Team Macpac GOT get out and about at the first of the Lactic Turkey Rogaine series events.

Last weekend Team Macpac GOT took on the challenge of a three hour rogaine at Auckland’s Riverhead forest. Having been off training for a month with the flu we were unsure how we would go at this event. However, we knew that with legendary navigator, Marquita Gelderman in our team our navigation would be spot on. At nine am we were given our maps and we spent the next hour in the car debating the possible route choices and options. My simplistic approach is simply to join the dots and keep travelling in one direction until it looks like time might be running out and then heading for the finish at high speed hoping to get there before the cut-off. Marquita and Anne however are far more strategic and measured and the conversation involved lots of talk of “clusters of high points” “elevation gain and drop” “out and back distances” “ease of running on well formed tracks versus small boggy ones” “escape routes” etc etc. Finally, after much discussion and evaluation and re-evaluation (which is hard for someone like me with a concentration span of a five year old) we decided on a route and a drew pretty little highlighted lines all over our maps to show our intended route. At 10am Shaun counted us down and we were off with people heading out into the forest in all directions. In these events it is always key to focus on your own map and direction and not worry what others are doing and that is exactly what we did. The three of us kept together and communicated clearly about where we were heading what, was coming up to look out for and what the clue of the next control was. This kept us all on our toes and aware of what we were looking for once we got to the control. With these events everyone has a map so it was a cool experience for me to see how both Marquita and Anne think through the details on the map and keep tabs on where they are at all times. We made good progress and no mistakes over the first part of the course but at the half way time call we realised our initial plans were extremely optimistic and that there was no way we were going to get all the controls we were hoping to get. From this point on we were constantly re-evaluating our choices and adapting our route to ensure we would get back to the finish line within the three hour time limit. In these events you get penalised 20 points for every minute over the three hours. It is amazing how quickly the last couple of hours goes – before we knew it we were sprinting to the finish – we arrived with 6 minutes to spare, covered in mud and happy with our efforts. What a great day out

For results check out http://www.lacticturkey.co.nz/RogaineRiverheadResults2011Overall.pdf