Training Log Archive: silkychrome

Off Road Rage, 3p co-ed with Andrei and AR rookie Kyle, 1st OA!!! cannot believe it. we made excellent strategy choices in last 2h of the race to take it.

1 - PADDLE, 6.5mi, 1:32
On Fri night we drew CP6 as our first CP (ORR made teams draw so everyone split up right away). It was cold in the AM but it was nice to get the paddle out of the way. We bundled up, ran down to canoes, and put in on the river side of the parking lot (opposite of boat ramp). We were first to CP6 with Register Racing (3p male, "RR") right behind. RR and another 3p coed team overlook us on the remaining paddle but otherwise it was uneventful.

2 - TREK + HAUNTED HUNT, 9.4mi, 1:48
We opted to trek next, strategy being to warm up from cold paddle. We also picked up the extra "Haunted Hunt" map which was a 4-point urban-o with a Halloween theme. We did the regular points first and the Haunted points at the end. Maybe would have been better the other way around. Anyway I felt good (not amazing, but keeping up) on this leg and we were all running well. We saw RR several times on out and backs for this trek, they seemed to gain on us on the road but we had more direct routes into CP.

3 - BIKE, 10.7mi, 1:18
We had one "short" loop left and it was biking up to the Truman MTB park for some singletrack. These trails aren't difficult but they are dense and confusing. I had a hard time with the trek-bike transition, my legs were dead and I couldn't keep up. I had my pack but no bottles on the bike. I didn't like the map situation we had here - a park trail map with no contours/CPs/UTM grid, and the main race USGS map with pre-plotted CPs but no trails. So we really had to guess about where the CPs were. Since the trails are so dense, that part of the course needs a blown-up park map, but I would have made sure the trails were accurate and put the CPs on the trail map. Anyway we rode up there and Andrei destroyed the map...we had guessed correctly on 3 out of 4 CPs and the other one we just kept riding the trail til it bent around and then we got it. Minimal time wasted and we got out of there.

4 - BIKE, 20.5mi, 1:49
In TA we were with Skeletons who thought they were close to the lead. Now it was time to head out on the long loop and I was suffering. Andrei took my pack and Kyle took one of my bottles. The first stretch of road out of town was a v busy highway and all slightly uphill, I was hurting. The nav was straightforward and we tried to draft where possible. Andrei really helped by calling out the distances between CPs, it was all 2-5k between points so I just focused on these small goals. It was a rhythm...ride to CP, eat a bite of sandwich, drink some Skratch, ride to next CP. I was hoping that by continuing to eat, I would just not get slower. I wasn't hopeful about getting faster since my fitness isn't there, but I just needed to not get slower. We saw Skeletons a few times going opposite way towards the end of this and thought they had forgotten to punch a few??

5 - TREK, 7.4mi, 2:03
We arrived at TA2 at Osage Bluff Rec Area and got ready to trek. We may have seen Skeletons riding in as we were running out? It took a few k's for my feet to thaw and also for us to discover we had about 400 calories between the entire team for a 2hr trek. Whoops. So we hit the first 3 CPs and then looped back thru TA2 to pick up more food from our bikes. We saw Skeletons a few times out there and they seemed to be faster on foot but Andrei's nav was more direct. We were back and forth until the final CP and then they pulled ahead. We also picked up a huge amount of burrs and hitchhikers on this section. We saw Alpine Shop about 2/3's of our way thru and guessed that they were just starting because their tights were still clean!!!! Again, the burrs were insane, they stuck on my tights and rubbed my skin raw (I only stopped to remove the ones that would interfere with biking). We made it back to TA, Skeletons were still there (changing bike shoes? messing with burrs?) and we rode out first.

6 - BIKE, 12.1mi, 1:14
Andrei had guessed that Skeletons had picked up some of these CPs already (which would explain their fully route on Leg 4) and sure enough, they never passed us coming home. So they were able to take a more direct route while we still had 4 or 5 CPs to get. Again, I was suffering, but just repeated the eat/drink/CP strategy. In the final k's we had a really neat route from the highway to the S/F, kudos to ORR for finding that and working it into the race (basically abandoned double-track to a dead end bike trail that avoided a busy bridge). We were all speculating about what the bonus/elite map was going to be...I thought paddle, Andrei thought bike/trek, Kyle wasn't sure. As we were crossing the ped bridge to HQ, we saw Skeletons paddling. Ah ha!

7 - BONUS BIKE, 4mi, 0:28
Well we got the bonus/elite map and it was the 6-hour race's course! Also Tiara told us that we were 2nd overall back!! I could not believe that. We could do any of the CPs in any order, just had to use the same discipline specified. We thought Skeleton's choice to paddle was strange since it was a lot of time for 1 CP. We decided to ride over to the trekking loop since there were CPs on the way there/back and then 4 CPs on a 4k foot loop. We were also basically out of food so we ate/drank a ton in TA...I slammed a gigantic chocolate cupcake that Skeletons had given me at check-in for picking up their paddles a year ago. Once we left HQ, we had about 2h10m remaining. We rode up to the trekking TA in 20 minutes and got 1 CP.

8 - BONUS TREK, 2.9mi, 0:49
We did this loop, slightly longer than 4k, but got 4 CPs in 50 minutes. It was a lot of shuffling for me. We saw RR here arriving in TA as we were attacking the final CP. On the run back to TA from the last CP, we had a debate about our route home. We knew we had time for at least 1 and maybe 2 points. We didn't want to be late but we talked strategy and decided we had to go for 2, to protect against a team opting for an all-bike bonus strategy which was also worth 7 points.

9 - BONUS BIKE, 7mi, 0:37
We rode out finally on our last section of the race!!! I was so happy. We got the penultimate CP, did our time check, and decided we definitely had time for one more. We got that one (which re-used the neat connection from road to HQ again) and powered home. In total we got 7 bonus CPs which tied us for the lead with Alpine/Kuat, but we won overall on time.

#RUNforRBG total: 42

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#RUNforRBG total: 24

Ericsson -4 again. Erl had the excellent idea to bring my old MTB shoes to the basement to use for trainer shoes. v convenient!

evening run with Tess!

#RUNforRBG total: 20