Training Log Archive: FB

started out for moderate ride but feeling good and short on time so I went hard last 30 mins... 15 Z3 30 Z5

a week late....

My Recollection (vs Wilderness' ) of Sea@Sea

Will was talking about this race back in early December. I told him that if I could run 30 mins on the mill, pain free and no swelling after, that I would do it with him. I did 2 runs with no issues, so we signed up and I tried to stay healthy for the next 10 weeks. I made no promises that I’d be able to run during the race, but I figured my biking and paddling would be decent (and I was already booked to be in St. Louis the day before the race, so this was an excuse to stay in warmer climes for a few more days!!)

I had a little bit of trepidation heading into race day because of the lack of info/clarity in the prerace briefing on Wednesday (I really felt I didn't need to be there as I got nothing from it). I think there is a high returning racer rate for this race, so maybe they assume everyone knows what's going on. When I tried asking a question it went way off on an unrelated tangent and 5 minutes later there was a dismissive answer.... well, ok then. (In RD's defence, I think he was totally sleep deprived and was really running on fumes). The 'weirdest' moment was immediately after the briefing, when a volunteer shouted for people to grab the supplementary (tourist) maps of off the table as they held important clues for the race. The RD chastised him for letting the ‘cat out of the bag’ since only a couple of teams had taken them... apparently dissemination of info is somewhat random... whaaaa???

We got our maps just before getting on the bus to the start. The combination of dim lighting and my bad eyes made for a stressful planning session. We did get things pretty well in order with some time to spare and we had some reasonable distance estimates for the bike sections (eyeballed) and I was feeling pretty good about our 42 1:25,000 maps (and the supplementals)....

…doing this from memory since I don’t have any race docs handy

Race started with short 'run' to the boats followed by a short 6 km ish paddle. There was one CP enroute to the TA. It was a guy in a kayak, with the control flag, off the point of an island. It was braided mangrovey? (but not such high growth) coastline for the short paddle from here and we managed to make a wrong turn. It was a direct route to the TA and we could see the TA, but we could not paddle to it :-( . Instead of backtracking we hammerheaded our way, dragging the boat through the marshy goop. Probably only cost us about 10 mins but got us covered in nasty muck.

We were soon riding with the leaders trying to locate the next CP. Took a couple of minutes to find the right trails, but after a quick river crossing we knew we were on the right track. Shortly after this CP we found ourselves riding alone. This was another mistake by me. I thought a certain highway was off limits so we took a longer route to the next WP. Probably cost another 10 minutes, but more importantly now I had to be careful about the rest of the race to make sure I was looking for alternate (faster) routes to the ones I may have marked on the map!! We spent a bit of time (10 mins?) looking for the next CP. I still hadn’t realized that the CP’s were often (usually) hidden vs being on major features or a recognizable intersection etc.

We were soon off the bikes and on foot. We hit the 1st 3 trek CP’s quickly and then picked up our WP UTM’s for CP 8. I eyeballed it on the map and was probably about 60m too far east. It looked like the CP would be right along the only road in the area… there were no other features so this made sense to me and off we went. Turns out finding a CP flag that is below ground level and blocked by a thicket is no easy task when you are looking a little bit to the east. DOAH!! This was a huge time waster for us. I understand a lot of teams gave up on this one, but we finally managed to find it as I was getting ready to call it. (If you came up the west side of the CP on a trail it was a much easier find. If you came up the road to the east, which we cut over to as a more distinguished feature, it was very difficult to find. We attacked from three ‘points’ before getting lucky)

The rest of the trek we had no issues. We opted not to buy our bikes (for CP credits.. a deal you could make at the last TA), so from CP10 we had to ‘run’ the roads to the next TA. Will was struggling (in the heat I think) so we were not particularly fast, but this was good for keeping my knees healthy anyways. We were passed by one solo bike in this section.

The bike went o.k. for us. I still don’t get the hidden CP thing. If you navigate your way to some small pond off of the road, it seems silly to me to then have to scrounge around looking under and behind things to find the flag. Maybe this evolved because flags get stolen…maybe it’s to add some difficulty because the terrain is not challenging… maybe it’s more fun this way and I’m the one with a problem? In any event, I was now aware of how this worked and we had no more finding CP issues and they became a great source of humour for us… unfortunately for Suzi, Will and I share one sense of humour :-)

We saw our bins at the trek – bike TA which was not supposed to happen and we were also informed we would not see them after the bike, before the paddle, which was the original plan. Not a big deal really, but I was frustrated and looking for an excuse to mope, so this was as good as any!
:-)

We were soon at the bike to paddle TA. Remarkably we were told we were still in 6th place and one of those in front of us was a solo. We were also informed that we were more than 2 hours behind the leader, so we had to skip CP 17. This really sucked. We had ALL the CP’s up to this point and now we couldn’t clear the course. This was the first night and is where I expected to start to get into a groove and pick up the pace if my body was feeling stable… and now we’re essentially short coursed. Bummer.

