Adventure Race race 11:26:03 [3] 42.0 mi (16:20 / mi)
FIG AR with BF, W4J and AB
Drove down to KY on Friday for the pre-race meeting that evening. RD gave the most entertaining pre-race briefing I've ever heard and then we got our maps. Had all evening to look them over, which was a first for us! W4J had booked us an awesome cabin right near the race HQ, so after we got our maps we headed back to the cabin to plan. All CPs were optional, just had to hit the TAs in order. After a lot of pondering we had a route to clear the course, and headed off to bed.
Prologue: Race started with a prologue on foot. There were a number of flags with point values from 2-10 and you had to collect 10 points. We moved pretty quickly through this section, kept up a jog on the trails. I made one minor nav error, but overall we were off to a pretty good start. Started to get light out near the end.
Trek 1: Point to point trek to get to our bikes. Started off by hiking up to the top of the natural arch and then the remainder of the trek was along a ridge line. Overshot the third control and ended up out on the wrong spur, so had to backtrack a bit on that one. It was surprisingly difficult to see the terrain from atop the ridge. Other than that things went smoothly, and we were able to keep up a nice trot along the trails.
Bike 1: Got to our bikes and made a quick transition. Started off with a very long decent down a rocky path. When we finally made it to the bottom we ran into a suburban trying to tow a CRV out of a monster puddle...still not sure how either vehicle made it all the way back in there. Or why they were there in the first place? Snagged the first CP no problem and then the adventure really started. The 'trail' to the next CP involved biking down a stream, and through trails that alternated between so rocky/steep I'm not sure how you could travel on them with a wheeled vehicle, and puddles above our knees. I've never pushed my bike so much in my life. Finally made it to the control and then on our way back out took a wrong turn that led us off the map... Not sure I've ever been that lost, but eventually we made our way back onto the map and ran into another team that was able to tell us where we were. At this point we realized all hope was lost for a decent place finish, so we just decided to have fun :) Picked up 2 more CPs on our way to TA2.
Trek 2: Dropped our bikes at TA2 and trekked out to grab one of the foot points (out of a possible 4). There was a nice little path to follow the whole way from all the racers that had already been there. Decided we didn't have time for any of the other points and just headed back to our bikes.
Bike 2: Compared to what we had been 'biking', this was awesome. Gravel/paved roads that were slightly downhill for miles! Grabbed 2 CPs along the way, both of which were just off the road.
Paddle: The paddle was so cool! It was in an old underground quarry that had half filled with water. So it was basically paddling through a big cave. Pitch black once you were away from the opening. There were pillars in a grid like pattern that were labelled with a letter/number combo and we were given a hand drawn map of the quarry. Scale: 1 inch = fun. It was a very short paddle, only took us 20ish minutes to get all 4 CPs in the cave, but ranks as the coolest AR paddle I've ever done!
Trek 3: Last section was an optional 4 points on foot. We hit 2 before we ran out of time and called it good.
Bike to finish: Very short bike from the paddle put-in back to the finish.
Overall, this race was a lot of fun. We meshed together really well as a team and all came away ready to race together again, which I would for sure call a success! Not quite the finish we were hoping for, but it was the most difficult navigation I've had to do so far and the craziest biking. I'm bummed my nav wasn't great, but I definitely learned a lot and have a renewed purpose to work on my navigation skills!