Andrew Brown (Big Foot) and Toby Wilson (Garingal) tied for first place as the fifth annual Garingal Goanna enjoyed its closest ever finish on Sunday.
While "Brooner" punched the finish a fraction of a second ahead of Toby, they recorded identical times of 45m28s around the 7.3km course on the fiendish Clay Pan map at Beacon Hill. Brooner's clubmate Andy Simpson was just seven seconds adrift in third place on the long course. Michele Dawson (GO) was fastest female in fifth place.
In the DraGOn (5.3km), Paul Shingler delivered more good news for the Feet with victory in 41m28s, a bare 10 seconds ahead of Tom Kennedy (Garingal). Bennelong's David McGhee was third in exactly 43 minutes.
In the short GeckO (3.9km), Tom's older brother Alex climbed out of his sick bed to take the honours in 42m21s, a clear six minutes in front of Terence Chiang, one of a number of promising Garingal juniors coming through the North Sydney Boys High School program. Only one second separated WHO veterans Steve Dunlop and Ian Miller for third place.
This newish area is a ripper of a map on Sydney's northern beaches with its complex track network and coastal scrub making map contact a necessity.
In this unique 'goat racing' format, runners:
* have a mass start
* may follow each other
* have a box of 4 controls that can be done in any order
* may skip a control or two (depending on the course)
* have to choose a or b at a forked control
There was lots of animated discussion about skips, forks etc - and many runners realised in the post mortem that they had overlooked yet another option that may have been better.
Click on the blue links for the GOanna, DraGOn and GeckO course maps. Which control(s) would you skip? Which fork would you take? The 'clay pan' area which hosted the box was blown up (see pic top left) for easier reading on the run... but it seems 80% of entrants forgot to refer to it!
A massive thank you to Colin Burnett for configuring the courses in SI - this is a huge task for this event, and to setter Ian Jessup and controller Ken Jacobson for offering something off the beaten track, so to speak.
Results are here (including a brief analysis of skips, forks and box routes) - feel free to put your course on Routegadget. And there are photos on Facebook.
