Written by Fred Flinstone sock wearer, Bruce Greenhalgh
The socks I usually wear on rogaines are of the high-end, adventure/outdoor variety. The sort of socks marketed as having special performance qualities (for which a premium is charged) and with names like ‘Summit’ or ‘Horizon’ or with logos depicting mountains. Habitués of outdoor gear shops will know what I mean. Despite wearing these state-of-the-art, world beating, outdoor socks my rogaine performances are generally pretty ordinary and my feet still hurt. And that had me thinking that in my quest for the ideal combination of shoes, socks, blisters and bruised toes I could consider any and all socks. And I did, trail testing various hosiery before finally deciding on a pair of socks for the Bendleby 24 hour that cost nothing (they were a give-away promotion from my local supermarket) and were decorated, not with inspiring adventure insignia, but with the cartoon figure of Fred Flintstone complete with his exultant catchcry of ‘Yabba-dabba-doo!’
I gave a lot of thought to my sock selection, really agonised over it, but ten minutes into the rogaine all my ruminations felt like a complete waste of time. My shoes and socks were sodden, courtesy of the weeds that covered much of the ranges which were wet from recent rains and current fog. Yep, fog. In the ‘driest state in the driest continent’, north of Goyder’s Line, we were in for a wet and misty weekend. It didn’t really rain, I’ll say that, but there was a lot of moisture around. (Creeks with water in them? Good heavens!) If I had to sum up the 2026 State Champs in one word, that word would be ‘foggy’. It was foggy enough to mess up our navigation. Our route first took us on anticlockwise loop of the Bendleby Range and after visiting a few controls we aimed for a high ridge between controls 43 and 81 thinking that the elevation would give us a view of the lie of the land. Wrong. The view we had was of fog and more fog and what followed was a masterclass in getting it wrong. We did find the control, almost by a process of gully elimination, but it was a disheartening experience. At least there was some solace in later learning that other teams had experienced similar fog induced navigational embarrassment.
Our misadventure did, fortunately, focus our minds and for the rest of the rogaine we only made a few minor navigational errors. Night fell as we reached control 82 and while my feet were okay (perhaps due to my sock selection?) my back was starting to really hurt. Initially it was just one of the (many) aches you endure on longer events, but the pain kept coming, taking me further and further into ‘I’m never going to rogaine again’ territory. A weird and very worrying aspect of the pain was that it kept tilting my body over to the right and so veering me off in that direction. The pain was centred in my right lower back so I guess that explains it. It made walking, particularly over rough ground, more difficult and anytime I had to exercise balance I invariably fell to my right. It was a bit like being drunk without having had the fun part of drinking. Needless to say, I wasn’t enjoying myself. We made it back to the HH at 10.00 pm and I headed straight for my sleeping bag, too tired and sore to bother with a meal. The ‘Yabba-dabba-doos!’ were in short supply.
I took a nocturnal loo break at about 1.30 am to find the fog had thickened and I confess that I was not entirely unhappy that I wasn’t able to carry out our initial plan of staying out overnight. Sunday morning featured more fog (surprise!) and some improvement with my back so we started another loop, this time to the south on the plain. My Fred Flintstones were discarded in favour of some quality, dry(!) woollen socks. I also had a shoe change which meant warm, dry and comfortable feet – for about 10 minutes – until we started walking through the weeds again when my feet were almost instantly saturated. Ah well, it was good while it lasted. The fog certainly lasted, walking to control 35 from 67 we could have been in a scene from ‘Wuthering Heights’. A few times in this stretch our normal practice of picking a feature, on bearing, in the distance to walk toward did not apply. The only visible feature was fog.
The fog did lift toward midday so we can’t blame it for our making a meal of finding control 22, our last. We did find it, but not with that much time to spare, which required a more than leisurely walk (with a now aching back) to the finish. This meant that my thoughts on returning were less ‘Yabba-dabba-doo!’ and more along the lines of ‘Thank #%@* that’s over.’ As for the matter of sock selection, well, what can I say? My search for socks that pamper my feet and elevate my performance continues…
For all this fun(?), fog and footwear contemplation I must thank the organisers: the setters and mappers who put in many hours before and at the event and those who performed the many tasks on the weekend in an exemplary fashion. Thank you all for your time and efforts.
