Duck Duck Gooseberries AR

Like a duck to water 🦆

Working on some sea kayaking skills for an overnighter island hopping in the Bay of Islands.

One ducks attempt at recovery by going from the North Coast to South Coast.

Back for a less sleepy but much 🌧er look at Park Pass over Easter - part of an epic week on the Five Passes tramping route 🏔🏞⛺️

Long weekends are for resting🍻😴🛶

One month ago we were at the pointy end of what has been called THE HARDEST STAGE IN GODZONE HISTORY!!

With fresh brains and well-rested eyes, it’s clear how massive that stage was. We’re so proud to have made it through!

The biggest THANK YOU!

Finish line feels with family and friends.

Cracking a cold(ish) beer from our epic sponsor .

Would you like to represent your favourite AR team?

This year we had some epic merino shirts made up by . This local company makes delightfully comfty, styley merino gear.

Duck duck gooseberries shirts come in spacious Men’s short sleeve or a more fitted female long sleeve.

If you’d like a shirt jump into our DM’s and we will add you to the next order!

Despite the relatively flat appearance of Brighton Beach, the road to the finish wasn’t smooth, metaphorically or literally, and we have a few people to thank!

Primarily thanks to our amazing support crew! Bron, Miranda and Becks. We literally could not have done it without your patience, proactivity and willingness to go without sleep for days on end! You fed us, put us to bed, pushed us out of the nest when needed and constantly provided reassurance we were okay.

Thanks also to our sponsor for finish line beers and a kitty for our support crew to assist with the above list of tasks! Your support was so deeply appreciated and we only wish we could have gotten a full course finish for you!

Thank you also to for the use of a four-bike carrier. It made transport so much easier for our support crew (who are all quite small stature) and meant they could load the bikes safely and without having to take all the snack pouches, map boards and tool kits off.

generously offered accommodation in Glenorchy for our support crew, and later for the team during our stand-down mid race. Thank you for your patience as we exploded all our gear onto your lawn to dry.

Thank you to our friends and family over the past year. We know that we have been preoccupied by the race, chronically unavailable due to training and that 75% of conversations inevitably turn back to . Thank you for your unfailing support of our insane and arbitrary goal.

Finally, thank you to the teammates. For being strong when needed, empathetic when needed. For making pace and for taking time. I don’t imagine many teams had as much fun out there as we did, and that means we are the real winners on the day.

Done! For once, no witty words. Real talk:

kicked our asses! What a testing course, what a wild area and what an epic week.

Massive highs and massive lows, we were stoked to make it through Stage 3 as the last ranked team, sinking 99 3/4 hours into the effort. As a result, the time we took to complete that stage landed us in a 24h stand down which saw us miss the following three stages.

We rejoined the course with four stages left, vowing to race as competitively as we could. Not to compete against any other team, but to push our own limits. We finished the remainder of the race, only stopping for a 20min power nap.

The team worked well together. We communicated consistently, our nav was smooth (barring one regrettable gaff in the first stage) and we had no team dynamic dramas. Aside from a few dark moments, we laughed, bantered and sang through the entire week.

Ultimately, we discovered that speed and efficiency are where we lost it. It’s clear there’s a lot of work to do before we see DDG finish a full course, but you haven’t seen the last of this scrappy bunch.

All we know about AR we learned from a race, and we will take this lesson in the same good natured way.