(Total distance covers both the running and snowshoeing sections of today's race.)
We joined the Canadian road trip to Sandy Creek, NY for the CNYO SnowGaine - a rogaine-style event where teams navigate around the same large map from 9-5 on two consecutive days, trying to maximize their points. Early registration fee was $35/team for the 2-day event including a huge quantity of hot food and drink at the end of each day. How do they do it?!?
The Bullfrog Van crew consisted of Slice (meeting her teammate Dog Runner in NY), Leanimal & Phatty, Milhouse & Dee, and 'Bent and me. We stayed at Harris Lodging, where each team got its own room, and we shared a communal kitchen and living room. Perfect arrangement, and it was great to have time to catch up with friends over the weekend. The driving weather on Friday night was horrible. We saw accidents along the 401, but our all-wheel drive and snow tires helped get us there in one piece - phew.
I think there were 16 teams, which means that a lot of people missed a great event. Eric Smith gave us our maps half an hour before the start. That's not much time to plan a 2-day race, so my plan was to try to divide the map into two areas as quickly as possible, then focus on choosing a reasonable route for Day 1. Eric had indicated that the top teams might complete the course, so I figured that the way to approach Day 1 was to assume that we would get them all, then we could always plan Day 2 differently if it appeared impossible. (Which it quickly did!) Last year we'd made the mistake of planning our Day 1 route so that we would skip controls on the outside of the map if we ran out of time. Then the next day we ended up going near controls that we'd already visited because we'd allowed our map to get "fragmented". This year I wanted to get out and completely finish the far northeast section of the map so that any missed controls would be closer to the start/finish, giving us maximum flexibility for planning a good Day 2 route.
The weather forecast was wintry - blowing snow and occasional ice pellets that made it very chilly along roads and in open fields. Looking at all the roads along our route, 'Bent and I decided to use snowshoes on Day 1, which was a mistake. We did a lot of road running (logged separately), sometimes on a hard surface and sometimes on soft snow, which was like running on sand. We used ski poles to push ourselves along while running, which was really helpful in the soft stuff.
For those who have seen the map, the control numbers will make sense. Otherwise, you'll just have to picture us running through the Winona State Forest, which apparently gets the most snow in the U.S. east of the Rockies. It was easy to believe!
Skipped #54 since I like to leave controls close to the finish area to allow more flexibility later in the day. Then into the woods in deep snow for 33, 72, 53. Found Milhouse & Dee's tracks at 33 and followed them for part of the time. Met Slice & Dog Runner coming toward us - hmmm, interesting. Out to 35 on the road, then turned north. Then I was the victim of a Bear Attack! No kidding, there were two big furry brown dogs barking and growling furiously at the end of their driveway, accompanied by two young children. I'm not afraid of dogs, so we kept on running as the children yelled, "Stop it, Bear!" Too late - Bear bit me on the bum. Argghh. We ran a short distance further, then 'Bent confirmed that my tights had no holes. I made a mental note to confirm in the evening that the skin wasn't broken, because otherwise I'd have to drive back to their house and ask for proof of rabies shots. Grrrrrr. (Luckily, it turns out that Bear was unsuccessful in his mission.) About 400 meters later, we were greeted by two barking pit bulls on the road, including an unaltered male. I love dogs, but this was different, since these two could kill us if they wanted to. We walked instead of running, keeping our poles poised and ready for battle. Their owner (shaved head & camo clothing) was yelling and running after them as they followed us down the road. Luckily, they weren't as gutsy as Bear. As long as we met their eyes (looking over our shoulders), they kept their distance. If we looked away toward the direction we were travelling, they ran up close behind us again. Some people don't deserve to have dogs.
Over to 61, then a 4.5 km out-and-back road run to 76 with snow whipping into our faces. We saw Milhouse & Dee and Slice & Dog Runner heading out as we were heading back.
No sign of Phatty & Leanimal all day, even on the sign-in sheets at each control. They must have done something *completely* different!
Then 36, where we stopped for a bit of lunch, then 57, which seemed a little misplaced. Fortunately, the three Canadian teams converged at the point where we expected the control to be, and we worked together to find it. Then up to 40, which was probably a mistake, but I didn't want to leave any controls in this quadrant going into Day 2. Slice & Dog Runner wisely turned west toward 60. Around 40, 'Bent's bad knee finally reacted to all the road running we'd been doing with heavy packs (snowshoes attached). We were as far as we could be from the start/finish, and he was using his ski poles as crutches to hurl himself forward. We decided to head to 77 (perhaps foolishly) then bail out. It was almost 11 km to the finish, mostly on hilly snowmobile trails covered in soft snow, and we had less than 1:45 to do it in. Pumped full of Advil, 'Bent bravely kept up a walk/run pace the whole way back. It would have been a little shorter to go through the woods and pick up 60 and 75 on the way, but we didn't want to take any chances.
It felt like Bargy Road would never end! In the last 2 km, Milhouse & Dee approached from behind, and we ran together to finish at 5:11 p.m., which gave us a 33-minute start delay penalty for Day 2. Total 540 points for the day. It felt like we had a good start, but things unravelled in the last 3 hrs. At least we succeeded in our goal to do all controls in one area of the map far from the start/finish, leaving all of the remaining controls available for Day 2. It was clear now that we couldn't get them all, so Day 2 would be an optimization exercise.