Training Log Archive: Leanimal

Brace yourselves.......its a long one!

Michigan MIX 2009 Race Report
Team Salomon Bobkittens

{Leanne Mueller, Liza Pye, Carolyn Connell, Nicky Cameron}
Support: Linda Connell

Well we had decided a while ago that the four of us wanted to do a longer race together, something that would throw more challenges and experiences our way.....we knew it would be a good time so we just had to find the right race.

Having done the MIX two years ago and the Rage last year we knew that Infiterra Sports ran a quality event with as many fun disciplines you can have in a race. The trouble was that Liza had just decided to move to Canmore and Carolyn would still be teaching at that time of year. Carolyn decided that she for sure couldn?t do it if she didn?t ask her principle and so she did. With her on board it just meant that Liza had to tell her new employers that she would be away for a week one month after starting her new job. It turns out that that wasn?t going to be a problem either so we signed up for the 3 ½ day MIX out of Traverse City, Michigan. With Carolyn?s Mom Linda on board for support we had our full team ready to go.

Liza and I have both done a number of races including ones that last several days. Carolyn and Nicky have also raced for years but the 48 hour Quest that we finished in about 36 hours was their longest race to date. We found out on the final paddle to the finish that Nicky had actually lost a night?s sleep worrying about the race. I knew the girls would be fine but I also know the anxiety that comes with stepping into uncharted territory....

Liza flew in from Canmore on Sunday morning and after picking me up in Bolton, Linda, Nicky and I headed to the airport to collect Liza and started our road trip to Grand Bend (the Connell?s Cottage) where we re-organized our gear and tried to sort Carolyn?s stuff the best that we could without her there. We were mighty impressed with her pre-organization though as she even had her socks lined up in a Ziploc in order from lightest weight to heaviest weight (we had to call her to tell her that we were going to switch the order so that she wouldn?t be able to figure out what was going on in TA?s!)

The next morning we completed the drive to Traverse City and ran into some interesting places and people....like the bumper sticker that said ?I?ll keep my guns, freedom, and money and you can keep your CHANGE? and then there was the ?smoke-free? diner that we ate at that absolutely reeked of smoke! We were very relieved when we made it to Traverse City to see a beautiful little town on the water...time to check in.

We saw some familiar faces here from other races and of course teams Running Free and team Milton Basement Racers. Check in went smoothly and we got our maps with the UTMs (except for the two Score-O courses) but no race instructions, we didn?t get those until the next day at 1pm. We plotted our points that night and went to bed to get plenty of sleep. The next morning we even had time to head downtown and do some shopping and have a nice breakfast before going to the race briefing. Here we went over the course and asked any questions that needed answering but honestly these guys are so dialled that there weren?t many questions that needed answering.

So off we went to the room to start prepping the maps. I knew that I wanted as much preparation time as possible and that having all of the distances and all relevant information on the map would help me later in the race when I was tired. So Liza and I started to work on the maps while Nicky put together our sails for the boats (umbrellas for the back of the boat) and Linda went to get Carolyn at the airport at 5:30pm. The maps took hours to do (I think from 2pm until about midnight when all was said and done) but I had to feel good about them and I knew that meant being insanely organized. By the time we got to bed at 1:30am I felt good about the maps and so that was a start.

The next morning we were up early and headed to the start line which was about ½ hour away. We were the first ones to arrive and sorted out our stuff and decided what to wear (it was windy). We grabbed a couple of boats and quickly attached our sails (Linda was duct taping like a madwoman)......as the countdown started we were still trying to get on the water but hey what was 10 seconds going to mean over 3 ½ days right?

CANOE (lakes with rivers joining them ? 52km) 8 hours

The paddle was tough for us. There was a nasty crosswind for a couple of the big lakes and the boats were tough to manage. It felt like we were being dropped by the pack pretty quickly and I was trying not to let myself get frustrated so early in the race. By the time we hit one of the lakes heading north we opened up the umbrellas and were pleased with the push we were getting. The only problem was that I felt like the boat was out of control at times and a couple of times it got away from us and we were pitched sideways. After 8 hours of paddling though we made it to the TA and I was happy to be getting on our bikes.

