What Happens

The Weekender event is the ‘Original’ Rat Race format – founded in Edinburgh in 2004, these full-tilt adventures consist of 2 components – the Mean Streets event on the Saturday evening and the Adventure event on the Sunday.
The choice is yours; if you want to get the flavour of the Rat Race you can enter the Mean Streets and enjoy 3 hours of checkpoint and activity hunting on a Saturday night in the heart of these awesome cities.  Or if you are up for the full bhoona, then sign up for the Adventure class, where you will compete in the Mean Streets, rest up for the night and then attack the full Rat Race adventure course, with ropes, boats and bikes!  For the full low-down, read on…

•  Event Village 
•  Refresher courses
•  Registration 
•  The Briefing
•  Saturday Evening: Mean Streets
•  Sunday All Day: Adventure Event 
•  Core components on Sunday
•  What you get for your money
•  Weekender timeline

Event village
For all competitors, the weekend starts at the Rat Race event village built in the heart of the city.  The village comes alive with music and commentary at around 1pm on the Saturday, allowing you and your supporters to get into the spirit of things and maybe tame some of those pre-event nerves. You can browse the adventure concessions, purchase any last-minute gear. Either way, come on down and enjoy the ambience and meet fellow competitors. There is a great atmosphere pre-event and this is another great facet of what makes the Rat Race so unique – racers mingling with the public in a city centre on a sunny Saturday getting ready for the urban adventure!

Refresher courses
For those of you who are doing the ADVENTURE class, you might still be a bit nervous (or rusty) on your ropes and/ or kayak skills. We lay on special refresher sessions at each Rat Race location to ensure you feel totally at ease when you reach these activities. Remember, these sessions are NOT A TOTAL SUBSTITUTE for prior experience; we ask that you have at least been in a kayak and have at least been on a rope in advance of the event.  But you can pick up these skills from any good climbing wall or kayak club in your area. More information to follow...

Registration

One thing is for sure; there WILL be a queue. You can avoid some of this by following our online instructions posted on the ‘Registration Tent’ page. You can fill out the medical questionnaire pre-event by following the online form and clicking where required.  Then on the day, you will need to sign your acceptance of our standard terms and conditions and collect your ‘dibbers’ (electronic timing devices – more on this later). By filling in the medical form pre-event, you will save time as there will be one less queue to stand in. At registration, you will also get your famous Rat Race goody bag with your event shirt, your number and sponsor goodies and souvenirs. In this bag, you will find the RAT RACE HIGHWAY CODE. This should be kept in your kit for the entire duration of the event and forms part of the MANDATORY KIT.  If you do not have all your kit, you will miss out on some challenges and hence you will be unable to compete for the overall prize.

The Briefing
This is where you are given some info on what will happen in the event; but not all the info.  The Race Director will address the whole event field at this time and it’s important that everyone is there. There will be some safety information and there might be some special instructions that relate directly to that city or the way the race will be run that weekend. Make sure someone brings a notebook and pen, but don’t worry about taking reams of cryptic notes from clues given by the Race Director; this is NOT part of the event and is purely a welcome and safety briefing. It does not feature any challenges whatsoever, other than getting there! At the end of the briefing, you will be given the Checkpoint descriptions card for the Mean Streets challenge. Together with you map, which you collected at Registration, you will now be able to mark up exactly where the Checkpoints (CPs) are on your map. Use this time well and ensure you mark them up

