Whangamata 12 hour

Even though ARC in February wasn't Jen's favourite introduction to the new sport of AR, I somehow convinced her to give it a shot at Whangamata.  Christine was our support crew at ARC; a friend from orienteering, I'm in awe of her nav and have managed to swing her along to this one also.  Christine expressed some concern over 12 hours vs 6, but I've assured her we will be fine.............

Boom, we are off.  Fairly hectic start, lots of bikes moving fast, a couple of crashes.  Someone breaks a chain and the 30 seconds that it takes me to find a chain link and throw it to them, sees our team near the back of the bottleneck heading into the narrow, clay single track.  We've discussed this the evening before.  It's so dodgy to miss checkpoints early, and run the risk of finishing early and allowing teams behind you to continue collecting points and finish ahead even if moving more slowly.  But, Jen and I were burned taking our bikes into a mud pit at ARC, and we really don't want it to happen again.  So, we head straight up the road and miss the nasty push bike grind.  A decision I'll stand behind!   It was also fun to be in the very front, and have the speedy teams come back past us 20 minutes or so later!

Stage 2 trek was fast, tricky and fun.  It was great working alongside Christine, hearing her take on the map, and having a solid navigator alongside.  Christine was finding the maps a struggle as they are so indistinct and lacking in detail compared to orienteering maps, but she was better than me at using the topography and ignoring everything else.  We got CPs on high points, trees, tunnels!

Heading up towards the far end of the loop, Tom's (much faster) team came racing down.  Owen was having chafing issues and Tom had told him that if they could find me, I was bound to have some anti-chafe with me.  He looked super relieved, as I fished it out of an easily accessible pocket of my Sport Billy bag. 

Stage 3 = Ride bikes on Forestry Roads.

  

 Stage 4 - the mammoth trek.  Winners and Losers.  It's not often we get a good off-track trek like this to have a punt at.  Our nav was really solid, I loved the reassurance of Christine's confidence, it takes so much pressure off the responsibility.  Coming back across to the farmland towards the end, we were alongside a competitive kayaking team with a good navigator, and made loads of time over them as they wandered off their bearing further up the hill doing unnecessary climbing. Unfortunately, it was also a bit of a loser, as the trek was so long, and with so few points, we also  lost the race here.  There were also two CPs incorrectly placed which many teams spent AGES looking for to no avail, stretching it out even further.  Good old Clare and her team correctly judged the trek as really long, missed it completely and won the race.  Pleased for her, am I gutted for us?  I don't like to lose, but I wouldn't have liked to miss the opportunity to take on the monster either.

Starting the final MTB in the dark wasn't what we were expecting.  We only had about an hour, and had to choose between going West for two checkpoints and finishing early, or going East for three checkpoints and having to push hard back up a hill.  Of course we went East, but on getting to the bottom of the hill we found we were too fatigued to push out bikes up narrow tricky trails, so we just rode back up the big hill again and went East.  Better value for money though!

Learning:
It's so much less stressful when you're not the most experienced navigator.
Always consider how long a leg will take and if it's worth it - do you take the gamble and miss it out?