6hr Rogaine with Rob, starting from Shallow Crossing near Batemans Bay. Lovely sunny day and we sat by the car and merrily planned a loop that looked nice and took in most of the controls. The first 5km was deceptively nice (mainly on trails) but after that it got progressively rougher and rougher and quickly became apparent we'd overestimated how much we could do. Also very apparent that leaving the path should be avoided as much as possible, and that you couldn't rely on seeing a path on the ground that was on the map. First 3hrs were fine though physically, but I hit a real low at about 3.30hrs when my legs started to question what we were doing and the bush was especially grotty. Fortunately we re-planned our route and the last 1.30hrs was mainly on road, so I could keep running to the finish ok. Everytime I left the path in the last hour or so I got real bad cramps in my legs and couldn't run much. We were pretty evenly matched, so that worked well, but Rob was much stronger at the end in the terrain. Really good fun though, nice views of the Castle and Pigeon House from one control, and a great feed at the hash-house. We got just enough points to beat the 12hr teams too, so that was nice. Had a brown wee when I got home.
Some of the map:
Check out Rob's execution of an important rogaining technique: