Training Log Archive: MIclimber

Event: Green Corn Moon Rogaine
 

Green Corn Moon Rogaine 6Hr - 6pm to Midnight. NSF Adventures

https://www.livelox.com/Viewer/Green-Corn-Moon-Rog...

Made the trip down to Great Seal State Park with Amy B, BJ & Julie Foster and camped at the horse campground, which was sufficient, although no showers.

Checked in right at 4pm, received map, and began planning. So nice to have 2 hours to plan and get everything in order from food to clothes. Originally planned to wear long pants and carry a long sleeve, instead opted for shorts and long socks and not carry the long sleeve. I'm very thankful I made that decision, I would have been very hot otherwise. Also we found out later the park is about 85% nice white woods!

We measured about 16.5km to clear and with 6 hours, a ~3km per hour pace seemed very doable to clear not knowing the park and impending hill climbs. We planned to stay high where possible and take the trails which were very good throughout the park. Every intersection was marked with a letter and white post, so not only was it helpful and hard to get very lost, it was a big morale boost every time you got to the next letter.

We started by following the majority of the crowd south, little did we know at the time we got the first CP 62 ahead of Mister Wonderful!

62 - 53 (massive hill climb) 72 - 42 - (another massive hill climb) 52. No real issues out of the gate and hit our first time check of 7pm at 52's water station and the middle location of the course. By 52 the crowd had thinned out to just a couple teams and we could see folks, but not really following.

41- 51. Originally we had planned to climb back up to the trail and hit 51 from the top, but on the fly decided to take the lower trail all the way around and then climb back up to 51. Seemed like it worked in our favor as we followed the Topo Sports team who made the same decision.

40 - Again we had planned to take the trail around the long way, but instead with Topo Sports just blasted up the massive hill. Luckily it only took a short time. Although it was not at the top of the hill, so we had to climb to the next trail and then follow it around to the top of another hill, before descending to 60. Topo Sports did this faster than us, as they lost us. Hit our 2nd time check well ahead of 8pm at 730pm!

60 - We arrived to the nearby trail intersection to several teams searching what I could tell was the wrong area a bit north of the correct reentrant. We quietly made our way down the reentrant and snagged it without anyone picking up that we were onto it. Back to the trail and around to 50, another one not too far from a trail intersection. But guess who showed back up as we were searching. Topo Sports! I got a kick out of that as that meant they were fast to 60 than us, but we had better nav to it. We conversed for a second to each other about the big looming decision to hit 80 or not. It added a mile roundtrip just for one CP. Topo Sports decided against it and we did not see them again. Being we were ahead of time at about 8pm we decided to go for it! We passed BJ & Julie going the opposite way, a nice site that they were going for some CPs we didn't think they would go for as they had originally planned to not go south of the road. So we knew they were doing well also.

80 - We passed Mister Wonderful on his way back from 80 about 1/3 of the way down the trail. A little mental boost, knowing that we were doing well if we were maybe only 10 minutes behind him. We arrived to the reentrant system, but were unsure exactly where on the map we were. I was hesitant that we were not in the right spot for attacking from as the trail should have been bending southeast, but it was south. After a minute or so, of not being able to figure it out, some other teams arrived to the area, and we decided to head down and try it out. Our first big mistake! We ended up wandering about 100 meters too far south and had to climb back up and were about to bail on it. It was getting dark at this point, so made the decision to stop and gear up with lights and headlamps. I can't believe it still, but I took my handheld light shined it just to test it out and as I swung it around, I caught the reflector about 75 meters down the spur. We had lost about 20 minutes searching all around it and now we stopped about to bail on it nearly on it. What a moment! The team we had been searching with down lower had split off from us about 5 minutes earlier, and by the time we returned to the trail, I could see there headlamps about 150 meters too far north still. Wow we made a big decision in that we didn't keep following them!

70 - Trail back around near the MTB parking lot, it was a long way and not sure the trail was entirely accurate here. But there were several teams searching the hill side, which it was another pretty big climb up at least a 100 feet if not more. But luckily I shined the reflector from pretty far away and now we were about 10 minutes behind our 3rd time check at 910pm.

35 - 30 - A couple of easy ones and then the long trail back north to 61.

61 - We were a little thrown off here by an extra switch back in the trail, there were several other teams searching the hill side. We were all thinking why can't we see this one, it's only like 2 lines off the trail! After a few minutes fellow SMOC member Scott Dye, spotted it and gave it away to me by running towards it. I thanked him for the help that ended our search!

