rogaining race (Ridgy Didge ARC) 11:50:00 [3] 30.0 km (23:40 / km)
shoes: Asics GT-2000
2 cups of tea and 2 cheese toasties at the amazing ANC (you should have seen the volunteers' especially-made orange-and-white rogaining aprons) weren't enough to ward off my usual 11pm slump; in fact they may have contributed to it because my body was more interested in digesting than in rogaining! But thankfully the feeling of overwhelming fatigue passed. We'd decided not to get any controls in the far NE or SE and instead to go a fair way east for some high-pointers, and were making good time with these, so much so that I was starting to think we'd get to the next water drop not much after 5am. Pride goes before a fall, of course, and we came unstuck on a leg which I'd previously identified as being the hardest on the whole course (at night, anyway).
Following up a flat creek valley to the south and unsure precisely how many junctions we'd passed, we twice stopped less than 200m from the control and did a big loop around to the next creek north, because some of the watercourses marked on the map ceased to exist on the ground in a flat marshy area and we couldn't work out how/where to find them again. We got confused by a clear area too - generally the vegetation was mapped really well but because there wasn't a distinct creek channel running through the middle of this one like there should have been, thought we were on the next clearing further south. If only we'd remembered the mantra of "distance and direction is key" but sometimes it's a bit hard to focus at 4 in the morning.
Yeah, so having lost an hour on that control (56) we thought we'd play it safe on the next one (98) by a direct bearing across 2 obvious saddles and the control being on the 3rd saddle in this line. Which should have worked apart from the minor detail of crossing the final creek and climbing the final spur at 90 degrees to the direction which we should have gone...was pretty pleased with my persistence in finally figuring out what we'd done; even if it did take me half an hour to catch on, at least we didn't have to wait for the sun to come up in order to do so.
So it was 7am by the time we reached the next water and what we had to do fairly directly back to the HH in the next 5 hours was about 80% of what we'd done in the initial 5 hours, but my toes were really hurting and Alex was having to wait for me at controls and hilltops. The one time I did get ahead of her was when we got separated in a green creek valley and she thought I was still behind, when in fact I'd powered on to the control and then heard her calling me from about 400m away - oops. But that was the only miscommunication we had all rogaine, and were in agreement that there was definitely no time for controls in the far SW if we wanted to be able to do the 150m ascent and descent to/from 90 on the top of the Black Ridge just east of the HH. This was a hard control to be finishing on, but at Capertee ARC 2015 all the controls were like that...
Anyway, despite the time lost in the night, our efforts were good enough for 3rd women's (2nd women's vets) and surprisingly less than 200 points behind Tamsin & Thor; we were moving slightly faster than them in the day time but obviously they had a better night. Only about 2/3 of the winning score of the incredible Julie & David, of course, and I don't think that even in peak fitness I could match the winning women's team but then Jess & Gill are the sort of people who run Six Foot track in not much over 4 hours! And the best bit about the presentations was that the organisers had hand-made rogaining aprons for the winners, and bags for second place, so now I have a little orange & white bag to keep my rogaining gear (that which doesn't routinely live in my O kit) in :)