Interviewer: Jo Powell
Interviewees: Jonty and Tiaan McKinnel, winners of the SA State Rogaining Championships 2026

Firstly, congratulations on your win last weekend. It was a difficult event with the fog and, collectively, we were astounded at how well your team did, cleaning up the course with 3 ½ hours spare.

A few questions for you:

You told me that you have honed your navigating skills over many, many years getting purposely lost in the bush in NZ as teens and have rogained since you were quite young. What strategies did you use for this rogaine, particularly when the fog overnight was so dense, when contours couldn’t be seen?

We had recently done a lot of bush navigation during our multi-day adventure races, meaning navigating with very few features to go off was second nature. It was important for us to know where we were at all times. So, bouncing from a big feature, sometimes only a few hundred meters away, was important getting to the control. Rather than doing big, long bearings, we did short bearings and always checked features with the bearing to confirm.

When you route plan, what do you consider? eg shortest distance, flats in the early hours, difficult terrain early, using handrails at night… (I did hear a whisper that you only spend 10 minutes route planning and therefore shortest distance is your only consideration. Is this correct?)

We used to only spend about 10-20 minutes route planning. We’ve changed that over the last 2 years, which has helped a lot. Now we try to use all the available planning time and consider every possible option. For this event, we spent just over two hours planning, tweaking and adjusting our route.

Pretty early on, we felt the course was clearable, so it became less about deciding what to collect and more about finding the quickest order to collect everything.

A few things we look for are making sure we have a fast run home, saving the steeper, more technical terrain for the night when the contours and landforms are prominent and easy to follow, and thinking about where we’ll be at different times throughout the event.

We also mark where we expect to be at the 3-hour, 6-hour, 9-hour marks and so on. That gives us a way to check whether we’re on schedule or need to adjust as we go. We even used last year’s SA State Champs event as a guide to help estimate our pace and predict our timing across different parts of the course. This year we predicted to take 20 hours, but we were half an hour slower which we put down to the fog.

What distance did you cover on this rogaine? Presumably you ran most of the course where you could – what daily training do you do to be able to cover that distance?

We travelled 103km all up, any flats or down hills we would try and run. We had the luxury of knowing the faster we went we would be done sooner so that makes it mentally more rewarding to travel quicker. Training is a mix of increasing trail running mileage over weeks. My mileage isn’t high by any means – around 50-70km weekly. Lower body strength training to help the tendons. I think expedition adventure racing helps with toughness overall as it drags on for days.

Considering you’re running, how do you keep track of distance and terrain between controls at night, in the fog, when you can’t clearly see around you?

We usually do a bearing to a feature we consider a more prominent feature compared to what the check point may be on. I, Jonty, would be on terrain watch and timing off my watch and Tiaan is on the bearing in front. If we are moving fast on the flats, I would have my stopwatch on 8 mins roughly for 1km of travel, and 10-12 mins if it was walking. I don’t tend to use the watch much in the hills.

As we are moving, I’m reading out to Tiaan what I’m seeing in terms of terrain time and estimated distance, and he would be putting that into what he sees on the map and calculating where we are. Once we hit a major feature like a creek or knoll, we take a bearing into the checkpoint, usually only a few hundred meters away. One thing that’s important here is we may have multiple major features to hit on the way to just one check point.

Also, we always have a backstop. That way if something goes really wrong, we can catch ourselves before we have a major problem. This could be a creek, track etc.

Can you share your fuelling secrets? What do you use to fuel your bodies for the 24-hours of pretty intense exercise, while keeping your running vest light?

We use high carb fuelling. Trying to stay 60+ g per hour. It is pretty average in terms of not really having big meals. More lollies, Beefast energy gels (my own brand energy gels), drink carb mixes, cookies etc. Because we are pushing hard our body is metabolically using lots of carbs as well as fat, but we need to keep the engine topped up with carbs.

 What were your most difficult controls to locate and why (if you can remember!)? (Refer to map: 2026-bendleby-final-50k-scale.pdf)

45 to 64 was tricky because it had just gone dark and our minds hadn’t adjusted to navigating in pitch black yet. It was a long bearing with not many obvious features to keep us on line. There was a 40–50 metre hill about halfway along, which we used as a stepping stone by timing ourselves and checking it off before continuing on our bearings

66 to 73 also caught us out. There were several creeks running in similar directions, and we ended up in the wrong one for about 10 minutes. We also came across a bit too high above the checkpoint, so it took us a little while to relocate before dropping into the correct creek.

You went from 93 to 102 then 75 in the wee hours of the morning, in thick fog. What was your strategy for navigating to those difficult points?

From 93 to 102, we jumped into the creek just south of the checkpoint and followed it before taking a bearing up onto the track. Once on the track, we followed it until it hooked left. From there, we took another bearing south into the creek that heads away to the south-east. That joins a larger creek flowing north-east, which we followed upstream until we reached the right attack point, then used that to navigate into 102.

From 102 to 75, we took a bearing west up onto the ridge. Once on top, we followed the ridgeline roughly north, counting off the knolls as we went. After the long, broad knoll, we dropped into the prominent saddle, then took a bearing down into the creek below the checkpoint. Once we hit the creek, we knew exactly where we were and simply followed it upstream into 75.

What’s your biggest navigational tip/s to us mere mortal rogainers?

Get comfortable using your compass. We use ours for pretty much every leg, especially at night. It also helps to point you in the right direction coming out of a check point.

The other big one is to always know where you are. On longer legs, don’t just focus on the next checkpoint. Break the leg up and tick off obvious features along the way such as tracks, spurs, creeks or saddles.