Australian University Rogaining Championship

On Thursday last week Sarah and I flew to Perth in an endeavour to bring the Nigel Aylott Trophy back to the ANU. After our cleanup at the ACT champs the ACT rogaining association had high hopes for us. This year the National university champs were held in conjunction with the West Australian State Championship, and by golly do those WA peeps love their rogaines. Over 130 teams turned up for the event.

Swan River - the camera is a but blurry due to some lens smudges (it gets worse)

We stayed the night in Fremantle and enjoyed a day relaxing before the big event by visiting a local bakery called Abhi's and swimming at Cottesloe Beach. Late in the afternoon a mini bus picked up all the student rogainers an drove us to the Hash House (ie starting/finishing point and camp area). We got a brief tour of Perth on the way.

Abhi's Bakery - highly recommended

We got to meet the student teams from Qld, Tassie, and South Australia and out first view of the coveted prize was at the airport with the Tasmanians proudly displaying the trophy they had won in the previous year. Sarah and I vowed then and there to take from them.

Keep your eye on the prize

We camped at the Hash House that night, ready for our early start as the maps of the course were to be given out at 8am - four hours before the start of the event. With four hours to prepare Sarah and I plopped down next the our arch enemies from Tasmania (Andy, Ed and Cam or as we dubbed them 'Black Ninjas and the Rainbow Warrior') to plot out a course that would bring us home the silverware.

The uni teams - the black ninjas are back row far left and front row centre. The Rainbow Warrior is back row third from the right (in the puffy vest)

We had decided early on that our main rivals were going to be the team from Tassie and after we had both finished prepping our maps we compared routes choices. They were fairly similar but we deigned to cover about 15kms more to pick up a few extra checkpoints. Time would tell if we could keep to our ambitions plan.

A tent on the course all by its lonesome

At 12 noon the starters horn blared and Sarah and took off running, much to the surprise of the other teams. The event course was quite a bit different to ACT. WA is very flat so Sarah found most of the technical controls while I picked up some new skills and knowledge while tagging along. By the time night fell I had a fair understanding of how to recognise the main features, but at night its a whole new story. In the dark we had to rely heavily on accurately following compass bearings and counting our paces.

Something to warm the night up and make the pain go away.

With night came the rain, and it quickly got cold and wet as well as limiting visibility even further. At about 11pm we ran into the Tassie team, which was pretty exciting. By this stage we knew we had ore points then them (we had traveled further and picked up more points), but we had to stay on our A game if were to win. The rest of the night went really well, we stopped by a water stop at midnight and found a bottle of port so we indulged. Sleep deprivation kicked in at about 4am and Sarah and I really struggled for the next four or five hours (until about 9am). At one point we were separated for about 15 mins in dense bush - it was very hard to find each other again. We finished strongly though, with me taking over the rains for a couple of controls (I can find the simple ones). We ended back at the Hash House at 12:52 - 8 minutes before the event finished.

A dog joined us for breakfast on Friday morning in Fremantle

Upon returning we were greeted by the news the the Rainbow Warrior (our nickname for Cam due to his rainbow coloured thermal top) had struggled in the wee hours of the morning and the team had to call it quits before sun up. This was both exciting and a little sad. The Tassie team were the only team that we believed could have challenged us and it was disappointing for them not to have done as well as expected. On the other hand we also meant we had probably won out category - and win we did. In the end we were 800 pts clear of the second placed team (UTS) with the Tassies coming third.

Celebrating the last control before home and nap time - 23 hours and 3o mins in the race

However, just like in the ACT champs the accolades weren't over yet. We also managed to be the first placed mixed team and we finished 5th overall, which isn't a shabby effort for what we though was a bungled run!

This brings our total haul for 2011 Australian university champions, ACT champions, and West Australian Mixed champions. Not too bad for my third ever rogaine (although Sarah does 98% of the navigation - I just supply the witty banter).

Sarah and I with our many WA trophies.
The smart people would have recognised that the photo of the trophy was taken in my room, thus ruining the suspense