ARC Journey to the End of the World

I had been tossing up between the NZ Rogaine Champs and the ARC adventure race (both were on the same weekend) but Michael pretty much refused to do a 24 hour rogaine so the ARC it was. We had really wanted to do the 12-hr but getting a double racing kayak is pretty hard and I was pretty disorganised in getting on to it so we settled on the 8-hr with the intention of racing it as hard as we could. But as the day was approaching I was feeling less and less keen...not helped by the fact I'd been sick for 2 weeks and had a lot of other things on my mind. It felt like deja vu from last year.


Michael working on the raft
We had race briefing the night before and I have to admit, I started to feel quite excited, although pretty apprehensive, especially about the final mountain bike stage which had the potential to be the make or break section of the race and we all know how anxious I feel about mountain biking (well, you might not but basically it scares me half to death no matter how much of it I do). Then the morning of the race we had to get there early to build our raft...we were able to use 2 inner tubes, 2 lengths of wood and some rope and were supplied with wooden paddles.


The 12-hr and 24-hr teams set off on their first kayak leg
We finished our raft in time to see the 12-hr and 24-hr teams set off for their first kayaking leg and I really started to get excited, anxious and a bit jealous that we weren't out there kayaking (although also secretly relieved as the thought of a surf landing sounded pretty scary).

Our first stage was the rafting. We were starting in the second wave of 8-hr teams at 8:20am and had to paddle our rafts across the estuary to the other side and pick up a couple of checkpoints then paddle back.


Stage 1: Rafting
Let's just say that our raft was, um, not so good. I think we needed the tubes further apart as it would tip over when Michael would try and get on so he basically swum the whole way while I swam most of the way. There was a bit of a current on the way over but on the way back it had got pretty strong and I got tangled up in some boats! The checkpoints were also a bit mysterious as the checkpoints ended up being round the wrong way which caused a bit of confusion. I was pretty relieved to get out of the water 'cause I was knackered! Swimming in shoes is tough work.


The first 8-hr teams set off on the rafting section
After a fairly quick transition and a change of clothes and shoes we set off on the second stage which involved a mountain bike ride to the rifle shoot then on to the transition area at Wentworth Valley.


Stage 2: Mtb and rifle shoot
It was a pretty easy ride along the main highway then on to some gravel roads. At the rifle shoot we each had 5 shots at the "ducks". Last year I'd got 5 out of 5 but clearly I was feeling a bit cocky this year because I stuffed up the first two shots which really frustrated me. Fortunately I managed to pull it together for the final 3 shots. Then it was a fairly short ride to the transition area where we dropped the bikes, grabbed quick bite to eat and a swig of water and then changed shoes for the trek stage.

Stage 3 was a trek through the Wentworth Valley and up through the bush as well as an abseil down the Wentworth Falls (you can see a picture of the falls here). We caught up to a few teams on our way up the gravel road to the first checkpoint and raced onto the mining track we figured CP0 would be on. Found a mine (it said Danger Do Not Enter) but couldn't find the checkpoint. A few other teams turned up and also went in and had a look but we were racing off to see if there was another one by then. Success. So then we were off as fast as we could to keep ahead. CP1 was pretty simple. But then we made our mistake...although we didn't realise it until much later.


Stage 3: Trek and Abseil
From CP1 we bashed up a very indistinct trail through the thick native bush to CP2 and then bashed even further up (scaling some cliff at one point and passing some teams who started in the first 8-hr group - one of the guys we passed called me a 'bloody machine'!) to CP3 where there was the most incredible view down to the coast at Whangamata and beyond. I wish we'd had time to take a picture really. Then it was down through the bush (trying not to slide over although I did have a couple of falls) to try and find CP4. This was when Michael started to question what was going on. For some reason he'd thought the abseil was at CP4 but we were no where near water. We both started to freak out until I had a look at the checkpoint descriptions and realised we were supposed to have gone to the abseil from CP1 then start up through the bush. Bugger.