71 - Decided to stay high and take the safer route on the trail to the hairpin switchback than go low thru the reentrant. It worked out, but it was slow going it seemed like to work our way east. As we zeroed in on it, another team met up with us, which seemed to happen to us quite a bit, in that it gave some validation that we were on the right track many times with our nav. In this instance, the other team spotted it first, although I would have gotten in another minute or two without them. Then another massive hill climb back to the road. This climb was exhausting and brutal for some reason. But we made it back to the water station after a brief jog down the road and were back on track at our 4th time check at 10pm.

43 - 32. We made the long trail travel back without collecting any CPs, nearly 1.5 miles. Hit both of these dead center.

63 - Crossed thru some thicker veg to get to the horse trail and followed it around. Ahead of our 5th time check here at 11pm. But we made a major mistake of stopping about 100 meters too far south to begin our search. We met back up with BJ& Julie again here. We spent about 20 minutes in and out of thick thorny impenetrable veg. I had called it, that we need to bail and move on. I could not understand why we couldn't find the large water source. The curve of the trail was very deceiving here and I should have measured better. I was also looking for a drop in elevation, only to discover there was even more of a drop. As we came to an exercise station at the low point, I shined my handheld thru an opening and saw what seemed to be a massive clearing. It drew my attention for some reason, I stepped 10 feet of the trail and realized this was the water source, all dried up and firm marsh at the moment. I yelled to Amy, we were back on the hunt! We then finally got it, way too much time lost here!

54 - Another big mistake. I think I was rattled from making such a dumb mistake at 63, that I didn't pay attention to the direction of the trail after the intersection. We started heading west thinking we were still going north. I knew we need to cross the creek, and when I finally really we were going west, instead of going back, I made the wrong decision to just go north. Well we cross the creek, climbed the 2 contours that were on top of each other, not fun, and ended up in private property. I freaked a bit and knew we needed to get the heck out of there as we had to stick out in these people's backyards with lights. Then making it worse instead of just fighting east thru the thick veg, we crossed the creek back south and ended back up at the intersection. Oh no, we have gone in a circle! Man I was fuming. I can't believe I had done this. So we crossed the creek a 3rd time! Battled up the embankment again, which was even worse this time. But finally we found the horse trail on the other side and got this one near the road. Another 15 minutes lost.

Now we were starting to panic a bit, 5 CPs left and only 25 minutes to go. We made the decision to press on to 44, knowing we would not clear now. Disappointing, but now was about getting the last that we could and make it back on time.

81 - Right out the back of our campsite, so no problem, other than it was down a big reentrant again, which Amy trudged down and back up. We got this one with 12 minutes to go. I knew we were ok, as the campsite was exactly half a mile from the start, even by taking the roads. We decided to try to get 33 on the way to the finish, since it was basically on the way along the interior trails in the disc golf course. Luckily it was literally on the trail, the easy one of the night!

With about 3 minutes to go, I was getting nervous, but I knew we only had a few hundred meters to go. But we were going up and down, walking more than I wanted, cutting around disc golf baskets. Finally thru the woods, I saw some tail lights in the parking lot about 100 meters off. I called out to Amy we had 2 minutes to go, we can do this. We came out of the woods and hit the finish table with 30 seconds to spare!

A great race, we didn't clear, missing 64 and 34 due to our bad final hour. But it was good to know we could have cleared. We ended up with 23/25 CPs and 1180 points out of 1270, which was good enough for 6th overall. We covered about 27km / ~16 miles total, with 3300ft of gain! Very happy with that result!

Epic Edition 8HR AR

Drove up Saturday night to stay at Caberfae Peaks Resort, stepped out of the car to greet Mark dragging his body back to his room after the 20HR race, he looked darn near dead with a slight smile. Caberfae itself was nice, but certainly not the luxury resort I was guess I should not have been expecting. Fine for a night before a race, but not somewhere I would stay otherwise. I was mostly disappointed with the apparent after party of the wedding that was going on that evening, which the reception hall was directly across the parking lot from our room. After I had fallen asleep at 11pm, I was woken up to blaring music and drunken crowd sing alongs 30 minutes later in the parking lot. This went on for about 3 songs, in which then other people from the hotel came out on their balconies, and were yelling at the drunks to turn it down. Finally they turned the music down to a reasonable level but then about 15 minutes after that, a giant drunken brawl broke out in the parking lot. It was nearly a scene straight out of Road House. The wedding reception staff, were taking out the trash, but did absolutely nothing while this was going on, front desk staff did absolutely nothing, I never saw any type of security come out. Apparently, this was normal behavior for a Saturday night here. So I watched the brawl and screaming matches until it finally fizzled out and got to sleep somewhere around 1am.

