Rogaine Thoughts

Thinking!
You can do that on a mountain bike, and you do a lot of it while you ride.
You think about all sorts of things, like route choices and strategies.
You think about where you are and where you are at.
You think philosophy and know you are free to think.
It’s the feeling of freedom that endures. Your thinking mind is free, detached from the mechanical constraints of place and time.
With your body plugged into your machine your soul can fly.
And it does. Wonderfully.
Memories take you back to your last goodbye, flash forward to your next hello. A fragment thought about a faraway problem, and flash back to the present to avoid a branch, navigate a corner, adjust speed. Philosophise.
It was like that as we rode, William and myself, on the MTB Rogaine in the forests near Dullstroom. William said he noticed how broad was the range of subjects we spoke about. He said “We speak so much nonsense about everything”. It was true, but isn’t that the nature of friendship? Sharing nonsense. Sharing freedom. Friends in the forest. Friends of the forest.
This is how it should be. The openness of the grasslands merging with reeds at the marsh. The marsh merging with the lakes. The forests running up the hills. Green forests. Brown grasses. Blue and yellow veld flowers intense in their freedom.
Here, there are not many people. It’s like this for miles around. No others to invade our thought space, to intrude with impatience and rudeness. Brash, in your face bustle. City life. Randomly moving crowds. Noisy trucks and cars and endless tar, melting in the heat, unnatural smells that choke the senses from what life should be. Unshared selfish existences. Meaningless.
A buck runs out of the reeds, a little startled by our speed. A hop, a jump and then gone, hidden again. What else lies hidden in the marsh? An owl? Rabbits? A kite looks down at us, unperturbed. Looking for those rabbits?
This is how it should be, and that is how it was.

Capestorm Rogaine - Race Report

Mike and William represented Team Lickety Split at the Capestorm Rogaine event near Belfast over the weekend. (In both the 6hr foot event on Saturday and the 5hour Mountain Bike event on Sunday).

We left early on Saturday morning, driving through persistent rain, and with one stop for breakfast we arrived in time for registration. We were a little rushed getting ourselves ready in time for the start but were standing in the rain on the start line as the event started.

It was WET

The Foot Rogaine

We had been looking at some of the terrain on a 1:50000 map and on Google Earth and had decided to use the southern side of the forests. This was supported by the fact that there were 3 check points worth 5 points in that half (check points were rated 1-5 points based on how much effort was required to get them).

We trudged through the rain heading south with a goal of trying to cover the whole South Eastern portion of the map. A bad route choice before the first point saw us sinking ankle deep into the marsh while there was a road not more than a 100m to our left going in the same direction. We got the point and adjusted our goals slightly based on the difficulty of the terrain just covered.

In the Forests

However once onto the forestry road we picked up our paced and quickly reached the far corner and our first 5 point Check Point. Up to here we had been on our own, but moving toward the second 5pt Check Point we started meeting the traffic. It seems everyone else was going counter clockwise while we went clockwise.

We had a few opportunities to take shortcuts through the forests, most were quite easy to hike through but a few had thick underbrush and were extremely difficult. After collecting all the 5 pointers on our list we got to the next 4 pointer and stopped for lunch (right near the check point we found a horrible snare that we removed). We were healthily ahead of schedule and decided to add a few extra points to our list, includeing a few points on the northern half of the forest which we had not originally planned on. The rain had finally stopped, and just a very light drizzle was falling.

We hiked off in search of the points but by now we were both starting to feel a little tired and our speed was significantly slower than previously. At one point a road was missing which made us walk a small extra loop while I tried to make sense of the ground vs map, but other than that some spot on navigation got us all the points quite quickly.

We thought we had enough time to collect a last 1 pointer on the way to the finish but my watch and the organisers watch didn't agree on the time and we were 74seconds late, losing us two points. We colelcted 60 points in total minus the two penalty points gave us a final score of 58. We were second in our age group - the winners scoring 119 points (there were two Mens Vet teams competion).

The MTB Rogaine

A cute bedroom to sleep in

We slept overnight at a farm on the other side of Belfast. We had good comfortable beds even if the room was tiny. We had rolls for supper but had eggs and bacon for breakfast.

After a good nights sleep (Mike got something like 11 hours) we headed off to the start and this time had more than enough time to get ready. The sun was out and it looked like it would be a very hot day. Due to our error on timing the day before I made sure that we timed ourselves a lot better. I used my stop watch and started it as we started. During the day I had to remember that the time on the stop watch was the time we were racing and not actual time.

After looking at the m ap Mike and I decided that our goal was to get the 3 x 6point value CPs that were miles away to the North. My quick guess put is at about 2 hours to get to the furtherest point and off we went. We collected a few CPs on the way. A bad navigational mistake was due to me not adjusting to the new map scale and we went hike-a-biking up a road covered in fallen logs, while the road I actually wanted was about 400m further along.

At one stage we were ahead of the winners!

We reached the first of the 6point CPs in only an hour - way ahead of our schedule. We decided not to change our routes and continued to the next 2 CPs where we stopped and had a picnic. This time we seemed to be following the standard route that every one was following. While having our picnic a few teams passed us and made comments. On the way back I chose what looked like the move direct route out of the northern section and ended up on the most technical route in the area. A route higher up the hillside would have been a lot easier.

At the next point we had a choice of taking the easy or the difficult route back. The difficult route would have been worht about 4 points more than the easy route. This small difference and the tiredness in my legs made me choose the easy route. (In the end 4 points would have placed us a position higher in the final standings). We went down into the forest, took a shortcut under the trees and over the stream clipped the point and stopped for lunch.

Lunch in the forest was great!

We took the easy route home, down toward the dams, and collected all the points on the way back as well as a few that were off the route but were relativly easy to get to. The water point we needed for Mike to fill up was missing and we finished relativly dry. On the way to the finish on the paved road Mike decided to see if he could break the 40km/hr speed limit, he reached about 42hm/hr but I struggled to reach 30!!

We finished with about 10minutes to spare. Very happy with what we had accomplished. Our final position was 3rd of 5 teams, 12 points behind the winners and 1 point behind second.

DONE

We are very tired. Got the points we wanted and a few more.

Lunch

We are tired. Now we are going to take the easy road home.

Technical

X

Rest time

Our goal achieved. We have got 3 cps worth 6Points each. This last one probably used up more time than it was worth.

Our first 6 pointer

Yes please

Race briefing

Where we slept

All done

And we are tired!

Nice cold water!

Race done. We collected about half the available points. We did not run at all. Good race. Nice distribution of points across the map. Lots of route choices even between points close together. Mike could not have done much more and i was quite happy to reach the finish.

Lunch!

41 points so far. But no more easy high score CPs left.

1 hour to go

William

The rain has stopped

William

Very far away from the start

Start

Capestorm Rogaine - Event Preview

Only three members of Lickety Split will be going through to this year’s Capestorm rogaine. Mike and William will join up as team Lickety Vets (as this is the first race William is doing as a Veteran). Adri will be joining us for the foot event.

Lickety Vets are doing both the 6hr foot on the Saturday and the 5hr MTB on the Sunday. Last time Mike and William did the Foot Rogaine we found a wonderful gorge to climb/crawl through and this time we won’t be doing anything different. Our goal will be to take a peaceful stroll through the environment looking for neat spots to have an adventure in. Adri who does not have a team for the event will be joining us just for fun.

We will be taking the MTB event on the Sunday a little more seriously, in other words we won’t purposefully get ourselves lost at a small mountain pool we happen to find along the way. Our goal is to cover between 50 and 70 kms (dependant on terrain), starting at the furtherest point we can find and working our way back as fast as possible.