9 AM
Adventure Racing race 17:56:50 [0]
USARA Nationals w/Mindy/Jon
Our first race together. I raced with each of them individually in Sept. Jon's second race back from a long break from AR and true endurance racing. Mindy exactly one year removed from giving birth to twins. My 9th out of 10 USARA races.
We had a good race overall with no major mistakes. We raced hard/fast throughout with a few minor mechanical issues that were remedied mid-race. We had strong trek legs but lost some time in a couple TAs and couldn't quite hold the pace on the final paddle.
We all had a good time and felt good about our performance. We look forward to racing together more.
Orienteering race 24:00 [4] 2.5 mi (9:36 / mi)
shoes: Salomon Speedcross Vario
We were concerned about following the crowd and having to fight to punch so we opted to break from the group. Theoretically, this was a good decision and worked well for a while but then we had trouble spotting some of the CPs towards the end of the loop (after we passed everyone going the other direction) and had very little help from the map.
In retrospect, we probably would have been better off fighting the crowd but benefiting from having more people to spot the CPs. It only cost us 5 mins which always seems like a lot at the start (and maybe was) but once we got on the water and pulled away a bit from some teams it didn't seem so bad.
Paddling race 3:55:00 [4] 15.5 mi (4.0 mph)
A long paddle to start the race. We weren't sure how long this would be with another paddle later in the race. It was longer than we thought. Fortunately, there were several opportunities to get out of the boat during the paddle. This also meant some strategy/nav involved.
We basically started out following WEDALI going CCW around the lake. At Marina we managed to take out at a better location than WEDALI and make up most of the 5 mins we were down. I think all other boats followed our lead regarding the takeout. We closed the gap to WEDALI by the next trek portion and also passed AMK and Rootstock leading the charge from the other direction. We paddled back to the TA with WEDALI just behind us the rest of the way having a little trouble spotting our portage location because of the low water level.
We had a strong paddle pace and nailed all the nav and were able to take out in 2nd place behind only AMK.
Orienteering race 1 [4] 2.25 mi ( / mi) +250ft / mi
shoes: Salomon Speedcross Vario
Trekking during the paddle.