Murray Quad Australia 2012

Do you want to escape the snow wet and cold ……. well maybe next year you can ….. 15th December marks the one year count down to the First Murray QUAD – Australia’s first Diamond Man a 130 km race that involves a swim, run, bike and kayak. In Yarrawonga we had beautiful weather about 30 degrees with little or no wind! Our club the Yarrawonga Mulwala Amateur Canoe Club, is based on the Murray River Australia’s largest river that is also home the iconic Murray Marathon a 404km canoe race that starts in Yarrawonga and finishes in Swan Hill that is held every year from Boxing day to New years eve.

The distance of each leg of the course will be a 1.7km swim on Lake Mulwala, a 21km run around Yarrawonga, a 83km bike ride from Yarrawonga to Cobram and a 25km paddle downstream on the Murray River from Cobram to Tocumwal. Original we were looking to make the event a half ironman distance plus a kayak leg, but we have now decided to make it a distance that suits the course rather than idea of an ironman plus kayak, this will allow an area for warm up before the swim (the lagoon at the rowing club) as well as give us a starting point big enough for one start.

The bike ride can now also go straight from the Tocumwal Road to Thompsons beach in Cobram. With the help of many local and Melbourne sporting clubs we aim to keep the entry costs to a minimum. In the next couple of weeks I will finalise the sanctioning of the event, date, start time, course, entry costs, registration dates, rules and regulations. We would also like to make this a qualifying event for the 2013 World Quadrathlon Championships in Europe as well as a WQF world cup race.
Once this is sorted I will start to look for some sponsors for the event, as well as partners to help with printing, advertising, equipment hire, merchandise including event T-Shirts, fundraising distribution and charities. etc.
It would be great to have some international athletes attend our event and hopefully we can build up the sport of Quadrathlon so one day we can have some of our athletes coming over to one of your events.
We plan to have our event sanctioned by our state governing body Canoeing Victoria and are looking into also have the governing Triathlon body TriVic also sanctioning the event therefore we can have two associations involved as Quad races are new to Australia we do have adventure races such as the Lorne Anaconda race that involves a ocean swim, run, mountain Bike ride and ocean paddle which is held on the first Sunday of December. So there is a number of events that may interest your members around this time each year.
Will keep you informed

Hope you all have a good Christmas…… and maybe see some of you next year!
Regards
Tim Roadley
Sec of the Yarrawonga Mulwala Amateur Canoe Club.
0417373376