Rogaine 2010 24 Hour Runners-Up Route Choice

Here is the Route choice of the Rogaine 2010 24 Hour Runners-Up, Fred Hammond & Kevin Grogan, who were also the 1st Veteran team.

Thanks for a great event last weekend, apart from the waist-high gorse and bracken.

For the record, our sequence of controls was as follows:
Start - 2 - 1 - 9 - 8 - 6 - 7 - 15 - 29 - 37 - 28 - 22 - 27 - 38 - 39 - 26 - 25 - 21 - 20 - 23 - 19 - 35 - 36 - 42 - 34 - 18 - 11 -12 - 4 - 13 - 14 - 5 - Finish

The idea was to leave easy-to-find ones near roads to night time and also have plenty of ones near the finish to choose from on Sun when we knew we would be slower but wanting to maximise our time out.

All went according to plan until we hit control 21. As were were approaching it from the road, it was a nightmare climb through the gorse beside the stream, and we often reverted to scaling the bed instead to avoid it. 

Once we hit it, the plan was to descend back on to the road and then go on to 24, then 23, 20 and 19.  As the descent would have been worse that the asent, we went on and did  20 instead.   Luckily we hit 20at 11pm, precisely when we had to switch on our headlights. As luck also had it, we managed to stay on tracks and roads all the way to dawn at no.36. The higlight of the night section was gate crashing a dance in Laragh (to replenish water and use the loo), and the Glendalough Hotel (unfortunately they were full up!).

After point 42, the plan was to go along the Glenmalure road, up the zigzags and across to point 41 and skipping 34. This entailed continuing down the other side of Carriglineen. This was a nightmare as well, gorse, neck high bracken and steep drops. It took ages to get on to the road at Drumgoff, and by that time any thoughts of contols 41 and 40 had been abandoned. It was a stupid idea in the first place, as it would have been a mad dash back to the finish and very little to show for it.

So it was up the track to control 34 - had we known what the descent off Carriglineen was like and what our final route was, it would have saved a great deal of time/effort by cutting down the forest and across the river to this track in the first place!  Of course, in retrospect, a better route would have been 20 - 19 - 23 - 36 - 42 - 34 - 35 - 18 ...

After leaving point 12, we went up to the quarry and road with the intention of getting point 3. However, once we hit the road, we abandoned this plan as time was getting short and we still wanted to get 4, 13, 14 and 5. We were averaging about 4km/hr by this point (!), and if we had gone for 3, there was no way we'd have got 13 and 14.  We found the final one (5) difficult. It turns out that the Harvey forest depiction bears no relationship to reality (cf your Fair Mountain O-map)!

Thanks again to all the team, particularly the ones putting out and collection the controls.

Regards,
Fred