Peter Owen
Paul Ewing smiles fondly at his wife Mel, describing their Saturday night outing as ‘our date night’.
Some date night.
Paul and Mel’s idea of a romantic rural getaway is a non-stop 24 hour adventure race, involving trekking, mountain biking, kayaking – even, this year, axe-throwing – over a rugged 120km course near Kenilworth.
It’s the Hells Bells adventure race – a certified torture test for most of us, but a highly anticipated event for 90 teams that travel from every Australian state to compete.
Clearly it’s an event for the fittest humans on the planet, and Paul and Mel qualify in that regard.
Paul, the manager of the fitness centre at Noosa Springs Golf and Spa Resort, has been competing in similar adventure races for 20 years, and Mel is a marathon runner who has graduated to ultra-marathons – those races where competitors run forever.
They competed together in their first Hells Bells event in 2018 under the team name ‘Newly Weds’ – appropriate as they’d recently celebrated their marriage. This time the name had changed slightly, to ‘Newly Weds Four Years On.’
Teams of two or four athletes begin the race at 11am on Saturday morning, before them an arduous test of skill, stamina and navigation as they seek out 10 checkpoints, each one signifying a section completed.
The course, over rough terrain and through raging rapids – much of it in pitch black darkness – is revealed to the athletes only hours before the start of the race.
For the record, Paul and Mel clocked in at 24 hours, six hours and 41 seconds and they freely concede that other teams completed the course in a quicker time.
“But it’s not about the time,” said Paul. “It’s about competing – and finishing. And, let’s face it, we’re not the youngest athletes out there.”
Paul says one of the major challenges is simply to stay awake.
“From when we got up on Saturday morning until we lay down on Sunday afternoon was 34 hours,” he said.
Mel, who also works at Noosa Springs as an Events Executive, said she fell asleep on the drive home after the race, woke long enough to soak in a hot bath, then slept for more than 12 hours.
“There’s a real sense of achievement,” she said. “It felt great to cross the line together.”
Paul knows that some of their friends struggle to understand the enjoyment they take from an event like Hells Bells.
“It’s our hobby,” he said. “We’re both heavily into fitness and we’re always in training – going for long runs or riding our bikes, or kayaking. We enjoy it.
“I know 24 hours seems an awfully long time, but if you break it up into two-hour blocks it doesn’t seem so daunting.”
