6-Hour winners. Niko Stoner and Albin Sundström
By Albin Sundström (visiting Swedish orienteering coach)
Going into the Rogaine, my friend Niko and I were planning on entering the 24-hour Rogaine, but I got cold feet the same night as entries closed. Even though I think it definitely would have been possible, the risk of injury was too great to push through with 24 hours. Looking back, it was a very wise decision.
The Rogaine in itself was great! I personally loved the planning of the route. I had never done a workout that long before, but had done some cross-country skiing races and workouts in the 5-hour region, so I knew my body would need A LOT of energy during the race.
Right before the start, I collected some food with the other boys before walking off to change into racing gear. I got back and put on the backpack, and off we went. For the first 50 minutes, it was heaven. Long control legs, nice terrain, and weather, and energy on top. Then we decided to stop and refuel, but I realised that all my energy wasn’t in my backpack… (later turns out it got put in Jett’s car with the rest of the food we had before the race). Through the good hearts of friends and strangers, I received some sweets to keep us going.
Once the rain hit after about 3 hours, it got hard for me. I was cold and tired. But Niko kept me going, and through communication, we kept on navigating correctly through the mountains in the west end of the map.
Then, all of a sudden, only an hour remained. The rain had stopped, and we were closing in on the hash house. The last control turned into a “sprint” to make it back in time.
When planning, we measured that the route would be about a marathon distance. So when I took out my watch and saw that 700 metres were needed to get to reach 42.2 km, we just had to do those as a cooldown. Probably the hardest cooldown of my life…
Afterwards, I was sooo tired. It took me probably 3 hours to eat dinner.
Someone told me afterwards that there are two types of fun. Type one: fun in the moment. Type two: fun afterwards. Rogaining is definitely type two! If I get the chance to do it again, I would. But that was not what I told myself after 4.5 hours into the race…
Lovely event filled with lovely people!
Thanks a lot!