rogaining race (Fun In The Flinders 12hr) 11:59:00 [3] 44.0 km (16:20 / km)
shoes: Asics 2000-4
Southern Flinders rogaine, with the HH on a farm east of Germein Gorge, north of Wirrabara. The landowner had competed in one rogaine before - last year's SA champs @Nackara - and enjoyed it so much that he wanted to set an event on his property. I'm never quite sure in advance how I feel about 12hr events because of the time pressure of navigating in the dark at the end, and it's been a bit of a complicated week at work so I wasn't particularly energetic (need to get fitter before the next 24hr, but one advantage of having gained a little weight since NZ is that I wasn't having to hitch up my tights all the way around as I was at the ARC a couple of months ago), and a bit daunted by trying to choose a logical route on a map with 2900pts available and nobody likely to get more than about 2000.
For some reason Zara & I thought the steep section in the NW with the high points would have horrible scrub, when in fact it turned out to be open sheep-grazing country with fabulous views. So we went south towards what's left of Wirrabara Forest then north through the middle of the map where there were plenty of controls but the points weren't high, and only got to part of the more lucrative stuff before heading for home - ruing the choices we'd made when we saw just how stunningly beautiful the open hills of the NW were, particularly the waterfall at 61 and the vista out across Baroota Reservoir to Spencer Gulf and Point Lowly. But what we did, we executed fairly well if rather sedately - some other teams who would have been moving faster than us initially struggled badly with cramps later on or got lost after dark, whereas we survived the massive scramble up to 93 on sunset and then the steep descent into 56 in the dark (theep thit ith thlippery) and then were smart enough to head east in flatter farmland and although we ran out of time to go to the control on the cemetery, got in with less than a minute to spare after a mad dash to 20 pts just down the road.
Somehow 1640 points turned out to be a winning score! Kate & John chose a northerly route (we really should have gone that way too, but it was just so hard to decide during planning time) and so they made it all the way to the 100-pointer on the waterhole, then ended up coming in a minute before us with 80 pts less. Great effort by them :)