IT Consultancy and Adventure Racing

Well after winning the Mixed class in the 2008 New Zealand Rogaining National Champs, team One Night Stand decided to take the next step and head over to Estonia for the 2008 World Champs in September.

After a ton of hassle fitting the redeeming of Qantas air points in with the itinerary for the race, and attempting to arrive in decent enough shape to be able to race, we eventually managed to organise things around arriving in Heathrow a couple of days before the race.

Neither of us have been to Estonia before, so the Lonely Planet was consulted, and a vague itinerary of staying in Estonia for just over a week, followed by a few days in England to see as many friends and family as possible was devised.

Searching the web, Rach managed to find a decent looking quote at http://www.motorhomesworldwide.com/, so after booking a camper with this company and handing over credit card information to secure a booking, we booked flights from London to Tallinn with easyjet, based on the booking we had. Unfortunately the adage of "if it seems too good to be true it probably is" played it's part, and after a couple of emails from the local RV suppliers http://www.hansarent.eu/ informing us that now we only had a booking request, and they were unable to service the whole of it, we were then told 4 days after accepting a larger than optimal van for a shorter than optimal time, that our booking was being cancelled!

What a shonky approach to business! I'm not sure if it's the Estonian or the Australian end of the operation that's so feeble, but quite frankly it's a pathetic way to run a business, and I can in no way recommend this outfit!

Unlike the tourist information people we contacted on turismiinfo _at_ tallinnlv.ee, who were fantastic, and emailed us through a list of other camper van hire places in Estonia through one of which we'll hopefully manage to save our trip!

Anyway, on to the race ... report courtesy of Rachel

Karula National Park, Estonia

After winning the mixed title at the National Rogaine Champs in NZ, Liam and I thought we'd head to the worlds in Estonia and give it a go. It would be my first ever taste of international competition!

The NZ winter didn't exactly make preparing easy.. nor pleasant.. with the coldest and wettest winter we've had for a while, but I continued to train, and Liam continued to do his usual - lots of random sport, culminating in racing for 7 days at the Bull of Africa a month before the race.

A week before the race we headed over to Europe, with a very wet and cold day's stopover in Sydney on the way. We arrived to a typically grey UK day and had the usual fun and joys of Heathrow (2 hours to get through even with EU passports!) before heading into town to catch up with a friend of mine. The next couple of days consisted of catching up with friends and family (and a few too many beers with the curries!) before a very early flight to Tallinn, Estonia on thursday morning.

The weather in Tallinn was pleasant, but cold at 11 deg at midday. We'd been told it should be in the region of 12-18... After collecting the rental car we headed to the supermarket to load up with race food and other sustenance. The joys of shopping in foreign countries! It took us at least 2 hours to find what we needed, though we were successful. From there we headed out east from Tallinn to check out the Lahemaa National Park for which we had a couple of orienteering maps. We spent a few hours wandering around the forest, familiarising ourselves with the layout and the maps which were proper orienteering maps (in NZ we tend to use topo maps for rogaining) and the different colours/ symbols from what we were used to. Initial impressions - lots of trees, reasonably smooth travel and very flat!

Accommodation for that night proved a bit of a mission. Apparently the area we were in was only really open in summer - and we were just out of season. We couldn't find anything that resembled food or a place to stay! Finally we found a pub (though it was empty) and they were able to direct us to a local B&B in the village (next door but with no signs, and turning out to be only a B seeing as we were out of season). We returned to the pub for a meal of local cuisine - dumplings, pork and salmon.

The next day we travelled south to the site of the race stopping for a bit of sight seeing and to book a hotel for after the race. We got to the race HQ about 5pm and were directed to where we could set up tents.. with the temperature now at 7 deg and quite a wind the exposed top of the hill wasn't appealing but we found a better spot with a few others from the Kiwi contingent around the lake. Having been informed that we couldn't register until the following morning there was little to do but light up the barbie and cook the sausies!

We both knocked ourselves out with sleeping pills and slept really well that evening despite the cold and noise. Up at 7, rugged up, we got stuff organised and waited for the maps to be handed out at 10. It must have been all of about 5 deg that morning as we sat in the car to eat breakfast with numerous layers on.

