Training Log Archive: AndreM

Event: World Rogaine Championships
 

NZ World Rogaine Champs, with Mark I. Mostly went very well. We kept a good pace throughout, I managed to keep up with Mark better this time. Only hiccup was ripping my timing band while crossing a high fence 30mins into the race. We then had to walk back 2k's to admin, get it re-fastened on my arm again and then another 2k's to get back to our planned route. Est lost time about 50-60mins.

It was a big disappointment to find my timing band missing at the second control, but we found it at the fence as I suspected and kept our heads by not running and wasting energy. Effectively, it was equivalent to 2 nav errors, so not too big in the overall scheme of things. Although, we dropped loops of 210 points and 100 points later on. Getting either of these would have placed us at about 5th-7th in MV. We came 12th MV, which is still a result we're quite happy with. If we had a perfect race it is conceivable that we could be around top 3, so encouraged for the future. We had about 3 mistakes aside from the initial timing band problem.

A big shower came through the night before and I thought that would be it for the rain as the morning was nice and not raining. But at about 1205 the drizzle started and didn't stop for the next 16hrs. We had 3hrs on the flats and then hit the hills in the NW going until about 3am when we exited in the SW. By 7pm I put every bit of clothing I had on, was fully drenched, but not freezing, just cold. I was a bit concerned about the am hours if it was to get much colder, but we got through the worst of it in the 'high' altitude of 300m or so, and then it was quite pleasant down at 100m in the flats during the early hours. Sunday turned into a nice day. My feet got a bit beat up from the constant drenching in the wet fields - similar to the Aug 09 rogaine - wet and lots of fences but without the rocks and much more hilly.

The hills were quite interesting and I will miss them. Very steep in places - where we're fighting for a foothold and working on all fours. A few slips on the downhills as well. In future I'd look at getting more grippy footwear. Shorts and gaiters worked well. Food worked well - sandwiches and bars mostly, and about 2 shots consumed.

The 20m contours took a bit of getting used to. Learned a lot in the model course on the Thurs before. Esp what a gully looks like. Basically, if you can't land a 747 in the gully, it's not a gully. With all the terrain being mainly grassy you can get good vision of where to go and pick a line up/over hills. However, night and mist changed that and we were reduced to following and guessing fences, which worked quite well for the most part.

Our most exciting time was getting to the Jed river at about midnight and finding out it's a really deep river, but only about 20m across. Luckily Mark discovered a fallen log which we precariously managed to cross - a fall would have probably meant the end of the race given how cold we were already. That and hitting the south of the map at that Hurunui river, fighting through jungle for about 15 mins to realise we were erroneously aiming for some hills on the opposite bank.

Good times travelling with the WA rogaining squad as well.

And thanks to Wil and Ricky for encouraging us to get the last 10 points! We found them walking behind us at about 1145am on Sunday going for the last 10 pointer. But then they took off across a field, we figured they must be going for a run to another 10 pointer. Well, if they can do it, so can we, so Mark and I took off in pursuit. Managed to almost get lost near the control, and then we all ran back. Little did we know that our scores were even and letting them finish first cost us a place (although not an MV place).