Training Log Archive: JayXC

Bike to bonus control then to finish.

Event: Shenandoah Epic 26-hour AR
 

Prologue- Out and back to get and tiny piece of paper with the letter H on it to be used for a challenge later in the race. Fortunately I returned back to the start ahead of all the women as I was told otherwise there would be consequences.

Put-in at Downriver Canoe and paddled north to Mark's house for the takeout.
An interesting addition to this years race was a bonus control located somewhere in Andy Guest State Park, the location of which would be revealed by instructions on 3 of the mapped control in the park that we could pick up at any point in the race.

Our guess at its location was somewhere in the northern portion of the park and this set our punching strategy for the entire race. We made multiple stops on the paddle to pick up optional controls near the river as we paddled.

At the takeout we exited river left while James paddled both canoes to river right and then swam back across. The river looked cold and so did James when he got out.

We took off on the Google map towards cp3 and then up Shaw Gap trail to the ridge of Massanutten Mtn where we ran the trail at the top north to the rappel on Buzzard Rock. The rappel landed at the base of a scree field and we were instructed to return back to the top and then travel south on the trail until we were clear of the scree then head down towards the river. We quickly found a herd path heading down but it ended up at the scree and we struggled to move very fast in it along with the Rev3 team who had suffered the same fate.

Once at the bottom we had to walk the edge of the river to cp7 and cp8 at the Elizabeth Furnace campground. There we discovered that NYARA had made a better decision coming down from the rappel and put 45 minutes on us.

C • when in doubt 1

Rev3 was just leaving on their bikes as we arrived and Nathalie ensured we had a quick transition. The bike loop took us up to Mudhole Gap then across to Mine Gap and onto some pavement and gravel roads for a number of points. We caught Rev3 as they were just leaving a church where I assume they picked up water. We rode together to The Veach Gap trail and back up towards the top with some bike pushing near the top.

The next trekking section took us along the ridge line to a small trail network for an o-course on the side of the mountain. We picked a ccw route which seemed faster but had a brutal climb back to the trail at the top. We searched for cp16 for 45 minutes on the way to the o-course. It turned out not to be where the UTM coordinates said it should be, approx. 400m off which was frustrating.

Bike down from Veech Gap to the TA/finish.

Andy Guest Bike-O
Having already picked up all of the low points on the course during the initial paddle we only needed to pick up the points in the park up high with the plan to have all the points punched by the time we hit the north end of the park. Once complete we would only have to punch the bonus point on the way to the finish. Turns out the bonus point was right near the finish so our perceived advantage turned out to be a liability and we nearly lost 3rd place in the process.

Fun course despite the issue with cp16 and the bingo bonus point. Too bad the first portion of the paddle was cancelled.

Travel to VA

4x400 fr descending on 7:00
8x50 kick/swim fr on 1:10
400 fr pull
2x200 ba on 4:20
100 fr cd

G-Tour Kickoff in Chili
Dropped on lap 3, solo TT lap 4 and caught 3 others and then we pace lined the last 2 laps.

288W NP, better than I expected. Will need to up my FTP.