The Search for Big Mack 2023 Rogaine by TanZ

TRAINING LEAD-UP

Sunday, Aug 27:

Glute and pec PT v2 in 32:22, 18A "Lower Body Prep" in 27:43, "Lower Push BW" in 47 min.  My glute was sore today, including during workouts, maybe from the ruck a couple days ago.  The backs of my shoulders were sore, too.

Monday, Aug 28:

Center - Day 11 - Rinse & Day 12 - Unwind Yoga with Adriene.  Used the TENS unit on the glute today, too.  

Tuesday, Aug 29:

2 min of HRPU: 45

1 min of Pull-ups: 12

Dinner, and then glute and pec PT v2 in 28:40, then 18A "Deadlift / KB" in 50:30, then "Hollow" in 16 min.

Thursday,  Aug 31:

Center - Day 1 - Show Up & Day 10 - Energy Yoga with Adriene.  Been low-energy and hungrier this week.

Friday, Sep 1:

Glute and pec PT v2 in 25:49, and v1 in 28:20, then 18A "Upper PUsh / Chin-up" in 44:25.

SEARCH FOR BIG MACK 10-HOUR ROGAINE

This was my second time doing a Rogaine, with my first being one that I happened to find in town during a business trip to Ohio in February.

Unlike the traditional orienteering events that I normally do, which have a list of mandatory checkpoints to find in a specific sequence, rogaines involve more strategy because you can find as many or as few points as you want within the time limit, and different checkpoints can be worth different numbers of points, so there's a lot more strategy involved.  I think I enjoy the strategy aspect a lot, since the mind comes into play, and can help offset any physical advantages that others may have, or give you an upper hand in addition to any physical advantages you may have.

Mark Lattanzi, founder of TanZ Navigation, literally wrote the book on map and compass navigation ("Squiggly Lines").  He hosts one or two events each year, of which the "Winter Wildcat Rogaine" has been the premier one more recently.  That one is a weekend-long event with two 10-hour rogaines.  That seems like a lot to dive into after only being used to doing only 3-hour time capped ones one per month, so SB and I were excited to learn about this more manageable single-day 10-hour event called "The Search for Big Mack". 

We decided to do it as a team of two, since it is a longer event, so it's good from a safety and a sharing-the-nav-load perspective.  

We left town on Friday so that we could check in the day before and get our maps and start planning, which meant that I got to see my doggie friend.

We picked up our maps at the Lake Powhatan Boy Scout Camp dining hall, which was adorned with the world's largest CP flag.

After having Mexican food for dinner, we drew up plans for the O-course, and then possible loops and if-there-'s-time-at-the-end points.

In the morning, we turned in our rough plan, so that the organizer had a sense of where to look for us if we never came back.

You could do the O-course whenever, and we decided to take it on first thing.  With the O-course, you do have to hit the points in succession, or else you get a penalty that made it far less worth it.  Almost everyone did the O-course first, it seemed.

There was a very tricky point early on, that left a lot of teams searching for a while.  What we were seeing path-wise on the ground didn't quite line up with what we would've expected based on the map.  That ate up a good bit of time.  

We got back on track and were eventually rolling again, though.  We crossed a dam, which was fun, and then we climbed straight uphill.  We followed terrain contours well for the next couple. 

We got thrown off by one random road in real life that wasn't really anything, which was a good lesson in measuring as many intermediate distances as possible during route planning, since we would've realized that it was nothing because it had come way too soon to be anything on the map.  SB figured out where we really were, and we continued on.  We were able to stop by HQ to refit on water and use the restroom since it was somewhat on the way, which was convenient.

We followed trails for sure paths, identified the rootstock landmark that indicated when we should leave the path and follow a bearing, ran into another team that had gotten lost trying to follow a bearing for a long way instead of taking a sure path and then cutting out later.  We found our next point and made our way back to the next point and then home base.  

At home base, we turned in our punch card for the O-course and got our next passport.  They had snacks, which were a welcome sight.

Now that the O-Course was done, it was time to set off on the big course, where we had much more flexibility on where we wanted to go.

Our first point on the big map had us go along a river.  We spent way too long trying to avoid getting our feet wet... we, of all people.  It would've been faster to go all in from the start, because we got wet eventually, anyways, and just took way longer to get there.  I do like how camouflaged I am!

SB found a nice shortcut to get us up to the path, and we took another nice terrain feature down to the point.  

We got another point hidden in a watery area.

And then we went on a long walk on a trail called "Shelby's Dream" to get a point slightly off the trail, and then we hiked way up a mountain to get our next point.

We could've considered going a bit further and off the mountain to get another point, but there didn't seem to be super clear landmarks, and it involved going down and back up many contour lines, so we decided to skip it.  Our legs were already pretty tired from going up the mountain!

We did go for one by a "small waterfall"... small indeed, but very cool.  I used the direction of the waterway on the map (north-south) to figure out which fork of the waterway to follow to get to the point.

We went back down the mountain, finding some natural hiking sticks to help us, and we walked through some cool-looking trails to hit our attack point for the next CP... we resisted the urge to do sensual orienteering and just guess where we should turn into the forest randomly.

My phone in my sweat-dampened pockets kept going into lockout mode because it kept thinking that I was trying to incorrectly type my password.  It would lock me out for longer amounts of time each time.  I had to rely on SB to take pictures for the whole second half of the event.

We decided to go up the mountain for a 9-pointer.  The "trail" seemed to be more of a re-entrant that had blazes marked on it.  Pace counting and paying attention to terrain features got us to the surprising "marsh"atop the mountain, though.

I was excited to get to search for the one in the "waterfall to pool"... I dove downhill into some thick stuff.  It was really dark in there because of all of the tree coverage.  Once down there, I saw a dried up body of water, which was odd, because I was expecting a full-on waterfall.  I stopped and listened, though, and followed my ears to the sound of moving water and found the point.  I realized that I had to find my way back, and now, there was nothing to listen to, to know which way to go.  Fortunately, my general sense of direction was enough to get me back to the path, but it was a little sketch for a little while in there.

The next point was pretty straightforward, based on pace counts and terrain features, although knowing where to turn in blew one random guy's mind.  

We had finished the general loop that we had planned, but we still had time, so we decided to go for point 84, which was supposedly slippery.  It wasn't that bad, but we did turn in way later than we should've.  It was odd, and I still can't explain it.  I thought we had pace counted the spot properly.  Anyways, I estimated which direction our error was more likely in, found a reentrant with a boulder... not the one we needed, but something close, and we saw a guy and found the point.  

We went onwards, and tried to find the next point where two creeks intersected, but never saw that spot.  We kept going, found a place to cross, and then found a path to take us back to the creek intersection that we had originally tried to find.  That took longer than it should've and was pretty confusing, too.  

It was tempting to go one point further, but we knew that the penalty for being late was severe, so we decided to head back and bank what we had.  It was a good move, because a surprising number of teams came back late, which is a big deal.  You can't get too greedy or over-confident.  The number of teams that were late show how easy it is to fall into the trap.

After the event, we changed clothes (SB took the time to shower).  There were awards, and we were thrilled to get second for the female division, which included solos as well as teams.  

They had an impressive spread of food (with interestingly named chili) and beer.

We had such a good time that we signed up for the Winter Wildcat a few days later!  

We had a good understanding of our capabilities and planned well.  We executed well, and made reasonable on-the-fly decisions, like going for extra points when we knew we had time.  We worked well together, as usual, and had so much fun.  We pretty much never stopped for a break and were going the whole time, which was pretty incredible, too. 

In all, we covered nearly 18 miles!  What's crazy is that we covered only about half the course.