4/12/2011

I hadn’t planned on doing this rogaine….well pretty much I forgot to even think about it is more to the point…anyway…. at the eleventh hour Greig called me up with an offer I couldn’t really turn down. So we were out to get Chris and Nathan Fa’avae!

There was a bit of patchy drizzle around to begin with so it was hard to know how much gear to wear. Pretty quickly  I got quite hot…but moving as fast as we were I didn’t really have a chance to change. For the first hour we went out to the top corner of the course and collected all those points there. The going was a little bit harder than our 47km plan especially with all the Matagouri about.

The Start!

We quickly decided to drop some controls after about 1.5hours in as it seemed like hard work across the swampy flat lands. About this point I decided I should have some food, as I hadn’t had anything since breakfast at that point. I ate and then felt a bit crap, so I ate some more and then felt really crap… I let Greig pull the line and tow me along while I rested a bit at the back and just followed heels. I never really came right again even after eating and drinking more and more.

The High Country

Once into the cycle of suffering I couldn’t get out, slowing Greig down considerably and hardly raising my eyes about ground level. The remaining hour the rain began to pour down, making it freezing cold and quite unpleasant. We had some trouble on the last few controls getting trapped by vegetation and caught out with a few controls in the wrong spots/control descriptions wrong… So our 7 hours ended with 10mins of road bashing which Greig began to feel the pain of my suffering for the previous 5 and a half hours!

Due to the wrong controls and my illness during the race we didn’t even come close to Chris and Nathan, and were pipped for 2nd place by 60 points… less than the two wrong controls that we wasted lots of time at…

Anyway a good learning experience for me…how to suffer…or how not to get myself into a position where I have to suffer! It was really cool terrain and its a pity I didn’t have much time to look around and pity the weather wasn’t better either!

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