Adventure Racing 5:00:00 [3] 75.0 km (4:00 / km)
Race the Rockies Calgary.
Monica and I cleaned up. 1st overall and beating ALL the boys with much pleasure. We had a great day. Monica is a machine of her feet, leaving me behind on the climbs despite having the flu.
We were the 2nd team on the lemans run up to the top of COP ski hill. We booted it back down, grabbed our bikes and took off to Bowmont Park. Monica said, "Do you think we've gone out too hard?", but she soon changed her mind when we were the 2nd of only 2 teams to make it through the Hwy 1 lights from COP thus giving us a solid 5 minute buffer. The bowmont orienteering run was flawless. Smooth, fast, a good route choice and we were in the clear lead out of that CP.
Back to COP and onto the Paskapoo slopes for more orienteering. We were allowed to take our bikes on that section because it is MTB terrain, but the controls were not on trails and neither Mon or I can mtb very well. We did the whole thing on foot and clocked the fastest time out of anybody. It sure helps to be able to orienteer in these races! I made a slight bad route choice which cost us about 10 minutes.
Then we trudged up to the top of the 50 m ski jump tower and free rappeled down which was wicked fun. Nice to be in the lead and not face the line-ups that ensured shortly after.
Then we loaded up the bikes with out food bank donation - 40 lbs of rice carried on my handle bars (Monica had 20 lbs in her backpack) and we very VERY carefully negotiated the fastest route (Bowness Rd and Memorial Drive) to the curling club to weigh in and drop the food. I nearly hit the pavement a couple of times when the bags got a little unbalanced and started rocking.
The final section was a bike navigation section through the NW of Calgary with UTMs. I quickly took a mental photo snap shot of all the locations and put the map away and we booted around that section fairly well. We found all the controls easily and didn't loose/gain any unnecessary elevation. At the end of that it was just a ride to the finish line back at COP. We had the wind at our backs and big smiles on our faces - especially for Monica who was doing her first AR. I think we were clear at least 30 minutes on the next team once the time credits and penalities had been worked out.