In the past whenever there has been a rogaine held around Christchurch I have always been busy, so it was a nice change to be available for the rogaine held today at Victoria Park by the Peninsula and Plains Orienteering Club. The 3 hour course was part of the Canterbury Secondary School Champs event, with there being an open category for anyone else who wished to participate. Although you were meant to be in teams of at least 2 people, I decided to compete solo as it would be better for my own navigation practise.
The course was effectively 2 big loops, with one loop focused around Victoria Park and the valley, and the second loop based around the Huntsbury valley and track. I decided before the event started to combine the two separate loops into one large loop while nominally skipping a few check points. This plan soon changed once the event started though as it became apparent that my idea was becoming more like a case of follow the leader as there were several other people with the same idea. Due to this I decided to split off from everyone else and go after the points which I had previously decided to skip. At the time when I made this decision, I believed I still had plenty of time to drop down and collect the points while still going on to clear the rest of the course.
Unfortunately, this section took way longer than I thought it would, so by the time I re-joined the course at the top of the hill I was running seriously low on time and had to make the decision to run back to the start/finish, skipping a fairly substantial amount of points on the way down the hill.
Looking back, If I had have had another 15-20 minutes I would have had enough time to collect all the points on the way back down the hill and would have completely cleared the course. This highlighted the importance of moving effectively over a course to get the most amount of points rather than trying to go out and get everything which seems to rarely work.
While not the best result for the amount of effort I put in, this was my 4th ever rogaine (2x Twalk, 1x 1hr Family event) and despite not gaining the full amount of points, my navigation was fairly accurate, with only one spot costing me a bit of time to try and find (I found it in the end, hiding behind a nice amount of gorse).
Time to get out and do some more!
The course was effectively 2 big loops, with one loop focused around Victoria Park and the valley, and the second loop based around the Huntsbury valley and track. I decided before the event started to combine the two separate loops into one large loop while nominally skipping a few check points. This plan soon changed once the event started though as it became apparent that my idea was becoming more like a case of follow the leader as there were several other people with the same idea. Due to this I decided to split off from everyone else and go after the points which I had previously decided to skip. At the time when I made this decision, I believed I still had plenty of time to drop down and collect the points while still going on to clear the rest of the course.
Unfortunately, this section took way longer than I thought it would, so by the time I re-joined the course at the top of the hill I was running seriously low on time and had to make the decision to run back to the start/finish, skipping a fairly substantial amount of points on the way down the hill.
Looking back, If I had have had another 15-20 minutes I would have had enough time to collect all the points on the way back down the hill and would have completely cleared the course. This highlighted the importance of moving effectively over a course to get the most amount of points rather than trying to go out and get everything which seems to rarely work.
While not the best result for the amount of effort I put in, this was my 4th ever rogaine (2x Twalk, 1x 1hr Family event) and despite not gaining the full amount of points, my navigation was fairly accurate, with only one spot costing me a bit of time to try and find (I found it in the end, hiding behind a nice amount of gorse).
Time to get out and do some more!
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