When we got to the next TA we got to play a game of operation?!?! And then do a little orienteering. The CP’s were not flagged and some were very well hidden, but they did have reflective tape and we did have a pretty decent map for this. Once we found the first one and figured out the gist, we made short work of the rest. (Again, precise plotting was KEY since ‘inside a tree’ is tough to find if your off by 30 meters in a forest… or approaching from the ‘wrong direction’ in the dark).

As the sun came up on day two we were off on the bikes, a few minutes behind the leaders, but they had done CP 17. We had no problems on this section and picked up the WP’s so we had coordinates for the next mystery CP. Problem was when we got to the point to look for the CP they told us we were being moved ahead on the course to the trek. Apparently, the entire race was behind by 8 hours?!?! Will and I had some good eyebrow raising chuckles as the discussion surrounded the strong headwind (which we never felt) and the high volume of trail riding (which by our bumkin standards had been all road).

At this point I was kinda frustrated again and decided we weren’t going to get the mystery CP. I think I had transposed one of the UTM co-ods because when I plotted it didn’t add up. I could have asked one of the other teams who came in behind us… or just followed one of them, but I was fast falling out of race mode.

We waited over two hours for our ride (much longer than it would have taken us to ride to the TA). We were the last teams (along with one other) to be moved ahead, in spite of virtually every other team that was shuttled arriving behind us. This is a testament to the fact that I had checked out. If I was still racing I would have had my elbows out a bit and we would have been on the first shuttle, but I honestly didn’t care at this point.

We had a slowish TA and left for a short trek (10-11 km?) to get our bikes back. We passed about 5-6 teams on the trek without running once and soon were back riding … seems others weren’t racing particularly hard either :)

When we left the TA with our bikes they asked if we were going to do the next trek or just bike straight to the ‘food truck’ TA? …. That sounds appealing!! 1 solo racer left as I was waiting for Will at the TA exit and he told the TA staff he was skipping the next trek and going for the food truck….. count us in for that!!! From that point on, in my mind, we were team Bloed en omo!! (Expedition Africa Reference)

We passed a couple of teams then decided not to get an easy out and back CP before a rail trail section. Next, we rode off map (purposely) for about 6-7 km and probably back on the map for about 3 or 4 more before I figured out where we were. We overshot our turn by 5-10 minutes :( . We then rode straight through Hampton skipped the short trek and were the first team to arrive at the Gold Head TA.

The food and drinks were great! Quite an oasis. I managed to have a brief, cool, shower and then we bedded down for a long, cold, fitful nights rest. Will and I squeezed in a tiny tent with one thin blanket type thing that barely covered one of us. I actually used a jar of olives for a pillow because my neck was getting sooo sore without a ‘lift’. Thank goodness it wasn’t too cold out.

At this point I was just glad that my knees had held up well. My back was a little stiff and my knees were ‘complaining’ but nothing insurmountable and I had not taken any meds whatsoever. We stayed the whole night and were amongst, if not THE last team to leave TA. We got the first 2 or 3 CPs on the bike and caught a couple of teams and then decided to ride to the finish (120 km total?), have a shower and a nap and go watch the UFC card that night. This would give us a good night sleep and an early start for the drive back to Barrie from Fla. (vs leaving late Sunday after 12 hrs of racing and closing ceremony)…. And we did find that headwind on our ride to the coast!!!!

…. We never did hand in our final punch card, with about 13-14 more CPs on it, that might have bumped us up a few spots in the final standing :0

Had we still been contending, or even in race mode, I would have likely taken some meds and we would have pushed on. I don’t like taking NSAIDS when I’m dehydrated (= racing) because of the harm they can do. We gave my body a good test and my rehab is doing well and we got some good exercise with a fun winter break and a lot of good laughs together. There seemed no point in suffering for the sake of suffering now as we no longer felt we were in a race. Plus, the drive home to make Will’s 07:00 Tuesday flight from YYZ would be much more enjoyable if we weren’t fighting sleep monsters the whole way. My main regret is that we didn’t get to do the next big paddle section as it looked like it would be a lot of fun.

By the end of the race (or at least our time at the race) I had really warmed up to the RD. I have met few people in my life who wanted to make everyone happy as much as this guy did. The race staff he had were great but he could likely have used more support and I question his delegation and communication skillz. However, he really, really, REALLY wanted to put on a great race for the racers and he worked VERY hard to do so and I appreciate that. It’s too bad I carried so much of my own personal baggage into the race, as I could have had a lot more fun in those early stages if I had been more mentally prepared.

I think I just realized why I keep doing this sh!t… it’s so I can write rambling race reports and see if I can get anyone to read it all?!?! ;-)

C • So far so good... 12

rope pull

Just some light stuff after dropping Will at YYZ at 06:00