82 teams had entered the 24 hour race. There appeared to be 3 kiwi teams: ourselves, our personal rivals ( the formidable super vet team) Anne and Bill Kennedy and Peter Squires and also the Holdaways who we didn’t meet. Some of the Aussie entrants were also familiar to me from orienteering competitions, but as they kept talking about snakes on the course, I decided not to engage in too much pre race banter. Most major rogaines have a variety of grades for you to enter based on age and sex. So being over 40 but under 55, we entered the Mixed Veteran category. This means that we can win the overall competition, the mixed category and also the mixed veteran.
One of the main challenges presented by rogaining is teamwork. Now most people who know Nick and myself would agree we probably have some skills in this area but they are not visible to the world at large. Teamwork means identifying the respective strengths and weaknesses of the individuals that make up the team and using the strengths and supporting the weaknesses to produce a better, combined result. Nick generally develops the outline of the course and does the majority of the navigation. I fine tune the plan and help with navigation as we approach the control or if his brain is resting! I also look after our physical well-being.
Planning a high scoring route was made complex because the setter had identified 3 water stops but they did not have a contol at these sites. So the puzzle was how far could one travel in the midday heat (35+) carrying minimal water, before being forced to divert to a water stop. (water = weight). Some teams opted to carry lots of water, some tried to go without. We decided to carry 1.5 litres of water each and 1 spare empty bottle so that we could do a second longer loop after leaving our first water stop. The other unknown factor was how complex would navigating after dark prove to be. We reckon we are pretty good at navigation, but we were daunted by the lack of contour details the rounded rolling hill tops and large saddle points!
We set off at 12 o’clock and it was hot! I usually set the pace but Nick was definitely frustrated because he wanted to go faster – my focus was on surviving the first 6 hot hours of the day. We sorted this out with a few curt words but eventually got into a rhythm and read our way well into the first 3 or four controls. We were amused to see Nigel Aylott running into the wrong marsh as we trudged forward to the control.
Things went really well for the first 7 hours but then we made our first error. Coming up off the open farm land searching for a little re-entrant in the green we were slack choosing an attack point and although this only cost us 15 minutes it wrecked our confidence. It was time for a Leppin break!.
At dusk we made it to the 2nd water stop which was a hut. We found another team seemingly shagged out and obviously in emotional turmoil. Strangely this gave us heart and we rested for 20 minutes waiting for the dark to descend so that we had not half light transition. It was a good plan and we attacked the controls aggressively with few problems.
Unfortunately, I had not been able to eat for several hours as I had developed a serious acidic stomach. I sat gagging on a hill, wondering how to sort it and remembered that Nick had brought several chocolate bars. Thanks Cadburys you kept me going till dawn. Later, I discovered that many people had developed stomach problems, which I suspect are due to dehydration. Again, good physical management kept us going. We lay on a hillside for 40 minutes, part of our programme of rests. Our second mistake followed. I had been looking at our planned course and felt that we had left some fairly steep country for our last loop but it was very point rich! We were about to head off to the extreme right of the map for 70 points and would have to cover 4 kilometres of there and back again. I thought we should drop this control. But Nick wasn’t listening and I wasn’t assertive. At 20 hours we reached the last water stop and looked up at the final 350 meters of climb. I choked, the killer instinct fled. We reassessed the plan and in order to avoid this daunting climb decided to drop half of this valuable part of the course. What folly! This decision cost us second place! But we did not know it then. The last 4 and a half hours are a blur of heat, bleeding feet and a desire to get back to the hash house. We had managed to get a total of 1370 points which didn’t seem very much at this time.
We had rented a camper van - what luxury! We fell asleep, missed the prize giving and did not discover for 5 days that we had come third in the mixed veteran, 35 out of 82 and had beaten our arch rivals, the Kennedys! (OK so one of their team had a heat problem but it still counts doesn’t it? )
But the really excellent news is that the overall competition was won by a mixed team, Tom Landon Smith and Alina McMaster who managed to get 2400 points. I always like it when a girl beats the men!
3 weeks later I am ready to do it again! Knowing at last that anything is possible. Winners keep going!
This page was written by Annie Sanderson and installed on 7 Feb.