The event was about 130 kms from Perth on the Albany highway, which bisected the map. We were at home with the 1:50,000 scale, but the contour interval was 5m and it still looked flat! This was for runners. There was no vegetation shown on the map. For this, you had to look at an aerial photograph in the Hash-House and copy it onto your own map. We decided not to bother, as there wasn't much except in the north-east corner.
Planning was difficult. The checkpoints were numbered from 1 to 72 but the point values went from 10 to 100. Thus the checkpoint number didn't tell you the value; just that it was worth the same or more than checkpoints with a lower number. As well, we had no real feel for how fast we could travel in this terrain. We knew it would be fast, but how fast?? How well would we navigate at night with such gentle contours?
We settled on a 76 km course, based on 4 km per hour during daylight and 2.5 at night, with no provision for stops. Our strategy was to do the rougher but closer NE corner first, to see how my knee behaved, before spreading out in a big clockwise loop round to the SW corner, then up to the NW corner. At the last minute we decided to reverse our course, because a cold SW wind had sprung up and the forecast included the possibility of a small front. We thought we would prefer the wind on our backs during the night.
As luck would have it, that simple and seemingly trivial decision probably gained us about 300 points. Because we were in the fast country right from the start, we quickly realised that we could cover a lot more distance than we planned. We were travelling at 6 km per hour, including all navigation and stops. We started adding loops onto our route, and planning profitable course alterations for the night. The terrain was delightful to travel in, with pockets of trees on ridge tops and in occasional places in the valleys, but always open. Most of the farmland was either closely grazed or recently sown, and easy underfoot apart from a few places where small stones on the surface brought back painful memories of Mt Singleton 600 kms to the north, where the 1996 2nd World Champs had been held.
The weather remained perfectly clear with a beautiful moon, and we continued to make excellent time. Our navigation worked well apart from the usual minor glitch right on nightfall, while we were trying to find the right stream junction from several in close proximity, all lurking in a wooded area. Once, a route choice got us caught in "fight" and we back-tracked.
Surprisingly, we saw very little of other people. The only notable contact was with a farmer in his 4WD at 2 am. He was wondering who we were, and we explained that we were Rogainers. He was a landowner who had given permission to use his land, but had been under the impression that we all went to sleep during the night. !! (A wee note here - the West Australia Rogaining club has an enviable reputation as a social club. They have a large membership of people who come for the camping and eating experience as much as the walking experience. It gives the club a great strength and their events are always enjoyable. They also have some pretty fast competitors.) One team we did meet at a water point said "You must be the Kiwi team." "How can you tell?" "Who else would be wearing shorts at night."
By mid-night my good knee had gone on strike, probably because I had been using it to help the crook one. I got slower and slower, and was doing most of the work on my crook knee which was now my good knee if you get my drift. Bill and Anne displayed amazing patience and encouragement as I limped on. We worked our way through the hilly NE corner, still expanding our course, and as dawn broke we were well placed to start our inwards spiral back to the hash-house. There were a few cut-off routes if we were running late, but they were inefficient and had to be used earlier rather than later. We decided to ignore them and stick to our route, and continued to add to it with highly inefficient detours for low-ranking checkpoints.
We limped in (at least, I limped in) with 15 minutes to spare and 3360 points out of a possible 3900 points, having covered 98 kms. This was enough to gain tenth place overall, and 1st. mixed vets and mixed supervets. The other NZ team, Chris Byrch and Dave Laurie, had gone clockwise as we had planned, and finished with 3000 points, in 23rd. place and 3rd. mixed vets. 2nd. mixed vets again went to Vivienne Prince and Derek Morris on 3240 points, so kiwis featured in all the mixed vet. placings. There were about 240 teams all told.
The winner was Nigel Aylott at last, with John Jacoby. They got all the checkpoints and were back with a few hours to spare. Nigel has never won an Australian title before, in spite of blitzing the 3rd World Champs in Kamloops in 1998. He does 100 km training runs! John won the Coast-to-Coast a few times and was Steve Gurney's main rival in the early days.
Two other teams also got all the checkpoints, and their placings were decided on finishing time. Interestingly, Nigel told me that their course was 103 km, only 5 km longer than ours. This shows the importance of knowing your ability and planning the best route to match it.
Bill and Anne drove me to the airport, hoping to see me boarded in a wheelchair.
With a superhuman effort I managed to cheat them out of this pleasure. However I
did have trouble importing the various wooden trophies back into NZ; they got prodded,
poked, X-rayed, ultrasounded, drop-tested, brix scored, radiation tested, and you
name it - - -
Written by Pete Squires
and installed on 15 Oct 01