Training Archive: Bash

Adventure Racing race 7:50:00 [3] **

Coast Raid Day 3

Another night in a school gym with new and old friends, followed by another too-early morning. We started with a paddle, which meant that we could inflate and assemble our kayaks before the race clock started. We were back at the familiar St. Paul's federal dock, where we've started our paddling for the past 3 days. Daniel Poirier is skilled at designing compact courses that don't cover a huge area on the map, but still feel interesting and different to the racers. This makes it easier from the race organization, transportation, safety and volunteer coordination perspectives, which in turn makes it easier for us to race in wild places like this.

The fastest route this morning involved a 400 meter portage with a climb near the start, but that wasn't consistent with our adventure vacation philosophy, so we joined the minority of teams that chose to paddle extra distance through some beautiful little channels.



At the end of Grand Lac Sale, we had a 1 km portage to the fish plant. This time we sat the kayaks on our shoulders, which was much easier than hauling them along by the handles at each end. After another few km of paddling, we transitioned to bikes for some hilly riding on inland ATV trails. At this CP, we had to drop our bikes at the end of a trail and hike to a viewpoint. (Daniel likes to send us to scenic lookouts.)



We continued to make berry picking a priority. No chance of getting bored with our race food.



We rode through Middle Bay, which is at the bottom of a big hill. As we whizzed past, the volunteers figured out who we were and held up huge flags for the appropriate country. After climbing out of town on the far side, we dropped our bikes at a point and headed out for a long trek on a beautiful, flat, open peninsula. The nicest part of today's trek took us along the seashore where we found a lot of whale bones.



Including part of a skull.



The farthest CP was this little fishing house on a remote point. Wow, I could hang out here for days watching the ocean.



We didn't need to go down to the ocean as early as we did, but it was much more entertaining to walk there.



Here we are, racing hard.



After a long, flat, boggy walk that was surprisingly hard on our leg muscles, followed by a short coasteering section and a little climb over a rocky hill, we were back at our bikes for the final ride into the village of Middle Bay, population 30. They had decorated a house in the centre of town to welcome us. We made the cut-off for the Extreme section, but once again we decided to take a pass on it.



Several of them had made up T-shirts saying "Middle Bay welcomes the Coast Raid". They collected our autographs on their backs!



Everyone in this tiny village was really friendly and very kind to us. The population is dwindling as people move elsewhere to find work with the decline of the fisheries, or else they want to be closer to health care facilities. The school is closed, and children need to go to St. Paul's or Blanc-Sablon. But they live in one of the most beautiful seaside locations you could imagine. (When I said this, one lady jokingly offered to sell me her house on the spot.)



Thanks to our berry-picking ways, the small community centre was full of racers by the time we arrived, so the locals opened up their church for us. It felt a little strange to hang our wet underwear over the pews to dry, but it turned out that the teams at the back of the pack got the luxury accommodation option this time!



A number of local families put on an amazing buffet for us at the Middle Bay Interpretive Centre. This photo shows just one of a number of tables, and the meal was accompanied by fresh coffee, a big cooler of beer, and so on. Just like last night, we were spoiled rotten, and we felt humbled by the generosity of these people as they welcomed us to their amazing little corner of Canada.



With full stomachs, it was time to return to the church for a little rest before picking up our maps for the night section, which would start at 10 p.m.

Adventure Racing race 2:49:00 [3] **

Coast Raid Night 3

The only night stage of this year's event was a 3-hour rogaine running from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. We could use any combination of biking or trekking to reach 7 CPs. If you came back after 3 hrs, you got credit for finding all CPs, even if you hadn't. So the only way to gain an advantage over other teams on this section was to find all CPs and come in under 3 hrs.

We rode west from Middle Bay up the steep hill. Most of the local residents were there to see us off, and many of them stayed up past 1 a.m. to welcome the last finishers. Tiny led us to a few CPs on bike, and my new bike shoes finally let me down on one climb where I tipped over and didn't unclip before I hit a rock with my upper shin. This wouldn't have been so bad if I had only done it once, but I managed to do it twice, landing on the same spot. Ouch, it's still painful and swollen after a week of recovery.



I screwed up on the night trek, leading us into the wrong valley so that we had to climb over a rocky hill to get to the right valley. We probably lost 10 minutes, but it felt like an eternity. Because of the tuckamore, it is never easy to follow a compass bearing in this country. In the daytime, I would often choose a high, far-away point on my bearing, then we would choose micro-routes around vegetation while keeping our target in sight. But of course, this didn't work at night, so I had to try to keep track of how far the vegetation had pushed us right or left. The next CP and our return to the road went smoothly, once I got the hang of it.

