Team Blackheart/Outer Edge win Melbourne Rat Race

Rat Race Adventure Race- Melbourne

Rob and Kathryn joined together with an orienteering friend Troy de Haas and competed in the Rat Race Adventure Race in Melbourne. Our entry was courtesy of Outer Edge Magazine.

The race got under way on Saturday afternoon with a 3 hour scatter course around inner Melbourne. The course was a combination of normal control finding together with activity controls like abseiling off car parks, rock climbing and swimming, many of which were only open at specific times. A good strategy was key! Some of the more quirky activities we had to do were 80’s dancing in a dodgy nightclub, getting a tattoo, collecting money for Oxfam, designing an advertising campaign for selling yellow cars and walking a tightrope!

Early on Sunday morning we left the docklands on bikes heading for Caulfield race course and then back again via West Gate Park – 70km in all. Along the way we kayaked, abseiled, climbed, tried shooting a hockey goal, ran around a cemetery and ate fish and chips, all while navigating our way on a fixed course.

The hardest activity for the day was diving off the 7m board at MSAC. Troy found it hard to jump from the 7m diving board and after 20min standing on the tower it looked like our race was over. Finally we convinced the officials let us go and chase was on to try and catch the teams now in front. With never give up attitude we joined back with the leading team, after most struggled to find a control in Westgate Park. We finally took the lead at the last control near docklands and finally finished in the first after 5hrs.

We won the first prize of a paid trip to Perth in February for the Perth Rat Race.

http://www.ratraceadventure.com/australia/

Post race recap

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).

Team Blackheart Finished ARWC

Team Blackheart finished the Adventure Racing World Championships at 9:50am (local time) just making it 10min before the zip line cut-off. I just got off the phone with Kim and everyone is fine but happy to be finished. Seems the race was just as confusing for the racers as it was for us spectating over the internet. Classic quote from Kim "we didn't even know the rules for the first 3 days".

Congratulations to Helly Hansen Prunesco for being (unofficially) the 2009 Adventure Racing World Champions and to our guys for a great race somewhere in the top 15???

The team gets on a plane tomorrow. I'm looking forward to the race report!