Keelan’s Wrap – 30th Lake Macquarie

I thought i’d write some thoughts/analysis. It’s all ‘what-ifs’ of course but i think lessons can be learnt from post-race analysis. Most important was to have fun (which was achieved!!).

I enjoyed having a different approached to route planning with my partner generally running 1min/km slower than i usually do. I also lead/naved 95% of it which was fun. Yet we still covered 43.6km in 6hr with sub-6min/km at the end so yeah…definitely moving  I think it was a fairly clear start 65-58-67-75-92-100-36-64-61-52-41 which took us 1hr 5mins (lost 5mins on the way). From there it was quite interesting. How do you slot in 80, 85, 70 & 72? 300 points with some potential for errors. It looked enticing but turned out to be a mistake i reckon. Good course setting here!

We tried to go for 85 but a mapped track didn’t exist so backtracked and got 80 first (lost 10mins) then 85. We then went for 70 but ended on the minor tracks to south (which definitely were much more major) and looked everywhere with 3 other teams. Absolutely not complaining about unmapped tracks, that’s rogaining and our error, but after looking for 20mins we gave up and left with nothing. So it took us 1hr for 160 points. Even with good nav, maybe 1hr at best for the full 300 points? Was this cluster worth it? I don’t think so.

Once back at 81 it was also fairly clear to go 42-66-100 (lost 5min trying by failing to go between road and cliffs behind properties) then 82-43-95-77-76-49-93-102-96-103-68. From here it again got interesting. We had 1hr 30mins left by this point. 37 was clearly not worth it as an out and back. I believe we chose a near perfect finishing route here considering where we were. And just an aside, the scale seemed closer than 1:25,000 on the street but that could’ve just been from coming from more bush and hillier controls.

From 68 we went 57-20-56-33. I think 21-22-35 was definitely not worth it. 31 and 23 also not really. 48 possibly as an out and back. From 33, we had 1hr 10mins left. If we didn’t stuff up our nav, we would have had 1hr 45mins left. For 60-53-72-94-46-69-104 loop (470 points) you clearly needed at least 1 hour to do it. I think it would’ve been better than attempting 80-85-70-73 (300 points) which would’ve taken roughly the same time.

So from 33 with 1hr 10mins, we made a risky move that just paid off to go 50-62-45-63 through the dunes. Our nav was good in a potentially tricky bit. The finish after 63 was 39-78-29-59-28-HH. Total 2580 points. Reasonably happy (particularly with the finish) after 35mins of errors. Without them we probably would’ve got 48, 47, 27, 104, 27 so maybe 220 points extra but who knows hey

However, i think for our speed the best route was 65-58-67-75-92-100-36-64-61-52-41 then drop 80-85-70-72 and go straight for 81-42-66-100-82-43-95-77-76-49-93-102-96-103-68-57-20-48-56-33. From here since you drop four in the middle, then go north to 60-53-71-94-46-69-104-55-62-45-63-39-26-78-49-47-28-27-51 for a total of 2940 points. That’s assuming no errors and since we made 30mins of errors based off what we did today say drop 47-27-51-48 (150 points) for 2790 points. 210 points more than what we got (so not much really!) 30, 40, 55, 34, 44, 74, 91 didn’t seem worth it under any circumstance.

Obviously a lot of ‘what-ifs’ in the above based on my own (very minimal) experience. I really enjoyed the course, the event and happy with how we went. I thought course setting was good – especially the middle 80 & 70 points cluster and weaving in the eastern streets. Lessons learnt were to not get enticed by the course setter (even though i said i wouldn’t going into it…). Cheers, loved it, will be back for more