Our final section was some coasteering, which we obviously should have done first. We knew the tide was rising, but we'd underestimated the effect it would have in this cliffy area. After all that, we returned to the start with 11 minutes to spare - and ready to work on maps for the next morning. Tiny started to work with me, but got sick and headed to bed in hopes of feeling better. I stayed up till 2:30 a.m. doing maps and preparing my pack for the next day. The alarm was set for 5 a.m. - yikes.

Adventure Racing 10:17:00 [3] **

Coast Raid Day 2

As Leanimal explained in her excellent race report, a major highlight of this stage race was the opportunity to stop in North Shore villages and enjoy the warm local welcome and the camaraderie of other racers from North and South America and Europe. Old Fort - where the highway ends - was beautiful in spite of a few black flies.



We - and a lot of damp gear - spent the night in the cozy school gym, sharing stories and laughs with other teams. One local fellow came by to collect our autographs, but we tried our best to stay humble.



Most of the volunteers stayed in other parts of the school, including a couple of friendly medics. They bandaged up AndyCam's thumb after his tumble in the tuckamore, but luckily the most serious injury they handled over 4 days was our South African friend Phillipe's foot, which got cut by a mussel shell. It didn't stop his team from placing 3rd overall though!

We had a bike start today, and at 7:15 a.m., Old Fort was treated to the tunes that greeted us at every race start. It was a nice energetic playlist, but a short one, and we heard the same songs enough that they will have to become the soundtrack for our slideshow! Can anyone remember the others?
Very Superstitious
All Star
Highway to Hell
Black Betty
And who could ever forget...?
Let's Get It Started

We started by biking 12 km to St. Paul's River, mostly on gravel road. There were a few hills, so Pixie and I put Tiny and 'Bent to work towing. We had to inflate our kayaks while the clock was running this time, then we paddled several km out to Ile des Esquimaux, where we took several hours to trek to 4 CPs all over the island.

We were never far from the sea, and there were some great views. We passed a little waterfront cabin that I'd love to spend a week at. We were better at blasting through the tuckamore today - and also better at figuring out ways to avoid it. Some of the trekking went across beautiful open terrain.



And some of it didn't!



We hopped back in our kayaks for a longer paddle that took us out to a point in a stiff breeze. Tiny had fun getting out of the kayak to punch the passport.



From there, we decided to use the wind to push us north, then turn into some protected waters that would take us to a place where we could portage over a road, returning to the harbour less than a km from the main dock. It was risky because it wasn't marked as a portage, but we were going to hit it almost exactly at high tide, so we took the chance. It got shallow early, and we had a few minutes of goopy walking through a salt bog, but it was a good route choice at high tide. Apparently, Team Salomon Suunto got there when the tide was lower, and it was a real pain to get through the muck to the road.

We hopped back onto our bikes and followed roads to a trail that got narrower and more overgrown until we were just riding on a narrow track while bushwhacking through a tunnel of green. Phew - we hit the TA and dropped our bikes for the next trek. The first CP was on a nearby hilltop with a scenic view. (Daniel Poirier, the course designer, has a wonderful sense of the aesthetic.)





From here, we bashed our way through the brush to an open hilltop at the base of a cliff where 'Bent went rappelling again. After bashing back to our bikes, we carried on further east of St. Paul's to the fish factory (do they make fish there?) where we were supposed to do a 700 meter adventure swim to Factory Point on a nearby island. Shortly before we arrived, they closed off the swim due to strong currents that had developed, so we never got the chance to pull out our cool pack rafts. We had to visit a new alternate CP on our side of the water, so we just trekked over to get it. Last but not least, we rode back to St. Paul's River in warm evening light - nice!

Even better, we learned that people in St. Paul's had prepared a "seafood tasting" for the racers at their museum. Incredible news - we just turned around at the finish line and headed back down the hill. And when we got there, it was like a mid-race hallucination. Huge platters overloaded with different types of seafood, fruit and vegetables - wow. One of them commented that they get bored with snow crab legs and steamed mussels because they eat them all the time. We didn't find it boring! I even managed a nice partidgeberry tart - yum!! At the museum, we learned that St. Paul's is the place where the cod trap was invented - and we also learned that some really, really friendly and generous people live there.

Note

Online race coverage - including GPS tracking - will be posted from Aug. 21-24 at:
http://www.coastraid.com

Adventure Racing race 7:36:00 [3] **

Coast Raid Day 1

We had the team presentation ceremony last night, along with speeches by local dignitaries and the race director.