BIKING (43km road/trail followed up with 16km of single track)

We were cold at this point so we tried to make it through the TA quickly so we could get warmed up on the bikes. We left just ahead of MBR and as I stopped to check something on my map they passed us on the bikes so we jumped in behind them and our teams made it to the next CP together. We had a short ride from here to Boyne Mountain where we would be doing some single track riding. The great thing about these guys is that they really want the racecourse to be fun so when we got to the single track we only had to bring our first aid kit, our spot device and cell phone and we could drop the rest. The trail was great fun with very few technical obstacles, just fast and fun. They also got some great video footage here as we came down a hill and they pulled the camera along a zip line. We picked up three controls here and returned to Boyne Mountain resort to TA for the first trek. We managed to pass one team in here but I think they had a broken chain.



TREKKING (53km)

On this trek we had to carry our PFDs so we ditched our smaller packs for the Raid 30?s. It was still a tight squeeze with our big PFDs but we managed to get everything in and headed out on foot knowing that the first few CP?s would require a lot of road trekking. Once on the road we picked it up to a slow jog and passed one team just out of the TA. We maintained a good pace and picked up the first control on the side of a road and continued toward the Chandler Hills where we would be getting most of the other CPs. Once at CP7 Liza and I went over our attack plan and knew that this is where the important navigating began. It was getting dark and we wanted to get the first remote CP before darkness came. Nicky and Carolyn were in charge of timing and distance and so we started the watch and headed into the bush. We bobbled a little bit on this one but were able to locate an open area that showed on the map and it ended up being the perfect AP for the CP. First one down! Over the course of the trek we moved well, communicated a lot, and were very attentive to our surroundings. Liza took the bearing up front while I stayed back and watched the topography and double checked the bearing. Carolyn and Nicky called out our distances and this all worked so well for us. We had marked some trails on the map that were in the Gazetteer but I could see in a couple of cases where the trail was marked one re-entrant over from where it actually was....or we were on a trail that wasn?t shown on the map. We managed to catch these though and with every CP we were feeling better about how we were approaching the nav. As we were approaching CP8 which was the first manned CP we had seen in a while we all took a guess at our placing....some guessed 5th or 6th but I thought it was more like 10th. When the CP staff gave us a coke (which they did at almost every CP by the way) and told us we were in 3rd and that 2nd place had just left we were ecstatic. I couldn?t believe it.....so we guzzled our cokes and headed back into the dark, rainy night to try to catch Checkpoint Zero (wait a minute hadn?t I just been in this situation 4 weeks ago). At the next hilltop CP we could see lights coming up the bank as we were leaving and I didn?t think it could be anyone but them so we took off from this CP and once we hit the trails we were back running and putting more distance between us and them.

Sure enough at CP9 we were told we were in second with just a few CPs left on the trek. Picking up our jog again we nailed the next couple of CPs and were told near the end of the trek that we were now only 40 minutes behind Nuun. They must have made a bit of a mistake since they were almost 1 hour 40 minutes ahead at the last CP. On we went to the rafting put-in.

RAFTING (Distance?)

The rafting was fun although the weather was the pits. We made our way down the river in good spirits and Nicky even popped into the bottom of the raft for a quick nap. We had a rafting section in the race last year and we really liked it since it gave us time to chat and be a bit silly. The rafts really only go a certain speed and I think if you put in a huge effort you might not be rewarded the way you would like so we just enjoyed it. We napped at the end of this leg for ½ hour and we knew that Nuun was still in the TA when we went down. By the time we got up though they had left but we weren?t far behind.

