As both Evelyn and myself started with a head cold we didn’t give a lot of thought with the route plan, first choice was it, thinking we would come in during the night at some stage. With a fuzzy brain, Evelyn worked out long how it would take us to finish our first loop back to the HH (unfortunately back around 9.30am Sunday morning) and rather than work out something easier we just agreed that it would be an overnighter. Cured the head colds brilliantly. Evelyn also planned where we should be during the event to be on time, however she forgot the extra hour allowed (and that we would start at 11am) so we were up on time from the word go, not that we realised this until we were approaching our 1st ‘time check’ position about 2 hours in. Also we decided to work on a 3km/hr speed overall (easier to calculate) rather than working out probable speeds for different terrain types and day/night time speeds. With runny noses and thick heads excessive brain activity while course planning was not encouraged. Surprisingly, given a couple of poor night’s sleep and head colds, this event was possibly the cleanest Rogaine we have done. Only a couple of minor navigation errors for the whole event, and spiking all 12 or so controls done at night. We did change our original route slightly on course to add extra controls during the night and re-arranged the morning route in to get all the controls close to the HH finishing with about 18 minutes to spare.
We struggled physically, especially Evelyn who pinched a ligament in her knee near Control 64 about 7pm at night plus lots of blisters, scratches, sore and cramping muscles etc, etc. I suggested at the time the time when Evelyn had hurt her knee that as the Safety Loop Car was coming to pick up another team who had an injured member, perhaps she should get a lift back to the HH. However as she had already spent a huge amount of effort climbing to that height and collected so many points, retiring wasn’t an option. There was lots of grumbling and we probably both lost our temper at times, especially during the night bush bashing and later agreed it was as well that there wasn’t anyone else in the team with us – not a good look. I’m always amazed how happy and cheerful everyone else is when we meet other teams out there. I always think that they must know the right way to go and have avoided most of the climb I’ve done.
Evelyn was also trying out a new product, which is like a slippery second skin when you spray it on, which is supposed to prevent blisters from forming. As Evelyn said “So I tried it and found it doesn’t work. Unfortunately I didn’t bring a second thin pair of socks to put under my regular sports socks – which I find works a treat and had to suffer the consequences, and I’m sorry, but I don’t suffer quietly” (I can definitely confirm that).
We were happy with the way we planned our course, covering the harder navigatable controls (south end) during the day, the ridge walk in the dark and then going down to the flat where it was pretty easy going when we were tired –we even lucked it in the morning, just at sunrise we changed a route choice on approaching a ruin, and as we approached from the north side, down the hill you could see it nestled in amongst some thick bush, not exactly where we were expecting it. Most people spent ages looking for this one, coming from the other side, even the setter had troubles when collecting it.
All in all we were very pleased with our result and were chuffed to be just 10 points behind the Murphy’s (and Randal). All the way home Evelyn was studying the map looking at alternative routes to see how we could have done better, given the time and distance we covered– the best she could come up with was equal points and then they would have beaten us on time anyway. I think I prefer being 10 points less.
