Weekend Warriors

Waking up this morning, my legs were an immediate reminder of our action packed weekend. We went with our neighbors, Liz and Ryan, down to Victor Harbor on Saturday for a 4 hour Rogaine. For those of you who haven’t heard of Rogaining (we certainly hadn’t before we got here), it is essentially an extended orienteering event. Rogaine originated in Australia in the 1970s and stands for “Rugged Outdoor Group Activity Involving Navigation and Endurance”. Apparently, the fact that the acronym is also the name of a well-known hair re-growth product is just a coincidence. Typically, Rogaines go for 12 or 24 hours. At only 4 hours, ours was titled “A Brief Encounter.”

Since we’re used to doing our family Thanksgiving orienteering in less than 2 hours, 4 hours felt like quite a bit—especially since we ran substantially more than half of the event. But, it was an excellent time. Usually Rogaines are out in the bush, but this was in an urban setting, so we found ourselves running through neighborhoods and along busy streets. We opted to go for the most scenic route instead of trying to get the highest possible points, so we went out to Granite Island, known for its Little Penguins, and also up to a bluff overlooking the rest of Victor Harbor. And, despite doing the scenic route, we ended up first in the Novice category. Of course there were only two other teams in our category, which was for people who had never done a Rogaine before, but we finished 14th out of 63 teams overall and felt pretty good. Two women actually won the event, and they ran the whole thing. We worked it out and realized that they essentially ran a marathon! For those of you considering doing a marathon, Rogaining would be excellent training because the navigating takes your mind of the running, and it’s really good fun.

The other aspect of a Rogaine that makes it different from orienteering is that it always includes some time navigating in the dark. In fact, they always do the Rogaines during a full moon so that you are less likely to run into things while you’re navigating at night. We did alright following the streets on the map to find the controls, but it will be a different story at night out in the bush without trails to guide us. Our neighbors told us that Rogaining always involves getting lost at least once, and that you’re supposed to carry a snake bite kit with you. Those two facts make me a little nervous about longer Rogaines in the bush, but I think we’re going to give it a go either in March or April, and we’ll let you know how it goes. Assuming we find our way back at the end, and aren’t eaten by feral camels or rabbits.

One of the best parts of a Rogaine is the Hash House. This is where all the food is, so once you finish running around, you can come back and eat a hot meal. On a longer Rogaine, you are required to stop in at the Hash House at some time during the night. When we finished, we were mostly just happy to have water since we hadn’t brought quite enough with us for the four hours. But the pizza tasted great as well. The event definitely made for deep sleeping that night.

Since we were all the way out on the Fleurieu Peninsula, Ryan and Liz decided we should head over to Deep Creek Conservation Area on Sunday before driving home. They took us on one of their favorite hikes, which was an undulating 12 km walk along part of the Heysen Trail and also out to the coast. It was a lovely hike, and even though our legs were tired, walking was probably one of the best things we could do the day after the Rogaine. We saw some amazing vegetation, including yacca plants (grass trees), which are many hundreds of years old. Some of their trunks looked like they had been burned, and Ryan explained that they had probably survived numerous fires. They seem to be ideally adapted to this environment, with roots that stretch some 20 m down into the ground, and an ability to withstand fires. In fact, I’m pretty sure they actually need the fires to reproduce. They were really neat looking plants, and seemed like they would make for an excellent game of hide and seek.

The hike took us through areas unlike anything we’ve seen yet in Australia, though apparently much of South Australia used to look like the Deep Creek area. As we were walking, I was wondering if perhaps Australia’s vegetation favors shorter bushwalkers. This was because, as the tallest walker in our group, my head kept hitting branches that seemed to be just at the exact height of my head. Everyone else walked along, oblivious to these overhanging branches, but I kept checking to make sure I hadn’t lost major chunks of my hair, as a lot of the vegetation was rather sharp.

Anyways, we just about had the whole trail to ourselves even though it was a Sunday. It was rather windy, but not too hot at all, which was great. We had great views of the ocean, beaches, and Kangaroo Island. We saw a few fairy wrens, kangaroos and sheep. And, we arrived at home tired, hungry, and feeling like we had really made the most of our weekend. (If you want to see more photos from the weekend, they are online here.)