Overland Quickstep Record

[Overlandman]

From The Mercury Website
Well Done Girls

http://www.themercury.com.au/article/20 ... -news.html
Overland quickstep record

FAST PACE: Jess Durbin of Huonville, and Suzzy Revill of Margate, both 16, walked the Overland Track in less than a day to raise money for charity.
Most walkers finish the Overland Track in about six days, but two schoolgirls have conquered the 65km hike in 23 hours in aid of charity.
Suzzy Revill and Jess Durbin, both 16, left Cradle Mountain on Tuesday at 8am and arrived at Lake St Clair at 7am on Wednesday.
Their longest stop was 45 minutes and they pounded through the icy night.
"During the day we were walking a fairly normal pace, but that turned out to be quite fast, and at night we really had to keep the pace up," Suzzy said."
It was called the 24-hour Overland Track Challenge but they covered the rugged distance in an hour less than that.
"We had quite nice weather, with sunny days, but it was quite cold at night. Towards the end Jess really helped keep me going when we were tired. At the end, I was just too tired."
Suzzy plays for the DiamondBacks and Jess is a gymnast, but that did not make it easy.

"It's definitely the hardest thing I've done," Suzzy said.

She and Jess, in year 10 at St Michael's Collegiate School in Hobart, arranged the walk to raise funds for their World Challenge Expedition in December.
They are travelling as part of a multi-school group, working in a village in Borneo, with funds raised supporting the village.
Their mothers saw them off at Cradle Mountain and then brought them food near the end.

Friends and family sponsored the girls and donations can still be made by emailing therevillfamily@gmail.com

[tibboh]

Wow, what an effort. Well done girls.
I'm imagining the pain if I was forced to endure this.

[GPSGuided]

I suspect their gear load could be in consideration for the UL category (with respect to the track taken). Fantastic!

[greyim]

Didnt stop to smell the roses then?

[Hermione]

Pleased to hear the girls achieved their goal amazing work! On our way out we met their mothers who were walking in to meet them at Narcissus, we thought it was a pretty overwhelming challenge ourselves.

[Strider]

It would be very interesting to hear what gear they carried. Awesome effort though

[frenchy_84]

Its a top effort but what is meant by a quickstep record? Because its certainly not the quickest time to complete the OT.

[MrWalker]

Its a top effort but what is meant by a quickstep record? Because its certainly not the quickest time to complete the OT.

The Mercury may have made up that term, but I think the point is they walked all the way. Runners have done it in less than half that time, but I think these girls didn't do any running.

[AndyR]

Hi All,

I can try and she'd some light as one of the girls (Susannah) is my daughter . First up, the Mercury made up that headline, at no stage did the girls try and claim this as some sort of record, they are well aware people run the track much faster and there may well be people who have walked it faster, that wasn't their aim - it's just a fund raising challenge for two 16 yo.

They each carried personal gear/food plus shared a tent, epirb, cooking gear, UHF radio etc. their packs were around the 11kg mark. The two dads walked an hour behind as a safety backup and had hourly radio contact.

There were quite a lot of people on the track and the girls received a lot of positive feedback, especially at Pelion where it was dinner time when they came through so if any of you we're there, thank you for making them feel good about what they were doing and especially to the person who donated their chips and gravy money!

If anyone wants to know a bit more about what they're up to have a look at http://jems2329.wix.com/24-hour-challenge

Cheers, Andy

[ULWalkingPhil]

Congratulations to the girls, you must be a very proud dad Andy. i know I would be.



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[corvus]

Well done girls a big ask especially at this time of year , three days was our best walking time with overnight sleeps.
corvus

[MrWalker]

The two dads walked an hour behind as a safety backup and had hourly radio contact.

Hey, that means the dads must have walked the distance in 24hrs as well. Its OK for these youngsters, but for older blokes that must have taken an effort keeping going all night. How come they didn't get their photo in the paper too?

I assume the mums had to get up in the cold at some ridiculous hour to head down the track and meet them well before their 7am finish.

Well done all of you.

[AndyR]

The two dads walked an hour behind as a safety backup and had hourly radio contact.

Hey, that means the dads must have walked the distance in 24hrs as well. Its OK for these youngsters, but for older blokes that must have taken an effort keeping going all night. How come they didn't get their photo in the paper too?

I assume the mums had to get up in the cold at some ridiculous hour to head down the track and meet them well before their 7am finish.

Well done all of you.

Yes the girls did it in 23 hours, we took 23.5. The mums saw us off at Cradle then drove to Lake St. Clare and walked in to Narcissus to be there for the next morning when the girls arrived.

Don't think two old blokes are quite as news worthy (or as photogenic) as the girls

Andy

[biggbird]

Congrats to the girls, a fantastic effort! Wish I had been so dedicated and altruistic in my youth, sounds like an awesome adventure, as well as more to come!

[GPSGuided]

Small world! Good to see Andy the dad here to fill in the details. Congratulations on excellence in parenting too!

[kanangra]

Good on you guys. What a great family achievement all round. Tremendous. I suspect both girls must keep pretty active? Did they do anything in particular to prepare? Did you all catch the boat out together?

