Bee Fast Energy Gel takes on the Australasian Rogaine Champs

My younger brother Tiaan and I decided to compete in Australia to have a go at the Australian Rogaine championships in the Snowy Mountains NSW. I took a quick flight over the ditch and packed 20 BeeFast honey gels ready for the mission ahead. We parked in Sydney and bought the remainder of our race food from the shops.  

We took 2 buses from Sydney to get to the race venues at "Murrumbidgee Wayfaring" Kosciuszko National Park. We pitched our tent slammed back some packet paster and combated the wasps. Sleep was good, I only bought my AR bivy bag as I thought it was going to be hot... but turns out it wasn't so at night and I got pretty cold. 

Woke up to a ripper sunrise and made ourselves breakfast as fuel was key now. So for those who don't know, Rogaining is not just a hair loss product. It is also a long-distance team sport that involves orienteering and adventure racing. The main goal of the sport is to navigate with a map and compass around a course and collect as many checkpoints (worth varying degrees of points) over a set time like 24 hours. Pre-map planning precise navigation and fitness are all key aspects of the sport.  



We received our maps at 9:00 am for a 3-hour pre-race planning session to commence. The boys dropped a no-doz and were locked in planning out different route selections and attack points into these points. 3 hours were up and we had our bags packed and everything mapped and ready to go. 

We pushed the pace in the first 6 hours but the nav and pace through the bush were tough, the gums undergrowth and fallen branches made it slow going, much slower than anticipated and by split 1 (4hr mark) we were 1.5 hrs behind time. We also cooked the biscuit in terms of water and had consumed nothing for a few hours so had to swing by the water drop to replenish to stores. 

(Slow asf section through bush w/ water stop detour)

Night came pretty quick and we chucked the headies on ready for 11 hours of darkness. The boys chipped away through the night collecting some easier nav points and using the road as a good attack position into some harder-to-nav checkpoints. We struck a bit of a fork in the road where we could change course. We originally planned to head up towards the ridgeline from 55 to collect 89, 35, 83, and 108 etc. Or change and head along to the bottom where we could pick up 56, 106, 24 and 94 etc. You can even see on the map route the zig-zag at point 55 where we change course. Why we did this, well first the bush was slow and we wanted to clear some of the back section the next day meaning if we went there we would potentially run out of time, and the bottom was perfect for running. 

(Route decision at point 55)

The night was pretty uneventful in terms of ball-ups. We got to Water Station 2 and slammed back some more water and Bee Fast honey gels. We decide here to attack 49 from the corner of the road and still in the dark and in a big gum tree forest. Way too casually we set a bearing and peeled off into the creek. Thinking we were east of the creek junction. You can see us peeling off left trying to find some sort of creek. We regathered, set a few bearings with the side of the hill and half-pie figured out we must have been west of the creek. Not fully knowing if we were going the right way Tiaan managed to walk straight into the checkpoint, the relief when he yelled out that he had found it. However, this time loss meant we cooked our chances at getting 77 and in hindsight, we should have got 77 and 97 skipping 49.    
 


We navigated for another couple of hours before hitting the day break at the water station. Having another few honey gels to keep the carbs coming in. Tiaan from this point started feeling nauseous and couldn't get any food down as well every stop we had he tried to spew up. Side note we later found out Tiaan was pooing blood and must have given himself an ulcer maybe from dehydration, maybe from chewing a water purification tablet.. we don't know. I was also pretty tired and we started making some lazy navigational errors, like not following bearings. Even though we felt slow and cooked we were still running and our splits were still fastest for the back section. Now if we had skipped some of the harder-to-reach (bush bashy) checkpoints earlier we might have gotten these last points. We ran out of time to get 90 and 61 and should have skipped something earlier on like the 49 pointer say to bank enough time to get these last points.  


We finished strong and got back in time. Rehydrated and fueled up. Packed our tent up and headed to prize giving. We tried to find some shade during prize giving and thought we might have maybe got the top ten out of 180 teams. Surprisingly we got called up first in the U30 group and then for the overall. The boys were bloody fizzed to get first place in the Australasian champs. We did a quick awkward photo and jumped on the bus back to civilization. 
 

What were the learnings?
-Bee Fast gels work: I had 18 and not much else in terms of food and I had energy the whole time. They were easy to eat and sustained my concentration as well as pace. 
-Don't chew water purification tabs to spit in your drink bottle.
-That even though Tiaan had internal bleeding he didn't complain and kept the pace high
-Aussie bush is no joke
-Water is essential to life and without it, you won't go far 
-Dont mix your lollies with biscuits, taste like crap
-Dont skimp on gaiters, hard gum branches into the shin suck
-ALWAYS TRUST YOUR COMPASS
-And just get out there and do the dam thing

Full results on https://rogaine-results.com/event/results/2025/australasian-champs/24hr