Posted by Chris Stevenson on 3/10/2001

This article originally written by Sue Clarke, from Newsletter 30, September 1991

Why are rogaines run in pairs? The easy answer is, of course, for safety. However, there is considerable scientific evidence to show that safety is not the major reason for the great attachment that most rogainers have for their partner. After all, how safety conscious can anyone be if their idea of a good time is to spend hours of darkness combing remote corners of the bush for mine shafts, lone stunted trees and the top of a waterfall?

Before a rogaine, a partner offers to hold the torch while you erect the tent, preferably some time after midnight in a howling gale. Rain also helps, but is not vital at this stage. Naturally, by the time your partner is ready to help, the tent is ready for occupation. Next, a partner suggests a route plan that you can shoot down and replace with your own superior plan. Even if your partner’s plan appears at first (or even second) glance to be the only sensible way to go, remember that it is always possible to insist on taking the controls in the reverse order. This will ensure that minimum use is made of daylight, attack points or any other sneaky little tricks that he may have had.

At the start, a partner strides into the vast unknown leaving you to labour with both pencil and control card, so heavily overburdened that it is no wonder that the first control punch fails to make a mark! The discovery of this fact at the next control leads only to a silent accusation of your total incompetence and the forceful removal of the card from your care and protection,

Once away from the Hash House, a partner is someone in whom to place all your trust, following faithfully wheresoever he may wish to lead, be this to the ends of the earth or off the edge of the map, A reliable partner will then refuse to listen to all intelligent suggestions of relocation (´so what if it is 15 km to the nearest identifiable feature’) and insist on climbing every available rise in the search for a tourist information ‘You are here’ sign. In an ideal partnership, this exercise should occupy most of the remaining daylight. As dusk falls, female common sense should eventually prevail and you will be able to lead him back to your last ‘known for-sure’ location. Hopefully it won’t have moved much in the last four hours.

Many partners will be disheartened after such a setback and this will provide you with the perfect opportunity to practice your bush psychology (‘Come along bush, it’s not as bad as all that’) and industrial relations (‘I know it looks like a piddling little knoll, but it is dark and perhaps if you took your sunglasses off for just a brief moment you too would recognise that 500 m ridge to our left’). All but the most determined of partners should be won over by such diplomacy.

All good partners will have seen ‘The Mission’ at least six times and eagerly head for any control clued as ‘The top of the waterfall’. Such controls should only be attempted in the dark so that your partner can then disappear into into the night leaving you to risk life and limb abseiling down without a rope.

The trickiest part of a rogaine is often the return to the Hash House but you can prevent your partner from dashing off in the right direction by your own great care and attention to irrelevant detail. If you make it back, a partner should continuously hassle you, demanding to know your aims and ambitions for the future. This will allow you to display your total control by replying along the lines of ‘Bog off! I’m changing my socks’ before presenting him with the ultimate CP (cunning plan) that combines maximum distance with minimum points. This CP should take you through to dawn, by which time any competent rogainer will have abandoned any artificial forms of light and be fumbling around in the half-light while your partner runs on ahead in a blaze of halogen radiance.

Once the sun has well and truly established itself, a partner should begin leaping around doing star jumps every time you fall a respectful three steps behind. This display is meant to show off his inexhaustible energy and to help you feel revitalised. When the final assault on the Hash House arrives, a partner must contrive to lead you directly home (Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200) with at least one very large hill to climb on the way, Six would even be better.

And when it’s all over and the fat lady has sung, all that remains is to count up the score. At this stage, having discovered how dangerously close he has been to winning, your partner will thank you most graciously for not having punched that first control and beg to be allowed to bring you cups of tea, pieces of cake and anything else you desire before wandering off in search of a good divorce lawyer.

But the real purpose of a rogaining partner is so that nothing that goes wrong need ever be your fault and so that you can convince yourself that you really would have won if only …

Sue Clarke –from Newsletter 30, September 1991