Despite being robbed of 2 hours of sleep, I woke early at 7am before my alarm and didn't feel too un-refreshed. My partner Adam, slept through the party and brawl, I was completely shocked and jealous. From our balcony, we were greeted with the makings of a perfect weather day, all sun and low 80's. We got ready and headed over to check in at the hall across the parking lot. We were one of the first teams to check in around 745am. We had our breakfast and waited for the 830am meeting to start. The pre-race meeting ended up running way over to about 915am and left us about 10-15 minutes to actually plan as the start was set for 930am. It was extremely stressful, with maps being on multiple pages at different scales, with roads that had different names and on a larger overview map also coordinating numbers. We had just enough time to come up with a CP order and it was announced the start would be pushed back to 945am. We were still scrambling to go to the bathroom and finish things up at the car, when it was then announced, I think when it was realized that everyone else was having the same stressful struggles, to bump the start back a full 30 minutes to 10am. For a 6-8hr race like this, at least an hour of planning beforehand would be nice, to be able to plan your race fully with distances and attackpoints, food, clothing, bathroom, etc. We managed to be ready to go with a couple minutes to spare. I think if we had gotten the maps when we checked in, it would not have been as much as issue. I actually didn't even get time to find my satellites on my garmin by the time the start horn blew.

Now the race. 28 CPs total. 2 Trek sections, 1 paddle section.

We decided I think wisely to do the east trekking section with the ski hill first rather than leave to last. I think we were both extremely happy that we did that as it was slow going, but we were able to recover fairly quickly while still fresh. We also really appreciated being able to ride our bikes within the trekking section around to the closest attack points, that made getting them so much faster. We had two bobbles on this first section, we over shot the turnoff for the ski hill as I was looking for a paved road, and it ended up being a two track. So we had to double back up a long gradual hill. Then after the CP on the ski hill, somehow I dropped our passport at the base. I didn't notice until we were about to get off our bikes at 43, and had to again ride back to 45 and then begin searching the ski hill area. Luckily we found it in a few minutes at the base and not at the top!

Our order for trek section 1 - Start - 49-50, 46, 47-48, 45-44, 43

Biked to paddle, picking up 34, 35 on the way. Some sandy, gravel, and large up hills in the highest gear, but did pretty well and was able to keep a good speed.

Paddle was easy going out with the current, a bit harder on the way back. We had 5 CPs, 38 -39 - 40 - 41 - 42 here that we did in CCW order. There was one CP we tried to short cut thru the sand bar/cat tails instead of having to go around the entire island. Unfortunately that didn't work and cost us a few minutes to double back.

Biked to trek section 2 picking up 36, 37 on the way.

Our order for trek section 2 - 3, 2, 1, 4, 5, 6, 9, 8, 7. Only had a minor bobble on the way from 1 to 4, in that we ended up too far east back out on the road. But it probably only cost a couple minutes, by traveling faster on the road versus the longer distance. Other that than, no major issues on navigating on foot for either section, hit nearly all of them dead on. It was a good feeling being USGS style maps too.

Biked back to the finish, with a couple of giant hills again in highest gear just barely moving pedaling as fast as possible. We knew after we had finished the paddle we would clear the course, but we were so surprised to find out we were 2nd overall, only 5 minutes behind 1st overall. We weren't really going all that fast it felt like anyways. We walked most of the trekking sections, except maybe jogging a mile or so on the roads. The bike section we only got passed by a couple of teams, so we had a decent steady pace and paddle we breezed though. We had 3-4 issues of double backing of 5 minutes or more, so it was nice to know that minus any one of those errors and we would have been first overall. And had we had not had any of our self inflicted errors, we would have been sub 6 hours, the original target finish for the race.

We had our race dinner and got our awards. Again things took way longer than necessary in our opinions. Being that we were already behind from the later start, we all just wanted to eat and get on the road home. It would have nice to have the awards ceremony while people were eating instead of waiting for everyone to finish eating and then the awards. Appreciate the amount of awards, but it just took way too long and was a bit painful at times.

Overall, the race was a great experience and I look forward to the next one. The race itself was fun as heck and we couldn't have really asked for better weather and scenery. Some organizational issues in our opinions could have been handled a bit better so they didn't detract from the experience just a tad. I think as I do more and more races of all different types from AR's to Tri's, and also now that I put on O events myself, I'm becoming more sensitive to the user experience and how races are put on.