Ascending Training

One of the disciplines we had no real experience with and needed to get some practice in prior to September was ascending of ropes. We have been told that there is a 100m vertical ascent we have to conquor mid course. 

With busy schedules Angus got his mate Vince to rig up a rope that we could ascend on a pulley at the stage by the Yarra River in Warrandyte  to simulate a 40 m climb. We came away from it with the knowledge it will be no walk in the park.

Event Reports - Orienteering & Salomon Trail Run

Over the past 2 weekends between us we have completed in an orienteering event at Westerfolds Park and Karina raced the Long course Salomon Trail Series at Plenty Gorge last sunday.

ORIENTEERING

Paul and Karina did an Orienteering event at Westerfolds park a couple of weeks back. It was good run to test out the new shoes from Active Feet, we ran from Warrandyte to Templestowe, did 2 orienteering courses and then ran back to Warrandyte, 32km run all up and good fun.
The plan was to get a good long run in and also get some navigation practice, as Westerfolds Park is a regular riding and running spot for us, we already knew our way around the park, which was definitely an advantage and allowed us to leave the compass packed away.
We decided to race individually to take advantage of getting navigation practice in, we started with course "A" which was the long course and had us covering approximately 7km. Paul blitzed this course, flying past Karina very early on, after starting 1 minute behind. Paul finished fairly high up in the results and Karina was mid field.
After having a taste of orienteering we decided to give course "B" a go, not realising that many of the points were used for both courses, so it was much easier to navigate. Once again Karina had a 1 minute start on Paul and with less navigation involved she managed to finish without Paul running her down. The results for course "B" had us 1st and 2nd overall, with Karina just pipping Paul by a massive 1 second.
The run home was probably the best training that we did of the day, as we were both fatigued, but we pushed home strong, walking a hill or two........32km in the legs!!! And no blisters with the new runners kindly supplied to us by our generous sponsor Active Feet.


SALOMON TRAIL RUN - 18KM LONG COURSE

Karina decided to do the Plenty Gorge 18km Salomon Trail Run last weekend, but in order to get in a sunday morning mountain bike ride she talked a few other crazy people (Philippa, Glen) into riding there and back with her and doing the run.
The ride there was 25km and Paul joined us for some of this, we were also joined by Pete Hepworth from Topgear Cycles who is one of our generous sponsors. Pete knows the area well, so he took us on an adventure, finding as much single track as he could for us.

Bike shoes off and runners on, Karina and Philippa lined up at the start line with about 1 minute to spare and had a quick discussion about how far we were running and how long that should take (which we estimated completely wrong, not factoring in the singletrack, vertical dirt or knee deep creek crossing that lay ahead).

The first 12km was damn hard, with lots of ups/downs, 2 creek crossings, mud, sloping singletrack, lots of rocks and uneven ground. At the finish of the first 12km my thoughts were, we only have the 6km course to go now which is the short course so one would assume it was the easier tracks. Well I couldn't have been more wrong, this section was hard work, with another 2 creek crossings and a constant roller coaster of vertical dirt, many people were suffering and the smiles on peoples faces were quickly disappearing as was my average pace on my GPS watch. Just when we thought we had finished the run, they sent us down another hill, just so that we had another vertical climb to the finishline.

The end results was 1st in age group for Philippa (4th overall in females), 7th in age group for Karina (10th overall in females) and 9th overall for Anna (one of our friends). So with the 3 of us girls all finishing in the top 10, with 120 girls in the event, we did ok. We did all meet up at about the 3km mark just for a chat, as us girls do! It was a fab event and although the hills were tough, I did love them!!!

After a quick shock with presentations, with Phlip taking out the open females and winning a HR monitor, it was bike shoes back on and Karina, Philippa and Glen took the slow and steady approach for the ride home as we were all a little fatigued (Glen ran the 12km). The ride home was 22km, we didn't add on any extra km's and had some good navigation practice as Pete had tour guided us there.

TOTAL - 47km on the mtb, 18km of trail running

Photo - Philippa, Karina, Glen....ready to ride home

Training

Lots of quality training happening this week, including morning kayaking and spinning, night mtbing and running! Highlight of tonights mtb/run session was seeing 2 deer, one which we very nearly hit while riding..........then while running around Warrandyte the Kangaroos were everywhere! 

A few nights ago, Paul, Angus and Karina started the day early with bootcamp style Kayaking, then topped it off with a very very wet 60km on the mtb at night!!!

Team Pharos Karina Vitiritti takes 2nd Female Pairs in Adventure Junkie race in Bendigo

Karina Vitiritti from Team Pharos teamed up with Philippa Birch a few weeks ago in Adventure Junkies Sprint Series Race 3. This was Philippa’s very first adventure race and she loved every minute of it, she even loved the extra mountain bike km’s we covered when we may have been a little confused!

We started off strong, putting the jigsaw of bearings/distances together and locating these quickly, then it was off on a run to collect various CP’s which we blitzed. The Kayak, Mtb Roadbook, Mountain bike ride and then run followed, these all went to plan except for the Mountain bike where we ended up a little confused with the very last CP. We wasted a fair bit of time here and consequently missed the cut off for the extra rogaine and this is where the 1st girls team got away from us. We finished 2nd in female pairs, which is fantastic, especially for Phlip’s 1st Adventure Race. We also managed to both win a spot prize, I have some shotz gels/bars and Phlip won entry to the next race.

Once again the Adventure Junkie event ran by Serge and Maria delivered........it was a fantastic course, great scenery, everyone was friendly and most importantly we both had a lot of fun on course. Bring on the Winter Challenge in August.

Active Feet Sponsorship....

Team PHAROS is excited to announce another fantastic sponsor in Active Feet, who have generously supplied us with 2 pairs of runners each. The customer service that we received in the Camberwell store this afternoon from Pat and Matt was excellent, they were both full of useful information.

Mick, Paul and Karina hit the Camberwell pavement tonight with our new runners and early reports are good, they all felt great!!!

Thanks for organising Keahny and Andrew............we shall keep you posted with our training and runner reviews after we hit the dirt!!!

 Angus, Mick, Paul, Karina at Active Feet Camberwell with our new runners, tops.....

Nice bright blue...........for how long????

Team PHAROS set to take on XPD in September

We are pleased to announce that PHAROS Financial Group will sponsor our team as it heads to XPD Australia's Expedition Adventure Race. The team has raced as Tali Karng Trackers, and more recently at Geoquest as Topgear Cycles.

The members of Team PHAROS have also recently been finalised and will consist of:
Michael Kolody 
Paul Gruber
Karina Vitiritti
Angus Rodwell

"The team has been training hard and is really looking forward to the challenge of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia" said Gruber, "it is truly going to be an outback experience". 

On the sponsorship news, Kolody said, "I'm really excited about the sponsorship. We look forward to representing the brand on a world stage and at such an awesome sporting event."

PHAROS Financial Group  offers strategic advice and seed or venture funding to businesses with a financial services focus, or those seeking specialist financial services support.  They challenge the current marketplace by conceiving and creating better financial advice solutions. They’re about innovation not reinvention – they don’t let great ideas pass them by.
Being privately funded they intensively scrutinise opportunities and only invest in those that they believe have commercial merit.  PHAROS' investor base is comprised of practising financial advisers and experienced managers. Our investor's commitment to the group extends beyond the financial, with each having undertaken to contribute their time, skills, knowledge, creativity and networking to each of the ventures the business commits to.
PHAROS currently has equity positions in 2 Australian Financial Services Licensees (AFSLs), Madison Financial Group & AdviceNet