Walking a Rogaine

Our annual rogaine was almost two weeks ago, but I haven't had time to write about it until now.
This was always going to be something special. Noam Ravid, one of our top orienteers/planners/mappers/organisers, had decided to take charge of this event, so I knew it was going to be good – a good map, a good course, and good logistics. Roni and myself marked the date a year ago, and as Noam described his preparations on the website my anticipation only grew. The map was 116 km², much larger than previous areas, and there were going to be 16, 12, 8 and 5 hour options. We chose 12 hours – because we didn't think we were fit enough for more.
As the date approached and we prepared our equipment, but not our legs (no time…), my family crashed us with an occasion on the exact date of the rogaine, and in order to prevent a feud we asked the organisers to allow us to start with the 16-hour race – so we started at 22:00 instead of 01:30, and did those hours in the night instead of daytime.
Our strategy, given the lack of fitness, was simple: Walk, don't run. Usually we run rogaines, and walk uphills. This time we walked, and ran only on paved roads (not uphill) in the night, and only downhill in the day. Our route, with annotations and split times, is here.
Each control was worth its number in points, and in all we collected 1410 points and finished 20 minutes early, with 3rd place overall in the 12-hour race. We ran only 35 minutes out of 12 hours, but because we were walking we almost didn't stop at all, and managed to keep a steady pace throughout.
The original plan was based on an estimated straight line pace of 3 km/hr, or 36 km overall. At the water control (north of 86) we were 45 minutes ahead of the pace, so we decided to add a control (90), and we added more towards the end, after control 75. In the end we covered a straight line route of 41.5 km, and 56.3 km in the terrain.
Our physical situation at the end was also quite good, and theoretically we could have continued to 16 hours (and been fighting for 2nd place there). As I'm not getting younger, and Roni isn't training, I think we'll be using the walking strategy again in future rogaines.
Thanks to Noam for a great map and challenging course, and for coming through with this project. I'm thinking of taking on next year's rogaine myself, as I haven't organised any since the first one in 2005.