The volunteer support for Endurance Aventure events is truly amazing. As an example, the race emcee is a CBC broadcaster who uses a week of vacation time to come. The volunteers all got nice waterproof-breathable Coast Raid jackets, and many of them seem to be related to one another, including some little kids having a terrific time.

We all slept at the high school in Blanc-Sablon, then piled into a school bus this morning to drive to the village of St. Paul's River. Before the race started, we inflated our kayaks for the first time and put on our cold water paddling gear. Fortunately, the organizers had allowed plenty of time for this!







The Advanced Elements kayaks were pretty good for inflatables. They were stable, tracked well and moved at a reasonable pace.

With a crowd of locals and volunteers cheering us on, the Coast Raid started with a kayak section - about 11 km including a portage of several hundred meters.





Our team remained happily near the back of the pack. Tiny had promised an adventure vacation to his wife Pixie, and 'Bent and I had agreed to approach the Coast Raid in that manner. So there was no pressure, although we did hope to finish the Raid. Anything beyond that would be gravy, so we took hundreds of photos with the 3 waterproof cameras on our team. On land, we often made brief stops to pick blueberries and bakeapples.

We dropped our kayaks in a bay and trekked up a steep hill onto a plateau. It was our first exposure to the boggy ground, fragile sphagnum moss, invisible deep holes and patches of tangled tuckamore that made the treks more challenging than one would expect on relatively open land.



After locating a couple of checkpoints, we descended to the water for several kilometers of awesome coasteering that led us to a ropes section, then ultimately back to our kayaks. The water was warmer than expected - 10-12C, so the coasteering was chilly, but not deadly. Most of the complaints came from the boys, who whinged about shrinkage. According to one guy, "I've got an inny instead of an outy now!"







We hopped back into the kayaks for a short paddle to the village of Old Fort, which is where the highway from Blanc-Sablon ends. There are a number of villages to the west of here on the Lower North Shore, but they aren't accessible by car. The one local team in the race had come from Harrington Harbour, and it had taken them 13 hrs by powerboat to get to Blanc-Sablon. This was their first race - impressive!

We went up to the local school to pick up our bikes for some orienteering in hilly terrain with spectacular views in gorgeous late afternoon light. We ended up dropping our bikes and hiking through a lake to get to one CP, and we had a fun ride through shallow water along a pebbled lake bottom to reach another CP. Basically, we were wet all day!





We made it back to the finish line an hour before the cut-off for the Extreme (i.e. advanced) section. We'd agreed earlier that we wouldn't do it today, so we took the 4-hr penalty and let a couple of other teams move ahead of us. This event isn't about results for us, so that was OK. All the teams built little forts in the school gym using chairs and bags, and - with judicious use of ear plugs and eye shades - most of us slept *very* well!

C • Love the pics 3

Event: Raid International Éco EnduranceAventure
 

Biking 55:00 [3] 18.9 km (2:55 / km)

With our bikes freshly assembled from their boxes, 'Bent, Tiny, Pixie and I rode to Labrador with our new South African friends, Phillipe and Jeremy. We got a taste of the steep climbs and descents as Hwy 138 follows the coast. I suspect the hills will feel a lot tougher in a few days - and they already felt tough today!

Note

Several hours in a school bus from Deer Lake to Ste. Barbe in Newfoundland, then 1 hr 45 min by ferry to Blanc-Sablon, Quebec - just a few kilometers west of the Labrador border. The kayaking conditions here would be a tad rough, but fortunately, our race took us through more protected waters!





In case you're uncertain (I know I was!), here is where Quebec's Lower North Shore is:
http://www.tourismlowernorthshore.com/villages.asp

Trekking 4:15:00 15.5 km (16:27 / km)

Climbed Gros Morne with 'Bent, Tiny and Pixie. Phatty, Leanimal, STORM and AndyCam joined us at the summit, and we all hiked down together. Great views except when we were on top and clouds rolled in temporarily. We saw several caribou and a *big* moose. We got chatting with another hiker who asked, "Where are you all from? A place called Salomon?"

Note

Went to Gros Morne on a rainy day. It was still beautiful there, but we weren't inspired to get our race clothes soaked by hiking in them. It cleared later in the day, and we watched a fantastic sunset with crashing ocean waves at the Lobster Point lighthouse. We stayed in Rocky Harbour and hosted Team Salomon Suunto for an Olympics-watching night.

People in Newfoundland are soooo friendly. We went into a small craft shop, and the owner mentioned that he knew two families from Ontario. We just smiled politely since there are *lots* of people in Ontario, but it turned out that we did know one of the families. They live in Caledon, and he had sold them a house just down the road from the craft shop. (They're involved with whale research.) Small world.