Roche's Rumble On-Foot Winners, Marc Iseli and Andrew Gaskell
By Andrew Gaskell, on behalf of Team Marc & Andy.
“I’ve got something that might interest you”. So began the intriguing message I received from Marc two weeks before my first rogaining event. Prior to Roche’s Rumble, Marc had competed in one other event, last year’s Lenah Valley Hops Again held near his home in Glenorchy. On that occasion, Marc’s endless pursuit of checkpoints had viciously chewed, swallowed and spat out his teammate and he was now on the search for a new victim. The prospect of spending a Sunday on what appeared to be some kind of scavenger hunt around Lauderdale was not a disagreeable one for me, and so, I agreed to join Marc’s team.
Knowing that the gun would be fired at 10:00, Marc and I agreed to meet and sign in at around 9:20am. That seemed like a reasonable amount of time to study the map but we quickly came to realise that getting there a bit earlier would have come in handy. We did a quick “eye-over” and thought that the northern section of the map looked a bit more “checkpoint dense” so decided to focus on that. Marc had come prepared with a corkboard, pins, string and measuring tape. I had come prepared to incline my head at a thoughtful angle and stroke my beard.
Marc cut off the scaled equivalent of 35 km of string, figuring that this would be a pretty conservative estimate of the ground we might cover during the four-hour event, and proceeded to mark out a route pinning each of the checkpoints we intended to cover along the way. Our plan was to pick up all the checkpoints along the western side going north and to then catch as many as possible along the eastern side on the way back south. There were a few sections which we didn’t include but flagged as “optional” depending on how we were tracking. This included the section near the airport (checkpoints 66, 90, 82), south of Seven Mile Beach (checkpoints 63, 102 and 43) and anything south of Ralphs Bay Canal for some extra points if we returned early (checkpoints 74, 21 and 107). Given that we ran out of time to consider any alternative routes, Marc described our method as a bit of a “brute force approach”, meaning that we may not take the most efficient route but expected to keep up a good pace and cover a lot of ground.
Marc and I know each other from local trail running events, where we charge up and down hilly trails until our lungs burn, our legs ache with fatigue and we collapse in a heap with exhaustion. When we recover enough to get a few words out, we rattle on about how much “fun” it all was and, with a crazed look in our eyes, how much we look forward to doing it all again at the next event.
In our first event as teammates, we set out as planned, heading north along the western side. At first, it felt like we were meeting with checkpoints regularly, ticking off 35, 13, 47, 53, 20, 104, 46 and 28 in quick succession. I quickly fell into the role of quizmaster while Marc was in charge of keeping us on our nominated route (not that way, this way. I think you’ll find its… oh I see, the map was upside down).
As we progressed with an out-and-back to 85, the checkpoints started to spread a bit. It still felt like we were ahead of where we needed to be, so we decided to go all the way out to checkpoint 91 via 105 and 38.
From this northernmost checkpoint we headed towards the eastern side of the map, continuing to tick off checkpoints as we went. When we got to 22, we felt like we had plenty of time to head up towards the airport and proceeded to do the extra loop of 66, 90 and 82 without much trouble.
We grabbed 40 and then went out and back to 63 before climbing up Single Hill for 102. Not only did this add nicely to our total but we felt that some uphill running was necessary for us to stay “on brand” as trail runners. There wasn’t much time to take in the views from up top and we quickly descended down to checkpoint 67 which had us a little unsure of the question being asked (What is written in red writing on the tin shed? What shed? The tin one. There is no tin shed. Red writing, tin shed. It should be over there. There’s red writing on that nearby tank. A tank is not a shed. Well, maybe this one identifies as a shed?). It was at this point when a gentleman from a neighbouring property waved us over to explain that the shed had been pulled down the previous week. We swiftly noted down the writing on the tank and moved on in the hope that this would still get us the points.
From here we continued to head southwards and picked up 29 and 44. With an eye on the clock, we decided to go straight to 60 and 71 and skip 52 and 34, with the intention of then heading south to have a late crack at 74, 21 and 107. Time seemed to slip away quickly, however, and we only managed to get to 74 before making the call to turn around and head for home.
We crossed the finish line with three minutes to spare. I was rather hungry and pleased to be offered a cardboard box full of goodies. After a very short time, the cardboard box was empty and we whiled away the afternoon discussing the joys of running around Lauderdale, chasing a series of seemingly meaningless clues and wondering if the writing on that elusive tin shed had in fact held a key, life-changing piece of wisdom…
Reflecting back on our route, it didn’t end up turning out too bad. Getting 52, 34 and possibly also squeezing in 43 instead of going south for 74 would have been a better option but, then again, if we’d pushed the pace a bit harder then 21 and 107 might have also still been on the cards.
I was jolted out of my reverie by the announcement of our names at the final presentations and Marc and I accepted our award for accumulating the most points in the foot category at Roche’s Rumble. I thoroughly enjoyed my first rogaining experience, despite not receiving a much-anticipated piggy-back ride that Marc had needed to give his former teammate at the Lenah Valley event. Notwithstanding this minor shortcoming, Marc and I had managed to cover 46 km in our “brute force” approach and befriended a confused water tank along the way. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it was a Sunday well spent and our thanks go out to all the volunteers for putting on such a great event.