With so much rainfall in the days preceding the event, it was nothing short of a miracle that rain held off for the whole day on Saturday 19 April, when a record 220 teams turned up for AROC’s most popular Adventure Race to date on the shores of Lake Macquarie.
The event started with the 50 Novice teams leaving on kayaks at 9AM, followed 15 minutes later by the first wave of Classic Course competitors on foot.
There was some real competition in the Novice Course with some of the faster, more experienced teams missing out on a place in the Classic course but deciding to have a hit out anyway. The Old Bulls were not disadvantaged by their age leading much of the way until the final sprint to the finish and Wherethafrickarewe Tribe with some extra juice in their legs crossed first to grab the win. Less than a minute behind in third place were the Three Stooges. The Sistas were the first all female team home in the Novice Course and 16th overall.
Hurry Up Dad had our youngest competitors for the day with AROC regular Alan Yeung racing with his two daughters, Bianca (9 years old) and Natalie (11 years old). They got every checkpoint and finished with tired but very big smiles and lots of hugs from the rest of the family.
The Classic course started out with a crossword orienteering around Stockland’s Murrays Beach. Crossword puzzle addicts may have got an advantage on this first leg, but it was good navigation that made all the difference in the foot orienteering of leg 2. Some of the participants in the second wave of the Classic Course had to wait a little bit for boats to be freed by the first wave racers who took their time to find checkpoints 1 through 4 between Stockland’s Murrays Beach and Rafferty’s Resort! Team Crank’s Michael Merriment, Matt De Belin and Matt Shields struggled with fitting the words into the crossword coming out of that leg around 40th place. But good riding skills saw them reeling in the field and just pip ARNuts Flat Chat in the last ride to finish first in 3 hours and 46minutes.
The Classic Course paddling leg was relatively straight-forward, but with a head wind picking up, it was hard work to cross the lake towards the Gwandalan peninsula.
The rogaining section then took teams running in a residential neighborhood, looking for clues to answer questions instead of traditional orienteering punches. On this trek, many a team was found counting “upturned” boats on the shore of Lake Macquarie, searching the top of a tree for a “man-made object” – a Coke bottle - or looking for a single word to describe a burnt and ruined house!
With many tracks turned into creeks by the heavy rainfalls of the past weeks, the first of the two mountain biking legs was a hoot with knee-deep puddles and a real mud fest for competitors and bikes alike. The large number of tracks in the area made for some more opportunities for navigational errors for hasty riders! The mud was lots of fun but also hard work and took teams almost twice as long as if the tracks had been dry. Some teams learnt to swim through some super huge puddles and Matt Bacon from Hardtale.com was seen going over his head at one point! He is not known as the little man for nothing!
It was then on to 3 short orienteering checkpoints hidden in watercourses and then back on the bike for the final leg which included heaps of muddy hills to conquer, on the saddle or off, according to the level of fatigue of the participants!
The Bedraggled Berra Babes were really not so bedraggled and won the all female category. The Pulsettes were second and Team Three Queen B’s third.
It was a long day for some with Team Do or Die Trying finishing in the dark but super stoked that they did keep trying for over 11 hours and actually did do it – well done.
GU sports drink and a complimentary barbeque welcomed the wary finishers at Stockland’s Murrays Beach. The rain finally came during the prize ceremony but was gone again by the time the party kicked off at Rafferty’s Resort. Freshly showered teams showed up by the pool to share some stories and congratulate once more the super resilient winning team, Team Crank.