Instead, we raced on to CP5 then down to the transition and raced back up the way we'd already come at the beginning of the trek to get to the abseil. It felt like a hell of a distance going back and we were going pretty fast to try and make up time so by the time I got to the waterfall I was knackered. I was in such a hurry I wasn't really thinking about how cool it was that we were abseiling down a 25 metre waterfall. Would so have loved to have done it again!

We made it back to the transition again in record time and got back on our bikes for Stage 4 which was a ride back to base. Pretty easy and so nice to be cruising on the bikes again after a pretty intense trek stage. I was definitely starting to feel weary by then too as I don't normally race longer events like this so hard!

We got back to base pretty quick and I attempted to get some more food down before we were off again for the final stage, a 2-hour mountain bike rogaine on the local tracks. It was pretty confusing as we were given 2 maps - a topo map and a trails map that you had to try and merge together to try and work out what was going on!


Stage 5: Mtb Rogaine
Fortunately Michael was doing the navigating while I was just attempting to keep up! But that got a bit tough so we loaded most of my gear into his pack which helped quite a lot on the hills. The route he'd planned out took us up to the highest point of the map before we slowly weaved our way down (with the odd steep uphill thrown in for good measure). The single track was pretty awesome riding (fortunately the rain the night before hadn't been too bad so the trails weren't too wet which was good 'cause they appeared to be clay based) but you had to be on your toes in case you missed the track you wanted or rode right past a checkpoint! We didn't see that many teams out there which I thought was a little weird but probably good as it's a bit frightening to be riding down a trail and meeting a team coming up.


The bike park map for stage 5
We had trouble with a few of the controls mostly due to the mysteriousness of the maps (and the descriptions given for where some of the checkpoints were)!! But we actually managed to find all the checkpoints before we had to race back to the finish as quick as possible as the 2 hours was nearly up (we found out later that we were the only 8 hour team to get all the checkpoints for the mountain bike rogaine stage). Michael was pushing me from behind for parts of the ride along the road at the end to keep me moving fast and we came screaming into the finish but we were still a couple of minutes late. Worth it though for the points we made getting all the checkpoints. I pretty much wanted to lie down on the grass at this point!

Awesome race but probably a bit short as we finished in 6 hours 30 minutes (probably should have been more like 6 hours without the mistake in the trek) but I was dead by the end anyway! 12 hour race next year?


Did I mention we won?

World Rogaine Champs - Cheviot

I've talked about what a rogaine is before, but just to recap, you have a certain amount of time to find as many controls as you can and there are penalties for each minute or part minute you are late back. Controls are worth different amounts of points depending on difficulty. For the World Rogaine Champs you have 24 hours, from midday Saturday until midday Sunday, with points ranging between 10 and 100 points. Once you'd registered, you had 3 hours with the map to work out your plan of attack.


There were about 250 teams and each team had to have between 2 and 5 members. I was racing with Andy who is a Canterbury local so he'd actually done a rogaine in the Cheviot area before...very handy! He'd also actually done a 24 hour rogaine before...whereas my longest was 12 hours!! We actually worked quite well together in planning our route, both thinking along the same lines which was useful. We decided it wasn't going to work to come back to the hash house so we were going to keep going over the whole 24 hours...or at least that was the plan.


Anxiously waiting in the start pen
I was pretty nervous before the start. After all, 8 and a half weeks before the race I got a stress fracture on my foot and had been off it entirely for 6 weeks (just cycling and mountain biking). Only a few days after being back on my feet I'd done an 8-hour rogaine and it had felt pretty disastrous and my feet were in pain after only 4 hours! And the South Island orienteering champs the weekend before had been a bit uncomfortable. Probably not surprising that I was anxious!

We all filed into the holding pen after getting our bands reset and waited nervously during the final instructions. And then we were off! There didn't feel like any hurry...after all, there was another 24 hours to go!! There was a huge queue of teams at the first control we went to so we probably should have run there to beat the rush but after that we never had any problems. It's amazing how quickly the field spreads out with everyone taking entirely different routes. I was feeling heaps better once we were moving and decided the best idea would be to, well, just not think about my feet!