K

[AndyR]

Good on you guys. What a great family achievement all round. Tremendous. I suspect both girls must keep pretty active? Did they do anything in particular to prepare? Did you all catch the boat out together?

K

Both girls are pretty active, Susie is a mad keen hockey player and Jess is a gymnast. We didn't do a lot of preparation apart from a bit of night walking but in the end we decided just doing it was the best approach

We did all catch the boat, part of the plan was to end up with 6 people on the boat otherwise the cost per person is crazy!

cheers

[wayno]

great achievement
hmm, looks like heavy macpac packs, could have gone much faster if they used lighter gear....

[Strider]

great achievement
hmm, looks like heavy macpac packs, could have gone much faster if they used lighter gear....

In all seriousness, I was quite surprised at the quoted 11kg pack weight. Would be interesting to see a gear list.

[wayno]

great achievement
hmm, looks like heavy macpac packs, could have gone much faster if they used lighter gear....

In all seriousness, I was quite surprised at the quoted 11kg pack weight. Would be interesting to see a gear list.

they should talk to phil

[MrWalker]

great achievement
hmm, looks like heavy macpac packs, could have gone much faster if they used lighter gear....

In all seriousness, I was quite surprised at the quoted 11kg pack weight. Would be interesting to see a gear list.

they should talk to phil

AndyR (dad) said they had a tent, for emergency use, and an EPIRB and 2-way radio, plus some cooking gear, so they had more than would be required for a day-walk. No doubt they could have had a lighter pack but it could not have been cut much more without reducing their safety margin a bit.

[GPSGuided]

AndyR (dad) said they had a tent, for emergency use, and an EPIRB and 2-way radio, plus some cooking gear, so they had more than would be required for a day-walk. No doubt they could have had a lighter pack but it could not have been cut much more without reducing their safety margin a bit.

For school students, going ultra-light may well be beyond their financial capability. As they are, they were being responsible in terms of safety. Further, the regular pack weight contributed to the validity of their time. I think it's a joke when record breakers are supported by a porter crew of 10, carrying gears that they should have carried.

[Strider]

AndyR (dad) said they had a tent, for emergency use, and an EPIRB and 2-way radio, plus some cooking gear, so they had more than would be required for a day-walk. No doubt they could have had a lighter pack but it could not have been cut much more without reducing their safety margin a bit.

For school students, going ultra-light may well be beyond their financial capability. As they are, they were being responsible in terms of safety. Further, the regular pack weight contributed to the validity of their time. I think it's a joke when record breakers are supported by a porter crew of 10, carrying gears that they should have carried.

For the record, I am not criticising the weight carried. More so I am interested as it seems fairly heavy what was planned to be be a relatively short trip (temporally). I suspect they had several days food with them also that was included in this weight?

[GPSGuided]

For the record, I am not criticising the weight carried. More so I am interested as it seems fairly heavy what was planned to be be a relatively short trip (temporally). I suspect they had several days food with them also that was included in this weight?

Didn't think you were. I too expressed an interest in their gears earlier. The fact that it's 11kg on these young school girls made their achievement even more outstanding! 1/5 of their body weight?

[AndyR]

We spent a lot of time agonising over weight vs safety. Both girls (and dads) wanted to carry packs they were familiar with and knew were comfortable, which did mean using ones on the heavier side (average empty pack is probably 2kg). The primary concern was we didn't want to end up on the front page of the Mercury or the 7 o'clock news as yet another irresponsible group while trying to let the girls have their adventure. To this end, we wanted to be able to sort ourselves out if things did turn to poo - nightmare scenario is someone does an ankle at 1a.m. can't move, it's zero degrees and the nearest hut is over an hour away. So major gear for each party of two was tent, sleeping bag each, 3 meals each, scroggin (we took too much) stove, first aid kit, epirb (or sat phone), UHF radio, walking poles (didn't use mine), a small amount of spare clothing, spare batteries for head torches plus the usual bits and pieces such as map, compass etc.

I'm sure you could do it much lighter, especially in summer but we used what we had. As noted above we each had scroggin and we expected we'd get through a fair bit but in reality we didn't eat anywhere near as much as we thought we would - it seems there's only so much fruit and nuts you can eat in a 24hr period. One interesting thing was we all carried at least 1L of water (included in the weight) but I think we all struggled to drink enough - the water was so cold that it made it hard to keep drinking between huts. Obviously there are things we took that we didn't need but that's how insurance works

cheers, Andy

[wayno]

all good mate, i was just being cheeky with my comment. background is some people prefer lighter gear on here and its been a thread in past posts...

[wayno]

one trick with cold water is have a bottle inside your jacket, some jackets have pockets inside for you to put them in,

[AndyR]

one trick with cold water is have a bottle inside your jacket, some jackets have pockets inside for you to put them in,

All apart from me were using bladders - maybe there's a market for some sort of battery powered bladder warmer - that doesn't sound how I intended it to

Andy

[wayno]

yeah bladders in winter.. thats why the yanks go for bottles instead.....