Rogaining race (Fossicker's Dream ARC) 23:51:21 [3] 77.0 km (18:35 / km)
shoes: Speedcross 3 No. 1 bright gree
Aus champs south of Mansfield Victoria with Ben Corry.
Finally teamed up with Ben a couple of weeks before the rogaine after Mark pulled out and then Ben's team mates pulled out. So I went in with high expectations.
Did the model course on Friday with Sophie and Ryan, only had time to find one control which seemed to be misplaced. Then I had to get to the ARA AGM.
Vegetation was open and hills not too big so Ben and I agreed 90-110km would be achievable. Then we planned 107km which gave us all the controls except two 20 point water drops which we could add in if way ahead of plan. And we had plenty of big zigzags on the way in from the NE corner plus looping around the HH to finish with some low pointers, so plenty of options to cut the course.
Started heading to the SE corner and as soon as we headed south from the road we were on our own. Early nav was nice and smooth and we crossed paths with Gill Fowler and her teammate quiet a few times in the first 5 hrs or so.
Heading up the road to the water drop W22, Gill and friend went running past us. We cut a corner in to the control and they were still at the water drop when we got there. They said they'd headed straight to 59 from the start so looked like thet'd got done the same route as us, but bouncing around all over the place. We quickly topped up our water again and left them behind as we headed to 43 then 102. On the way to 68 we passed them going the other way, so they probably weren't planning on getting 44 and 45 just to the north, we didn't see them again till close to the end.
Nav was still going nicely, vegetation into and out of 68 was the thickest on the course and pretty slow going. Whilst the hills weren't big, they were steep and just one after another and our pace was putting us well behind plan, but we weren't too concerned with plenty of drop options later.
So 5 or 6 hours in I started to not feel so good, and slowly fell in a hole (not literally/Achilles tearing) and before too long was struggling to eat or drink. By the time we got to the water drop W02 (zero pointer) I was pretty bad, had a mandarine and we crossed paths with Dave and Bryce whilst we were there.
Once we got past the OOB after 31 I need a short lay down and tried to eat more and tried really hard to spew but couldn't get anything up, so at least I knew I hadn't eaten too much, so just needed to try to get something down.
Still wasn't feeling any better and I'm not sure were, maybe after 70 or 56 I told Ben I needed a longer break, so about half an hour hoping my stomach would settle down, then managed to get a muesli bar down. After that I slowly improved, very slowly getting more food done by having very small bites then washing them down with water, which pretty much tastes disgusting.
We had a couple of minor nav issues in the 2nd half of the night, can't remember exactly where, no major time loses anyway. One issue was between 101 and 32 which was about a 2.5km leg, we were aiming for the track just north of an OOB to then head up to a ridge line to follow for about 1.5km. We crossed hit the N-S road then found a road heading east, but soon after things weren't quite right and luckily Ben realised before we headed into another OOB, so we just followed the road instead, so no prob there.
Pretty funny that we could hear music playing in the distance for about an hour around 3 in the morning.
I think it must have been 80 were we crossed paths with Wil and Andre, we dropped down the spur from the top and were then heading back up to the ridge to head to 72 when we saw them heading down towards to control. Wil said he was struggling, I said I was too.
So at 51 it was time to plan what we could do through till the end, must have been daylight by then. So instead of doing 33, W01, 74 then cutting back, we decided same distance for same points but an extra drop option at the end would be better. So we headed round east round the south side of an OOB and then north up to 49, but we soon regretted it as we then had to cross to river across a deep valley and also had to pick a spot to cross to avoid the blackberries, and we wouldn't have anymore water drops either.
By now we were doing all we could to avoid hills, generally heading for ridgelines and going the long way to avoid as many gullies as possible. After 92 we headed to 79 and on the way I started to loose the plot with my nav. and from there till the finish I just couldn't make sense of the gullies and water courses any more. Good thing Ben was still spot on.
Heading in to 61 Gill and friend cam running in from our left just behind us, then we headed east for the road to get 81, once again avoiding a heap of gullies. Not sure if they got 81 before us going straight, we didn't see them again. On to 53 and we started pushing the pace as Ben was keen to get 67 before 48 and HH. Decided we had time to get it, but I ran out of water with over an hour to go and I think Ben was also out by then.
Very hot for the last hour and kept the pace up. from 48 to HH had down to a deep water course then over a big hill down to the river next to the HH and a bit of time to cool down whilst crossing the river before finishing with nearly 10 mins to go.
Happy to have got through 24 hrs again after really struggling through the middle again. The last 6 hrs I just ate lollies washed down with water but it got me through.
7th equaled my best Aus champs result and a pretty good result considering and we beat Wil and Andre who struggled even more.
Didn't carry a GPS, ran a string around what we did and got 72km straight line, 77km including some deviations from straight line.
Plan going forward is to work on drinking lots during training and sort out hydration and nutrition issues.
Note: Added gpx file drawn be Ben from the aerial photo.