BIKING (75km) Road and 2-track

This ride started off with a little frustration because of the conditions of the roads we chose. When planning your route and trying to use the Gazetteer to place road names on the map you don?t always know what roads are the most major. Not only that the Gazetteer is not always correct with its road names, in fact it was dead wrong on three occasions for us in this race (one of which cost us some time later in the race) so when we got on the roads and they were very sandy and muddy from the rain I began to question our route. We were going about 16 km an hour on shitty, hilly terrain and we didn?t see Nuun?s tracks ahead of us so I could only imagine they were going 30kph on paved roads. Anyway we made it to all of the CP?s on route and only looked for one for a while when I told the team it was on the west side of a two-track and promptly pointed east. So after looking for a number of minutes I did my ?Never Eat Shredded Wheat? and realized we were on the wrong side.....oops. Nicky being the literary genius that she is also had an issue with the wording of the description and thought that a comma was possibly missing and that that was the problem.......back on our bikes to the TA.
Once we got here we found out Nuun had not left that long ago so maybe we hadn?t lost that much time.

TREKKING (+ O-Course 32kms)

Another bit of a road run to start this one off so we forced ourselves into 3 or 4 minutes on and 1 minute off until we got to the bush. Once here we had to find one CP enroute to the start of the O-Section. We reached the highway and were on our way to the start of the O-section when we saw what we thought was a mirage....or could it be?....10 bags of chips just lying in the middle of the road.....and not squished!!!! Yipeee ? the chips from GOD. I guess they had fallen off a truck so we scooped them up and left some with the CP staff and took some with us.

Here we got our Score-O map and had to plan our route. We sat in the shade, drank our coke, and put our plan together. We planned to get the ones we thought would be more difficult in the day and I think we put together a pretty good strategy....and so we were off. We nailed the first 4 or 5 CPs in good time with Liza leading the run through the bush and just as we were headed for CP11 darkness fell. I wasn?t too worried though since we had a great AP and these guys put so much reflective tape up that if you are close you are going to see it. CP11 was on a spur but we hit some elevation before it and without going on and on we looked around for a while. We had to bail out the other side and re-attack from a river/bridge junction and found it but not without losing over an hour of time.......

The only other CP we had trouble with was CP17 which was in a HUGE re-entrant on the side of a HUGE hill. I didn?t think there was any way we could screw this one up but as it turns out there was. We found at least two other massive re-entrants that I just did not see on the map and could not figure out how they could be there without being obvious on the map so after spending over another hour here we decided to drop it. The reason for this is that there was another O-section later in the race and because I did not think (and neither did the race directors) that we would be able to get them all I thought we should leave more points for closer to the end of the race in case we were running out of time.....it was a really hard thing to judge from this point in the race especially when we didn?t even have the other map yet. So we all agreed and started to leave the area. Then we came across another trail that looked like it was heading down another re-entrant. We decided we would run 5 minutes down and if it wasn?t there we would leave. After 2 minutes we found it and boy was I relieved. We lost even more time getting out of here and to the next CP and so we figured as we were heading to the TA that we had made about 3 hours worth of mistakes ? and we hadn?t even seen another team out there the whole time....weird.

It turns out that Nuun had come in 4 hours before us but that no-one else was in. I knew that Milton Basement Racers would not be far behind but our team needed rest so we decided to change and sleep. Not that we did anything but shiver but it was bit of a mental break and I think we needed it.

BIKE (40km)

We found out at this TA that CPs N and O had been dropped from the course so we could replan our route. I was a bag of toys at this point and could not stop shivering so Liza planned our route (the same one I would have chosen) from this TA to the next and had to use the Gazetteer because we had cut off the maps and did not have the roads on map to choose another route. The staff told us it was straightforward and it really looked like it was. Off we went and only had to make a couple of turns to get to the next TA. Stupid Gazetteer had named the roads incorrectly AGAIN and so we turned just a little too early and ended up riding around in the sand before finally popping out on a road that I could see on the map. The funny thing was that we had seen Nuun?s tracks in the sand so they must have done the same thing here.