The notes had informed us that it was expected that the top competitors would clear the course, so we'd decided to look for a route that enabled us to do that, with plenty of options for getting back earlier if necessary. At the NZ Nats we'd moved much more quickly than we expected and covered 100+k in around 20 hours.

Once we got the maps we proceeded with our plan, laying out a route that would cover the course. We measured sections and felt like we could cover the distance. The first section to the water drop we expected would take about 2 hours. We'd also been warned numerous times about the bogs - and that the water level was much higher than usual for the time of year (wet and cold again...) so to be careful in route planning.

At 11.30 we completed the route planning and finalised our gear ready to hit the road. At this stage I was wearing 2 layers on my bottom half (tights and o-pants) and 3 on top (2 layers of merino and a jacket) as well as buff, hat and gloves. Liam suddenly got really cold, starting to shiver, which isn't a state I've seen him in too often! He put on a hat and jacket in attempt to warm up and we headed to the start pen. Everyone was just milling around when the gun went and we were off. We got a good start and were leading the pack out towards the road in our direction. As we turned up the road however we saw that most people that were heading for the same checkpoint as us had gone directly over the field and we were a fair way back. Error on our part - whereas in NZ it is almost always quicker to run the paths than the fields here that didn't look to be the case.

We joined the stream of people heading towards the checkpoint and made our first clip. About a further 10 min up the road we started to warm up - I started feeling my toes for the first time all morning! - and we started to take off some of the layers as we jogged along. We made a couple of minor errors getting to the next couple of CPs, but generally made good progress. As we headed in to collect an 8 pointer however we seemed to have taken a wrong turn and the map wasn't lining up with the features at all. We backtracked, took another path, which turned out to be wrong (we had been right but there were minor issues with the map) but finally figured out where we were based on some Estonian signs and a no-go area on the map which we figured must mean the edge of the nature reserve. We made it to the CP but had lost about 10 min on the way and some others that had been behind us were now in front.

The next couple of hours continued similarly. Liam got progressively 'into' the map and the number of nav issues reduced. It was however very different to what we were used to - much more 'fine' navigation required. Whereas back home I'd describe it more as gross navigation until you were in the vicinity of the CP and then some detail work to find it, here it almost seemed to be the opposite. A lot of work to get to the area of the CP but it was always visible/ easy to find once close.

After 3.5h we got through our first section - to the first water area. It had taken us almost twice as long as we'd hoped and we'd had several minor issues along the way, but we were also just making slow progress. The type of navigating was very different from what Liam's used to and we seemed to spend much more time stopped checking directions and distances. We were also making poor route choices between CP's - our lack of familiarity with the terrain was showing. What looked to be mapped as bogs in some cases seemed to be quite dry underfoot and in others was chest deep water! At one CP we were pretty unhappy to find a team that we had passed early on our run through on the tracks from the last CP just leaving as we arrived.

We made another mistake at this point. Given it had taken twice as long as we expected to reach this point we should have sat down and reviewed our plan but we pushed on, and continued to throughout the race, just making choices on which checkpoints to drop on the run.

The next few hours were uneventful, although we were both feeling a bit flat - legs heavy and not really racing - until about 8pm when we were walking along some concrete blocks through peat bogs. I decided we needed to get running again and took off. About 20 steps later there was a concrete block missing and I stepped into the peat bog without thinking.. up to my knee and fell forward whacking my right knee/ shin against the next concrete block. Ouch! Copious swearing was to be heard. I didn't think it was going to stop me, but it was really hurting so we continued along slowly through the bog and out to the road. At this stage the dark was just falling so we stopped to sort out night gear and I took some pain relief, bleeding medication and taped across below my knee where a big bump was appearing. We continued on to the next CP though I was still in a fair bit of pain and Liam suggested we stop there and make a decision about whether to turn back or continue.

Though tempted to pull out and head home - a combination of pain, the fact that it hadn't really gone at all to plan, we weren't going to do that well overall and there was still another 16 hours to go - I knew that if I did pull out I would be pretty disappointed in the morning, and I didn't feel the injury justified pulling out of the race! It felt like it should be getting less sore, and as we progressed I found it did - whether the tape, bleeding meds or just the pain relief worked I'm not sure.

