Adam and I had never done a navigational event (bar me doing an AROC once years ago), so this was something new and interesting for us.
We were issued with maps at registration, covered in waypoints spread all over Kowen and Sparrow Hill. Some waypoints were worth more than others, some 30 points, some 40 and so on to the 100 pointers (which were spread out at maximum distance from each other in all four corners of the map ofcourse!). The idea is you get an hour to plan your route, to collect the most points in the time limit (6 hours for this event), with a 10 point/minute penalty for being late.
Adam took to the navigator roll like a duck to water, planning out a nice loop that took in as many 100, 90 and 80 pointers as we could, without over reaching and trying get them all. We though our planned route was pretty conservative, this being our first event, we wanted to be safe and sure we could manage it.
We chose to start in Sparrow, so at the start, we took off, out the front of all the riders and lead the field into the Sparrow single track, we put on some push in here, mainly due to Adam being so damn fast, only my slowness holding him back :) As it was early in the event, there were plenty of other riders around, and we kept bumping into a another team, joking and teasing other. The people in these events are super friendly, it was all in the spirit of fun, not competition like so many MTB racers seem to be these days.
Within 90mins we had a clean run and gotten all the waypoints in Sparrow, a great start, we headed back to the cars and grabbed our camel backs and a quick bite before crossing the Kings Highway into Kowen. We were feeling really good as we'd cleaned up in Sparrow, it was a nice way to start, on familiar ground.
The Eastern end of Kowen was all new to me, I'd only ever down the old 24 hour race course here, and I was surprised by the amount of single track that on this side of the forrest. Plenty of fun to be had here!
We made good progress and collected some big pointers, and then headed into the hills, for the climb to the top of the ridge line, where more big points were the be found. Climbing the mountains there was taxing and slow though, and when we got to the top and collected our waypoints, on the way down the fatigue showed in the form of mistakes, we missed a turn off, then later got lost (another friendly team set us straight on where we were though, which was awesome), and further on just simply could not find a way point we were looking for, I swear it was right under our noses! We couldn't find it though and bailed out, time was running out and that 10point/min penalty was looming, we decided to hot foot it out of there grabbing whatever easy way points we could on the way.
We raced back to the finish and came in 3 minutes late, so got docked 30 points. At the finish the organisers had laid on a big spread of food at the "hash house". The selection was awesome, bbq, salads, pasta, chocky cakes, fruit. I was amazed considering the $25 entry fee, no MTB event I've done has been catered like this, and they usually get 1000 people (not 120) that pay $100, not $25!
I'm hooked, the people were awesome, the organisation supberb, the price was cheap and the catering fantastic. Navigating engaged the brain as much as the legs, instead of mindlessly pumping pedal around in circles I got to think and have heaps of fun, the 6 hours flew by and was over before we knew it!
Next time though, we'll do some smarter route planning, avoiding waypoints that are far off the trail in deep bush (and hard to find, taking time) and we'll both run map boards, instead of only one of us running a cable tied Tupperware lid for a map board (and the other guy wondering where we are) :)
Oh, I almost forgot, the result, we came 9th place in our division (Open Men) and 14th overall... holly cow! What a top result, we were both stoked with that for a first crack at Rogaining! Richard and Reedy got 8th in Open Men and 12th overall, pipping us by 50 points (a single mid point way point), awesome motivation for us to try a bit harder next time, bring on the next one... ;)
The crew:
| Jason | Giant Trance |
| Adam | SC Blur |
| Reedy | Merida Mission |
| Richard | ? |
The Stats:
| Distance | 54km |
| Time | 6:03 |
| Climb | 1400vm |
| Speed | ?km/h avg, ?km/h max |
| Power | ?Wavg |
| Date | 06/05/07 |