first rogaine by MacKillop College students
The day started at 6:15am when Mark and I got out of bed and had breakfast. We got dressed for a big day of riding. We put the trailer on the car, stacked the bikes in the back and tied them up. Then dad drove us out to Stromlo forest. At this stage Mark and I were very nervous because this was our first Rogaine event ever.
When we arrived at Stromlo we untied the bikes and checked we had everything. We went up to the main tent to grab the maps and other things (minus our drink bottles and mobile phone that mum wanted us to take). After we got the maps we went over to a tree stump and covered our maps with contact and started to make a plan of attack. Soon Jason Singleton came over to see if we were okay (he works at our school and he was the one who told me about the event). Mr Singleton and his brother helped us plan where we were going to go.
Soon it was time to start so I ran and grabbed the card and we jumped on our bikes and raced to checkpoint 32. We found it and the next ones easily until we got to checkpoint 90. At 90, I decided to let Mark go up to the top of the hill to get the checkpoint (because he needs the exercise!). I waited at the bottom for about 10 minutes then I started to worry because I called out Mark's name and he did not answer. I thought he had fallen down a hole or had been bitten by a snake so I started to go up the the hill but I could not find him so I waited at the bikes. About 5 minutes later Mark came around from the other side of the hill. When I asked what happened he said "I got disoriented and I came down the other side of the hill and I had to walk the whole way around".
The rest of the ride was fun and we found most of the checkpoints with ease. At 3:00pm, Mark and I decided to go back. At 3:12pm we got back to the start/finish and ate and ate and ate. Soon afterwards we found out that we had come second [in the juniors] with 840 points, only 130 points behind the first place people.
We this is a great achievement because we had never been Rogaining before.
…Daniel Riley and Mark Corrigan
[Congratulations guys, but you’re supposed to stick together! The rules of rogaining require teams to stay together (within earshot) at all times and for all team members to get within 10 metres of every control, mainly for the reasons that Daniel and Mark mentioned. – Ed.]