ARC Adventure Race – The Ghost of Jack Bean

More than 200 endurance junkies will head to the Coromandel Peninsula this weekend for the 13th ARC Adventure Race on February 16 and 17. The Coromandel has long been considered one of New Zealand’s hidden gems, and the ARC Adventure Race will take in some of its darkest and most remote areas.

Established in 1989, Adventure Racing is a team sport, usually of four with at least one woman, that combines traditional endurance sport disciplines such as trekking, running, kayaking and mountain biking, with challenging terrain and navigational and climbing skills usually more akin to major expeditions.

The annual ARC Adventure Race gives competitors the option of the feature 24 hour event, or 12 hour and eight hour options. The actual course is kept secret until the night before the race. As such navigation and night racing play as big a part as the typical endurance challenges of distance and terrain. This year the event is based in the Kauaeranga Valley, in the heart of the Coromandel Peninsula.

The ARC 24 hour event has become New Zealand’s premier adventure race, with former adventure racing world champions Team Orion Health having won several titles. For the fifth year the ARC adventure race will also host a special category that strives to find the best New Zealand Special Services. Army, Navy, Air Force, SAS, Police, Fire Service and Ambulance are all invited.

Favourites this year team Beaufort 9 of Aidan Boswell, Emma McCosh (Cam), Grant Burke and Louise Mark (Akld). They will be pushed by last year’s third and fourth placegetters, Opotiki’s team Substitutes of Destry Harte, Hedley Meachem, Karl Brown and Lea Vellenoweth and Rotorua’s team Captain Pineapple and Random Lumps of Erin Roberts, Dion Mair, Marquita Gelderman and Alan Kirkpatrick.

Famous for its historic themes, the 2013 ARC Adventure Race has gold fever, with participants racing in search of “The Ghost of Jack Bean”.

Dating back to 1893, the ghost of Jack Bean is a Coromandel folk tale involving a gold mining party returning through the bush from their mine when one Jack Bean and his weeks gold take went missing, never to be seen again.

Along the way participants in the feature 24 hour race will kayak 36k, some of it at night, mountain bike 73k, trek 40k and score extra points with mystery challenges such as target shooting and abseiling.

Organisers Andy Reid and Keith Stephenson are Coromandel residents and endurance sport enthusiasts who got together 10 years ago to form Adventure Racing Coromandel, an event company aimed at promoting adventure and endurance sports in their region. As well as the ARC Adventure Race they organise the Moehau Man Multisport Festival, the Cranleigh K2 Cycle Classic and the Great Cranleigh Kauri Run.