rogaining

for those of you who don't know (and don't worry - i didn't either) rogaining is a competition where you navigate your way through the woods to checkpoints. basically gives a point to hiking - as if there needs to be one.
well that's what i did this past weekend. me and a few people from the outdoors club formed a team for the australian national rogaining championships. yeah that's right - national champs. nothing like starting at the top!
the weekend was really good. we drove up there (the pyraneese range about 3 hours away) friday arriving around 11:30 pm at set camp for a good night's sleep. i don't know if i'd call a cold night in a tent a 'good night's sleep', but i suppose it beats waking up at 5am and driving the morning of. i actually slept pretty well and woke up to a hot breakfast cooked for us by the volunteers. daniel (our trip organizer) kept reiterating that the food was the best part of the event, and i wasn't let down. that's the awesome thing about intense hiking; not only are you expected, but encouraged to eat as many carbs and chocolate snacks as you can. love it! haha
our maps were passed out at 9 am leaving 3 hours for us to plan our route and get ready for the day. this course covered 230 square kilometers of half hilly forrested areas and half fields, vineyards, and sheep paddocks. it was a 24 hour event running from noon saturday to noon sunday. we planned to get it 50-60 K over that time period leaving a few hours during the night to sleep and get a hot meal at the hash house.
we ended up getting in the mileage and making it back to camp in time to get some food, but those were pretty much the only things that went according to plan along the way. haha. 4 of the 5 of us were rookie rogainers so there was some fumbling around with compasses and figuring our exactly which hill we were on. after a wasted hour of searching for our 3rd checkpoint we had to change our route plan. this happened a few times throughout the night, but i didn't bring our spirits down. we were just there to have a good hike anyway and it was only added entertainment when we had no idea where we were. in true australian fashion there was a pub on the course, so at one point in time we were going to try and make it there to get some free soup and take a break, but that didn't really work as planned either. haha.
i've never hiked at night. it adds a whole new angle to the activity. rogains are always held on or near full moons so there is optimal natural light, but it was a bit of a cloudy night so we were more dependant on our head torches than planned. we only stayed in the wooded areas for a couple hours in the dark before making our way to the paddocks where it's easier to see. chasing sheep around is now a new favorite hobby. they're so funny!
anyway, after getting hopelessly lost among the farms on an unmarked road, which we thought was a different road...very confusing, we made it back to the hash house around 1:30 am. in the 13th hour of hiking i had a suprising amount of energy and was feeling stronger than expected, but was moving pretty slow because of these bloody blisters. i had taped the back of my ankles for prevention, but not the bottom of my heal: big mistake. at this point in time my heal was fully surrounded by a bubble of paaain! haha. but luckily the terrain was flat so i just had to suck it up and make it home.
we had some cheese toasties (grilled cheese) and soup and turned in for the night. we didn't go too hard the next morning. slept in until 7:30 or so and got going again an hour after that. we just went out and got 4 more checkpoints before making our way back to the base at 11:30. the novelty had started to wear off and the navigation on the second day was pretty easy so we entertained ourselves by quoting movies which usually included will ferrel, vince vaughn, or ben stiller somehow. they have the best movies!
throughout our 16.5 hours of hiking we covered about 55K. there were 3800 possible points on the course. the highest amount anyone got was about 2500. we got 650. haha. poor showing. but we did our best and had a blast doing it. i'm not sure exactly where we came in for the competition. there were 166 teams with 369 people. i know we beat some teams, so we didn't come in last. and when it comes down to it, in a national competition, that's all you can really hope for. :)