Training Log Archive: Timato

Second half of the race.

C • Dude... 8

C • CNN? 11

Adventure Rage AR

So where to start with this race. Probably from the start when we learned that the Hot Shot Lawyer wasn't going to be able to come with us to Michigan. You see it's really hard to get Mr. Noshnoj out of the house these days what with a 2 year old and a new born, so this was his one big race of the year. So after exhausting our short list of people we knew it was suggest we ask Tom to come race with us. Audrey knew him a bit so at Nav Stock RAID I approached him, asked him if he was interested and signed him up right there on the spot. Glad we did that in the end because he was a fantastic teammate.

We were all pumped to do this race. I had done MIX last year, which is put on by the same organizers and these guys run a quality race course. I was chatting with one of the race directors as he drove us to the start line and he was saying they learned everything they know after doing a number of RtN's back in the old Dave Z days and they just try to model their events based off of that. It really shows they care a lot about the race when it runs as smoothly as it did.

We arrive at the resort just outside Cadillac MI on Thursday afternoon after. Luckily we were able to convince the border guard that the Eddie Johnson we were travelling with was not the same fellow they were looking for. Their Eddie Johnson apparently has 5 different arrest warrants out for him, but apparently he's a bit taller (kidding) so they let us through. After last year we learned you stop in the US to buy the race food so this in the very least wasn't a problem coming over the boarder with cans of beef soup.

The nice thing about this race is they give you all the maps the night before and let you plot out the points. They just don't give you the instructions so you're not 100% sure what the course is, but at least you're plotting is done so you won't need as much time in the morning with the maps. Friday morning rolled around and at 8 am we were sitting in the banquet hall at the resort for a free breakfast as they revealed the race course to us. The course consisted of 2 paddles in canoes, a paddle in a 4 person raft, 3 bike legs (one of which was almost entirely on single track trails), and 3 treks of which two were considered score-o allowing you to do the 9/10 controls in any order. The other nice thing with this course was that with the Score-O they set out a minimum number of controls you needed to stay ranked. This way slower teams were still racing with faster teams rather then being short cutted, or just unranked completely.

The best part was we were warned about the bugs and how bad they would be. You can see from some of the stories online that I really hit it off with the race organizers when I made fun of his bug net after the first trek when I think I'd only seen one or two mosquitos at that point in the race.

So how did it all start for us? Well it started out well when I woke up and realized I was coming down with a cold. I had the sore through and runny nose. "Great, this is going to go so well" was all I was thinking. At 1 pm we all climbed into canoes and tried not to the let the current take us past the start line before they said go. "Go" and 24 canoes all go in different directions ramming each other as we all try to paddle with a canoe directly beside us. Eddie and I both learned in this leg that strong paddlers we are not. Slowly teams started to pass us by and I start my usual approach of swearing at the canoe, or just the fact that we are in the canoe as teams pass us by like there's something wrong with our boat. I'm pretty sure we came off the water with only 4/5 teams behind us. Eddie and I were not happy campers at this point. I remember Eddie saying, "Oh well, we'll see how we do from here, maybe we can make a few spots up".

After the paddle we head out on the trek. We had to hit a number of points in the woods and then we'd come out to a trail run to the new canoe put in. We hit the first control fine, and then I have us run up a trail to avoid the "steep" hills because to avoid getting cliffed out. I learned at that point that in this race that was nearly impossible and we could just climb anything we saw. We got another CP without a problem and then had a longer trek to the next one. It was at this point where we came up on the Bobkittens in the woods. I did my best bear impression to try to scare them, but they're so tough that it didn't even phase them. I also realized at this point that Leanimal wasn't 100% sure where she was on the map, so since they'd been trash talking us pretty bad all week I just put our head down and kept walking on our route as they stopped to look at their map. Hit two more points and ran out to the paddle (where I insulted a whole nation by calling them wimps, although I don't think I ever used the word wimps in my comment). Turns out that we did really well on the trek and we were now in third. "Sweet" we're thinking, we may be back in this after all.

