2019 Australasian Rogaining Championships

Monday, 11 November 2019

We're not hugely into rogaining (a very long version of orienteering) but as the Australasian Rogaining Championships were being held in lovely St Helens and most of the organisers were also orienteers we could hardly not go to this event.  We had enjoyed the last  event we went to about a year ago - admittedly it was just 6 hours long though!

This time we were entered in the 24 hour championship class. Zali and Jett were doing it together as the only under 23 team entered, and Jon and I were a team in the very competitive mixed veterans class. This meant we had 24 hours to visit as many checkpoints as we wanted and we could rest for as little or much as we wanted in the night.  As we're not very serious we'd already decided we would definitely be returning to our tents to sleep before heading out again in the morning.  Paul's team (and many others) were planning to stay out all night. 

At a rogaining event you are given your map 3 hours before the event officially starts, which seems like ages but by the time you've made a vague plan, packed your gear and lodged all your safety paperwork it's time to go!    Zali and Jett planned their own route while we worked on ours.

Making snack bags

Jon doing some measuring with string

about to start 

Once we started Jon and I were amongst a big group of teams making our way through the bush to the close controls but as people chose their own routes or fell behind they gradually dropped out of sight. By about the 4th control we were all by ourselves doing our own thing.   Zali and Jett had chosen a similar route to start with but we weren't exactly sure what their plans were after that so it was a delight to bump into them on a hill about 2.5 hours after we started.

They had already had lunch (I think they stopped about 10 minutes after they started!) so we farewelled them and sat down for  our own lunch.

It was at this point that Jon got out his measuring string and told me that we had around 30k to go before we would make it to the All-Night-Cafe, which in turn was still at least 10k from our tents.

That was actually more information than I really wanted and I came to the realisation that our day was going to be a lot longer than I thought (I imagined us getting back to home base at about 10pm) so I started to feel a bit down.  But once we cleared a few more controls, including ascending and descending a giant rocky hill, I started to feel more positive about it all and we were having a nice time together as went along.  We also had a few easier track routes to look forward too which were quite pleasant going.  Generally the forest was pretty nice and there were lots of spring flowers out.

At 6pm the All-Night-Cafe opened - we were still a long way away from it, but we joked to ourselves that Zali and Jett, keen for some free cake, would certainly have been waiting outside the door for it to open. So it was a pleasant surprise when we finally made it there just as it was getting dark and found Zali and Jett sitting together on one of the couches in front of the fire eating toasted sandwiches!  They had executed their route pretty much as planned but it had taken a bit longer than expected so they had only just arrived.  After being waited on kindly by the bemused Lions Club volunteers  (I had a toasted sandwich, soup, & cake) we all put on head torches, re-filled water, put on all our warm clothes and headed out into the dark to find some more controls on our way back to  home base.  The kids had chosen a relatively straight forward route by the main road, and we had a more complex one where we had to go back into the hilly forest to visit 3 controls before getting out onto the road to finish off the last few controls.

The All Night Cafe

The first part of our forest leg involved crossing a thigh deep creek so we decided to stay as dry as possible by crossing in bare feet and rolling up our tights. It was pretty cold by then so we tried to dry our sandy feet and get going as quickly as possible once we made it to the other side. As we stood up Jon realised he didn't have his compass.  Uh Oh.  It wasn't with us, which meant it had to be on the other side - aargh!  Just as he was preparing to cross back to search for it, a team we'd just crossed paths with minutes earlier re-appeared on the other creek bank - they'd found Jon's compass and kindly took it back to the crossing point where they left it for Jon. So after some shouted gratitude he was back into the freezing water for another round trip! Not an ideal start but other than that our forest leg went smoothly, in fact it went really well due to Jon's great navigation our our excellent headlights. Having covered almost 40k by that point we were getting pretty tired by the time we made it out to the road for the final stretch. As we neared the last few controls we noticed we were catching up to Zali and Jett who were travelling with Clare's team by then (Clare found them having a rest by the side of the road and suggested they do the last few controls together which was great). We knew were getting close because as well as punching the control,  you write your team number and the time onto a paper sheet stuck to each control.   We got to the last control 6 minutes behind them, and we just had to get down a steep hill through some thick bits of vegetation and we'd pop out onto a road near home base. It wasn't an easy leg but we made it back and to our surprise we'd somehow overtaken both Zali & Jett and Clare's team who took a less than ideal route and actually spent an extra 30 minutes bashing through thick scrub. - poor them!  So we arrived back around midnight, and Zali & Jett made it back half an hour later. 

Needless to say we all went to bed pretty much straight away despite the free food & drinks on offer at the base camp.  

The next morning Jon and I got up at 6.30, had a quick breakfast and dragged our tired and sore bodies out again just after 7. We left the kids to sleep as we figured they'd done enough.  As we headed out we noticed a few bedraggled looking teams coming in from a long night - including Clare's dad's team who had had some navigational problems and decided just to lie down and rest for a few hours somewhere in the forest.  They were so tough they were just coming in for breakfast before going back out to do some more controls - very hard core!

We did a nice loop around Humbug Point in the sunshine but I'm actually a bit disappointed we didn't make it out earlier as we didn't have time to do what would have been the most scenic parts of the course. Although realistically my legs wouldn't have managed much more distance - they were really sore and while the track sections were ok, walking in the bush and climbing over logs and rocks was really painful!

We executed our cut-down plan pretty well and returned to check in a comfortable 45 minutes before the cut off time - perfect! I've only done one 24 hour rogaine before - it was back in the 90s and I remember almost nothing else except a long, painful & unpleasant run to the finish to make it in time - I was very keen to avoid that nightmare this time around so being able to stroll in to the finish was great!  Clare's team came in a just few minutes behind us.  

During the presentations we learned that the winning teams had got heaps more points than us (each control is worth between 20 - 100 points) - and as we suspected before we started,  if you want to win your class you have to stay out all night. Not something I aspire to that's for sure!  Jon and I finished a respectable 28th overall (of 98 teams) - not too far behind All-Night-Paul who had to cope with an injured team-mate for quite a few hours I think.  The only exception to that was Zali and Jett, who won their class due to being the only competitors this year.  Still I think they deserved  it - they were out for 13 hours straight and covered a solid 25k or so including a lot of hours in the dark - well done them!

As we examined their perpetual trophy later we noticed that their eldest cousin Liam had won it back in 2004 in SA! That's cool!

So all in all we had a really big weekend!  It was a pretty tough adventure but we had lots of fun and made lots of memories! We worked out that we covered around 62k - 50ks on the first stretch, then 12 the next morning.  

That's further than I've ever walked in one day before (and more than the length of the 3 Capes walk!).  In fact it's not much shorter than the Overland Track (not counting the final 20ks around the lake), which has given me an idea..