Written by Bruce Greenhalgh
I’ve been competing in rogaines longer than I care to remember, but the recent ‘Jetty? Set? Go!’ minigaine at Glenelg was a first for me. I’d never previously rogained as part of a team of four (or five for that matter). In a way that’s easy to explain. Rogaining frequently involves a fair bit of, shall we say, ‘discomfort’ so it’s often difficult to find even just one partner, let alone multiple team members. Take the minigaine for example, if I had a crystal ball I would have had to admit to potential team members that competing in it would involve getting drenched and acquiring a deep understanding of the term ‘wind chill’ not once, but twice. It would have been a hard sell. But I don’t have a crystal ball so I didn’t have to make that admission and my initial pairing with Chris Graves expanded to a team of four with the addition of Lauren Bradley and Jesse Kerrison – two novices yet to experience the meteorological delights of rogaining.
Being in a team of four had me pondering the question of, ‘What’s the ideal number of team members for a rogaine?’ (Yes, it’s true. I don’t have a life.) A team of five has always struck me as being too big and unwieldy, that it would involve too much time and energy getting the team all rogaining in the same direction. A team of four would be better in this regard, but presents the potential for a ‘dispute resolution’ problem. If two members decide on one course and two decide on something else, how do you resolve that situation? So, maybe a ‘three’ is the way to go? Two versus one? And a ‘three’ would bring in the benefits of having extra team members, beyond the minimum of two, namely the increased likelihood that at least one team member is on the ball when, invariably, brains fade, as well as the advantage of having extra eyes looking for controls.
