Rogaining: Round Two

Perhaps some of you remember the blog about our first 24 hour Rogaine. If you don’t remember it, I certainly do! It’s hard to forget the struggle to keep walking hour after hour in the dark when even the ground seemed like an excellent place to curl up in a ball and take a nap. Ugh, that was a tough one.

Fortunately, our second experience with a 24 hour Rogaine was much different. In fact, I would go so far as to say it was pleasant. Our neighbor, Liz, joined us for the event since her normal partner had some foot issues. We were actually happy to have Liz, a more seasoned Rogainer, with us, because we felt sure that she would keep us to the schedule, and more importantly, keep us from deciding to add on huge extra loops to our plan. And, keep us to the schedule she did.

The Rogaine was in the Bendleby Ranges, which are apparently owned entirely by one land owner. We were talking later with people about what it would take to set up Rogaines in the US, and I think one of the more difficult parts would be finding land owners who are willing to let you use their land. While that’s still a challenge here in Australia, the amazing thing is that often you only need to get the permission of one land owner because people own so much land out in the bush. For instance, this family seemed to own the entire Bendleby Ranges, which seemed to me to be a fairly extensive stretch of hills.

Anyways, the Rogaine went very smoothly for us. The terrain was beautiful, we only got lost once (though it was perhaps at just about the worst time and in the worst place: right before dark and in the trees! Oops!) But, we recovered relatively quickly, and on the whole, did an excellent job of navigating. We even managed to find gummy worms at one control. Also, we made it back to the Hash House at a very reasonable hour (9:30 I think) for some dinner. We enjoyed the dahl that Ryan and Liz had made and frozen a few weeks ago (people volunteer to make up big pots of food ahead of time for the Hash House so that there is plenty of good, warm food for dinner). Dave and I were particularly happy to experience this since we essentially missed out on the Hash House altogether last time. We had a good sleep, and a very comfortable time the next morning when we went out to grab some more controls before the event ended at noon. In fact, I wasn’t really even sore the next day! We probably could have gone a little harder, but we had a great time doing it, felt good during and after, and got a much better sense for how to stay on track.

Other positives included a complete lack of orb spiders, a surprising change of weather overnight (bringing in a wave of much warmer weather), beautiful sun the first day, yummy snacks along the course, and excellent company. The only down side is that when you spend 24 hours of your weekend Rogaining, and another 6 or 7 hours to drive there and back, you suddenly find there are very few hours left in your weekend. But, on the other hand, at least you spend at least 24 hours of your weekend outside in the bush, and that's hard to beat.