When we got to the TA we found out they had left only an hour age because they had slept for a couple of hours.

PADDLE (Manistee River ? 42 kms)

The sun was out, the river was moving, and Linda had packed us a lunch for our trip so all was good. We decided once we were on the river that since it was moving and we hadn?t got a lot of sleep at the last TA that one person would paddle and the other would sleep and that way at least we were moving forward on the course. This worked like a charm and I had the best sleep I had all race in these boats. I wish I had the camera with me at this point because it was funny to see one person jammed in the front of the canoe while the other person tried not to splash them or ram the boat into the bank on a corner. We had a lot of laughs on this section too as Liza and I thought a couple of Canadian Geese were going to charge Nicky and Carolyn?s boat but it was just the angle we were on (Liza actually screamed).

The river was beautiful and our PB & J lunch with a Joe Louis for dessert was the best. We also passed a lot of fly fisherman on this river and in addition to getting an invitation to come to a party that night Liza and I were passed a Bud Light (I know what is the point right FB?) and so we grabbed it on the way by and saved it for the TA.

We got to the take-out and had to pack up all of our paddling stuff to take with us on the next trek. There was a bit of a crowd there cheering us on, including the Salomon USA dudes who I think thought of us as their team now! We even had a photographer follow us out of the TA down the road snapping photos as we ran and eventually we had to tell him that we were going to have to go to the bathroom now.......he took off fairly quickly!

TREKKING (26kms)

This trek had us jogging most of the time since it was predominantly road but we did have to work our way through some trail systems and Nicky and Carolyn had two piece paddles so the bush trekking was a bit frustrating for them. Luckily there wasn?t a lot of it and by the time we got to the middle of this trek we were 2 hours behind Nuun (they made us some time on the river while we slept). We posed for some photos here and Liza made the photographer take pictures of our mascot (A cheetah that Trish Westman gave to us at RTN Extreme and who had been taped to our SPOT device all race). As we neared the final CP that was on a beaver dam we had another videographer follow us along the trail to our AP (Nicky of course didn?t realize this and had been relieving herself of digestive gases (sorry Nick) when all of a sudden she looked behind us and said ?um did you guys know there is a camera guy following us?). We asked if he was going to come with us to the CP (yes) and if he planned on getting his feet wet (no). We told him he probably wouldn?t last long then but he came in the thick bush for about 100ft before he stopped and Nicky told him we were just getting to the good part. I think Liza was a bit fast for him to be honest.

We found the CP no problem since we had aimed south of it and when we got to the river it was just north of where we had popped out. We jogged the trails to the next TA at a boy scouts camp and once again were greeted by many familiar faces.

BIKING (68km)

This section was mostly two-track and road with some nasty sandy bits. We had to change our route a bit on the fly due to some trails that did not go through like we thought they might. All in all this ride was great for us minus one big bike crash. It was now dark and we were heading along a hard packed dirt road and down a hill at about 40-45kph when my front wheel hit a really soft patch of sand. My handlebars jack-knifed and the first thing to hit the ground was my face (I thought I was going to have to make another trip to see Bent for a broken tooth but I got lucky). I knew I was okay but when I got up and turned around I saw Nicky in a heap beside my bike. Here feet were still attached to her bike and she wasn?t really making any noise and we could see blood coming out of her nose.....uh oh. After a few moments of talking to her she told us she thought she was okay but Carolyn had seen the whole thing and said she had flown through the air and landed on the back of her neck and head. We cleaned up the blood and assessed the bikes and once we knew everyone was going to be okay we decided we would give a little more room on the bikes, especially when we knew the terrain could get loose very quickly. At the end of this section we met the CP staff who told us how to get on to the VASA single track bike course that would pop us out at the next TA. More cokes and BRATWURST sausages.....this was our favourite CP! So delicious. We also found out here that Milton Basement Racers had not left the last TA so we knew we had a bit of time going on to the O-course which I figured we would need.

