Training Log Archive: P-K

Leg 1 of WT 2018

We started out near Potter's Landing and started south. With a new baby this year and the 'incident' at Rockstar, I haven't actually used a compass since last year's WT so needless to say I was really hoping to bag the first one without incident.

As always seems to be the case, 90% of the field chose a bit of a different route to CP1 than we did as they all turned right on Cowie Rd and we kept on past the marsh before heading south. Probably a conservative route choice by us but we've always chosen routes based more on 'not getting lost' than on speed. We dropped onto Gibson River further east than we planned and had to come back west for the CP but were comfortably in our 15/16th place that we usually are and had the monkey off our backs.

Across the river we had planned to go directly south but the Windy River trail seemed runnable so we stuck to it and came around the west side to McRae Lake making good time along the water and into the CP still where we were in the field.

At that point we saw everybody jumping in the water and I have to confess I didn't really look too hard at the swim when we were route planning. Maybe it's because we had a team member who was really uncomfortable swimming, or maybe I just wasn't looking hard enough. Either way we had planned to go E around the lake and even after a brief discussion about the swim we stuck to the plan. Ran most of the ATV trail and the Windy River trail to CP3 and still in our 'mid-pack' position going into the TA.

That's where the wheels fell off.......

We knew this bike section was going to be tough...and we knew we had one guy who wasn't the most comfortable on technical biking, but we were out on the bike earlier than we expected to be (out of the TA at 12:45pm) and hoped to keep it slow and steady all the way and make the 10pm cutoff with ease.

We also knew this section of the hydrocut from a few races ago and had a pretty good idea what to expect. And I haded the maps off to RB for this section to keep myself fresh for the overnight paddle. We left the TA with high hopes!

But best laid plans.........

EH had a couple bad falls early on and really lost some confidence and our pace slowed to a crawl. Without the ability to do any towing because of the terrain and no real way to share the load (other than taking his pack, which we did) there wasn't much we could do to move faster. When we got to the river crossing CP he wanted to pull out of the race, but it was his first 24hr race and he was just pulling out because he knew he was slowing us down. So we pulled together and talked him into staying and I'm glad we did.

We really crawled going up the 2nd half of the bike and pulled into the TA around 11pm but I'm glad we stuck it out as a team and kept everybody moving.

I think EH had the fitness but he was uncomfortable riding the puddles and on an older 26er bike he didn't stand a chance. RB and MH were super strong and never struggled all the way up the hydrocut. Nav was great, we never got lost, we just moved slowly.

Last bike in the books