rogaining race (Flagstaff Hill Minigaine) 2:59:28 [4] 28.0 km (6:25 / km)
shoes: Asics Gel 2130
I talked Steve Cooper into doing the 3hr minigaine with me and he politely requested that I not run him into the ground as he "hadn't been doing many long runs lately" (apart from winning the 12hr, that is!)
The hash house was at the scout hall on Blacks Rd; about 1km north of it is the 30m high flood control dam across Sturt Gorge and I immediately ruled out going to the control there. We decided to cross the gorge further west, early on, and then go up through Bellevue Heights, Craigburn Farm and Coromandel Valley, then see how much time we had to get through Aberfoyle Park, where the streets twist and turn and the organisers hadn't marked any of the linear parks which follow creeks in that area, so that it looked like some controls were in the middle of the built-up housing area!
At the briefing they mentioned not crossing the gorge because of yesterday's rain (I think this referred mainly to immediately upstream of the dam - there are some good photos of it on Google Earth) so I suggested to Steve that we leave out a 60 & 70 in the gorge, do a bit of a road slog down to where I knew there was a crossable ford, then a road slog up Eve Rd through Bellevue Heights getting a 30 & 40 instead. 60 less points but it put us ahead of schedule and so when we got to Blackwood Football Club just on an hour, we figured we would go all the way up to 90pts at Hawthorndene Oval. We may have been the only team who did so, in the end. As we decided this, the bottom dropped out of the sky. I haven't been so wet since the Mt Magnificent trail run in July. And where did all that rain go? Straight into the Sturt Creek catchment and therefore into the gorge!
Up into and out of Craigburn Farm, where the map hadn't been updated at all and I was very glad of Summer Series prior knowledge :) Down into a stupid control in a reserve with private land all around so we had to come back out the same way, then down Coromandel Parade to the road bridge across the Sturt River. When we saw how much water was flowing we were very pleased with our route choice. We had also just passed Steven Dose & John Soden going uphill the way we had come down and were pretty sure they couldn't manage to do in the next 80 minutes what had just taken us 100min.
Now the streets got harder to read and I made some dodgy entry/exits to some of the little parks & laneways; can probably account for about 10 min of silliness all up over the last hour, but we were lucky with some educated guesses as to which parks went through to other roads. With 20 min to go and only two 20 pointers in a line between us & the hash house, Steve suddenly noticed out a 30 & 40 on the south side of Blacks Rd (a total distance of 4km back to the hash house as it turned out) and wondered if we could manage either of those as well. I said "We'll do them both instead, and if we are less than 3 min late back then the extra 30 points will have been worth it". We made it back with less than half a minute to spare, passing a number of teams as we belted along Blacks Rd, who were obviously going to be late.
And then we looked around for our competition. The McCombs came in 4 min late, John & Fern 6 min late, thereby losing 60 points, having swum the river east of the flood control dam to achieve this. And there was no sign of the Sodens. Even after I'd put on warm dry clothes, neither Zara/Lauren nor John/Steven had appeared. Concerned enquiries elicited sightings of them at the top of the hill on the north side of the river even later than John & Fern had been. It was getting closer and closer to the 30-minutes-late-after-which-teams-are-disqualified cutoff, and they still hadn't appeared. Eventually John & Steven were 33 min late and Zara & Lauren 36 min, the girls having swum the lake upstream of the flood control dam (did Zara really have her phone between her teeth?) and ending up with no official points to show for all their efforts.
It seems like a few teams bit off more than they could chew, even if the river hadn't flooded. The last time this happened was at the Onkaparinga Gorge twilight event where crossing the gorge in the dark made some teams very late. Paul Hoopmann, though, memorably said that he knew it was crap in the gorge so he went all the way around the rim. This time it paid off for us to do the same. Steve & I ended up first, with John & Fern second (well done guys, especially with your swim) and as far as I can tell, even if other teams hadn't lost points for being late we would still have won with 1180 points, though by a much smaller margin.
Rough breakdown:
first hour 9.5km, 420 points
second hour 9km, 380 points
third hour 9.5km, 380 points
Thanks heaps to Steve who is always a great partner (and to Maya for lending him to me for the afternoon)!