INTERNATIONAL ROGAINING FEDERATION Inc. A0040409P Box 3, Central Park, 3145 Australia Newsletter No. 188 www.rogaining.org August 2012 IRF Team President: Neil Phillips Promotions and Development: Alan Mansfield Secretary/Treasurer: Rod Phillips Technical Manager: Lauri Leppik World Rogaining Championships Manager: vacant Members of IRF Czech Republic (Miroslav Seidl, Jan Tojnar) New Zealand (Alan Holdaway, Nick Collins) Australia (David Baldwin, Richard Robinson) Estonia (Lauri Leppik, Eduard Pukkonen) USA: (Barb Bryant, Bob Reddick) Individual members until end 2012 Murray Foubister -Canada Guntars Mankus -Latvia Sergey Yashchenko, Evgeny Dombrovskiy -Russia Efim Shtempler -Ukraine Observer status Canada: Francis Falardeau Finland: Miia Hovi Germany: Marko Rößler Lithuania: Gediminas Trimakas Spain: Felip Gili Sweden: Bengt Nilsson VRA-IRF Liaison Officer: Rebecca Shaw Rogaining in South Africa 2012 Capestorm Rogaine: Ian Bratt After every cross-country navigation event the planner breathes a sigh of relief if everything has gone well. On Sunday evening that sigh was bigger than usual once we had collected all the controls and everybody was safely out of the area. The competitors, the organisers, the planner and his car were all in one piece and safely on their way home after a great weekend of rogaining. Five weeks ago, I had a blank piece of paper, four orthophotos of the Mokobulaan Plantation and access to Google maps. Nicholas Mulder had mapped four areas for previous orienteering events including the 2012 Gauteng Championships which were held six weeks ago. However, these represented only a fraction of the overall area which covers in excess of 60km2. It became immediately apparent, on starting to draw the contours, that I had my work cut out to complete the map and planning in time for the event. Such was the magnitude of the drawing that I had to make a decision to only show every second contour resulting in a contour interval of 20m even though I had 10m contours on the orthophoto. I estimate that I spent in excess of forty hours just drawing. Controller Glen Terry and I visited the area a month ago and spent the best part of two days driving 120km around the area checking out the tracks and vegetation. Admittedly we could have avoided the map corrections on the mountain bike map if we had not been stuck in what appears to be the only marsh in the area for three hours! Despite our best efforts to free ourselves my car remained resolutely stuck. Glen was dispatched to call the cavalry which arrived in the form of forest manager, Herman, driving a tractor. In less than ten minutes we were hauled to higher ground and visions of having to spend the night under the stars rapidly faded. The rest of the map was drawn based on the orthophotos. It also became apparent early on that the high cliffs on the edge of the escarpment overlooking the main valley and some cliffs in other places represented un-crossable barriers which could prove dangerous to competitors. I also realised that due to time constraints when putting out controls, they would have to be close to tracks. Nevertheless, there were a couple i.e. the saddle and top of the spur (which in hindsight should have been top of the hill) overlooking the assembly area which required a trek on foot to put them out and collect them. There were thirty foot controls and thirty bike controls which took us seven hours on Friday and an hour and a half on Saturday to put out. Overall, I drove over 200km in the area over the three days indicating the magnitude of the organisation involved in an event of this nature. We were blessed with exceptional weather, especially given the way it changed on Monday and covered much of the country in snow. I do not think it could have been better for competitors or organisers but it could have been so different if the cold front had arrived two days earlier. Putting out controls and/or collecting controls in rain (or snow) in that area would have been a nightmare, not to mention a problem for the competitors both getting to the area and in the actual competitions. We reduced the length of the events due to the smaller size of the area compared to previous rogaines. This seemed to boost the entries on the longer events at the expense of the shorter ones. It was also pleasing that the top teams did not manage to visit all the controls. They were close but still had to make decisions as to what controls to miss out. It seems that all the foot controls were correctly placed (at least I received no complaints). However, there were two bike controls which were misplaced for which I must apologise profusely. I marked 122 incorrectly on the map we used when putting out controls. 105 was one of the last controls we placed on Friday after seven hours driving round the area. I know how frustrating it can be when controls are not to be found where expected and I hope that it didn’t spoil the event too much. One advantage of the Emit system is that it allows us to see which order the competitors visited the controls and the times they took between them. Please bear in mind that the time shown to the first control is incorrect since it includes the time between clearing the e-card and the official start. To get the correct time for your first leg, deduct the difference between official finish time shown in the results from the overall time shown by the Emit timing and then deduct this from your first leg time, e.g. if your EMIT time was 4h05 and your official time was 3h55, deduct the difference i.e. 10 minutes from the time shown for your first leg. Although it is drier at this time of year which suited us it is also the high fire season. Finally thanks to all the competitors for your support. It makes it all worthwhile receiving your positive comments and feedback. I hope you enjoyed the challenge and the wonderful views and I hope to see you all again next year. Hopefully when you visit South Africa you will consider marking a rogaine in your itinerary. It is a great way to see some of the less-visited parts of the countryside. New Zealand Rogaining Championships, http://www.rogaine.org.nz/nzchamps2012/ . 2