Saturday Evening: Mean Streets
The Mean Streets kicks off at around 5pm and involves 3 hours of checkpoint hunting in the city centre by running and walking. You will have been given a map of the city at Registration and at the end of the briefing you will have also been issued your checkpoint descriptions card and have marked up your map. The Start is now upon you and you will join hundreds of other competitors on the Start line. From here, the ‘course’ is up to you – from the Starters’ gun, you will visit as many checkpoints as you can in a 3 hour period, navigating your way. Each checkpoint (CP) is awarded a different points value and the values of these CPs are the last part of the puzzle. You will not actually receive the info on CP values until AFTER the event has started! It’s actually immediately after.  In fact you will dart out of the Start line and grab a ‘give-out’ sheet which has the CP values on them. Some are high value and some are not; some far away and some close at hand; some are open and some are closed, from time to time.  Some are ‘activity’ CPs – which means you will encounter some adrenalin, adventure or bizarre activity there. Approximately half of the CPs have activities. It’s up to the team exactly where you go and which CPs you attempt to get to. Go as fast or as slow as you like and enjoy the great views of the city, the camaraderie with other teams and possibly from time to time, enjoy being lost! You might experience some physical challenges, you might get wet, you might go underground, you might go into buildings, you might do some parkour, you might have to solve a mental problem and you might even have to do something fairly strange. But whatever you do and wherever you go, you will see some famous places, some hidden places, some special places and lots and lots of smiling faces. After all, it’s Saturday evening and you are on the loose in a busy city! Enjoy rubbing shoulders with the public, but respect the environment you are in and be responsible at all times.

When the 3 hours period is nearly up, you must make your way back to the village to ensure you do not get back too late, as escalating points penalties will be inflicted if you are. The idea is to use team tactics, route choice and the values of the CPs to steer you around the Mean Streets and get back to Rat base with as many points as you can. The winner of the Mean Streets will have the most points.  Simple as that.  For adventure competitors, we will use our results ratification-izer-ation-formula to turn this points score into time and this will be added onto your time from the next day’s adventure…

Sunday All Day: Adventure Event
OK, so you have conquered the Mean Streets.  Now it’s time to turn up the heat for the Rat Race Adventure course.  This is where we introduce ropes, boats and bikes and much much more as you foray further into (or out of) the city and possibly further still.

It all starts on Saturday night, actually.  When you are back from the Mean Streets, you get ANOTHER route material – the route book.  DO NOT LOSE IT.  Your team will only get one and we do not have many spares.  This is your Bible for the Sunday route; just like with the CP descriptions and the give-out sheet for the Mean Streets, you will use this route book alongside your map throughout the Sunday event.  But it will not guide you like a Saharan nomad; you’ll have to use it to prepare your route and plot the CPs on your map yourselves. This is all part of the challenge – navigation is a core component of the Rat Race. But it’s not one to be feared. It’s fun. You are in a city. How wrong can you go!!?? Ensure your maps are marked up in plenty of time for the start of the event at 0730 on Sunday. Turn up with plenty of time, prepare your noble steeds, check your gear and maybe throw a bit of brekky down your necks at the onsite caterers. Then gather for the second mass start of the weekend – the Start of the Adventure class event. From out the traps, you will have between 60 – 80km of distance to tackle.  This sounds a lot and it is a challenge for sure. However, remember some key things here:

1.) Most of the distance is covered on bikes, linking in other sections of the course

2.) You CAN miss sections out if you don’t fancy them. This relates to the foot sections especially. The Rat Race is designed to allow this. You take a time penalty instead and continue in the race

3.) There are cut-offs, after which time you will be routed onto shorter courses.  So if you fall behind for whatever reason, don’t worry we will not leave you out there when everyone else is enjoying their first beers at the party

It’s all under Rats!

The Rat Race course is kept a secret until the weekend of the event, so we can’t tell you where you will be going or what exactly you will be doing right now. However, we CAN tell you a little about the distances involved and some key components of the event.

Core components on Sunday

Biking: 50 – 70km; on-road and off-road. This is the main discipline that will ‘link’ the various components of the course

Ropework: Some people think this is what really sets the Rat Race apart from anything else – the ability to clamber all over buildings and structures with ropes.  It’s exciting, exhilarating and gives great views of the city you are traveling around.  And it’s the sort of thing you would get arrested for if you tried it without us!  We will always give you at least one section and usually 2 or more.  Previous events have seen zip wires into city squares and abseils off famous stadiums; airy traverses off railway bridges and scrambling up city crags or walls. Remember there is the refresher course for those who want to blow out the cobwebs.

