Training Log Archive: guerfondler

I remember Rick closing the door on the trailer to provide us with complete darkness... closed us up in a tin can, completely unconscious for 45 minutes, until he reopened the door. Those were minutes I was dead to the world, apart from my normal existance. But oh, precious and necessary moments.

Biked to Vasa single track.

Vasa single track. Kept a good pace winding through the forest on a nice trail. Finally our team was "clicking". We had all adjusted to the demands of this race, were working together for efficient punches, and were making good time.

Quick TA into orienteering section, our first in daylight.

Punched two controls on Timber Ridge, thinking we had pretty much locked in 6th place. All we had to do was finish before 7:00, which shouldn't be a problem...

Slow transition to bikes, having lost our our impletus.

Bike into a head wind carrying our paddle gear. We're all getting a little grumpy now.

Canoe down the Boardman River. As we paddled I complained to Molly how the race finish wasn't going to be very dramatic. We seemed locked into sixth place, now unable to get enough points for a better finish.

We made it fine through the rapids. I was asking another team if everyone was alright after they spilled out of their boats, not realizing the current was rapidly carrying us toward a log. Well, we went over that log and dumped our boat. The canoe was pinned under another log. I managed to grab our paddles before I found myself standing chest deep in a cold, fast current on the outside of a bend next to a gravel cliff.

I could barely keep my footing, with a tenuous grip on a twig, and was nearly swept downstream. Molly, to her credit, stepped back into the river to help control the boat. We extracted our packs from the upside-down canoe and tossed them to shore. Dave and Pete made it back upstream to help and were just across the river from us.

The situation was not so dire that I couldn't appreciate Dave's smile as he waded into the water, throw bag in hand, yelling "I'll save you!". (Inside joke: Our team normally says that, on dry land, before someone gets a throw bag in the face.) I tied the rope to the boat, we got it free from the log, and Dave and Pete were able to haul it in. While they emptied it Molly and I worked on warming up -- we had spent too much time in the water and had little in the way of dry clothing.

Molly and I were perched half way up the gravel cliff, under an e-blanket cursing the cloud blocking the sun, when the race director came along. He had heard several teams had swamped their boats and was just making sure everyone was ok. I wasn't in any hurry to continue until he said it was about a two hour paddle to the finish, and we had about two hours to do it. Hearing that was all I needed to stand up and run for the boat.

Picture this: I'm wearing wet tights with a poncho fashioned out of the foil blanket; Red PFD over that, with a black rubber bonnet I brought (mostly) as a joke. A fisherman at a portage asked why I was wearing a costume. I was too exhausted to care, and in too much of a hurry to explain.

We gave that paddle everything we had left, finishing just eight minutes before we would have been officially ranked as losers. I was soon standing in the bathroom of the Holiday Inn trying to clean up before the awards banquette. I had a beer in hand, a silly grin on my face, and a feeling of complete euphoria inside. If only it didn't take so much work to get that feeling!