Bruny Island Rogaine.

Sunday, 28 February 2021

I like rogaining. Sometimes.  At least for the first few hours. I then alternate between loving it and hating it for the next 8 hours. By the end I've pretty much decided I hate it.   I like it again when it has stopped and we get to eat the delicious food that is always provided when you get back.

Despite my mixed feelings, the Bruny Island Rogaine seemed like a good opportunity to see some Bruny Island sights we rarely get to see from the usual visitor spots, and since it was only (ha!) 12 hours I figured it wouldn't be too bad on my body. That turned out to be wrong of course!

Jett and Paul and I formed our team fairly late (on the last day of entries), when Jett's other options fell through and Paul realised that entries were closing.  Unfortunately Jett's youth prevented us from being able to enter appropriately decrepid age class and we had to settle for the mixed open category - something we didn't have a chance in hell of winning. Luckily we weren't in it for the prizes. In the meantime Jon entered with my former paddling buddy Ian, and Zali teamed up with two friends.

So we went to Bruny Island on Friday afternoon and set up camp (unfortunately in the middle of a rainshower) so that we didn't have to get up too early the next day. The event didn't start until 11 but you get given the maps at 8:30 and it takes a while to plan a route and get packed with lunch and other supplies.

After the blink of the eye we were off and running. Well, shuffling. The downhills. For everything else we walked briskly. 

The terrain varied from open farmlands, to bracken, to forest, to fences. So many fences. I didn't take a photo of a single one but I think we would have crossed around 80 and I'm not exaggerating. In the above photo Jett is running with a rolled up bit of cardboard that we used to avoid most of the barbed wire. By the end of the race it was completely shredded.

I haven't been rogaining with Paul before - it turns out he's not as keen on sitting-down breaks as Jon is, but after 2 or 3 hours we convinced him that we could at least sit down to take our sandwiches out of our bags, even if we still had to eat them as we walked.  I took mine out reealllly sloooowly.

Near the top of one of the hills we encountered Jon and Ian running the other way. Moving signifcantly faster than us they actually managed to visit every last control and cover 67kms, and they even finished with more than an hour to spare - no other teams got close to this.  

The day stretched on with more hills, forest, farmland and fences until we eventually found ourselves about to cross the main road near the ferry terminal about about 5.30pm - just over halfway in time and 26km covered.  We refilled our water and set off for another 15 or so km stretch to the next water stop. I didn't take as many photos in the 2nd half but I had to get a photo of this section of waist high thistles we had to go through. My legs are scratched up today and I wore gaiters - I'm not sure how Jett coped!

We eventually made our northern most planned point at around 7:45pm / 38km. We stopped to refill our water, eat another sandwich (we were allowed to stop this time), put on our head torches and turn for home. We'd saved a lot of high scoring controls for the last 10 or so k and we were looking pretty good time-wise to still get them all. Unfortunately after getting two of them, Paul's stomach started to cause him trouble and he started to slow right down. In the end we just had to abandon our plans and head down to the main road to walk the last 7km home. This was a bit boring but we did get to see lots of wildlife on the way back and we were all pretty exhausted so Jett and I didn't really mind!

We arrived back at 10:30pm - half an hour before the deadline, after which teams lose 10 points per minute they are late. All up we covered 47k. We did pretty well in the overall standings despite our last few hours - if we'd got the points we'd planned to we probably would have broken the 50k mark which would have been something! I'm really happy with our overall route choice - it was pretty spot on and we made almost zero navigational errors which always helps things stay on track!

Paul went straight to bed as soon as we got back, while Jett and I went to refuel at the food tent with a very late dinner! While we ate we watched the last of the finishers come in (at increasing speed as the time ticked away!). It was nice to debrief with everyone else afterwards.

Paul seemed to be completely fine the next morning which was good. My knee is sore and my legs are scratched. My running shoes will never be the same after tromping on so many strands of barbed wire! 

Zali and her friends covered about 35k and won their class. They also had to walk past a lot of controls when one team member got a jack jumper bite and they had to head back for treatment. To their credit after having some dinner and putting some stingose on the bite they headed out into the dark to get some more points!

So it was all good fun(ish).  The whole time we were out there, Clare was back in Kingston experiencing pangs of disappointment, as the whole rogaine on Bruny Island was her idea - although she had to pull out of the organising committee before it was held.

Will I do another one? Yeah - dunno. Depends if I've forgotten how hard this one was or not by then!