The first hill
My hope that the rain wouldn't come (despite it clearly being on its way), it arrived not long after we started...nothing too bad, just a little drizzle which was actually quite refreshing, but the sky was definitely looking dark. We'd only been going an hour when Andy encountered a problem with his shoes. The inner sole kept slipping inside, probably caused by being so wet, and no tape was going to hold them. He struggled along for a little while before ditching them altogether and wearing 2 pairs of socks instead!


A local farmer keeping his cattle at bay as several hundred mad people stampede across his paddock not long after the start!
Our first stop was at about 6pm a the drinks station high above the coast. We refilled our bladders and I had my first portion of satay tofu and rice. It was a struggle to get even such a tiny portion down but I definitely felt better afterwards. We didn't stop for long though, maybe 15 minutes? We met up with another team at the waterstop who traveled down the hill towards the coast with us for a little while but we split before the next control when we took a different route (and got there quite a lot faster as it turns out when we encountered about 3 hours later!).


Rolling hills...pretty standard
Everything was going pretty well and we were working well as a team, especially on the fences which we had down pat. Want to know more about the fences (it felt like we crossed hundreds of them during the race)? Go here...these were our official instructions. We were finding controls without any real problem and making okay speed especially considering the terrain (it was a lot steeper than I had expected although we had chosen the steepest and roughest side of the map to start). We encountered Tim and Tane (fellow orienteers and Andy's flatmates) a couple of times in the first 6 hours with Tim looking worse for wear. We ended up having to give him some salt and electrolyte tablets at one point. But other than that we didn't really encounter many teams at all.


Tim and Tane
It was just on dark as we were trying to find #45 but with no luck. It felt like we searched every possible gully in the area. It was fully dark by 9pm so we only had our headlights but even then you couldn't see very far as the mist was pretty thick in places. The weather was also starting to pack in even more as we gave up and started climbing the hill up to #83. I think we both felt pretty defeated after that so thankfully we found the next few controls no problem.


Fairly typical countryside on the eastern side of the highway
It was about midnight when we got to #63. We then slithered down through the mud to a flat area by the stream under the cover of the bush. There was another team also resting here and we joined them for break number 2 (and my second portion of satay tofu and rice...oh yeah!). I changed my socks and put on another layer of polypro under my jacket as well as my hat and buff. It was definitely getting colder...and more miserable as the rain had got more persistent.


Looking down to the wild coastline.
We knew getting to the next control was going to be tricky but it was way worse than we ever would have imagined! We thought we'd found the gap between the two cliffs but with the darkness, rain and mist it was really too hard to tell so we started to head up. The grass seemed to vanish and be replaced by mud. My shoes didn't have the best of grip and there were moments when I thought I might go sliding down the hill. There was no way I was going to look down because it was way too frightening. This was probably my one and only mini meltdown but we got through it and got to the top (never been so glad to be on my hands and knees in the grass!). Then the control (#75), a little further along, seemed to be impossible to find. We encountered another team looking too who were also stuck. It was bitterly cold and the wind and rain had really picked up by then. I was beginning to freeze and getting pretty grumpy! We were just about to give up when Andy decided he needed to change the batteries in his headlamp and he walked about 2 metres away and had one final glance...and there was the control, about 10 metres from where we'd been standing!! When we called out to the other team, they thought we were kidding!


Punching in...it will register the time we arrived at each control electronically on our wristbands and since we both had to punch each control it shows that we both went there.
Then it was down the ridgeline to Gore Bay (via a couple of controls). I'd run out of water so we were hoping to find something down there otherwise we'd have to run a few ks up the road to the waterstop and back and we really didn't want to have to do that. Thankfully when we got down to the bay we found a small campground with an outdoor kitchen area (and toilets!!!! You would not believe how awesome toilets are...!) and we filled up our bladders and sheltered for a few minutes under the cover as the rain just bucketed down. A couple of other teams came and joined us too. Oh yeah, and there was even a light we could turn on. Bliss! But seriously, if we'd been closer to the hash house at this point I think we would have considered bailing...that's how awful the weather was.


