Australasian Rogaining Championship race report – by Pierre Francois, Team 100 - No Detour

The story

My first and only one 24hrs rogaine was about two years ago for NSW Championship in the Howes Valley on the putty road where I ended up badly to the hospital after a massive foot infection ( story and gross pictures still available here). I never gave up with that though and while last year I was in France for holidays; my aim was to try again this year. But with a busy year trying to find a routine with two young kids, my training and racing schedule has been hopeless so the idea was to be a passenger and finish the race in one piece. Even though he was a little bit hard to convince at first, Ross partnered up with me (no no no 24hrs on foot is not brutal )

Pre-race

We had an early drive from Sydney to the Hash House, nested in the Capertee area, about 4.5hours drive from Sydney. The surroundings cliffs were majestic as usual with the Blue Mountains (is it still in the Blue Mountains by the way?). While we drove through the campground to find a spot for the tent (post-race snooze) we could see the long queue of excited rogainers looking forward to the A2 map. And we were like them!

While I setup the campground in a strategic location (understand close to the toilet block to the detriment of the inexistent shade), Ross went to get the map and timing tags. Lots of points on that maps, and we are quite relieved to see that this time the organizers put plenty of water drops at strategic locations. Perfect: whatever would be our plan, we won’t have to bother too much about turning ourselves into camel mode. It is little to say that Ross (the sweat stream!) was more than happy.

We decided to go serenity and gain in confidence first, and thus tackle the easiest part of the map, north east with good number of low points, expecting them to be easier to find on a flattish terrain. Then our route should bring us to the south with aim to be at the ANC (All Night Café) as early as we could in the night (understand here 8pm as a target). The sunset was scheduled to be around 7pm. If legs still respond by that time, the south-west loop (71-99-104-34-94-76-101-87-92-68-97-55) with high points all located at fair distances to the tracks but with lots of climbing was in our sights. Also a bit unsure about our fitness the plan was to walk fast but not jog to last longer in the race.

Race

With little time to spare for a last drink, we used the 3 hours of planning, gear packaging etc wisely and stood up in the front line for the traditional race briefing. Lots of known faces from the Adventure Racing community around (at least I know them and they don’t know me) but this is quite normal since this is the National Championship.

At my surprise, no one ran to the first checkpoint in our group, CP43 for us. We are in the leading group for teams which decided to go North. The climb to CP53 took its toll but had great views but first mistake was soon about to happen. While we cruised to CP51, my attention got caught by a wild pig running to hell down into the valley and I unintentionally drifted the team to the wrong gully, which appears to be the first one. It took us energy to realize the mistake and by the time we had found CP51, we had already lost half an hour. We have been on course for just an hour! Chaotic start, by my fault.

We nailed the next two checkpoints (32 and 86) but we did our second mistake. While cruising towards 31, we underestimated the covered distance and didn’t pay enough attention to the landscape. We looped around in the area but were absolutely confused and unsure about our exact location. Nothing matched. So we used a safety exit to the south aiming to hit the road quickly but unfortunately we hit a track which was unmapped. Both of us very confused, we finally found two other guys lost as well and reached the water drop after having spent half an hour in the middle of nowhere. Upset by our over confidence we quickly ran in the northern gully to get CP31 but once again we didn’t pay

enough attention to the compass and drifted in the wrong gully. What a mess! I decided to ditch that checkpoint. We spent almost 1h30 on a checkpoint worth 30 points only, disaster.

We got 41, 45 then 65 without troubles. And here came our third mistake towards CP73. Once again we underestimated the travelled distance and went in the wrong gully. We both started to fear about our ability to navigate at night and no doubt that we were both mentally

affected by such a bad start (and we decided to go North East to gain in confidence… total Fail).

We found CP73 after almost 5 hours on course, way behind our expectations and the rain had started to fall off. From this time onward we decided to go slower and pay much more attention to the landscape and compass. I know we should have proceeded that way from the beginning.

Our first big hundred checkpoint was 106, followed by 85, 75 and then 95. A good bunch on points punched just before darkness. It was time to put on the Ay-Up.

On the way to 83, I’ve made a lucky one by retrieving his Suunto compass, lost early on. We really paid attention to the terrain and finally nailed 83 then 42 after a steep descent. Spirits were much better at this stage.

Now on the track near Wallaby creek, we are pacing up towards 93. Once up there, we were one of the many teams looking for the checkpoint. We spent half an hour out there and finally found it (not sure that the location was accurate though).

We were reaching the 10 hours racing mark, time to check feet. Mine were ok but Ross started to feel about his. He taped his feet and surely kept going towards CP58. Still on the navigation, I was in a great mood having digested the early start we had in the race. But here came out fourth mistake. Over confident I didn’t pay too much attention of the gully. Probably because I think that I was expecting to see obvious gullies and switch to the third one but the reality was that the creek was a narrow one with lots of small rocks and I completely messed up with the essential: cross checking map and terrain. At some points Ross interrogated me about the distance we had travelled and thought that we were way too far south in the creek, and that we had missed the gullies. Hmmm, I was not convinced but decided it will be safer for us to turn back and double check the landscape inside that creek. Worth case scenario would have been to go back to CP93 and eventually ditch our plan to reach the ANC quicker. We finally had a last attempt and were kind of guided by another team of Queenslanders, a strong one. Finally we found CP58 before them in an obvious gully and rushed toward the top of the hill, pretty happy by this lucky outcome.

Back on the other side of the valley, we found ourselves with the same team which had failed to find 58 but were moving much faster than us.

CP102 was meant to be only one contour level (10m) above the creek level, on a knoll. Hmmm we found it way higher than that, 4 or 5 contours, a very steep hill.

While 78 was on our list of checkpoints to do, the lack of attack point made us thinking it was not worth it. We rushed to 47 then 40 on the main steep road. It was 1.20AM, we have been on course for 13hours.

The café was a welcome pit stop for me with Nutella slices of bread, coffee, a fire, and amazing volunteers who spent the night up there. You guys rock and the rogainers are very lucky to have such good people to support them during events! While I enjoyed the time there, checked my feet etc, Ross seemed to be keen to rush out the place and ditch our plan in the southern west loop. We still had plenty of time to do this hilly part of the map but our feet suffered from the storm. We put dry socks on and decided to shorten the plan, to make everyone happy.

From now on, we slowly started to mentally give up with the race. Our pace drastically dropped down even if we nailed CP71, 67, 80. At this stage, we were both keen to call it a day and finished at walking pace by 33,35,36,50 and finally 30. It was right on the sunrise which was rewarding.

We reached the Hash House at 6.25am, after 18.5 hours of racing and in one piece. The bonus of being early finishers was that we could have a two hours snooze and time to pack up to be back home with our family earlier in the day, which was well received.

We had a long chat about our race and were really pissed off by the costly mistakes we did early on and but were quite happy by our night navigation. We’ve seen heaps of kangaroos, a wombat and a wild pig and in the end had a good time. Overall we covered 59km in 18.5hours, and our total score was 1620pts, an overall position of 87/143 teams. With a better fitness and ambitions I think we could have had 1000pts more and be in the first quarter of the finishers but you know … shoulda, coulda, woulda There is always next year!

Thanks to all the volunteers who ran the event. Big up for the course setters because to me the course had few hiccups and the map was very well used.

http://act.rogaine.asn.au/navlight/NSWRA/AustChamps2015/html/results.html

https://www.strava.com/activities/411264869