http://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/view/29189826/
I've been feeling a bit funny in stomach & head, and generally exhausted, for a couple of days so was reassured by prior agreement with Fern that we would take this at a gentle jog, but worried by Tyson's parting advice to Fern at the start that she shouldn't run me into the ground, or words to that effect!
From the scout hall at Ridgehaven, the map extended east to Anstey's Hill - where we ruled out going up into the reserve for 200 points with 200m bonus climb - and west to where the escarpment drops to the plains below the Keithcot Farm O-map. Basically, Tea Tree Gully & Golden Grove. Initial glance at the map told me it was cleanuppable, by the Doses at least (who are locals) and once we had decided to leave out Anstey's Hill (for which I was grateful) the rest of the course looked to be about 30km so I figured we'd end up doing that with 30-45 min to spare, but 3hrs+ was going to be more than enough running for me.
With the sun on our backs, and at Fern's cracking pace, I struggled through even the first hour, but finally warmed up, finally had a drink, and then we were on a gentle downhill across the suburbs past Tea Tree Plaza. In the SW corner of the map we saw Steve/Riordan Dose going the opposite way from us, closely followed by Steve Cooper & teammate, and knew that they would have enough time to go up the hill and beat us, but I wasn't quite so sure of the other pair of guys we saw running in a similar direction a few minutes later.
Headed steadily north, steadily uphill, got 81 & 90 in the creek below Keithcot (the bushbashing leg between them being the only reason why we were wearing long socks, which made my feet really itchy) then across into the area which I recognised as having been on the old Woodlake O-map, and basically back down the creek to the HH. Didn't even need to get our torches out, though we probably should have for the last couple of controls. Got back just before the Geogaine winners AKA Tynomite & Christofuffle.
We had 40 min to spare, and were 4th. The Doses cleaned up, with less than 5 min to spare. So we wouldn't have managed to clean up, but could very likely have achieved what Steve Cooper did, which involved going up Anstey's Hill, but as a tradeoff, leaving out 20 & 43 immediately west of the hash house (but definitely no chance of managing the 100km bikeride he & his teammate were participating in on Sunday). And the team which was 3rd, 30 points ahead of us, obviously got everything we did, plus the 30 at the SW foot of the hill, which we had thought of as too far out of the way.
I enjoyed Fern's company and navigation very much but am going to need a pretty quiet running week before Canberra next weekend. Might focus a bit more on sleep & food, neither of which I got much of after the rogaine. Apparently 60 pizzas were delivered, but for over 200 people this was hardly enough, as they were delivered in staggered lots of 10, and on each occasion, by the time they had been laid out on the tables and the first layer of people had stepped back, the pizzas had vanished. I have never seen pizza dematerialise so quickly!