Well, it’s been six months since our last 12h run (you can read about that HERE ) and the long promised Lapsa Rogaining is coming up. The night before I spent some time thinking over our potential route, the distance, and the competition.
I find it difficult to wake up this morning, the only thought in my head is “maybe we shouldn’t do this, it’s cold outside”, but there is no turning back. We stuff our bags with food and drink, as well as extra gloves and socks, thermal wear, and everything else. It seems as if you could survive weeks in the woods with what we have packed, but we both remember our last 12-hour tour.
We’ve arrived at the center of the competition, picking up Aivars from a different team on our way. We exchange competitive comments, but we’re not planning on winning, we come to enjoy the woods, cliffs, and hills. We have to gather all our motivation to step out of the car though. It’s really cold out.
Mašīnā izplānot distanci ilgu laiku (kā jau vienmēr) neprasa. It kā ir pāris varianti šur un tur, bet skaidrs, ka ir jādodas uz kartes lejasdaļu un tad naktī jādodas pa ceļu vākt punktus līdz otrai kartes malai un tad atpakaļ uz sacensību centru. Ar brāli vēl īsti nesaprotam kāds būs ātrums un vēlme skriet, bet nu - improvizēsim!
As always, planning the route doesn’t take long. There are a couple possible variations here and there, but we do know, that we have to head to the bottom of the map, and then at night we’ll be making our way to the other side of map, later returning to the center. We still haven’t decided what our speed will be, we’ll just have to see if we feel like running or not. I check if my planning matches with mom’s, and, of course, it does. So, we decide to pick up a few extra points in the beginning as not to disturb each other.
Our bags are heavy- at first, we don’t consider that a problem, but I do know that later, that’ll be a burden.
My teammate has seriously packed up, I call him a pickle and we head to the starting line. Shortly before entering the track we meet Ilze Lapiņa and chat a for a bit.
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START! We begin marching, but we warm up to brisk walking quickly. We reach our first checkpoint (CP21) in the company of some other orienteers, I recognize some friends of my mom and we discuss the happenings of the orienteering and rogaining worlds as well as our everyday lives. We decide to head to our next checkpoint (CP51) together. Reaching it was a success and we head to CP24, my brother has become quite precise at finding his way and I’ve gotten good at spotting the orange marker. We’ve become an amazing team.
We split from our companions, who are not heading to CP29. We’ve got a lot to talk about anyway, I hadn’t been home in a while, so we finally got to discuss our happenings. The first cereal bar gets whipped out. We head to CP22 now.
We move onto the hardest part of our distance – a path over the hills, collecting some more valuable checkpoints. We’ve warmed up good and our speed is good. We head to CP50 crossing a field and taking pictures. We almost miss CP57, when I take my brother the wrong way, after this mistake I let him be in charge of navigation, even though the route to the next few points isn’t too difficult. We’re listening to music, chatting to some of the passers-by and we successfully get to CP40.
We move forward, taking a path that goes right by Gauja, we try to keep the good mood going by singing. I’ll be honest, I’m starting to get a little tired, but we’re not slowing down, because we know exactly when and where we have to be.
After collecting CP61, we gain some company for a little while.
We head to CP65 a little ahead of schedule, but we do find it. Then comes CP48. I feel as if I’m going to fall asleep sometime soon. Krišjānis is finding the way, but he’s not too confident, when we reach a crossroads of little rivers, I grab the map and we continue carefully. Everything on the map is drawn approximately, we step into a field and I can’t tell if we’re even going the right way. The compass seems to reassure me, but what I around me doesn’t.
We both start worrying a little, but we keep moving. Our feet get wetter and wetter, when we find some broken in paths, we decide to follow them into the unknown.
Panic starts to set in. Where are we? Everything here looks the same, we climb up a hill, there is no point there, I suggest we just skip it and head toward the larger path. It’s been 5 hours and we’ve spent too much of that time looking for this one point. Krišjānis doesn’t want to give up, we keep going and climb another hill. Here I notice some more trails that have been broken in, but there is no control point in sight. Heading toward the road we meet some 6hour competitors from Valmiera, they tell us that CP48 is located here somewhere. We turn back wander blindly through the fields.
