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.

This is a sound conclusion; except I can recall being a member of a trio when all three of us had quite different ideas about how to proceed (with all of us being wrong). It wasn’t fun. Two then? Some advantages, some disadvantages. I doubt if there is actually an ideal number for a rogaine team. So much depends on the people on the team: how well they get on, what their goals are for the event, their athletic capabilities, their dispositions and so on and so forth.

Despite the disparities in age (‘open’ to ‘ultra vet’) and experience (novices to decades of rogaine participation) our team of four worked well. We began by heading for control 91 (the pelican) via the more inland controls of the northern part of the map. It was during this section that I experienced one of the advantages of being in a team of four. Having three people tell me I’d got it wrong when I briefly led the team astray made for an instant and unreserved correction. So efficient! After 91 it was south along the coast with the rain coming not long after we’d left Mr Percival. It didn’t rain that long, but what it lacked in duration it made up for in volume. We were sodden. The last time I’d been so wet was … was at another rogaine (Tuilkilkey last year). We were undeterred though, and the day did brighten up as we neared the Patawalonga. We were fairly dry by the time we did the ‘out and back’ on the Glenelg jetty. From there we followed a roughly anticlockwise loop back to the HH with a lot of route changes as we tried to time our finish to perfection. We did finish with just a couple of minutes to spare (good) but that meant being caught in the second downpour which came in the final minutes of the hour (not so good). One soaking was enough, I could have done without the encore.

Still, a good time was had by all and for that we must thank the setting team of Shannon Packer, Stephen Warren-Smith and Bob Ellis who set a map that still has me wondering if we made a good route choice. It also left me with the question of ‘Why no controls worth 20 points?’ I feel deprived of the opportunity to be fooled into going for ‘twenty pointers’ which often end up not being worth the time and effort – a specialty of mine. Another time…

Thanks also to the other volunteers who gave their time and energy on a day when being outside wouldn’t have been their first choice. Your fortitude is to be commended.