MOGA 2018 is only a few weeks ago and I feel like I'm much less prepared for this year's competition. That said, I did go on a training run out in the Bajada, a desert region west of Santa Fe which contains a big geo-art that makes for decent training for MOGA. MOGA competitions are about running around from cache to cache to see how many you can get in a 2.5 hour period, and this geoart lends itself to this. Of course, the MOGA comps are usually cross-country, and this particular geo-art is along back-roads, which makes it not ideal for training. But it still allows me to get into a groove of running and searching, running and searching. As a side benefit, Geocaching.com is doing a promotion right now called Planetary Pursuit, which is trying to motivate cachers to find a bunch of different caches for a few week period in order to unlock digital souvenirs. Getting all the souvenirs was going to be tough for me with my current rate of geocaching, but since Mystery caches give you extra points, this geo-art was my best shot at completing the Planetary Pursuit challenge.
I had excellent calm cool weather for a run through the desert, and it was just as crowded as I like... I ran into only one other vehicle along my whole run! My chosen route was just a portion of the whole geo-art, but one that I thought would be about the right amount of time, ~2.5 hrs. Pretty quickly I got into a groove.... running the 550 ft between each geocache, and then stopping to make the find. For the most part, each geocache was a quick find, but a few gave me some trouble, and three I just couldn't find. The amount of work that the CO put into making all these containers, and listings is mind boggling. Every cache is a bison drilled and epoxied into a rock. And usually this made them easy to find. But occasionally GZ was strewn with a bunch of similar rocks, and these ones were tough. Also, as with a MOGA competition, I didn't want to linger at any one location for too long at any hide, giving myself only 5 minutes to look. The three that I didn't find also had some other DNFs so it's possible they may be missing or displaced from their GZ.. or maybe I just missed the hide.
The biggest benefit for me on this run was getting used to my new GPSr as far as MOGA race mode is concerned. My new GPSr is a great unit, (Garmin In Reach) but it is not meant to be a geocaching device. My old Garmin 60csx was great for geocaching and competitions and I worry a bit that my new device will be something of a hinderance. It doesn't treat waypoints as geocaches, with an easy toggle between found and not found. Instead, all waypoints are just that... and it isn't easy to go to one, and then immediately select the next closest to go after. I was having to figure out a method for selecting my next target, all while jogging down the road to not waste time. I eventually figured out a decent method, but because of certain aspects of the devices interface, I ended up missing two geocaches along my route because I thought they were something else. This kind of mistake could mean losing out in a MOGA competition... so it's something I'll have to be extra careful about. I'm glad I had some time to figure out these issues before the comp though.