This was about as pleasant as it looks...about 3:30am and soaking wet but at least we found a little bit of shelter, and some water, at Gore Bay
Then suddenly, at just before 4am and as we stepped out from under our shelter at Gore Bay, the rain stopped! It was like a miracle and we both felt energised again. The next few controls were pretty easy as we walked up the road and across gently rolling farmland. You didn't really even need torchlight on the road which was cool. It was pretty much daylight by 5am (well, light enough to see without needing your headlights).

Just after 6am we got to #82 then trouped up to the track above into the shelter of the forest for our last real stop and "breakfast" (my last portion of satay tofu and rice) and another change of the socks which were soaked through. My feet didn't look too good but never mind. Not long to go!


6am "breakfast" stop...only 6 hours to go!
As the sun came up the weather seemed to be clearing up too which really was about time. My feet were getting too sore for jumping over fences any more though so I was reduced to throwing my pack over the fence and squeezing through the middle wires. We also seemed to be making some silly navigational errors too. Any chance I got I would sit down, even for a couple of seconds, just to get off my feet. The pain was pretty intense. Andy was struggling getting up the hills. I was struggling getting down them. But somehow there were even some controls we jogged to!


It's pretty steep
Once we got down to the road from #37 and made our way along to #11 my feet hurt so much I had a permanent grimace on my face and was pretty much just forcing myself onwards. I don't think they have ever hurt that much, well, ever! The final bit to the finish fro #11 was like torture but knowing what you'd just been through and that it would be over soon was plenty to keep me going. It was so awesome to walk onto the court and see the finish banner and all the people and know we had done it.


Finished...yay!
We crossed the line after 23 hours, 35 minutes and 30 seconds (those seconds count man!). Michael was there to greet me (with his camera) at the finish which was awesome but I really just couldn't wait to sit down and take off my shoes!


Andy and I
At the finish we discovered Tim and Tane were already back after having to pull out after about 15 hours. Sounds like Tim had a rough time out there. He hadn't taken enough gear or the right kind of food and had ended up getting way too cold and wet to continue...and they weren't the only team who ended up in this position and had to pull out. This made me even more thankful and proud that we'd pushed through.


My feet hurt! Thankfully for you viewers my feet look washed out here so you can't see how terrible they looked by the end. 24 hours in wet shoes and socks isn't pretty.
We were all starting to get just a little bit anxious with 10 minutes to go until midday as Chris Forne and his team mate (Marcel Hagener) hadn't got back yet. If any kiwi team was going to win it was going to be these guys. Turns out they had plenty of time to spare, arriving a few minutes later. They ended up winning by such a huge margin it was ridiculous! Chris is a god!


Chris Forne (and Marcel). Chris is a god!
I was so tired by the time I finally got home that I thought I would just fall asleep but it didn't happen. Probably too much going on in my head! My legs (mostly the ankles, feet and thighs) felt in absolute agony...the pain seemed to get worse after a few hours of finishing so by the time I was home I was so uncomfortable and had to get Michael to help me to the bathroom! Having a shower was saved until I actually felt like I could keep myself steady long enough! I didn't fall asleep until 8:30 (just after I finally managed to have a shower!!) that night which meant I was up for 38 hours. No wonder it took so long to feel like I wasn't tired all the time!


Using Michael as a prop so I could stand up without keeling over!
I have to say though, I survived a lot better than expected and I actually really enjoyed it...okay, apart from the dead of the night when the weather was just plain awful! Now I can't wait to do another one! Does that mean I'm crazy?

23 hours, 35 minutes and 30 seconds later

More on the World Rogaine Champs to come...

The Great Forest Rogaine - Rotorua

The Great Forest Rogaine was an 8-hour rogaine in Rotorua in the Whakarewarewa Forest (also known as the Redwoods) organised by Brent from the top adventure racing team Orion Health. I was racing with Michael again (how does he put up with me?!).