Kayaking: We use a fleet of boats, which are robust, safe and easy to paddle. They are sit-on-top style and are ideal boats for various types of water.  You might be paddling on city docks, on rivers, canals or even on the Bay.  You will always be under the watchful eyes of our safety crews and you will have all the equipment provided. We tend to set fairly basic kayak challenges as the standards of paddling generally are fairly (ahem) mixed!  Don’t worry if you aren’t the best paddlers and remember there is always the refresher course to brush up on your skills.  These are very popular for confidence building pre-event.

Navigation: Not to be feared! Navigation is featured throughout the event. Suffice to say that most is done on maps. The route books and CP descriptions (Mean Streets) are additions to the mapping – it all works when used together. We might give you some other navigation challenges along the route, such as orienteering with special maps in city parks, or navigation with aerial photos.  These will vary from event to event.

Special stages: This could literally mean anything.  We have sent people underground into caves to navigate in pitch darkness; we have given people wigs and microphones and asked them to perform on stage in front of an audience; we have had teams looking for ghostly monks in a castle and have defended ourselves with flour bombs from teams ‘laying siege’ to a fortified island.  People have been buried in sand, navigated the aisles of shopping centres, rode bikes over parked cars and through big trucks and some have encountered the legendary Rat Race slippery wall – sometimes featured immediately before the finish line as the ‘final straw.’  We’ve even had teams perform live at a major music festival in front of 1000s. All between bouts of biking, hiking, abseiling and kayaking.  It all lies between you and the finish…

Approximate distances
For the Sunday you should plan for the following distances, as a guide (if you complete the full course with no cut-offs):
• Biking 50 – 70km depending on city layout and gradients
• Foot (walking or running) 10 km (not all in one go)
• Kayaking 3-5 km maximum

What you get for your money

Adventure Class
• Entry to the one and only Rat Race Urban Adventure (including Mean Streets and Adventure Event)
• Professionally planned course
• Rat Race Special Edition Technical Race Shirt (more info on this one coming soon)
• Rat Race goody bag
• ALWAYS at least one exhilarating rope-work challenge and usually 2 or 3!
• Plastic sit-on top kayaks provided from our fleet with all buoyancy aids and paddles supplied
• Water safety cover at all water sections
• Professional ropework instructors supervising all ropework locations; thorough pre-event risk assessment of all ropework challenges
• Maps, route-book and all route materials
• Electronic timing chips and personal results print-out (some events like to charge you extra for these devices – we don’t!)
• Thorough pre-event risk assessment of the entire course and all health and safety criteria met
• Professional event management
• High value prizes
• Secure bike storage at the event village
• Event village entertainment

All at AUD150 incl gst per person regular rate!

Mean Streets Class
• Professionally planned course
• Dozens of checkpoints for you to hit
• Maps and checkpoint descriptions sheet
• ALL equipment provided
• Engaging and fun activities at many of the checkpoints
• Rat Race Special Edition Technical Race Shirt (more info on this one coming soon)
• Rat Race goody bag
• Electronic timing chips and personal results print-out (Some events like to charge you extra for these devices – we don’t!)
• Thorough pre-event risk assessment of the entire course and all health and safety criteria met
• Professional event management
• High value prizes
• Event village entertainment

All at AUD70 incl gst per person regular rate!

Weekender timeline

Here’s a guide to the times things happen on the Weekender.

Saturday
• 1000 Registration opens
• 1300 Entertainment Stage programme begins in the event village
• 1500 Registration closes
• 1530 Mass briefing from the Stage
• 1700 Start of the Mean Streets event
• 2000 Finish of the Mean Streets event
• 0000 Secure bike compound locked for the night

Sunday
• 0730 Start of the Adventure event
• 1400 First finishers expected back to the event village
• 1700 Last teams back across the finish line
• 1730 After-party starts
• 1830 Prize-giving

Age limits

All competitors must be over 16. Those aged 16 and 17 must provide written parental/ guardian consent of their participation.

Prize categories:
• Rat Race Event prize:  Only mixed teams of 3 eligible
• Spirit of the Event:  Awarded to the team who has shown the most courage, kindness or pure bare faced cheek out there on the course!
• Best All male team: Awarded per event
• Best All female team:  Awarded per event
• Best Youth team:  For teams with 2 or more participants aged 16 or 17 on the day of the race (awarded per event)