Monday May 29 |
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| Rozzi flew out today, we hitched a ride to West Plam Beach and rented a car there. Suzanne and I drove down to South Beach to stay with her friend Kristin. |
Sunday May 28 |
| Note | |
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| MNOC Lake Maria |
| Note | |
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| Sun, water, beer, Waverunner, loud music, sun, more beer, waterskiing, inflatable raft, flipping over, sun, more beer, wakeboarding, dinner on the grill, sunburn, more beer. |
Saturday May 27 |
| MTB (road) 7:00:00 [3] | |
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| Lots more biking through Green Swamp. After CP 8 Suzanne's knee was starting to give out because of the incessant sand. After a calm but depressing discussion, we decided to avoid risking an injury by bailing out at the next available location - and this possibility was only open to discussion because we had already lost a team member. We had one strike against us already and didn't want to get another one.
Getting out of Green Swamp took a long time, though. |
| Miscellaneous race (transition/resting) 2:00:00 [1] | |
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| Finally got out of the Swamp (we heard some bull alligators making noise off the trail) and took another rail-to-trail down to CP 11. At this point we were all hallucinating to one degree or another, so we dismounted and walked bikes for a while. Brian fell asleep while walking and managed to wake up before he tripped over his bike. We stopped at a picnic area and caught a couple hours of sleep (on top of the benches - the ground had fire ants) in the predawn hours. Woke up at sunrise and proceeded to CP11 where we met a nice volunteer and called our support crew. |
Friday May 26 |
| Note | |
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| Florida Coast to Coast AR - Homosassa to Sebastian. |
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| C • Hope Everyone's okay. 1 |
| Paddling (kayak) (Adventure Race) 5:00:00 [3] *** | |
| spiked:1/1c |
| Florida C2C Adventure Race. Started at 1 AM on the Gulf Coast west of Crystal River for a paddle section. We had to rent kayaks and ended up with 13' sit-a-tops, no competition for the 20' fiberglass boats some other teams had. Mark and I lost the plug on our boat partway through too, and had to paddle to shore and drain the boat before we capsized. We decoyed a couple of teams going to the lone control and ended up coming off the water in 18th place. |
| MTB (road) race 3:00:00 [3] *** | |
| spiked:4/4c |
| Transitioned to bikes and had a good road ride over to the "Maze", so called because of the mess of streets, ATV trails, and private property. It was hard to read the USGS map (although Ron Eaglin had updated many of the trails) and a lot of teams lost a lot of time. We did OK, and during this section we started to get our first confirmation that the controls were more "hidden" than they should be (also, the instructions had no location clues, only UTMs.) It turned into more of a go to the spot and then hunt around within a 100m circle - yuck. |
| Hiking race 3:00:00 [2] *** | |
| spiked:2/2c |
| Dropped bikes and found we had jumped up to 8th place. Switched over to trekking through an area of the Withlacoochee NF called the Citrus Tract. Good route choice enabled us to find both controls efficiently, plus we were able to decoy another team that, based on the direction they were coming, must have been completely lost. Lots of trekking through sugar sand from 1-6 inches deep, plus the mid afternoon temperatures were in the mid 90s. |
| MTB (road) 1:00:00 [3] | |
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| Got into TA 2 on foot and found we were in 5th place. Had a quick transition and got ready for a 125 mile biking section. The first leg was about 12 miles to the beginning of the singletrack (with a 4 PM cutoff). About 10 miles in, disaster struck - Mark stood up on his bike to get some forward progress through the sand and we all heard a load SNAP. His right chainstay had snapped clean through and the bike was unusable. There was no way we could finish the bike section, even with towing, and there were additional sections later in the race. We reluctantly had to call our support crew to meet us at the start of the singletrack.
We called Elias and got approval to proceed as a 3P team, but it wasn't really the same and we were obviously unranked anyway.
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| MTB (technical) race 4:00:00 [3] *** | |
| spiked:4/4c |
| Cool singletrack course near Croom. Again, the controls were a bit "hidden" and we wasted a fair amount of time digging around for them. The biking was fun, although the 95+ heat and sun forced us to go slow and stop for a couple of rests. |
| MTB (road) race 4:00:00 [3] | |
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| Left the singletrack and went 11 miles down a rail-to-trail to Trilby, where we stopped and cooled off at a convenience store. Then we continued onto the entrance to Green Swamp right around sunset. About 1.5 miles in we had to cross the Withlacoochee river which was only about knee deep and 50 yards wide. We crossed OK with our bikes and Suzanne saw a baby alligator unnervingly close to her as she was climbing out on the other side.
