The 'Old Tracks Rogaine' was organised by the Rotorua Orienteering Club with people from a wide variety of backgrounds taking part. There was certainly an odd looking bunch at the 11am start. Lean racing beans from the Whakatane harrier club, local hunters complete with swannies, brightly clad orienteers, families with picnic equipment and other assorted odd-balls.
Many on the start line had little idea of what lay ahead of them. Event organiser Alister Coulter had put together a challenging course. Rogaining sometimes known as long distance orienteering requires participants to make their way by foot to numerous checkpoints where they write down a code. Unlike orienteering you can plot your own course and each checkpoint has different values according to distance from the start. So that a control point at the top of a hill a long way from the start has the highest values. The winner is the team or individual that collects the most points.
The 'Old Tracks Rogaine' had 22 control points over a 30 to 40 kilometre course. Coulter was a little nervous before the start as he was unsure if the course would be long enough for some of the more experienced and fit. Neil Jones an experienced international adventure racer was on the start line and several experienced orienteers. He needn't have worried as no one was able to get to all the control points.
Mark McKenna of Rotorua was the winner with 1080 points closely followed by the 4 person team of Neil Jones and 13 year old son Daniel, and multisporters Mike van der Boom and Graeme Shaw.
The event was used as a practice run for a 12-hour Rogaine to be held in May 2004. For a full list of results and more information about the Rotorua Orienteering club visit www.geocities.com/rotorua-oc or the RogaineNZ website.
This page written by Mike van der Boom, and installed on 14 Nov 03.