top of page
Writer's pictureMatt Moore

Rogue Raid 24hr Rogaine!


The Tiger Adventure teams!

Over the weekend Dominika and I hit our first 24 hour rogaine adventure race. After running a poll on my IG and FB, it looks like plenty of you would like an explanation of what exactly a rogaine adventure race is, so here we go. Rogaining is an orienteering sport of long distance cross-country navigation,[1] involving both route planning and navigation between checkpoints using a variety of map types. In a rogaine, teams of two to five people choose which checkpoints to visit within a time limit with the intent of maximizing their score. Teamwork, endurance, competition and an appreciation for the natural environment are features of the sport. Championship rogaines are 24 hours long, but rogaines can be as short as two hours. (Thanks Wikipedia) So basically the sport involves just using a map and compass to navigate across various terrain using various disciplines, the event we were at, the Rogue Raid 24hr is Australia's largest 24hr event. We arrived out at Wyaralong Dam in SE Queensland at about 6 30am on Saturday to leave our bikes and a transition box at TA-B (Transition site B, south side of the dam in the map below), then headed 10km around the dam to HQ (Top right of map), where the event was going to start. At 8am they started handing out maps and that was when the fun began.

As soon as I saw the map I started to get nervous, I knew some of these points would be very tricky to nav to with my very limited skills and half of this event would be happening at night. I hadn't tried nav in the dark yet but I knew it was going to be much harder to work things out. So the way this event was organised, we were allowed a few hours to mark our maps up and work out our strategy. Since we basically had no strategy, this didn't take long at all.

Now the whole point of this sport is to self navigate with a map and compass. There are no electronics allowed except for a stopwatch so you can work out the distances you have travelled. Well, the people in the know can, I'm very much throwing darts with my eyes closed at the moment but slowly improving. While I know there's no electronics allowed, I wore my Garmin HR strap to grab my HR for the event and buried my Fenix 5 in my pack so that I could get a map readout on completion of the event. I figured people would be interested in hearing about it afterwards so I do it with the intention of bringing interested people into the sport.

This was as far as my Garmin got before the battery died, I could have thrown it on the charger if I knew it was flat but you get the idea, this does miss the last few hours where Dom and I got after it on the mountain bikes on the north side, this was the hardest we pushed all race. I know this is against the rules. If this upsets any other racers, just look at our total points and it should be fairly obvious that we didn't cheat 😂

 

After providing us with a sealed GPS locator so they could find our bodies, Raid Adventures sent us all away at 11am. We started up at HQ and the first leg was a trek leg. We were to collect checkpoints 1 and 2 then return to HQ to hit the first Kayak leg. Dom and I jogged a little at the start, though our plan was to hike the full event, this being Dom's first ever 24hr I knew full well the dangers of going too hard too early. By the time my terrible nav skills got us to the checkpoints and back to HQ, we were one of the last teams to grab our kayaks. We dropped it in the water and started paddling out north west to pick up checkpoints 3, 4 and 5, then we were to head to TA-A (Transition site A). Both Dom and I have had a crazy few weeks with work and events so both of us came into this event tired, run down, under prepared and a bit irritable. We also really don't like kayaking. We never do it so we are stuck in that painful beginner stage, after about 60 seconds we were feeling the burn and the realisation that the next 10km was going to be quite unpleasant hit both of us at the same time. Previously, I had sat in the rear of the kayak which is where the foot pedals are located that control the rudder. After getting groin cramps during the 6hr Wildfire Raid about a month earlier and having nowhere to stretch out we decided to switch places with Dom taking the steering position. After we zigzagged out of HQ, Dom told me that my pack was hitting the pedals and she couldn't steer properly so she adjusted the pedals to bring them closer to her and away from my pack.

We quickly started literally going in circles and I was getting very, very angry. Poor Dom didn't realise when she adjusted the pedals she also had to adjust the straps as well so the rudder was stuck to one side. So if the event organisers were wondering who the fuckwits were paddling in circles while yelling at each other, that was us. Luckily Dom worked it out before I threw her out of the kayak and we were underway 😂

This close up of the map gives you a bit of an idea how the event played out. After picking up 2 points in the kayak we decided to cut our misery short and just shoot for TA-A, a transition area on the north side of the dam. Here we hit another trek leg, including going up Mt Joyce for a beautiful view. We then headed back to the kayak, choosing to skip the checkpoints on offer and paddle direct to TA-B on the Southside, have a long break to eat and get dry before the sun went down and get ready for night ops.

It was in the transition area that I spotted Rick and Tim, great blokes I had met at the two 6hr events I had hit previously, they were in a team of 4 with Liz and Andy and we decided to stick with them for some night nav so I could hopefully get less lost and learn a thing or two. I know from my previous 24 hour OCR efforts that company can be thing that keeps you sane when the demons start during the night and they seemed happy for the company so we all headed out as a unit.

An example of the notes I had left myself to get to each checkpoint

Rick's team turned out to be great company and I enjoyed getting to know some great people over the next 8 hours. Adventure racers are out there on a limb right with the craziest OCR racers and I realised that this sport had a community of interesting people just like obstacle racing, this fact alone will definitely get me back to more events, the people make it. I've met few people as determined as Rick, he backed himself 100% with his nav, even if that meant heading directly through a patch of Lantana, which we did more than once. Sometimes on all fours.

Lantana. We hacked our way through loads of these fucking devil bushes

Rick taught me a few new nav tricks and we all kept each other company on foot until around midnight when we decided to head back to TA-B and grab the bikes.

My Hardtail MTB with the mopboard attached

Once we got on the bikes I could see Dominika was starting to hit the wall. After about an hour we were starting to lag behind and really slow the others down. It was about 2am at this point and the event had taken it's toll. At one point descending a small hill I nearly watched Dom fall off the bike multiple times, she could barely hold a straight line. After we caught up to the guys patiently waiting for us I told them we would leave them to get after it and ride the 10kms along the road directly back to HQ so we could have a kip in the car. We got up after 3 hours sleep and decided to head north on the bikes, picking up a few check points before the end of the event at 11am.

Dom and I finished up in 64th position out of 68 teams, with a total of 520 points. Rob Preston's team, Thought Sports took out the win with 1990 points, giving you an idea of just how shit we are at this sport 😂 Huge thanks to Trevor Mullens from Tiger Adventure Trevor helps people get into this sport and tells them what gear to buy and even runs free training sessions. He does this all out of love for the sport, he doesn't make any money out of it and we wouldn't have been able to get out on course without his valuable assistance. I recommend anyone looking to get into this sport to hit him up, we were proud to race in his team shirts under the name 'One Moore Tiger Team'

I highly recommend this sport to everyone. While there were teams made up of absolute savages, there were people out there walking with us, I spoke to a dad with his son who was maybe 12 who were not hunting too many checkpoints and were planning to sleep. We saw many teams of kids and quite elderly people hitting the 6 hour, it really is an amazing way to get outside, use your brain and get active. If anyone has any questions, feel free to hit me up 🤙🏼

Matt Moore

136 views0 comments

Commentaires


Join the Mailing List to never miss an update!

Thanks, You'll get our updates now!

bottom of page