A Tough Battle at the Front

Michael Meryment

In keeping with AROC's urban theme the latest round in the series was held at the Sydney Olympics site at Homebush, with the start line right in front of the cauldron where the flame burned in 2000.

With an over full house of 303 competitors on the start line the initial dash was nothing short of frantic. Team CRANK lined up with the usual suspects, Matt de Belin and Michael Meryment being joined by reigning NSW road racing champion Klayten Smith. Klayten had raced a Teva event late last year and only agreed to join us on this one as long as there were no "stupid crocodiles" - those who did the Sydney Teva sprint will understand. Closest to that we'd get would be a shark in the Parramatta River.

The course consisted of a short run to the map give out point for a rogaine in Bicentennial Park, a linear bike leg, a paddle down the Parramatta River, a foot orienteering course followed by a paddle back up the river, and finally a short ride and a run to checkpoints to pick up answers to a series of questions.

The start was the most concern as we had no idea how hard the NSW Orienteering squads were going to hit out and as they are undefeated in these races this summer they were the teams to watch. Racing in 2 teams for this event as NSW Stingers and Australian Stingers we knew they were fast on foot and extremely accurate in their navigation.

As expected it was a lung buster from the gun. I've finished half marathons on Olympic Boulevard and none of them hurt as much as the first 1500m of that road in this event.

At the map give out volunteers were inundated with teams grabbing maps to see where the fastest route through the park was that yielded 100 points. We set off on a vaguely planned loop collecting the first few checkpoints before sorting out the rest of course. With Matt navigating, Klayten collecting controls and myself adding points and giving descriptions the teamwork fell into place immediately.

We crossed paths with the 2 Stingers teams and eventually all met up and headed to the last 3 controls together, still running flat out. After a small hiccup with getting the right control card to the first checkpoint (CP1) we mounted the bikes and chased the NSW Stingers team. After 4 controls on the bike we had them and with the next control on top of a small hill with a nasty incline we put the hammer down and dropped them to take the lead.

With all 12 bike controls collected we were on the road swapping off turns en route to the paddle transition. Into the Toy Boy Voyager III sit-on-tops and Klayten had his first lesson in paddling which he took to pretty well. 2km and 2 Rivercats later we beached at Kissing Point and ran an orienteering course collecting 7 controls.

In the spirit of a fun AROC race one control was at the top of a slippery dip which we all had to take to the bottom and another was on a rope netting climb. From there we found an interesting route under jetties and across the shoreline to take us directly to the kayaks.

By this stage both Stingers teams had closed the gap and we all hit the boats together to reverse the journey back up the river. We discovered later that the Australian Stingers team had lost their map and were running flat out to follow the other Stingers team to the controls.

By the finish of the paddle we managed to gain a slight advantage and we were out of the bike transition before either chasing teams had left the water.

Back on the bike and with Klayten on the front we motored all the way to the start/finish area to receive another map of the Olympic site to mark up with controls and a control card with questions and advice that the answers were to be found at each of the controls. We didn't realise the first of these controls had 5 questions and wasted valuable time with 3 of us running around the sculptures in front of the Olympic Stadium looking for an answer to the first question!

Once we split the questions between us and saw where the answers were located it made the job easier, but not quick enough to get out before the NSW Stingers team. From there it was a frantic chase with Crank running into controls just as they were leaving, but in the end they were too strong and we didn't have the legs left to run them down.

I can't say we weren't pleased with 2nd, but to be caught out on a random and "designed to be fun" task is a bit frustrating. A few extra kilometres on the bike or paddle and we may have been able to hold it. Thanks to Tom and Alina from AROC for putting on another fantastic event. They manage to pull it off each time and with a record size field they did an incredible job.

A big thanks to iRule for the tent we use at races. With shade a premium at the Overflow Park it was great to be able to pop it up next to the food stall and have a chat with everyone as they refuelled in the shade post event.

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