Luke Haines
Well, I started multisport racing about 5 years ago and was always an active outdoors person, but still had to learn all the disciplines from scratch. Being a very competitive person drove me to increase my weekly training load, learn about the sports and do things I never thought were possible, like paddling a K1. Having got much better at all the sports, my results improved with every race and have now achieved my starting goal of winning the Mars Challenge in 2007.
I also completed the Speight’s Coast to Coast World Multisport Championships in New Zealand this year. This has to be one of the greatest events in the world and I will certainly return for the next few years. Other achievements so far include a win in the Geelong Canoe Club team for K1 Cup Murray Marathon 2006, podium finishes at Max Adventure Melbourne events (2006, 2005) and 4th place at Upper Murray Challenge 2005.
The team aspect of adventure racing is great fun and a welcome change from slogging out the individual multisport races. Choosing which races to do in a jam packed race calendar is very difficult but would really like to do well at a 24hr MTB race in the next year and do well at UMC in 2007. And, if I can convince or trick a few other people (maybe even my XPD team-mates), put together a team for the Crocodile Trophy MTB race.