Adventure Racing race 9:00:00 [4]
shoes: Nort face
GMRAS, team Slow and Furious!, with Dragos and Jenny
7th out of 12 teams total, 3rd in the 3peeps category, and last team to get all points! :)
We were told the first discipline would be orienteering, so I had my compass ready to go :) This was a pretty low key AR, after about 10 min of instructions, we all had to run up this huge hill to get our maps. Honest I only jogged half of it (with the backpack and everything), but we got our maps, and after a quick glance I realized the controls were so easy I would have no advantage over the other racers. Which proved to be true after I looked at the results. At one control I relaxed so much, I didn't even take a bearing, so after walking in the relative direction for 5 min, nothing looked like the map, and had to "relocate". Luckily I picked the right direction; otherwise it would have been an ugly long up hill. That was the orienteering, which was a truly good hill workout, and good bushwhacking exercise. I hope next time they'll add a bit more challenging controls, to make my trip worth ... I mean, nothing more exciting than the chance to get lost in the woods :)
Then we hoped on the bikes. We had about 25 miles of road (paved and dirt). My bike seat post was not tight, so it slid all the way down and because I haven't really biked since last year, I just kept thinking "it seems a bit low, but maybe I'm not used to it" Half way I finally looked, and sure enough it was way low. Mostly uneventful. One control was in the woods I was pretty happy with our decision to stop at the base of the mountain and orienteer straight to it, versus using the suggested bike drop. It was a quite a bit shorter and easy to navigate.
And the last and most eventful was the canoeing part. That made up for all the previous not so challenging sections. So we get there around 1pm, and we knew this was a 10h race, so hmm... Hopped in the canoe, Jenny in the middle, headed to first control, the waters seemed a bit rough (=I was already a bit tired). The control was around an island, maybe a 1/4 mile north, but we saw some canoes parked at the south side, so we figured they must know something. It's always the "adventure racing" style = using as much information you can get, including stealing it from other teams or = cheating as much as you can w/out actually braking any rules set by the AR. So, we soon found out that the waters around the island were REALLY rough, so everyone just pulled on the south side, and walked it. So, we figure, good idea, we'll do the same. Dragos and Jenny volunteer for the swamp cross and we got our first canoe control in hand.
The 3 teams we met there have decided the waters were too dangerous and they bailed out for the next (last) 2 controls. I looked and it was wild: we were embarking in the +1 feet waves against the wind going all the way across, then all the way down and then back up. So, we look at each other, check out watches, the sun was shining "We got nothing better to do today, we might as well get our moneys worth!" So, I tightened up my life vest, tied my camelback to the canoe (yes, the possibility of tipping was there). And here we go: OH, MY! We set up the direction for next control from the shore, because once we turned around the island there was no stopping or looking on the map, or we would be right back in a second. So, we push with all our mighty efforts, and then me and jenny say: "Ok, now we'll switch on the right side". Yeah, right! Dragos, with limited steering experience came back very promptly "no, you're not, keep paddling on the left cause I can't steer this against the waves, wind, and you" So, we're like "what?". But seeing how we're quickly getting parallel to the waves and moving in complete wrong direction, we followed orders and kept on paddling on the left, yeah, arms were ready to fall off. But slowly and surely we could see the control and got in calmer water by the shore, so smiles came back to our faces. Not for long! Dragos messed up with the punch card there. Anyway, we decided to go to the third control as well, like we didn?t get quite enough punishment.
So, I look at the map, get my bearing and say: oh, it's easy, we'll just go along the shore till we hot the control. Easier on the map than on the real terrain. Not sure what kind of an antique map was that, cause where my bearing was now there was a forest, not a tree here and there in the water, thick woods! So, I said, oh, well, we'll just use the islands on the left to figure our kind of where we were, even if now I really starting to have my doubts that map was good at all, but did not make a big deal at the time. So, we paddle, and paddle, and paddle, and not much was making sense, and I'm looking at that map and I see some sort of earth bank that was supposed to be our catching feature, and the bend in that was the control. We could see no bend from where we were coming, so after little decision making, I say, take the shortest route to the earth bank and we'll walk to find the control. Said and done. And to our huge surprise, when we were about 30 feet from the shore we see the control just a bit to the left. We said, awesome, cheering up again. Stopped on the shore for a stretch break, bathroom break, and more clothes on.(the wind picked up even more).
So, now we had all our controls ... and big decision on how to come back... which waves were least frightening? So, finally said, ok, we'll hit the islands on the right and then keep on straight against the waves. Now, we didn?t realize how shallow the water was on the right, and there was a LOT of shimmy-shimmy, and at point I thought that we were completely stuck, but we somehow made it back in deep waters. (obviously, I'm writing now). So, by now, I think dragos kind of got the hang of the steering, so we could at least switch once in a while, but he kept putting us parallel to the waves, which scared me pretty good, as I kept looking to see if we tipped, where we would drift.... and it was a LONG way. Can't complain much cause I can barely steer at all.. Anyway, we somehow made it back, last team out of the water, I was just so happy we made it and we didn?t tip, that the bike ride back was just "flower behind the ear", like Romanian would say.
Got back, had some food prepared by the very nice AR staff (may I say some of the nicest!), but we continued our BBQ up at the tent with some nice pork chops and good beer to conclude the day. Yet, another fun AR.