8/10/2011

Second Last control of the Castle Hill Rogaine...rogaining doesn't really make for fantastic photography....

This was a last in the series of 3 Canterbury Rogaine events, once again in a new and exciting place – Castle Hill. Andy J was going to team up with me…but by Friday afternoon his condition had degraded somewhat and he pulled the pin. So I hijacked Greig and Steve’s team to play the third wheel with the hot favorites.

It was Snowing by the time the start rolled around, and very cold! I over dressed a little bit and after the high intensity of the insert on the map I was fairly warm. It wasnt long before I started to take layers off. After a 20min trudge up to the top of some scree (200m) it was a very fast decent, with Steve putting a down a pretty decent sprint of 2.05mins! After an hour or so the sun came out. It’s funny how much heavier your gear is once you have taken it off and put it in your pack….

We were on target with some pretty slick navigation to clear the course and collect all the controls at about 2 hours in but somehow by the time we were at 2.5 and our decision point we had to make the tough call to drop two controls at the top of the course. Then after another hour Steve began to slow down with cramp. Again at 50mins to go we had to make another tough call…one that probably cost 5mins but I think we gained an extra 2 when it came down the end as well…

Then half an hour from the end Greig went down with seriously painful looking cramp…So I had to take charge of the navigation and carried Greig’s pack up the hill so he could make it back in time. There was some pretty cool orienteering in the village and with a bit of time pressure it got me all excited! I hooned around dragging Greig and Steve with me…however this time I had learned to look after my team a bit more and we all finished together with 2.5mins to spare.

As I guess was expected we were the winners, and Greig’s team won the series, although the only common thing about that team was Greig as he and I both had different team mates for all three events. It was a cool series of rogaines with a good variety of terrain and most of the time the controls were right in the centre of the circle…which is always a bonus for rogaining. All round much better than slogging around the North Canterbury farm land in the pouring rain at 2am.