WRC 2016 race day!
26 July 2016
We started off conservatively, opting to take a minute detour to access a river crossing to avoid wet feet We normally wouldn't have worried about, but given that it was the only river on the entire course we thought It prudent. We then went reasonably fast, but not unrealistically so for a few controls, until we were forced to a slow by the 'spinifex' which I would liken to a bush made from thin barbecue skewers, except sharper, and as you can see from the map at http://vra.rogaine.asn.au/wrc2016/docs/Map_withImages_LR.pdf (nb our map doesnt have pictures, they were just given to us to show the type of terrain). There was a lot of green on the map, most of which was spinifex, so we had very sore legs and hands, and plenty of splinters by the end of it! However soon after this my feet became very sore, on account of the huge numbers of rocks everywhere you could look, and It quickly became apparent that it was that, along with my knee which would be the limiting factors on our speed more so than fitness. Luckily levi had us covered with the navigation through what I though was tricky bush in the south of the map, while I battled. We ran out of water for about 4 hours, which was hard to deal with In the heat so we were relieved when we arrived at the "all night cafe" where we filled drink bottles, got some free food and quickly warmed by the fire as we taped up our feet again. We then headed off and managed to get ourselves lost on a similar spur to the one we were looking for. The next few controls went a bit awry as we got more tired. We found ourselves skipping parts of our original plan to move fast back to the hash house (start/finish) so that we would not lose any points for being late. However we ran Into some fellow youths on the way In and raced them back, In case we had the same number of points( as In that case the team with the lowest time wins), however we got there with 50 minutes to spare, so we decided to drop our packs and hoon up to one final 80 point control, muscles complaining on the way up, and with Levi falling over and breaking a rock with his head on the way down. We hurried back at what felt like a sprint to our tired and shattered bodies, but was probably more like a frantic jog, and we just made it back at a time of 23:52; 8 minutes before the end (midday). As you might imagine it was a great relief to sit down and relax after months of preparation and stress, knowing that it was all done, and we could just wait for the results. As it happened, the last 80 point control we dashed up to stepped us up from 70 points behind 2nd place, to 10 points ahead! We were estatic at this news, knowing that we had given it everything. In general there was a strong NZ presence on the podiums over the various age grades which you can access here http://act.rogaine.asn.au/navlight/ARA/WRC2016/html/results.html
We would like to thank you once again, particularly to the George Mason charitable trust, the NZ rogaining associaton through navlite, bivouac outdoor, and every single one of you who gave us any kind of support, we really couldnt have done it without you. Thank you very much for allowing us to have this amazing experience, and a particularly big thank you to The George Mason Charitable Trust, I hope we made you proud.
Cheers,
Tom & Levi