We had an hour to plan our route and when we got the maps it was pretty daunting 'cause it was HUGE! It was also really unclear just how much of the bush you'd be able to bash through and what the terrain would be like. I've been to the forest a few times before but only for mountain bike orienteering so I had never really paid attention to the forest. Our planned route turned out to be way too ambitious but you never really know until you get out there and we didn't know how my foot was going to handle it.


I must have been pretty happy at this point!
We were pretty much walking the whole way in order to look after my foot and also because I haven't been on my feet much (spending the last 6 weeks almost purely on bikes) which meant there was plenty of time to suss out routes and work out what we were doing.


Navigation seemed pretty easy as most of the controls were on tracks or clearings just off tracks, and if they weren't then they were on pretty obvious features like tops of hills (obvious but not always that easy to get to through the bush). We discovered fairly early on that bashing though the bush didn't save you that much time and, if possible, it was best to stick to the tracks. It was frustrating because we are much better at tricky navigation and sticking to tracks when you can't go fast just feels tedious.


Unfortunately I started to feel really ill after only an hour which was probably because I hadn't hydrated nearly enough before the race (it started at 2pm). There were some pretty painful periods as I struggled to keep going and I was finding it next to impossible to get food into me even stuff I normally race with fine. This is something I'm really going to have to be conscious of for the Worlds since that starts at midday.


Changing your socks helps your feet feel better again for a little while...perhaps I should have gone round with 8 pairs of socks!
I started to feel better eventually (maybe 2 or 3 hours later?!) but by then my feet were screaming at me. Not good. They had gotten so soft from not being used! And I wasn't super comfortable in the shoes I'd chosen but they did have more support and cushioning for the balls of my feet which I figured would be important to keep from refracturing my foot.


At least the scenery was pretty right?!


With about an hour and a half to go I got pretty moody and got really pissed off at Michael when I thought he was bush bashing to try and cut a corner. Turns out he was following an indistinct track to the control but hadn't told me and I hadn't been concentrating on the map so it was a classic case of miscommunication. Sigh.


We had about couple of hours of darkness as the race finished at 10pm
We were 3 minutes late back which was frustrating but oh well. Michael told me I was crazy for running the last section despite how much my feet hurt but I am terribly stubborn sometimes. Luckily it does appear my left foot is mostly okay still.

The Worlds are in 2 weeks. ARGH!!!

The Ophir Awesome E.P.I.C. 12 Hour Rogaine

The Ophir Awesome E.P.I.C. Rogaine was a 12 hour race held out on the Raggedy Range above the small township of Ophir. It's typical Central Otago country with rolling farmland and lots of rocks. Thankfully it was a fairly fine day (slightly overcast and a fairly mild temperature for this time of year) as the area is pretty exposed and could have been pretty miserable in bad weather.


The event centre - the Ophir Town Hall on the right...I love the quaint old buildings down here
As I think I've explained before, with a rogaine you are given a map with all the controls and a certain amount of time (this one was 12 hours) and the aim is to get as many as you can. Controls are worth varying amounts of points (in this, #1-5 were 100 points, the #20s were 20, the #30s were 30 and so on). There are also penalties for every minute or part minute you are late back (it was 10 points for this race). So even if you are 1 second late then you lose points. You have a certain amount of time before the race starts to plan out your possible route although this will change as you go along depending on time. But with a long race you are normally required to hand in what is called a 'flight plan' in case of an emergency and a search party is needed so they have some idea of where you might have gone.

You will also have a list of compulsory gear that you must carry with you. For this race each person needed a fleece or woollen top, long sleeve polypro top, leggings, hat, and gloves, a wind and waterproof jacket and overtrousers, a survival blanket, a whistle and a torch (we carried head torches). As a team we needed a first aid kit and a compass. Then on top of that you will need food and drink for the full 12 hours. There was 1 water stop where we were allowed to fill up a maximum of 1.5 litres per person.

