra, the Gold Coast and Maryborough will be travelling to the event where they will get through a course only revealed to them an hour and a half before the start.
They should expect between 20 to 30 km of mountain biking, eight to15 km trail running/trekking and three to five kilometres of kayaking and they will have six hours to complete the course using just a map and compass.
Pomona will be headquarters for the event and local businesses have been put on alert to expect more than 100 women in hot pink race bibs running and riding around their town looking for checkpoints and carrying out some other challenges in Stan Topper Park in the centre of town.
The event is supported by Tourism Noosa and a range of local businesses such as butcher Alan Gitsham, who will be supplying some of his award-winning sausages for the post-race barbecue to re-fuel the hungry racers.
The race starts at 8am at on Saturday 15 October, and anyone who would like to be part of the fun can still enter at triadventure.com.au/?page_id=72.