Gunnedah’s Casey Haywood and Michael Stevenson, and two friends, Guy Randall and Cameron Bell completed the Sydney route in 29 hours and 44 minutes.

The team had hoped to finish in 27 hours but lost precious time after Guy went down for the count.

“We were going awesome. We were about 66th position out of 462 teams, until we got to about midnight on the Friday night and one of our guys crashed. He had an anaphylactic crash,” Casey said.

He said they took Guy back to a check-point, gave him food and let him sleep. It wasn’t until later that they found the cause of a problem – Guy had a leech in his shoe.

“It’s just as mental as it is physical and the hard part was deciding to push on that night. It was 1.30am when we woke Guy up to get going again, and the rain was coming in, and it was hard to get up and put our raincoats on,” Casey said.

The team crossed the finish line at 2.45pm on Saturday, in 129^th place.

“It was a massive achievement in itself,” Casey said.

He said the track was “very rugged”, with participants forced to climb over boulders and make their way along creek banks. 

“We were all pretty battered and bruised,” he said.

“We all had lots of chaff, sore knees, sore feet, blisters were starting to come through.”

Casey said whenever they had passed medic tents, they were full of people receiving attention.

“The big thing was only 35 per cent of teams completed the whole thing as team.,” he said.

“It’s definitely hard but I guess you’re with your team and you try to get through it together.”

Despite their exhaustion, the four men still hit the town to celebrate with their support crew.

“We were all feeling super proud,” he said.

“Our support crew was amazing. Couldn’t have done it without them.”

Casey said he would probably have another go at the Trailwalker event next year but it might take a bit of persuasion to get his three team mates back on board.

“I reckon I can wrangle it,” he said.

To support the Hopeless Wanderers in their fundraising efforts, visit http://oxf.tw/25218