Adventure Racing 3:41:00 [3]
I was teamed up with Scooby for this years WILD BOAR and what a year it was. The theme was "retro outdoors", inspired by MEC's final catalogue, and I knew there would come a time that I regretted purging some of my clothing last year. I got rid of some old Rad pants and River pants from MEC so had to resort to some retro looking gear from camp. It included an authentic K-way brand jacket though. The weather was crap but that didn't dampen the spirits of the competitors as we all posed for a group shot in front of the Doughty's before the race watches were synchronized and it was "go" time. Scooby and I trotted along at the front to the first CP and then on to Bolton Camp, which had 5 optional CP's very close together, to try to get all of the CP's there. As part of the challenge this map was basically hand drawn in the 70's and I don't know this area very well. I thought of waiting for Coach LD and V02max to head in first since she runs there all the time but we headed through an unmapped subdivision and into the forest and quickly realized that this was going to be tougher than we thought.
After running around for a while we finally located a large ridge that I could see on the map. We used that to get the first control and then things were a bit more clear. We did get to one spot on the map though where Scooby said to me "there are some houses up here". Because the map was so old and these subdivisions were new I was ignoring them completely and just trying to read the contours and hand drawn features. So I exclaimed rather loudly to Scooby, "F%#% the houses Kevin, F*@#$ the houses". That became our favourite line of the race.
We decided to get the hell off of that map, leaving one CP out there (we should have gone to get it since it was so close) and ran to the TA to get on our bikes. KD was there (sick and still being a trooper by standing in the cold rain to cheer us on and watch our gear) and she told us that two teams had just left and that three teams didn't get any CPs in Bolton Camp.
Our strategy was to ride north to Albion, not get any CPs there, and head right back south to try to clear the rest of the course. Scooby lead us out of the TA and with a tailwind we hammered in the low to mid 40's up to Castlederg and across and up Duffy's to Albion. We saw Phatty and MrsBiker heading back south and could see CoachLD and VO2max just up ahead. As they went in to Albion we turned back south to the boat TA.
The CPs along the river were so close that I didn't want to have to drop any of them and I know the Humber Valley pretty well so I wanted to get all of those CPs as well. We got to the boat TA and there was no sign of Goose or of Phatty and MrsBiker. We double checked that we were in the right spot and then realized that because there was only one person moving gear around and so many route options that Goose likely wasn't there yet. A few minutes later he came screaming around the corner with the 6 boats on the trailer and proceeded to launch them onto the grass like they weighed 5 pounds each.
The river paddle was great, we nailed all of the CPs, didn't dump and managed not to get hypothermia, although I was quite cold when we got out. We realized we had lots of time for the rest of the controls so we proceeded to get them all before running to the finish with almost 20 minutes to spare.
It was a great day and I had a great partner. It was hard to figure out how we did since everyone chose very different routes but in the end we were able to take the crown! Great post race festivities at the Doughty's and I don't know anyone else who works as hard on his birthday as Goose does. If anyone is looking to volunteer next year with the hopes of maybe being invited in future years I am sure Goose would consider it.
Happy Birthday Goose and thanks for another great adventure in our back yard!