Although it's called a Swamp, the road/trails werent swampy, just the same sandy/gravelly as before. We spent all night in there. |
| Miscellaneous race (transition/resting) 3:00:00 [1] | |
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| Transition times and rest/recovery time. Had to go slower and rest/hydrate more often due to the exposure. |
Monday May 22 |
| Swimming (gym) 50:00 [2] | |
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| C • Good Luck 2 |
Sunday May 21 |
| Terrain Run (no map) 1:00:00 [3] ** | |
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| Somewhere... very cool... |
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| C • Are you a volunteer 1 |
Saturday May 20 |
| Hiking 1:30:00 [1] 4.0 mi (22:30 / mi) | |
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| Goofing around at Forestville. Walked in the creek and got wet (intentionally this time.)
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Friday May 19 |
| Trail Run tempo 1:05:00 [3] 12 km (5:25 / km) | |
| shoes: Montrail Vitesse II (2006, gra |
| Evening run at Lake Elmo. |
Wednesday May 17 |
| Trail Run 35:00 [2] 3.0 mi (11:40 / mi) | |
| shoes: Montrail Vitesse II (2006, gra |
| Ran around Isles with Suzanne. |
Tuesday May 16 |
| Swimming (gym) 1:00:00 [2] | |
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Monday May 15 |
| Swimming (gym) 1:10:00 [2] | |
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Sunday May 14 |
| Note | |
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| MNOC Lake Elmo |
| Hiking 45:00 [2] 3.0 mi (14:59 / mi) | |
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| Went down and explored Memorial Park some more, found all the neat singletrack. I'll have to bring my bike next time (it was too wet today anyway.) |
Saturday May 13 |
| Paddling (kayak) race 1:30:00 [3] 3.0 mi (29:59 / mi) | |
| spiked:3/3c |
| Wild 12 hr Spring Sprint. Suzanne wasn't feeling so good so we substituted Leslie. Started the race with a paddle in the Mississippi backwaters using the #@*&!$%s. There was a bit of a current even outside the main channel of the river, and it made the paddle a little more interesting. We portaged a section to avoid fighting against it. |
| MTB (road) race 6:20:00 [3] ** 53.0 mi (7:09 / mi) | |
| spiked:5/5c |
| Long long road bike with lots of hills. Best route choice plus required waypoints meant it was almost exclusively gravel roads. Two days of rain prior turned anything unpaved into a sticky gluey mess thanks to the local clay soil. As a respite from the ever present white clay, there was one unimproved road that ended up as 2 inch deep sticky black mud. By the time we walked our bikes to the top of the hill (of course) there was an inch and a half of mud caked on the tires and the bikes doubled in weight. Luckily there were no lasting mechanical issues resulting from it, although some other teams had problems. |
| Orienteering race 45:00 [2] *** 2.5 mi (17:59 / mi) | |
| spiked:4/5c |
| Orienteering section at Hay Creek Trails. Bobbled a bit on #8 but recovered quickly. Very thick vegetation, many areas would have been marked fight on an O-map (although the 2nd half was better.) Trails weren't on the USGS map either, which ended up confusing a number of teams. We had to decoy a team near #6 who had arrived before us and spent 15 minutes looking for the checkpoint - we went right to it but didn't let them think we found it. |
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| C • wow! 3 |
| MTB (technical) race 50:00 [3] 3.0 mi (16:39 / mi) | |
| spiked:1/1c |
| Mountain bike trail (doubletrack) in Memorial Park on top of one of the bluffs in Red Wing. Some pretty cool rollers, but otherwise forgettable. There is some nice singletrack there, though! |
| Hiking race 35:00 [2] * 2.5 mi (14:00 / mi) | |
| spiked:2/2c |
| Trek through Red Wing to and from Barn Bluff, also the checkpoint on its western summit. |
| Ropes race 20:00 [1] | |
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| Traverse and rappel on the north side of Barn Bluff. |
| Miscellaneous race (transition/queuing) 40:00 [1] | |
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| Transition time plus at least a half hour waiting for the rappel. One of the two ropes had been closed due to rock fall. |
| Note | |
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| Total time just a hair over 11 hours. 3rd place to WEDALI and the new team on the block (Dan D, Barry, Molly, and someone else) |
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| C • Nice Job 7 |
Wednesday May 10 |
| Swimming (gym) 1:00:00 [2] | |
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| Trail Run 24:00 [3] 4.3 km (5:35 / km) | |
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| Sunset run at Terrace Oaks. Beautiful day and saw only 1 other person on the trails. |
Tuesday May 9 |
| Swimming (gym) 40:00 [2] | |
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| Strength/Core (gym) 25:00 [2] | |
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Monday May 8 |
| MTB (road) 30:00 [4] 7.0 mi (4:17 / mi) | |
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| Tow practice, biked from Dan's work to VE and back. Hit 26 mph on the Vento trail. |
| Miscellaneous (bouldering wall) 1:00:00 [2] | |
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| At VE. Hot and sweaty. |
Sunday May 7 |
| Paddling (kayak) (whitewater) 5:00:00 [3] | |
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| Private class for our team at the Outpost in Duluth. We ran the upper section of the St. Louis River and Randy put together a customized class to prepare us for PQ. We took one inflatable tandem and one hardshell tandem, since the latter are the boats we'll be using. We stopped at First Hole and cycled around several times, learning how to maneuver the beasts (and when to maneuver vs. just punching though.) Also practiced our self rescue there as well. Cold water!
