Training Log Archive: Georgia

Event: Australasian Rogaining Championships
 

Australasian Rogaine Champs near Capertee with Greig.

After last years travel extravaganza to get to the event and back to NZ without taking a day off work we decided to be more relaxed this year and head over on Friday morning. This was a good idea as we had a relaxing drive through the Blue Mountains and a nice place to camp for the night. I was pretty concerned at how hot it was at the hash house when we arrived and that the Australians were all gleefully showing us photos of the "friendly" snake that had been hanging around the tents.

So anyway, we got the maps and were surprised that the course so was so short. Based on all the terrain info we had and the pace we had gone in the last two rogaines we were convinced we should clear the course, hopefully with hours to spare. And so we planned a route to collect all the controls not really paying much attention to silly efforts to get minimal points other than leaving the "points desert" in the NE (?) corner until the end. Once the race started we were constantly losing time on our plan and on reflection we should have realised we weren't going to get them all earlier and made a bit of a sensible back up plan. We kept thinking the terrain would get faster and we would catch up time (the organisers wouldn't lie to us would they?!!).

I pretty much had a hard time for most of this race. Greig was just cruising along and I was suffering from the beginning. Maybe the heat or maybe I had been racing too much recently. I got pretty down about how I was going (not helped by Greig insisting that we were dawdling while I felt like my head was going to explode) and generally got a bit demoralised (and grumpy). I was annoyed that I'd done lots of training and now was slowing the team up so much. This bad attitude effected how we finished the race and ended up probably costing us 2nd place. Lesson learnt (hopefully).

We sucked at night again, losing hours to nav mistakes (98, 60 in particular but also the others around the base of the plateau) which was depressing and frustrating. Although again we should have been more positive about things and just got on with it. You never know how you are going in a rogaine and need to keep pushing to the end. And the navigation was tricky.

We ended up clearing the majority of the course expect for all the high pointers in the NE corner.

A bit of a ramble of a race report but I'm sure Greig will post a GPS track which will explain more of what we did.

Lessons learnt:
- I should have a small pack, Greig should carry more
- Maybe we shouldn't team up for races that are likely to be scrubby or very physical (steep hills) we seemed to be too different pace for this to really work this year (annoying for both parties)
- Always plan a good finish for if you are running out of time and execute it. Don't just meander along picking the next controls one at a time.
- Stay positive. Everyone has bad times its how you deal with it that makes the difference.

C • Good call 5

C • The night wasn't quite as b... 2

C • You're still ridiculously a... 4

An easier Monday run than normal