We had fun at one CP during the night, when it wasn't where we expected and we managed to get lost walking around trying to find it. We reviewed our position, and headed south where we knew we'd hit a track and could reevaluate where we needed to be. After walking in that direction for quite some time we still hadn't come across the track so sat down to review our strategy again. At this stage we saw a couple of lights coming towards us so figured we were almost at the track and headed towards them. Turned out they couldn't find the CP either, so we decided to continue to head towards where we thought the track was, as we turned Liam caught sight of the reflector on the CP - we'd been sitting a mere 20m or so from it!! At about 4am we lay down for a brief kip - 15 min or so - but other than that continued through the night.

The next point of interest was a certain CP 84 which we hit at about 7am - just after dawn being the coldest time during a 24 hour race. Up to this point we had been reasonably warm - especially in the forest, though interestingly we found that it was warmer standing still than moving?? We needed to cross a watercourse and bog to get to this CP - not really an issue we thought - most of the bogs were easily crossable with maybe wet feet, and most watercourses had either been insignificant or had beaver dams or logs across them which could be used to get across. This proved to be a different case. We came up on the left side of a fire break and ended up suddenly in waist deep water. Liam was behind me and kept saying its only 20m across.. We couldn't see much, but it kept going. At this point I 'lost' it somewhat as we were getting progressively wetter and colder, and Liam had to calm me down and get us turned around and heading back to the dry. We reviewed the map and there appeared to be a track through the waterway about 50 yards to the side of where we were so we headed in that direction. When we got to the crossing point there was another team just about across... in chest deep water! They assured us there were no other options further around, and at least at this point we could see where the water ended! So we clenched our teeth and went for it, getting thouroughly soaked in the process.

Across the bl**dy stream we headed off at a brisk walk to try and warm up a bit. This was the only point at which my hands got really cold (good going for me) and it took me a good 1/2 hour (I know cause the alarm went off to eat twice during the time) to warm them up despite doing finger exercises and lots of swearing. It was of course that wonderful post dawn 'coldest time of the day', and we both ended up adding layers of clothing - I ended up with 4 layers on the top and 3 on my bottom half! We managed to add these layers spectacularly inefficiently - I think we stopped 4 times in the space of an hour!

From there we chose what was probably not the most efficient CP to pick up, but was a lot of fun finding - crossing beaver dams and spotting an elk! - and given we had decided already that we weren't competitive weren't too worried about maximising points. Once we got out on the road with about 2 hours to go though that changed a bit, I started jogging again, warmed up and managed to strip a couple of layers and after a little trouble collecting what should have been an easy CP, Liam put me on tow for the final hour as we jogged into the finish.

Came across the line, got our readouts from the transponders and quickly headed to the 'showers'. Here Liam got lucky.. the boys had a sauna and large warm changing area whereas the girls had 2 freezing cold showers and a hallway to change in. Unfortunately I'd also given Liam the car keys so wasn't too happy waiting for him at the car!!

After breakfast, and a quick hour's kip in the tent we went to check the results.. Russians won, NZ 2nd.. we were 2nd NZ team in, 28th in our category and 97th overall. OK, but frustrating knowing we could/should have done better. NZ also took out the junior mixed (beat them fortunately) and super vet mixed titles.

As is typical of these events as soon as prizegiving was complete everyone disappeared, and likewise we packed up our tent and headed to the hotel we'd booked which fantastically had a washing machine and very warm rooms, so everything got washed and was dry the next morning!!

Woke the next morning with very different soreness to usual - quads were fine (no climbing!) but calves and feet were very painful. Not that it mattered too much as we sat in the car and headed to Riga for some more exploring.

So, not our best performance, but something we can learn a lot from. Next time we want to get there a bit earlier and suss out the terrain better and do some more orienteering events at home to familiarise ourselves with that type of mapping. Most importantly though will be to take the time to sit down and reassess when things aren't going to plan. Hopefully that'll be a lesson we can put into practice if we need to again!