The Eagle Bay Epic Adventure Race saw 1,500 competitors spread their wings over one of three off-road adventure race events in the South West.
Based at the Eagle Bay Brewing Co, the off-road courses included mountain biking, trail running, kayaking and ocean swimming through the Meelup Regional Park and Geographe Bay.
The event attracted more than 2,000 supporters who cheered from the sidelines in beautiful weather conditions and gave the new race a big thumbs up.
Byron Hudson and Phip Hughes showed up their nearest rivals, taking out the Leeuwin Long Course in times of 4hrs 09:07 and 5hrs 04:33, respectively, with Hudson only narrowly beating second place Brendon Dimmer by 20 seconds.
The course included a gruelling 23km mountain bike, 2km ocean swim, 13.5km paddle, and 12.5km trail run traversing the breathtaking landscape along the coast. The run leg also included a water jump and 50m swim mid-way through.
In the relay team of four category 'Team Epic' clocked in a speedy time of 3 hrs 56:47.
The Vibe Short Course included 13km mountain bike, 1.2km ocean swim, 5km paddle and 7.9km trail run either solo or in relay teams.
The shorter race being the most popular of the weekend with over 600 competitors.
Andrew Mowlem of 'Team Epic' took out the short course solo male line honours, along with under 18 rising star Femke Negus winning the female category; posting times of 2 hrs 15:17 and 2 hrs 33:07 respectively.
Team members included William Lee, Kristopher Taylor, Brendan Rice and Andrew Mowlem who all raced individually as part of the Vibe Short Course on Saturday, backing up on Sunday with the Leeuwin Long Course team win.
The Kids Adventure challenge saw more than 400 children aged up to 13 years take on the 3.5km running and obstacle course complete with spiders webs, hurdles, crawling and slippery dip obstacles along the way.
Saturday afternoon also featured WA's first 'Wife'* Carrying Championships with the winning couple taking home their weight in beer thanks to the Eagle Bay Brewing Co.
Couples had to piggy back one another over the 400m course that included hurdles and limbo bars.
Conducted in a head-to-head elimination style there were two heats of four pairs with a winner-takes-all Final being the highlight of the weekend for many people.
The event information is from https://eaglebayepic.rapidascent.com.au/
Photos by Therese Sayers.