Rogaines are generally done in teams, mostly in teams of 2. I was in a team with Michael who has a mountain of experience in rogaines, especially longer ones such as this. Up until this event, the longest rogaine I'd done was 4 hours which rather pales in comparison with 12!


And we're off!
We all set out in the usual mad dash with teams mainly heading to either #20 or #50 first. We had planned on going to #50 and watched a few teams going off all over the place. We soon realised they were all going to look at the wrong sets of rocks so snuck off to where we thought it should be and had a good look around. Michael finally found it sneakily and we raced off while everyone else kept looking. Good start! But then we were on our own. No one else seemed to have a route anything like ours which was kind of cool but a little unsettling.


Michael's idea was that we would try and get as many controls on the flattish section first before heading out to the far end of the map so we didn't have to go looking for them in the dark which seemed like a good idea since we could clock up heaps of points quite quickly. Also quite a risky idea because once at the furthest end of the map we would have no real shortcuts back if time wasn't on our side. As far as I could tell, most teams seemed to have the opposite approach, choosing to get controls along the top of the range first then come down and do the flattish controls last.


We were going pretty well and finding controls pretty quickly and it was cool seeing our control card filling up and I was feeling great physically although trying to keep up with Michael's ginormous stride was tough work!


Fairly early on Michael decided we should add an extra loop (we called it the 'extended edition') which turned out to be a good idea but left me feeling a bit anxious about how far we still had to go. At the 4 hour mark we were still only about 2.5km away from the hash house! But our control card was filling up nicely which was encouraging!


Typical Central Otago country - rolling farmland covered in rocks
Although this event was using cryptic clues, it was nothing like TWALK where you practically had to do a grid search at every control to find the damn things. These were always in the centre of the circle and the clue pretty much always made sense once you got in the right area. It surprised me to hear other people talk of having a lot of trouble. I guess you needed to be able to navigate and read a map...which I would have thought went without saying?


There was a control on the rock in the centre of the pool and being the kind soul that I am I let Michael go and get that one for us!
At about the 5 hour mark I began to feel really ill in the stomach and I had a headache. I knew I'd been eating and hydrating really well most of the time but I suspect I hadn't started early enough. The next 45 minutes were pretty tough until I could finally get my body to release some gas. I upped the electrolyte content of my water and made sure I was drinking a little bit more often and eventually it went away and I felt back to normal. It was a little freaky though because one moment I was saying I was feeling great and then bam, the next minute I'm incredibly nauseous. Definitely something to watch out for.


The gorge to #74. Thank goodness we weren't one of the teams trying to find this in the dark
We reached the water stop at just over halfway and met Greig and Conal there who had gone the other way. It was a bit of a boost of confidence really as they reckoned we'd have enough time to get out to the end and over the tops. Good news for me as I'd been beginning to feel a little panicked! We fueled up and set off again, bumping into Tim and Tane coming the other way as well. They looked knackered.


Tiger Hill on the right and control #1, worth 100 points
After that we pretty much saw no one apart from 1 other team briefly. My feet began to hurt and I learnt an interesting tip...if you dry your feet and change your socks you'll get at least another hour out of them before you get back to the same pain point you were at before.


Climbing Tiger Hill
We made it up to the trig at the highest point on the course just before 6pm so it was still daylight but we knew there was only limited time left before it would start to get dark. At this point we still weren't sure just how much of our homeward plan we would be able to complete but were feeling fairly optimistic.


The highest point on the Raggedy Range
Navigation was going pretty well until #36 where I pointed to a hill in the distance and said something like, "we're going to that hill, right?" and Michael agreed so off we ran...bad mistake! We ended up well off and desperately searching the rocks for the damn control which, of course, never appeared. Eventually Michael realised what we'd done so we trouped off to the correct hill but even then we couldn't find it. But just when we were about to give up we saw it at last! I was feeling a bit disheartened by then because we'd wasted a fair amount of time and darkness had pretty much arrived so it was time for the headlights. The time lost meant we had to reevaluate our plan of attack and cut out a short loop we had planned, instead heading straight across to #89.