And there it was – in a small bush of firs, there it stands, control point 48. Finding it feels great, but we’ve already lost way too much time.
We attempt to regain confidence in our orienteering skills after this failure. We almost miss the next point as well, it’s almost funny now. We were so close yet so far. We fall behind schedule even more.
We take a break and I don’t even count the time anymore, we put on some reflective vests (so we don’t lose each other), we eat something. No need to say, that staying put for a while did make us realize that it’s a little cold out. We head to CP56, but we put on headlights, and some more clothes before leaving. We put on some dry socks (which ended up being a mistake).
I take lead and we go into the swamp; our feet immediately get wet again. When we overcome this swamp, we arrive at a trench, where I manage to sink up to my knees. There isn’t really anything to grab onto, Krišjānis starts panicking and tries to pull me out. I have no ground and I realize that I’m just sinking in deeper. In the we did somehow manage to get out alive, but this incident did remind us to be more careful.
Of course, we could evade problems at the point either. I notice some lights passing and deduce that there must be a road, I check the map and there is no sign of a road. We later realized that it was a doe, hopefully we won’t be meeting any other woodland creatures today.
My watch says it’s barely six in the evening, but it’s already quite dark outside. After collecting CP56 I lead us to the wider trail, which goes through a field. We’ve noticed that the wind is much stronger and colder outside the woods than inside, a light drizzle starts as well. The temperature is nearing zero degrees and we’ve been wandering 8 hours already.
Krišjānis is complaining about back and shoulder pain because his bag is too heavy. But I’m freezing. Suddenly we both get a little scared, no idea why because we were on track and safe, with time to spare and a precise plan of action. But I’m still afraid! The light can be as bright as it wants, it’s not lightening the mood. I think of going home, Krišjānis says that’s not an option. This time he’s the hero, leading us to CP34 and then CP37. We decide to call mom and it turns out that she’s not far away at all. Maybe we’ll meet up her! Yes, we do accidentally run up to her and her sister.
I wouldn’t say that we have a lot of time to spare, but meeting mom definitely has raised our spirits, we start moving faster and quickly plan out the rest of the route, so that we can finish all at the same time. The fear has definitely subsided and we’re now discussing our experience so far.
No need to say that it’s getting even colder. It’s fine if we’re moving fast, but when we mess up, we need to stop. Stopping only makes you realize just how cold it really is.
Climbing up the hill which should lead the CP55, we all head a little too much to the left. I gather my brain cells and notice the marking. YES, we can move on now. The mood has improved exponentially, but we are all starting to go crazy slowly.
My victory has led me to become the leader of our pack. Krišjānis has quieted down and this time our roles are switched. He can’t feel his fingers with three pairs of gloves on. I’m doing better, my body has already gotten used to these crazy activities.
We move toward CP41. At first, we’re not too sure about our location on the map, but we regain confidence when we meet other teams. It had been a while without seeing other people.
Then we struggled with CP42, but it was all good in the end, I cheer my brother up, we’re almost at the finish. My determination isn’t at its heights either, but we keep moving.
The last two kilometers were awfully slow, the cold wind was blowing in our faces. At first thinking that we still have an ENTIRE half hour to get to the finish line felt good, but then I realized just how little that is. Mom and her sister had gone far ahead of us. And others were passing us as well.
We keep moving, I can feel a blister forming at the bottom of my foot, but we have no time for that. We rush and, in the distance, we start to notice the lights and the white tent. My heart jumps and I force us to run the last few meters.
We arrive 2 minutes before control time ends, and we enter the tent.
It was nice having relatives who had already finished an hour earlier, they brought us a change of clothes, some soup and comforted us. Changing clothes felt impossible at first, even 35 minutes after finishing, because everything was so frozen and wet and disgusting – it had been raining for the past six hours.
