Day Seven Hundred and Thirty Five

Friday 17th June

And so to the first day of the event, all those months of planning coming together. I got up at 1.50am and by 2.45 I was at Bellbird Grove firing up generators and laying out the last of the Barricades at Registration.

Soon enough headlights came down the hill and people were arriving. Soon followed the first of nine buses. The process seemed to work with traffic control and people registered and then got on the buses and away up the hill.

After 3 cycles of that all the teams were on their way to the start. I then spent time cleaning up and moving on to the next job which was building checkpoints 5 and 6. The teams were coming through fast and so were were under pressure to to get everything ready.

At about 6pm I decided to head home via the event control centre. I wont go into details her, however things changed and from that point as we received the unfortunate news about our loyal supporter and friend Barry Russell who had passed away in section 3 of the trail.

I then spent another 5 hours at control dealing with things and re planning. I'm so proud of the way the team all stepped up and helped each other and carried the event through.

Finally got home long after midnight and into bead after a 23 hour day.