- Details
By Jon McComb
Pulling up to the skate park in Blackmans Bay, we were greeted by a beautiful morning – perfect weather for rogaining around Kingborough’s beachside suburbs. My lovely wife and previous rogaine partner said I had to find someone else for this one as she was washing her hair. So I was fortunate to end up with Ian, whose regular partner was busted and seemed pretty happy to rein in his pace to match mine. In fact he was so blasé about the prospect of running 4 hours with me he went for a kayak in the morning.
I was looking forward to a solid run and breaking out of my usual running routes around the neighbourhood. With years of local running I figured we could cover about 40km depending on how hilly we made it. I think route planning before the start is a really fun but underappreciated part of rogaining. The fancy cardboard, pin and string set-ups used by a few experienced teams at the last rogaine caught my eye, so I brought all the bits along. What I discovered is that it takes next level coordination to manage everything in a breeze. As we plotted our route we reached the end of the string and still hadn’t covered all the controls… this was not a good sign. Our route to collect the lot would have been about 48km so unless we grew wings, we were going to have to drop some controls.
- Details
Well it’s all done. All the competitors returned, more-or-less on time, we did not have to search for anyone and no-one was hurt (other than blisters etc). The results have been finalised and published. It’s not all about winning, and everyone we spoke to seemed to have had a thoroughly enjoyable time regardless of their score. So what else is there? Just a wrap-up and particularly thanks. An extraordinary number of people and organisations contributed to this event, and all deserve recognition:
- Details
Julie and I had been looking forward to returning to Tassie since we'd ridden from Launceston via Bay of Fires down the east coast in January 2018, passing through some of the forest in the coastal hinterland thinking what a great area it would be for rogaining. Add to that the opportunity to bring our MTBs and do a bit more riding after the event, it was a no-brainer.
Overall Winners David Baldwin & Julie Quinn
The drive up the Fingal valley on Friday saw snow on the hill tops. At least we weren't going to overheat. After the ARA AGM we headed to Binalong Bay to the house we were sharing with Jeannie Douglass and Ron Simpson and enjoyed a roast dinner they'd whipped up - perfect! Julie made some strawberry pancakes to eat during the event and we were all set for the rogaine.
- Details
It sounds like a cliché but organising the course for 2019 Australasian Championships was a team effort. In May 2017 we were looking at the Buckland/Nugent area just east of Hobart but from April 2018 onwards we were focussed on the St Helens area. St Helens offered greater navigational challenges with varying terrain: beach and coastal, granite terrain, former tin-mining areas and some marshland.
In the early stages the main issue was creating the base map. Although the event area is undeniably scenic, a successful event required an accurate map to be fair on the entrants. Bernard spent untold weeks working on the map, pulling together data from TheList (Tas Govt), aerial photographs and processing LiDAR data to produce the contours, streams and the patches of dense vegetation. Bernard and Sara Brain made several trips to the proposed area to test the map and to carry out map corrections.
- Details
By Paul Liggins
The moral of the story: if you've just finished a hard run, gasping for breath and not thinking straight, and Gary Carroll approaches, walk away as fast as you possibly can.
When Gary asked if I was interested in helping with a rogaine, my oxygen-depleted brain thought (a) I've done about a dozen rogaines so (b) its about time I did my bit and (c) its a long way off so there's plenty of time and anyway (d) how hard can it be? Thus, somewhat rashly I said yes, immediately recognising my error when I saw the look of surprise in Gary's eyes.
Gary applied his skills of the dark arts and magically came up with a base map. I applied my special skill, procrastinating, leaving it to Easter to do map refinement and corrections. Then two days before Easter I hurt my back and spent all my allotted mapping and course setting time lying on the floor watching Fox Sports.
The Midlands Muster