Colonial Rescheduled

Wellington and Shoestring Dates Set; “Shoestring” Definition Proposed

The Colonial Rogaine near Wellington, postponed after dry conditions in April, has been rescheduled and rebadged as the "Colonial Challenge". The daylight event will be held on Sat 22 Nov, with 10 and 5-hour options. The Colonial Challenge will use an area overlapping the 1998 Makara 12hr Rogaine, but a new start point will give it an entirely different "feel". Planner Tony Gazley admits that night navigation is an important part of rogaining. "But a small amount of dark at the beginning or end just allows teams to use this as transport time, to get out or back from the perimeter," he explained, "and that's not actually very testing. The area is big enough for 10 hours, so we decided to keep it in daylight."

The area is mainly farmland with some scrub, pine forest and native bush, mostly below 300m. There are spectacular views to the South Island, and at the northern end it rises to Colonial Knob, 458m. The start/finish will be near Porirua. More details are given in the entry form. Entries will close a week before on 15 November.

And as usual rogaine keeners in Wellington and the Hutt Valley will run a series of "shoestring rogaines" leading up to the Colonial Challenge. Four events on Thursday nights a fortnight apart have been scheduled: Oct 2, 16, 30 and Nov 13. Two areas are old favourites and two haven't been used for shoestrings before. But being "close to home" of course some will have walked, run or biked on them before. Details are now being firmed up and will shortly be on the events page. Reminders will be sent to members of the Wellington Ridge Runners mailing list.

The organisers of these afterwork events have discussed the varying use the term "shoestring", and as the inventors of the term want to propose a definition. Participants need to know what to expect. "A shoestring rogaine is one without markers at the controls, and not even questions to answer! Scoring is based completely on honesty. Experienced navigators may compete solo."

So that you know when you are "there”, control points have to be bold and obvious features, and this would normally be helped by issuing a list of control features with the map. "1. The trig. 2. The road junction." But to enable as much fun for as little work as possible, controls may not have been visited during the preparation for the event. The limitations of this are obvious: the planner must have a very good knowledge of the area, and visit any control sites that can't be described from memory. On the other hand some dubious control sites will slip through and participants must accept that. This is the point of establishing a shoestring definition.

Now if the planner is going to visit some of the controls, (s)he may decide to place a marker of some sort, such as a pink tape. The event may still be of shoestring standard unless ALL the controls have been visited prior and there is some sort of checking of competitors visits, such as recording code letters or answering questions. As responsible citizens, any markers placed should be removed after the event.

And one last thing: is it clear that there is no independent check of the shoestring planner’s work? The planner may slip up - looking for words to describe a point is different from looking for a point to match the words! Just remember that when you have a bit of difficulty: search around for a reasonable time, then claim the points and carry on.

This page written by Michael Wood, installed on 12 Sep 03 and updated on 16 Sep.