Training Log Archive: getawaystix

This paddle was thouroughly laughable & painful. Bill & I were struggling to stay awake. Bill paddled directly into shore a few times, while I constantly fell asleep paddling and dropped behind. At one point we lost Bill for a good 15 minutes?

Finally into the dark zone at close to 6am, which would leave 1.5hrs of sleep before the final 60-odd k paddle to the finish city of Salamanca. We opted for 2hrs, which turned into 2.5 and we finally got going at 9am.

The river paddle was pretty good/cool, a few small rapids, lift-overs, damns and portages kept things lively. We realized half-way down the river we were going to be very close to making the 6pm race cut-off. We kicked it into high gear for the rest of the paddle, which was painful, but also inspiring knowing we could still push after so many days. We arrived just after 6pm, happy to hear the cut-off was extended to 7.

One final token City orienteering section, then onto the finish line.....there's nothing else like it in sport. Even after the shocker of a race we'd experienced, it was still an undescribable feeling crossing that line.

Fun trek up to a castle/fortress type structure with a rappell off the back. Followed by some typical, late-race, gotta keep running, but it's more like shuffling efforts.

Awesome Inline section up a big switchbacked-out climb.

We were making sure to nail all of the nav. I was still feeling like a bag-of-tools on the bike, so our pace was a bit slow, but the ride got easier (less hills) as it went on. Strangely, we picked up a straggler (some russian dude, who appeared to be with the race, but we weren't sure, but he was taking lots of pictures, kinda weird. He stayed with us for basically the entire ride and I don't think he drank, or ate much of anything, weirder. maybe he was just a halucination?

We were ~5k from the end of the ride when our bad luck with mtb nav caught up with us again......only 5 more freakin k.......another unmapped road followed by a hasty decision to walk down a rail-road track???? Probably another wasted hour or so, before we relocated ourselves, hopped on the unmapped road and finally got to the last TA, which we thought was the start of a dark-zone, but no, we had to paddle across a lake to reach the dark zone, so painful. Luckily Ben held it together in this TA, otherwise I fear Bill, Ula & myself might still be there.

A funny kayak-trek-kayak-trek-kayak section where one team-mate could stay with the kayaks while the others did trekking loops from the shore. This represents all the kayaking on this leg.

Kind of a cool paddle in the dark, which made navigation fun. I hadn't had to use a compass in a boat since the 2001 RTN Champs in New Liskeard when we paddled at night in the fog. I was paying super-close attention & thought I'd planned a solid way to attack the first CP, but after paddling for 30 min. longer than anticipated we knew we'd overshot. Turns out we'd paddled right past the CP, but it was misplaced, or not marked properly on the map. Kind of lame to still have misplaced CP's in the World Champs???

The treks went well for us, with no issues locating CP's. We still managed to lose another 3 hours to the leaders on this leg, which seems excessive, but I'd rack it up to: 1/2hr slow TA, 1hr misplaced CP, 1.5hrs slow pace/day vs. night????

combination of 2 treks in middle kayaking leg

Started out with what was becoming our obligatory ride down what would turn out to be overgrown/unridable tracks/roads, followed by back-tracking & trying option #2..........so frustrating. Lost 45 minutes before we'd been riding for 2 hours.

Halfway through the ride we opted to hit a restaurant for a full meal. Amazingly our hack-job on the Spanish language still produced a tasty meal.

Although we should have realized from our mishaps on the legs prior we never once discussed the possibility of missing the 24hr cut-off at the next TA.

I struggled big-time after the meal, as I think all my blood went to my stomach, which left the legs empty. I've never felt so empty on the bike in all my life, totally tapped. I rung the bell and called for a 20 min. power-nap.

Finally into the TA we learned we'd missed the 24-hour cut-off after the 1st place team had arrived (Team Buff). I didn't really have time to process the info., since I was still feeling like a bag of tools & tried to snag a few more hours of sleep.

Once awake the reality of getting short-coursed sunk in and we basically knew the top 10 was no longer realistically attainable, bummer.

Started to ride, but within minutes we were stopped at a gas station trying to fix two blown sidewalls. Note to self, opt for thicker UST tubeless tires instead of standard/lighter tires w/ sealant for expedition races.

Once riding again we got some renewed vigor, since we missed a cut-off and skipped the last section we found ourselves riding with top 10 teams. We rode with Quecha for a bit, then settled into a nice groove & were having a decent ride before stopping for our cushy 2hr snooze, this time in a run-down bar (the cieling panels were made of styrofoam, which made for great matresses).

Once up, we were riding well, had another mess-about in some trails before locating the next CP, then had a monster climb before hitting the next TA. I imagine it would have been some spectacular terrain, but it was all dark for us.

Big trek, nice scenary with some good ups & downs.

Sticking with our strategy of sleeping 2hrs per night we slept again and dropped further behind. Even with our added rest we weren't making up time on the front-runners? We pushed hard and ran out a big 10-15k valley at the end of this leg and normally would have expected to pass a few teams, but we only caught one at the very end, ughh.

Easy road ride into the 4hr mandatory stop TA.

Not sure how I feel about mandatory stops not necessary as dark-zones for safety. I'd probably rather see sleep strategy left up to teams to figure out on their own, but perhaps this was a requirement from the events insurer?

