A Perfect Saturday Night

I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of a much better way to spend Saturday night, other than competing in a Nightgaine, especially one whose Hash House is about 5kms from home. I confess it is a bit of a mystery to me why so few people also chose to spend their Saturday night rogaining around the Northern Districts. It’s not as though the course was crowded, in fact, team mate Andrew and I didn’t see any other team for two hours.

I want to acknowledge Steve Ryan who has quite a track record of organising great events. Steve has organised a number of events and each one has run like clock work. Steve was the organiser the 2023 Bantry Baygaine which is more commonly known as the “Leechgaine” and those who competed will not soon forget the rain, the leeches, or the fun we all had.

My Neck of the Woods

I grew up underneath the map legend and still live about 5 kms away from the centre of the map. Being a keen walker, and having a couple of dogs that need walking every day, I know the map area really well. To give it some context I have walked Vineyard Creek 62 to 92 twice in the last month or two and, prior to that, many times at night. I have walked the Ponds Track three times in the last couple of months (81-44-73-33-74). I have also walked from Denistone Station to Epping Station through the bush, several times in the last year.

I find that knowing the area of a rogaine can be a double-edged sword. I have, in the past, made assumptions about the location of controls, based on memory and come unstuck as a result, so last night I was careful to focus on the map and the terrain and not try to 2nd guess any control locations. Having said that, I did use my local knowledge to good effect finding 102 just north of Denistone Sports’ Club with an absolute minimum of bush time.

The only bit of bushland, on the course last night, I didn’t know well was Brush Farm Park (Control 91) and interestingly we made a mistake trying to get to 91 but, fortunately, teammate Andrew realised we were going in the wrong direction and we turned around with little more than a minute lost.

Planning

We had 90 mins with the maps last night before the event started and we used most of that time productively. Our basic process with route planning was:

• Colour high pointing controls and try to find high pointing hot spots on the map
• Look at the map and get a feel for distances and hills
• Develop sequences of controls that look productive
• String together sequences into a course
• Mark the flight plan with the proposed route
• Mark on the map where we think we should be after hours 1, 2, 3 and 4 hours as an indication of likley progress.
• Go and find Ted Woodley and Julian ledger and pick their brains

I do not always colour the high pointing controls on the map looking for hot spots because the course setters of recent years have been very good at removing high scoring hot spots from their maps. I also usually look at the novice routes to see what the course setters think about the map from a novice perspective. Last night I felt that I knew the course well enough not to benefit from this technique and I didn’t look at the novice routes at all.

I find marking the flight plan with a route a very good aid to planning. Once I mark my planned route on the flight plan I get a very good feel for which controls I have included and which I have left out and ask myself questions like; “Is that control worth the effort?” “Why is that control not on my proposed course.”.

Seeking out Ted and Julian has become part of my pre-rogaine ritual. I seek out Ted because he is a very technical route planner and measures (“strings”) the course. I am not a patient person and do not have the patience generally to measure a course and I do not need to when I can talk to Ted and pick his brain. Last night, following a discussion with Ted, I became aware that my proposed course was too long for my legs and that I needed a couple of contigency plans. I seek out Julian because he has a superb eye for a route from the perspective of a rogainer keen to get around the course with the fewest hills and maximum efficiency. In the case of last night Julian was doing the 3 hour course with a couple of novices (I was doing the 5 hour) so his insights only covered a small portion of the map.

On the Course

We have become very spoilt in recent years by the quality of our maps and last night was no exception. Hamish Mackie put together a superbly accurate map. In fact our maps are so good that I often feel a bit guilty. It feels like cheating, using such an accurate map to find controls. I really appreciated the accuracy of the vegetation layer and all the fine detail. My only challenge with the map is that a couple of times I confused the contour lines with roads, under headlight.

Everything out of the course went pretty well and we were 12 mins ahead of schedule at our 1hr mark, a couple of minutes ahead at our two hour mark, 12 minutes behind at our three hour mark and doing some re-planning by the time we got to our planned 4 hour mark.

We bagged control 102 at Denistone Sports’ Club with 30mins left to go. Knowing what lay between 102 and the Hash House I was getting seriously concerned that we would be late back. There were a couple of controls (50 and 72) which were very close to our direct line on the way back and I wasn’t sure if we could get these and get back to the Hash House without being horribly late back.

I suggested to team mate Andrew that we needed to get moving or be late and, to his credit, he responded by jogging back to the hash house at a speed I couldn’t hope to match. In any case we did lift our speed and our penultimate and ultimate kilometres were our our 2nd and 3rd fastest and we manged to bag controls 50 and 72 very efficently on the way through. I suspect that Andrew could have made it back inside the 5 hours without me as his anchor. In the washup, we were 2:41 late which I thought was a pretty good outcome considering the fatigue I felt at 102.

My Team Mate

Last night I teamed up with 15 year old Andrew Wiffen. Andrew has rogained before, but as a 6 year old child in a Northern Beaches rogaine with his Mum. Andrew attended our Navigation Workshop a few weeks ago and was keen to give a real rogaine a go.

Andrew proved himself to be a more than competent navigator. The couple of times I started to make an error, he very quickly picked me up and headed us in the right direction.

I was unsure how we would go together as Andrew is 46 years my junior and I wasn’t sure how my old and experienced legs would match up to his still growing ones. As it turned out we were pretty well matched, until we started jogging and I quickly realised that his jogging pace was about twice mine.

A Good Night

Andrew and I were pretty content with our 12/30 overall in the five hour event, having covered 26.5 kms in the 5 hours and having beaten a few good rogainers in the process. Having said that, I am in awe of Andrew Brown who comfortably won the 3 hour event bagging more points in three hours than Andrew and I got in 5 hours. Also, congratulations to Peter Blyton and Sergey Pikuz who comfortably won the 5 hour event. These guys are really fine athletes and I can only dream of moving that fast for that long.

So, thanks, Steve Ryan, Hamish Mackie, Eppping Rotary and a host of other volunteers for giving me a perfect Saturday night.