Training Log Archive: Garrison

A month late, but finished full blown race report.

Working on an "actual" race report for this one, but here are the basics. Didn't keep track of times at all, borrowed some distances from silkychrome.

6am start

Bike 1: ~15 mile ride from start, pretty uneventful.

Trek1: 10ish mile trek, remembered the challenge of navving in WI. Other than a bobble on 1 was slow but clean.

Bike 2: 35 miles started on amazing single track. Steady pace, I crashed in the rocks which immediately deleted any ability I had to ride in rocks for about 30 miniutes. Keith (our rookie, yeah, first race ever was a 30 hour) had some heat issues after the single track but we helped him out and he refused to quit. Rolled into Cable and restocked on Gatorades and ate. Cruised last few miles to TA, Keith bounced back strong.

TA: Frantic TA trying to plot ahead of the storm. No UTM grids made for a little extra challenge. Just finished prior to all hell breaking loose.

Paddle: ?? miles We launched in the thick of the storm. Sideways rain, lightning, all the good stuff. Not smart but we got lucky and are still alive. No issues on the paddling points, but burned 45 minutes of our "paddled in the lightning" time on a mid paddle mini-trek because I misplotted C5. Very frustrating as we had a "check sheet" to confirm CP locations. (On the up side, I'm confident that we went right to the point that I plotted on the first try.) Dropped the 3 southern most points as we knew a monster 23 CP trek was ahead. Better CP density.

Trek 2: Advertised as 11 miles, felt like 20. Tough way to get my night nav skills de-rusted. Subtle terrain, darkness, thick bush, leg sucking swamps, prehistoric volumes of mosquitoes. Other than 19 stayed mostly connected to the map (with LOTS of recoveries) but was very slow and deliberate. Too slow. Conditions and (unneeded) concerns about the ankle had the brain going too many directions at once so I didn't operate with enough urgency. But, we still got more points than any other team. Part of our strategy since Keith's "undercarriage" was only prepared for direct ride to finish.

Bike 3: 12 miles to finish on pavement. I almost fell asleep at the handlebars twice. Once I disengaged the nav brain the mental fatigue punched me in the head. Hard.

Third place overall. Not bad for a team with a pure AR rookie (who was amazing) and a rusty dinged up navigator. Ankle actually did great and felt better after the race than before. I was crazy clumsy in the woods tripping everywhere, but I think that will be out of my system now that I trust it again. 30 hours of racing is effective for scar tissue removal apparently. The whole race gave me a lot of confidence going in to CT in 2 weeks.

Felt great to get back out there despite some brutal conditions at times!

C • Happy you're back! 4

Event: Stubborn Mule 30-Hr AR