After lunch, we went down the river, swapping boats a couple of times. Most of the way down, Randy let us read the river and didn't tell us the line to take, but he did at Electric Ledge. Mark and I managed it successfully in the Hypalon boat, although he later said we were awfully close to tipping left (which I didn't really feel.) Dan and Rebecca tried it in the hardshell and strayed too far right (near the big hole) and did a barrel roll left. Randy and Billy came down to grab Dan and the overturned boat, and we jumped out of the eddy to pick up Rebecca. We cut back left and tried to eddy out again, but we had spent too much time in the fast current and just missed getting into its downstream end. We immediately had to run through Rescue Rapids (appropriate name) with Rebecca hanging onto the end of the boat. Luckily, we took a solid line and stayed in pretty deep water, so despite some chaos and a couple of bumps, everyone got through OK.
All of us but Dan regrouped downstream right, Randy and Billy had dropped him off upstream left. All people, boats, and paddles were accounted for. We waded the boats back upstream to a mid channel island, then I ferried the hardshell across to pick up Dan, which gave us another chance to take the lower portion of Rescue Rapids before we got out onto the reservoir.
Here's a decent river map. |
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| C • Envy and jealousy 2 |
| Riverboarding (whitewater) 45:00 [3] | |
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| Geared up and took the riverboards down below the Hwy 210 bridge. Randy and Billy had brought a Big Kahuna bodyboard and an NRS inflatable in addition to our ripboards, so the six of us played around a couple of drops, going through forward, backward, and sideways. Then we went upstream and did 210 Drop, which I skipped out on and later regretted after seeing from the viewing platform how much fun it was.
The riverboards are very easy to hold onto even if you get knocked around, and using your feet to turn becomes instinctual after a few minutes. They're also useful for protecting your face, e.g. as you hit backwash. It was fun but it was getting late and we hadn't yet had dinner, so we packed it in. |
Saturday May 6 |
| Trail Run tempo 1:15:00 [3] 7.8 mi (9:36 / mi) +250m 5:26 / km | |
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| Trail run at Chippewa Moraine. Ran counterclockwise on the Circle trail, then out to Plummer Lake along the Ice Age trail. Constantly climbing or descending due to the morainal topography. |
| Hiking 30:00 [2] 2.0 mi (14:59 / mi) | |
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| Road Run 25:00 [3] 2.6 mi (9:37 / mi) +90m 5:24 / km | |
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| Came back along the road to Cty M, then the rest of the Circle trail. |
| Hiking 45:00 [2] 2.0 mi (22:30 / mi) | |
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| Checking out Big Falls County Park. |
Friday May 5 |
| Swimming (gym) 1:00:00 [2] | |
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| With Dan. |
Thursday May 4 |
| MTB (road) 1:35:00 [3] 23.0 mi (4:07 / mi) | |
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| High bridge - Dodd - 110 - Valley Park - Great Rivers Trail - Fort Snelling - Minnehaha - River Road - Summit. Got a flat tire a few miles into the ride. |
Wednesday May 3 |
| MTB (technical) 1:00:00 [3] 7.9 mi (7:35 / mi) | |
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| River Bottoms. East side was pretty good, west side still with standing water. Bailed twice, once on a crappy log pile (big tire-swallowing gap on the far side) and once in a mud hole (tire slipped and I landed in a patch of buckthorn) Makes me look like an amateur :) |
Tuesday May 2 |
| Swimming (gym) 45:00 [2] | |
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| Strength/Core (gym) 30:00 [2] | |
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