Saturday Aug 18 |
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| Event: MNOC Rogaine
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 | Orienteering race 5:00:00 [3] **** | |
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| Rest of the time for O section, est. 6:25 total. |
| MTB (technical) race 3:09:00 [3] ** 32.0 mi (5:54 / mi) +500m 3:30 / km | |
| spiked:5/5c |
| Quick transition back to bikes. As we were going out, we saw Ya Mule and Ya Mule 180 running in to the TA about a mile up the road, so that gave us an idea what the gap was. The bike had some nice challenges, including a bridgeless crossing of the Montreal River which forms the WI-MI border. There were quite a few areas with deep sand. At CP 9, we had a mystery challenge - all four of us had to balance on a cinder block without any part of our bodies hanging below the top of the block. Then some more sand, then I misread the map and read a bridge across the Mud River where there was none (this is on the way to the last CP.) So we get to the end of the road, and it turns into a grass track leading south into a floating marsh. We stumbled our bikes out to the edge of the river itself, where there was a ruin of an old bridge. I volunteered to test the water, jumped off the side of the bridge, and couldn't hit bottom. Finally I discovered a place about 100m downstream where there was enough aquatic vegetation to walk acorss the river waist-to-chest deep, although your feet were on nothing but plant roots. We carefully took our bikes across, only to be confronted with a head-high willow-like tangle, still rooted in shallow water. However, this strip of vegetation was only about 20m wide, so we proceeded by lifting our bikes, throwing them forward to press down the woody vegetation, then moving up and repeating the process. We came out into a sphagnum bog, and that felt like easy bikewhacking in comparison. We paralleled the river until we hit the trail on the other side (that the ruined bridge had connected to) and finally got out onto the road.
It turns out both WEDALI and Ya Mule had taken the same route (we saw WEDALI's tracks) and so we didn't lose any appreciable time to them (since there was another route which took you across the river well upstream where it was smaller.) We took a steady pace back to the lodge and finished in 2nd place with a time of 15:09. WEDALI had 14:15 and Ya Mule had 15:26. |
Friday Aug 17 |
| Note | |
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| Trekkineer AR (24 hour) |
| Road Run race 30:00 [4] * 3.5 mi (8:34 / mi) vdot: 35.8 | |
| shoes: Salomon XA Pro 3D (2007, gray) |
| Start of Trekkineer AR at Gile, W 5 PM. Road ran from the start line to the canoes, using human tow from the start. |
| Paddling (canoe) race 3:30:00 [4] ** 8.5 mi (24:42 / mi) | |
| spiked:20/20c shoes: Salomon XA Pro 3D (2007, gray) |
| A full 20 checkpoints on the Gile Flowage, all on little islands or protruding rocks. Since it was a the beginning of the race, it was a little follow-the-leader. We stayed up front with WEDALI, both Ya Mule teams, and Mastodon. One of the tricks was trying to be as quick as possible in and out of the canoes. I had the passport and (literally) jumped out of the canoe for most of them, then Mark would position the boat for easy takeoff. Came off the water in 4th place. |
| MTB (technical) race 1:15:00 [4] ** 16.0 mi (4:41 / mi) +250m 2:47 / km | |
| spiked:6/6c |
| Transition to bikes for some ATV trail riding as it got dark. Took a good route into the next TA a Weber Lake and passed either one or two teams who stayed on the ATV trail. |
| Miscellaneous race 20:00 [1] | |
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| TA time. |
| Orienteering race 1:25:00 [3] **** 15.0 mi (5:39 / mi) +400m 3:15 / km | |
| spiked:11/12c shoes: Salomon XA Pro 3D (2007, gray) |
| Excellently set Night-O, with lots of checkpoints 200-900 meters off trails and plenty of temptation to bushwhack. Some places it was reasonable to do so, but others were ill-advised. We played it safe and, after some bobbling on the first one, settled down to a very efficient leg. We didn't even run and had (I think) the second best time. WEDALI did it in 5:43.
I found out afterwards Ya Mule took and ill-advised route and lost as much as an hour, which allowed us to pass them. |
Wednesday Aug 15 |
| MTB (technical) 1:35:00 [3] 17.0 mi (5:34 / mi) +300m 3:18 / km | |
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| Biking at Savanna Portage/Remote Lakes. The logged area is starting to grow in. |
| Paddling (canoe) 1:00:00 [2] | |
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| Paddle up the W Savanna River until too shallow to go. |