Orienteering race (Rogaining) 24:00:00 86.0 km (16:45 / km) +2800m14:24 / km ahr:106 max:170 (injured)shoes: Salomon XA Elevate (11)
ACT 24hr with Mounty, Tantangara / Bullocks Hill camp in the northern Kosciusko area.
Generally a very enjoyable adventure despite being having shin pain for 3/4s of it, even the loooong cooold night wasn’t nearly as cold as expected as we kept moving well.
Were interested to find we were the only team who headed NE from the hash house at the start, and very few went clockwise like us, so knew we wouldn’t be seeing many people out there. Good going for the first quarter though started to get scrappy around the 5 hour mark, got lucky on 93 & 72 catching things just in time, before screwing up 62 with a parallel error.
First few controls in the dark were fine, then big hunt around for a vague saddle at 58 - probably 15 minutes lost. Into the tricky SE corner we were super cautious and it paid off, reasonably clean through here and safely to witzes hut for a sit down & extra clothes. I was really struggling with shin pain on the downhills by this stage, sideways or backwards was easier (or at least pain-free) compared to straight down.
Coldest part of the night was along the road here and through the lower lying stream areas, stupidly decided not to take the planned road route to 84 and binned 20 mins on a parallel error with unmapped tracks and creeks catching out my poor nighttime distance judgement.
Got it together after that for a while but started having to drop stuff from the plan, though in hindsight perhaps this was too soon - we weren’t moving quickly but were still moving better than we thought.
Sun rose through the trees while we were in the SW corner of the map, lovely cloud inversion to the west, mist in the valleys above frozen ground, really beautiful way to start the day which helped pick up my spirits after an hour of painful trudging and grumpy stomach.
Some more cutting off plans but then having to add more back in at the end as we tried to scoop up some remaining points, as in daylight it’s all pretty easy nav and the open stuff reminded me of Scotland and the lakes.
Finished off in the worst bit of the area for the last 90 mins which was my biggest boo of the event. While grateful we didn’t start with an hour or more of slogging through fallen trees and scrub, it finally broke my resolve and I wanted it all over. To the point that when we didn’t immediately find our second last control at 40 I couldn’t be bothered relocating and trying again, fast track me to the finish please.
Didn’t think we’d done too well given the slow progress, but everyone else went into the shit section first and found themselves behind schedule, or made errors like not taking their food and bonked, so we ended up 2nd (albeit distantly) from Gill & Phil who smashed it.
Good learning experience (gutted my gps failed for further insights), even if the legs didn’t play ball. Amnow awaiting results of an MRI to see what the damage is, but a stress fracture wouldn’t surprise me given the pain and swelling of the past week.