Hi everyone,firstly I'd like to thank the Super-crew- my parents Julia and Robert who did a tremendous job supporting us throughout the race. The race was originally to be
"unsupported" format but this changed leading up to the race and we were lucky they had already decided to attend. It was such a huge advantage to have support, and even more to have one that was willing to stretch the rules in the "unsupported" transitions that it became a bit of a joke. Anyway Julia could tell many stories of their behind the scenes look at a very dysfunctional race organisation.
And a second huge thanks to Big Dave Provan for all his post on this blog site. Dave obviously spent many days trying to understand the format and if only we had understood the rules so well. I was expecting the official race coverage to be really good based on last years event, but the organisation much have had other things on their minds.
Dave was correct in his assumptions on how the race was to be decided:
1. Number of Mandatory CP's - if team are equal then
2. Number of Bonus CP's - if teams are still equal
3. Lowest cumulative time
But these assumptions- most of which came from the head organisers mouth were not always correct
1. The most important thing is to finish each stage inside the cut-off time
- Not always true- and there were no penalties anyway
2. Get as many of the Mandatory CP's along the way inside the cut-off
- Often the cut-offs meant nothing so you were better of just getting as many CP's and taking the short cut that was better.
3. Get as many bonus CP's as you can inside the time limit for each stage
As stated in the last post- we officially finished 14th. This was a little below our expectations and the first time we have left a race wondering what went wrong. Our team, along with most others, failed to realise early enough that it was not always the most important goal to make the "cut-offs". In the race briefing it was stated that you would be greatly disadvantaged if you didn't make a cut-off, but in several cases it was actually an advantage. In a few situations we rushed through parts of the course, missing valuable checkpoints on the bike (our strength leg) to make a cut off but we should have looked more in detail at what each long course/short course actually entailed. There were in fact no compulsory CP's which meant it was advantageous to miss most of the fun challenges (such as the climbing/canyoning). Other challenges such as the orienteering legs were only bonus controls so virtually no one did them which is a real shame.
Anyway that's enough of an explanation of the race for the moment. Damon with get around to the full race report next week when he returns to work (an hence is paid to procrastinate).
