Jon Sutcliffe and Thor Egerton. Open Mixed winners.
This event came around quickly. It was only 6 months ago that we last had an Australasian Rogaining Champs, then held in WA. On that occasion, we had come away with rather more than we expected. Aiming to just defend our Mixed Super Vets title, we came away with three trophies - the Mixed Super Vets plus Mixed Veterans & Mixed Open titles. It was the rogaining equivalent of “doing a Bradbury”. The perennial winners of these titles David Baldwin & Julie Quinn didn’t race, with Juile sidelined by injury. Other notable mixed teams also hadn’t entered. We had to work hard for the score of course but we knew we weren’t in the same league as some of these absent teams.
Six months later and we had wrestled the three trophies by car, plane, plane, hotel and car to the Snowy Mountains area. Julie & David were again out of the running to get the X and XV titles back as they were the setters and organisers of this event. But there was strong field and the maximum entry limit of 400 had been reached. There was also a very strong mixed super vets category (particularly from Tasmania with Simon and Karen, and Bernard and Sara entered), so we knew winning even one category was going to need a big effort out there.
The area was tough - few quick track routes, lots of thick bush and a very warm start on the Saturday. Maybe all this helped us - we drew on our experience and we decided on a fairly conservative plan - just 65km (straight-line) for the 24 hours, and focussing on the highest pointers.
For the first 6 hours we were on track and all was going well. We were on schedule at 4km/h (about 24km clocked) and had been through some nice country. We expected to slow after 6pm to about 3km/h and a bit slower still after dark. But when we hit the bush at about 6.30pm, we found it very tough. We stumbled through 58-96-105-74-86 (about 5km in total), found them cleanly but took 2.5 hours. We arrived at Water2 about 9pm and significantly behind our plan and with a big climb up into the bush ahead of us. This was no longer an option - we just didn’t have the will to bushbash uphill again. We knew we had to adjust the plan.
We stayed at the water point for 20 minutes to look at options, get water and tend to feet. We spotted that there was a low route to the east, going in and out of open areas. It looked about 200 points less but we thought we could pick them off more quickly and be back on schedule by 94. This turned out to be a good estimate. Again recalculating along the route, we then decided that 44-92-101-52-W1 was better than our intended 81-72-W1 and was only a shade longer so we deviated again. A slight error reading contours in the dark took us off course near 101 and so we decided to get 53 as well. A lucky error perhaps.
We stayed at Water1 for another 20 minute break - water, foot care, a short rest and (yay!) head torches off. From there we brought it home. We lost time in the slow bush between 82-73 but began to speed up at the end, knocking off the last loop quicker than expected. I (Jon) wondered whether we could fit in an extra loop of 71-51-40 instead of just 31, on the way back but we were probably about 10 minutes short of attempting that.
Our strong finish and our recalculated route that we did at probably the ideal time, made us competitive. In a race of attrition, we held our nerve didn’t do too much wrong. We had some luck with control spotting in the dark and we both stayed reasonably healthy throughout. Many good teams weren’t so fortunate.
Amazingly we retained the XSV title, and (thanks to the long list of injured/ill competitors), we took the X and XV titles again too. The margin we had from Richard Robinson & Tamsin Barnes (QLD) in all 3 categories, was just 60 points! We want to give them a shout out for the almost equal performance out there as another XSV team. Looking at the points accumulation data, Tamsin and Richard were ahead of us the whole time until the last 90mins.
There was plenty about the event that wasn’t much fun much at the time, but it was a good test of our mental strength and experience. Conservative route planning, good navigation, the flexibility to change course, and regular stops to keep feet in good shape are the take aways from this one.
The results and teams' routes can be viewed on the rogaine-results.com website.
Jonathan Sutcliffe & Thorlene Egerton