We arrived at around 5pm, ~14hrs behind the leaders (Buff) who had managed to open a gap of ~4hrs on the rest of the field. This should have raised some red flags about our pace and decisions about being able to finish the rest of the race, especially considering there was a strange cut-off rule where teams had to start a leg within 24hrs of the lead team. I'm not a fan of this rule, since there's no way to foresee if the leaders went out too hard, or if they'll drop later on, hence making the cut-off unreasonable. An RD should be able to work backwards from the finish and figure out specific cut-offs based on estimates derived from course vetting. Having a specific cut-off time specified ahead of time would make it easier for teams to figure out if they should push hard, or opt to take short-courses. In any case, we hadn't started considering the fact we could miss cut-offs and this came back to bite us in the ass, not that it really would have mattered, since with all our nav & mechanical problems we wouldn't have had time to finish the full-course anyway.

A night ride for us, with many nav problems.

We must've lost 30-45min. seaching around mapped & unmapped trails at the start of the ride, then faced a big 2hr issue 3/4's of the way through the ride. Very weird stuff, since we always knew where we were, and we were on what we thought was the most direct route, but we continuously ended up on roads/trails that peetered out, or ended in fields, at homes, or in marshes, so strange. In looking at the SPOT tracking other teams rode through the areas where we struggled without much trouble, which is even more confusing. Perhaps we couldn't see things at night, which they could see during the day????

We opted to sleep in the TA for 2hrs before starting the next kayak/trek leg. This is another error I think we made at this event, i.e. sleeping too much. In hindsight the route appeared to be broken up by two big madatory "rest" periods. 1st, halfway through the race there was a mandatory 4hr stop, and 2nd there was a dark zone on the last river paddling section, which looked long enough most teams would get stopped along it at some point. I think this is the strategy most teams employed, i.e. race hard for 48hrs, then sleep at the 4hr mandatory stop, then race hard to the last kayak leg (taking short naps along the way) knowing you'd most likely get stopped on the last paddle.

Anyway we started the trek/paddle, or paddle/trek leg at around 8:30am, now over 8 hours behind the leaders. On this leg we split again, with the same funny "time-credit" system in place if one set of team-mates arrived after the 2nd set at each of the 2 TA's on this leg.

Bill & I ran the longer trek first without much trouble, except trying to bushwack down a big switchback in the road, but then back-tracking after realizing the thorn & scrub infested bush was way too slow. Otherwise we had a good run and kept up a solid pace.

Interesting kayak with a big side, then headwind.

One monster climb with a few more quick up & downs for good measure. Some excellent plateaus & vistas. This ride went well navigationally and we maintained a decent pace.

Inline, mostly up a big hill in the dark

City Orienteering AR Worlds 2010. Smooth start, teams running everywhere.....

Interesting ride with some punchy climbs. I wasn't feeling 100% (which was a recurring theme on the bike for me in this event). All & all not too bad, we were 30min. down in around 10th.

Cool section with some real orienteering. Maps were quite good. Was split into 2 sections, the 1st with all 4 team members together & the 2nd where each team split into pairs. There was a funny rule for the 2nd section, which I'm guessing was implemented to try and decrease any time lost by teams with a poor navigator, or by teams who had to wait for their 2nd set of team-mates to return. Basically, the rule was that they would take the time difference between when the 1st & 2nd set of team-mates arrived back, divide it by 2 and subtract that amount of time from your overall time in the event. Weird.

We had a decent 1st leg, I dropped maybe 2 min. on one control & we probably wasted more time than others looking for a control that had been removed.

Bill & I waited ~20min. for Ben & Ula to return from the 2nd leg, then we had a slow TA back onto the bikes. Not sure what we were doing, but the leaderboard shows us spending 20min. in the TA, which for Bill & I would have been over 40min.?????? It was beginning to get quite cold & rainy and we were suiting up for a long, cold ride through the night.

Started with a monster downhill in pouring rain on a paved road, awesome, the rain stung like crazy & before long we were soaked to the core. Does anyone know how to stay somewhat dry while riding in these conditions? Luckily our gear had us stay reasonably warm, so long as we kept moving. We heard a girl from another team dropped on this leg with hypothermia.

I did a brutal job with the nav on this leg. Started with a 20min error by selecting a road that didn't pan-out (This will be another recurring theme in this race, where we planned routes that wouldn't work out, i.e. the roads were too overgrown, or weren't there anymore forcing us to back-track. The area of the event had countless roads & trails going all over in various states of repair.

Benoit blew a sidewall, which thought about holding air at first (he was running tubeless with sealant in the tire), but after a few re-inflations we dropped in a tube.

Still raining, this was one of those sections where you had to laugh at the ridiculousness of riding in the middle of the night, in pouring rain, in cold conditions in the middle of nowhere......only in AR!

Next we flubbed finding a trail leading off a main road. We initially searched in the correct spot, but didn't locate it. 1/2 hour later we returned to the same spot and promptly found the trail??????

About 15 min. later while desending a technical trail Ursula was delayed and we soon found out her front brake was barely working, while the rear was completely fried. After a quick discussion we opted to move Ben's rear brake onto Ursula's bike. Ben rode the rest of the event with only a front brake! Crazy and impressive, considering this was a mountain race.......

30-45 min. later we were moving again, only to stop 5 min. later to fix another flat tire????

Nearing the end of the ride we experienced another "trail location" problem as we'd ridden to the location of where we thought a trail would begin, but didn't locate it. A good hour later we returned to the same spot and found the trail. I'll take the blame for this one, as I had originally ridden into the field-area where the trail was to begin, but didn't notice anything the first time around. This sounds bizzarre, but it's how a lot of our race went on the mtb legs, missing trails, un-mapped roads, overgrown trails/roads, this is nothing new for AR, but we seemed to suffer immensely on these legs. I'm curious if other teams had similar problems, or if it was just us?

We arrived at the next TA around 5am, now a good 5 hours behind the leaders.