The single track was a blast and we could tell that we were tired since we were laughing a lot. We saw an animal that Nicky named ?the reverse skunk? but that we thought might be a badger. The reverse skunk was funnier though and we wondered if it would spray lovely perfumed scents?

We got to the TA to the O-course and it was dark and starting to rain. Liza and I got changed and headed into the lodge to plan our route. We told the girls to change and sleep while we did this. After sucking back a couple of red bulls we were able to come up with a route that was a bit conservative but we knew we couldn?t afford any errors in here. We also knew it was going to be tough as there were a million depressions that looked like hills so we had to be sure of what we were looking for. As we finished our mapping Liza and I decided that we also needed a 10 minute nap and so down we went. We left the TA at 2am and with a videographer following us headed off for our first couple of CPs. We bobbled on the first but nailed the second and then we were off on our own. In this section we did really well except for one CP. We did the smart thing though and bailed out to a known point early, had a 10 minute nap, and re-attacked to find it fairly quickly.......two CPs left and we were back at the TA to find out that MBR had only left on the O-course 1 hour ago. I knew that they would finish it quickly in the daylight but if we could get to the final paddle soon I didn?t think they could catch us.

BIKE (12km)

This was a rainy, miserable road ride but I took the opportunity to get some pictures and video along the way and we just cruised to the boat put in.

PADDLE (42km)

Another beautiful moving river (this one a little faster) and it was tough to stay awake. I think we all brought two red bulls each and even with these it was hard to keep a solid rhythm going. Liza and I rammed head first into a couple of trees on the banks and almost lost our heads but we managed to keep moving forward. Nicky was constantly falling asleep and at one point Carolyn told us we had to stop. So we backed up into a dock area and Nicky proceeded to just throw her head back with no support and fell dead asleep (I of course took pictures and video). We were only here about 5 -7 minutes before we continued on. I tried to keep an eye on where we were so I could let them know how far to the CP but the river was so windy. So when Carolyn asked me how far to the finish I just laughed hysterically in her face. The look I got back was priceless and so I had to make a guess. We eventually made it to the CP and on to the class I and II rapids that came at us unexpectedly. I marvelled at how calm Nicky was in the white water since I didn?t think she had that much experience but in the end we found out from Carolyn that Nicky was basically asleep. We made it through this section without dumping thankfully because all of us were quite cold. As we approached the town of Traverse City we had to paddle the river through it and Linda came down to meet us along the river. She sprinted with us until she had to turn for the finish and we had to turn into the Bay where the wind was blowing something fierce. We headed right into the white-caps and then turned to surf into the beach and the finish line. I could picture us dumping here but Carolyn and Nicky just missed t-boning us and we both beached side-by-side like a couple of pros.

It was a great feeling to have finished in second place and to have had Nuun on their toes for the whole race. They are a great team and were kind enough to have woken up from their nap to come down to see us finish.......what a classy team. I wish we could have done the same for MBR but if we couldn?t stay awake in white water I don?t think we could have woken up from our 2 hour nap......

It was a great experience, our team worked so well together, we had the best support crew out there, we had so much fun, the racecourse was stellar and we ended up right where I knew we could so I couldn?t be happier with the result!

Thanks to my team La Femme, DogRunner, and Slice and to Linda the champion of all support crews, and of course to our sponsor Salomon who had us looking so fantastic on the course!!!! Anyone thinking about doing an Infiterra race should really consider it (we even won $1000US in addition to other great prizing) they do such an amazing job and really make it a fun racecourse for the racers.

Until next time.....
If you are on facebook I have put all of the photos up there because I always have trouble doing it here for some reason....maybe I'll try a link here but I am not sure it will work.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/album.php?aid=2...

C • Congrats!! 12

Working on the report right now...it will be up today so simmer down FB!

C • what day did you post that note on? 2