Not long after it got dark my feet started aching unbearably and my knee injury from a few weeks back decided to flare up so it was an incredibly painful last couple of hours but I was pretty determined that it wasn't going to slow us down too much. But I kind of gave up helping navigate by this point and just focused on keeping on moving.

Somehow we managed to stuff up our route from #73 down to #80 and missed the control altogether. If I'd known how close we were to it I would have made us go back but Michael didn't tell me that until afterwards. Not really sure what went wrong as it looked fairly easy on the map but then again it was downhill and I was having too much trouble with my feet to check the map much!


My awkward shuffle-jog once my feet gave up on me!
From #70 we bailed out to the road instead of going to try and find #21. It just wasn't worth the pain. And somehow I got myself running at a cracking pace for the last 1.5km or so which surprised me! I guess Michael encouraging me that we could overtake the team in front kind of spurred me on as well as the fact that running was a lot less painful than walking (your feet aren't on the ground as long and there's less pressure on the hips!). We came back with 5 minutes to spare and I was so thankful to sit down and attempt to stretch out my legs (oh, and eat peanut butter sandwiches which taste mighty fine after a diet of 4 OSM bars, 2 small clif bars, a small handful of dried fruit, 6 squares of chocolate, 4 powerbar gels and lots and lots of replace...gotta love racing food!).

I was surprised at how much energy I had during this race despite how sore my feet were...although the thought of another 12 hours on top of this was pretty scary! Oh well, still another couple of months till the Worlds! I thought we did pretty well and made an excellent team although the last couple of hours were not as successful as they could have been! As it turns out, we won the mixed grade (and 5th overall...even, somehow, beating Georgia and Fleur)! Yay! I hope Michael keeps my bottle of wine safe 'cause I deserve every bit of it!

Rogaine Series - Waiuku

I used to hate rogaines and score events (same as a rogaine...but only an hour long), preferring to just follow the set course that regular orienteering provides but lately I've really started to enjoy them...which is fortunate since I have a 12 hour in Otago next month and am then doing the World Rogaine Champs in November which is a grand total of 24 hours long so you'd really hope that I liked doing them otherwise that's an epically long torture session (okay let's be honest, it's probably a bit of that too)!

Anyway, Counties was running a 3 hour rogaine out at Waiuku. There were 2 seperate maps...Waiuku Forest North and South, each seperated by roughly 3km of road. North went uphill, South went downhill so each had pros and cons but it did make planning interesting as getting from one map to the other was not going to be quick. I was in a team with Cath and her partner Andrew who were heading off to Vanuatu the following weekend for an adventure race. Needless to say I was extremely jealous (it even has a snorkling rogaine...I mean how cool is that?!). Anyway, Cath wasn't feeling 100% so we were never going to be going super fast but that suited me anyway as my knee hadn't been that great all week!


The executive decision (Cath and I...Andrew doesn't do maps) was that we'd tackle the North map first and see how we went from there. I think we planned out a pretty good route to get all on the North map and they were really pretty easy controls. We probably started off a little fast for Cath but we all got into a good grove after a while. They are great fun to race with! Apart from forgetting to pick up #54 and having to race back down the road from #49 to get it, everything was pretty simple and straight forward and we got through our planned route quite a lot quicker than we expected.


The 3km down the road to the South map really took its toll on my knee injury from last weekend and I started to struggle. We hadn't really planned too much on this map as we really didn't expect to get through everything so fast but after a quick discussion I think we had a fairly good route planned out. If it wasn't for my knee and Cath feeling a bit sick, we would have pushed harder and tried to get a few more but it just wasn't worth it under the circumstances. We ended up coming in nearly 15 minutes early as I just didn't know how long I was going to be able to keep going without causing damage but it turns out we definitely could have at least go #46 on our way back. Oh well!

One thing that I think would have made it cooler would have been to have different controls worth different amounts of points 'cause that would have made it a bit more strategic. Also, some tougher navigation would have been good. But all in all, it was a fun event and we ended up winning the open mixed category despite having to come in early.