They say that everything in Australia will kill you. For a Carcross couple, the saying didn’t hold true for the adventure racing world championships, held in the country’s province of New South Wales this week.

Denise and Greg McHale, half of Team Tecnu and racing under the Canadian banner, finished 16th.

The 627 kilometre race – if you took zero wrong turns – featured more than 90 quartets from around the world.

The eventual winners, New Zealand’s team Seagate, completed the course in 95 hours and four minutes, in other words, it took them just under four days to complete it.

Team Tecnu finished in 116 hours and six minutes.

In addition to the McHales, who came out of semi-retirement to race this season, the team also featured Alex Provost and Benjamin Medina.

The course featured four different activities, spread out between transition areas.

In total racers had to trek 115 kilometres, bike for 322 (just over half the total race distance), paddle for 185K, and do a caving section, which ended up being about 5K.

Teams were left in the dark about where the course would take them until a few hours before the start, when the maps were released.

“There’s a lot of variables here that’s going to make it pretty interesting,” said Denise in a video posted to the team’s official Facebook page ahead of the race. “I’m just ready to go. Let’s do it.”

A traditional adventure race with no optional checkpoints or early courses, teams chose when to sleep – if they did – and where. There was only one blacked out section, a 44 kilometre pack raft, which was too dangerous to be completed in the dark.

Team Tecnu ended up starting it in the dark and opted to have a quick sleep. They reached that leg on day four.

By then, blisters – oh, the blisters – were the least of the team’s worries.

Sleep deprivation was the main worry, but it was also a source of entertainment as Greg watched Provost doze off in the back of the boat, waking up as he hit the water.

The sleep deprivation became especially apparent in another video featuring Greg on the team’s Facebook page. In the organized chaos of the transition area before the final bike, he is already decked-out in his cycling gear.

“When it comes down to the last three things and now there’s no more water and soon there’ll be no more bike and soon there’ll be no more nothing,” he says. “There will be beers and bed.”

A total of 117 kilometres later, after a bike through Morton National Park and a beachside trek back to Ulladulla, Team Tecnu crossed the line in the top 20 in the world, arm-in-arm they stepped under the banner and presumably, after a beer or two, fell straight into bed.