Mountain Designs Wild Women : Rocking Around Glenrock - Gearing up for Mountain Designs Geoquest

Rogaines are like orienteering - navigation with a map and compass, however they are always completed in a team and the map scale is usually 1:25000 instead of 1:10000 or 1:15000. A rogaine map may have very few tracks or other significant features marked and thus ensures that the navigators rely heavily on contours, creek-lines and the CP location. QRA events are for the uninitiated are very affordable and great value for money, given the length of time out on the course, the food provided post event and the opportunity to visit places that the general public rarely would visit. We at Tri Adventure believe participation in Rogaines is one of the best ways to improve navigation and test out the feet off track, so great preparation for #GEOQUESTAR.

Rogaines are great preparation for Adventure Racing....so the Tri Adventure Crew are all here!

Kim, Cass and Ali teamed up for this 8HR event at Glenrock (west of Gatton), and were pretty excited to have our new AY UP lights ready for the hours of darkness, as the event started at midday. Strategy and route choice always plays a big part in any event where navigation is involved, so we set what we thought was a conservative course with a few short course options and a quick way home via the only track on the map if required.

CP - Descriptions

Rock around the Glen Event Map - with our planned course marked up!

Unfortunately, we did not get off to a great start, totally miscalculating our way to CP32 and ended up getting CP70 first. While we were happy we knew where we were on the map it would have been stupid to go and get 2 of the planned CP’s as they were now in the opposite direction, so we headed for 41 instead, as it looked pretty easy. It took us 1hr 20 just to get 2 CP’s, not a great start, so next up was 101 about 1k up a creek. It was a great challenging CP to find as we decided it was best to travel in the creek as the spurs on both sides seemed covered in Lantana. We persisted and found it eventually however many teams didn’t. Then we traversed around to collect 61 before dropping into the creek for CP82. We totally overshot this one as we were expecting to just see it in the ‘main watercourse’ but must have walked straight past it as it was positioned about 10m up another watercourse, we found it on our way back! Then we headed for CP 50 and 42 on our way to the featured CP of the event Glenrock worth 200 points, most teams started this way and were up the top within 30minutes of the event start, we were now 4hrs in and light was fading, we ran across the ridge to CP55 and then headed down the middle spur towards 60, as our planned route looked like a cliff. This section of the course was our favourite as the views were amazing….we wished we had a camera….next time!

Cass and Kim taped up their shoes to avoid grass seed - it only lasted 1hr - but the Moxie's lasted the entire race!

We had opted for a massive lantana bush bash to CP60 as I spotted it from a distance, but it was on the other side of a steep watercourse. At this stage I opted for a crowd surfing technique to get through as my legs were not long enough to step on top, and we all ended up looking like we had wrestled a lion! Now getting dark we popped on the AYUP’s and headed for the road, and completely changed our planned route. We headed for CP52, 53 and then 73 as they were now close to the road and gave us a quick route home. 52 was a bit tricky to find the watercourse, and we were pretty excited to see the Cowgirls (Tri Adventure – Jan & Shan) at that point and were smashing it. We are not sure what happened at 73 but we did not find it, we were in the main watercourse but just could not find the junction to the watercourse where the CP was located, so disappointingly we had to abandon as now we had just 40mins left. We absolutely sprinted towards CP 43 and found a little track straight to it, and then sprinted again to 40

So we ended up with 930 points placed 11^th overall and 3^rd women’s team, not quite the result we had hoped for but none the less great navigation practice and a good 8hrs on the legs leading up to Geoquest.

Mountain Designs Wild Women - Ali & Cass

On Thursday night we were invited to attend the Mountain Designs Kawana store VIP night All GEOQUEST participants were provided voucher for 25% off MD’s gear leading up to the event, so Gina Ali and I attended and picked up some awesome MD’s product and had the opportunity to chat with the Kawana sales team Dan and Vanessa about adventure racing gear.