rogaining race (Otway Coast 6hr) 5:53:00 [4] 29.0 km (12:10 / km) +1260m 10:00 / km
shoes: Asics GT-2000
6/12hr rogaine at Aireys Inlet; a dozen or so controls in the coastal town strip and the rest in the bush, which the organisers kept warning everybody at the briefing was "really, really thick". They'd had to modify the course because of some waterworks, removing 7 controls in the east and adding 3 in the west; I almost wished that Blair & I were doing the 12 hour because then cleaning up the entire course would have been a solid goal (as it turned out, the 12hr winners fell 40 points short of this).
With a 6hr as a subset of a 12hr it's a bit harder to know whether you've chosen the optimal controls to leave out, but we decided against the low-scoring coast and headed for the hills, which were described as having tall timber on the steeper lower slopes and heathland higher up. Heathland turned out to mean Epacris impressa (all white, rather than pink) and also some low-growing tea-tree (Leptospermum, not to be confused with Melaleuca) among the eucalypts. In between these two levels the steep slopes had young wattles through which it was possible to push, although visibility was poor and the long-grass-like tussocky plants kept grabbing at my ankles. Particularly annoying when I can't move foot A because it's caught by a long strand, the end of which foot B is standing on!
Our goal was to cover approx 5km (actual distance, not straight line) or get 4 controls each hour. I think we got pretty close to this: 51, 61, 80, 72 in the first hour; 53, 83, 71, 63 in the second hour; 62, 81, 47, 92 in the 3rd hour; 60, 65, 90, 73 in the 4th hour; 91, 74, 54 in the 5th hour and finished off with 70, 66, 44, 45 and had 7 min to spare. The blip in the 5th hour was caused by a truly horrible gully crossing where the vegetation twined and tangled around everything, including my neck - being garrotted by cutting-grass is not my idea of a good time. I was starting to get seriously claustrophobic but then Blair announced that he had popped out of the thicket on to the track which we wanted. All we had to do was climb up one more hill (by this time my hip flexors were refusing to lift over anything, including grass tussocks) and the rest was track running, much of it downhill. Surprised by how many teams we saw in the last hour who looked like they weren't going to make it back by 6pm.
Throughout the whole event we hadn't seen any teams who definitely looked as though they were going faster than us (apart from right at the beginning) so I was hopeful of us winning but didn't expect to do so by 260 points, which was a pleasant surprise. Also it was nice to catch up with Peter Taylor and family; theirs appears to be an evolving rogaining dynasty :)