|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
PIHA 2006 RACE REPORT
|
The 5th annual Piha Rogaine, this year
sponsored by Shoe Science with a field of 419 people making up 155 teams
which was the largest rogaine ever held in New Zealand!
The 5th annual Piha Rogaine, this year sponsored by Shoe Science, was held on Saturday 10th June 2006. With a field of 419 people making up 155 teams this was the largest rogaine ever held in New Zealand. The previous largest was the World Rogaine Champs, held down in the Christchurch area in 2000, which had 415 people entered from around the world. 
The 6-hour event started at 10am
and included about a quarter of the total number of competitors
for the day. Competitors were able to collect their maps and
start planning from 9am. Piha is on the west coast of Auckland in the bush-clad Waitakere Ranges. The Piha area offers great terrain for a rogaine. With vast networks of walking tracks (ranging from nice wide tracks to very indistinct trails) and plenty of hills – using the planning time to plan a good route is crucial. The tracks were very muddy due to consistent rain leading up to the event, but race day cleared up after some initial downpour in the morning. The 6 hour event was close fought battle with 50 points separating the top three teams. At the prize giving the provisional results gave “Team R&D” (Ross Friedrich, Darren Goose, Roel Michels and Wayne Hodgetts) the lead, but the day after the event (in warmer and more comfortable conditions) when control cards were added up “Horleys Hare & Tortoise” ended up winning with 1,220 points. In their adding up of the points they excluded a checkpoint they couldn’t find. Because it appears this checkpoint was taken/tampered with by some dodgy member of the public during the day, event organisers were forced to award the points for all teams who said they had gone to this checkpoint. This gave “Horleys Hare & Tortoise” an extra 60 points which was enough to jump ahead of the 1,180 points that “Team R&D” had secured. Third was “Headless Chickens” (Simon Walters and Maurice Puckett) with 1,170. Three very different routes were taken but “Horleys Hare & Tortoise” were the only team of these teams to include the longer, but faster moving, gravel road northern loop to collect some high points. They managed to get all but 5 of the available checkpoints and even finished with 15 minutes to spare before the 6 hour deadline. RaceReviewer shows an approximate distance travelled by the winning team of nearly 41km and a climb of 2,020 metres. The climb was 20 metres less than “Team R&D” and 200 metres less than 3rd placed “Headless Chickens”, indicating a very clever route choice.
The mixed open category of
the 6 hour event was also close with multisport/adventure
racers “Powered by Velvet” (Chris Morrissey and Joanna
Goose) taking it out with 1,140 points. This was 30
points ahead of “I Never said I could Run” (Mandy Mills
and Nigel Mather). Third was “MainFreight Mavericks”
(John Eshuis, David Tierney and Natalie Rouse) with
1,010 points.
Looking at the routes taken by these teams “Power by Velvet” arrived back at the finish with time to spare so were able to head out and get some more points from the closer checkpoints. “I Never said I could Run” managed to plan a route that pretty much did a big loop around the whole map.
Just 20 points separated
the two top teams in the 3 hour event. The Grey brothers
in Team “Grey – this seasons black”, Lach and Gus took
it out with 20 points more than the veteran mens team
“Hinkle Horn Honking Club” (Pete Swanson and Guy
Cory-Wright) with 800 points. In raw points collected
“Hinkle Horn Honking Club” finished first but were
penalised 30 points for finishing just over 2 minutes
after the 3 hour deadline. Third was open mens team
“Parkin Jones” (Geoff Parkin and Dan Jones) with 710
points. At the start all three of these teams took off
in totally opposite directions with the Grey brothers
heading north for the drier faster tracks and the
Honking club team heading south and including the
dreaded muddy bog of Marguerite Track. The Grey brothers
spend a lot of time out training in this area so knew
what to avoid and this could have been the knowledge
that won them the race. RaceReviewer shows that the Grey
brothers course was well planned covering approximately
26km in the three hours (finishing with 1.5 minutes to
spare) and climbing 1,000 metres which was over 300
metres less than the “Hinkle Horn Honking Club”.
First womens team in the 3 hour event was the Bush Bandits (Karyn Burns and Sheryl Dickinson) who scored 580 points, just 20 points ahead of “Fitness Culture 1” (Jamie Till and Claudine Allan).
Full results are available on the website at www.lacticturkey.co.nz, including 3D RaceReviewer. This software allows you to see the routes taken by all the teams for both the 3-hour and 6-hour on an aerial photo or the race map in two dimensions or three. The animated dots making their way around the course showing teams zig-zagging around the course, and it shows just how far these top teams can go in the time allowed. There is also a version of RaceReviewer that allows those of you who couldn’t come to the event to have a go at planning a route by using the map on RaceReviewer and comparing your made-up course to the winners routes. RaceReviewer developer Jody Snowdon has offered a bottle of fine polish vodka for anyone that can do better than 1,430 points for 40km route, and better than 1,010 points for 26km route – delivery in September when he gets back from his travels. Just email Shaun at lacticturkeys@lacticturkey.co.nz with your route. The next event is in 4 weeks time at Huia, which is at the Southern end of the Waitakere ranges. The new start venue compared to past rogaines at Huia is at the scenic Cornwallis Beach and this should create some interesting new route choices. Enter online at www.lacticturkey.co.nz Thanks to our sponsors:
|
Web site produced and maintained by © 2001 Endorphin Junkies Productions - All rights reserved
|