Now another paddle, and yet again teams pass us (we're going to have to solve this sooner or later). This paddle was a lot shorter (thank god) and uneventful, we didn't even pull out our trademark 360 at any point.....

Of wait, I did manage to barf over the side of the canoe, but then again that's almost normal when I race these days. hmmm.... we're going to have to solve this sooner or later..... I'm seeing a trend here.

Onto the bike, I'm pumped because the bike is always the most fun for me. So off we go, we're biking for 10 minutes, something comes off Eddie's bike, Tom yells stop, Eddie stops ...... can you see where this is going......I stop, Audrey looks behind, but doesn't stop..... Well she did once she ran into me and her forward momentum was halted by my bike ...... and then the ground..... "Audrey are you ok", "Yeah Tim I'm fine let's go" "I don't think I can my drive train seems stuck".... Eddie: "Is it supposed to be bent like that".... Oh shit the hanger is totally bent and there goes our race ....Luckily we were able to bend this back. It even held up until the last bike leg before it started to bend again. Disaster averted on we go.

The next two bikes sections were just awesome. All on single track in a section called Big M. First we did a shorter loop on the inside section of trails, and then we did a longer outside loop in the dark. The whole way we're going back and forth with all the lead teams. We pull into the TA at the end of this and enjoy our nice cold cans of soup, ahh the unsupported life. Apparently later on people got warm pizza, suckers that just sounds soo unheathly in a race like this. :)

Onto the Score-O. So as we were heading out Luke the race organizer was talking to a few of us as we were getting changed. He figured it would take us until morning. He even asked "do you think you can get them all before morning?" To which I responded "Are they in the right place? We'll see". This leg couldn't have gone better. I'm really excited to see the results because I think we'll have the fastest leg here. After 3.5 hours we were out of the woods and back at the TA with still another hour or two until morning.... and.... most importantly we were alone in first place.

A quick TA and off for a long bike ride. This was a more traditional AR bike ride with lots of sand, water, rain, road, freezies, and another round of vomit(yes still me, the cold was doing really well at this point). We ended up finishing with a solo racer, who took a much smart route to the final TA. But hey, we finished it and were still right up there. Another quick TA and onto the rafts. This was a lot of fun, all 4 of us in this raft going down river. We talked a lot to stay awake at this point. From the rafts we did another small bike ride back to the resort. By now my bike was just a mess. I had maybe 2 or 3 gears that I could use to peddle in. Eddie helped me a lot on the hills because my chain would keep getting stuck, or skipping, or it would just come right off. I was glad we were almost done the biking because my bike had also determined it was done.

We pull into the resort a few minutes behind the solo rider and we've got one final score-o to do. I was feeling pretty good about our chances based on how the Nav had gone up until now. Then we realized that our shoes weren't here yet. We went into the race organizers and asked about our paddle bag, which had our shoes in it. They made some calls and it was on the way, but still 10 minutes out. We made the call to wait rather then force Eddie to do this leg in his bike shoes. Proops to the support guys who sped from the TA to get us our gear right away. Eddie throws on the shoes and we're off. First CP check go it, 2nd CP easy, 3rd CP straigh forward, 5 and then 6. 4 more to go, we're on a role...... "Shit where are we"......"Let's go to the top of the hill we'll figure it out"...."Nope no idea".... We wander down to a trail... Still no idea. We sit down..Decision time, I could only come up with 2 solutions to the problem.

1. We set a baring in a general direction back to the finish line, we walk until we hit a road and then relocate and attach the final 4 controls.

2. We continue to wander on this trail we'd found hoping it turns out to be something we can identify.

It took no time for the time to decide on option #1. Off we go. Sure enough we hit a road after 20/30 minutes of treking, figure out where we are, turn around and start running to get the last controls, from here we got the next checkpoint and then we had to go get the one that had screwed me up before. Off we go up the re-entrant. We walk almost to the top and I realized we had totally gone past it. We turn around and head back down the re-entrant. I stopped at a point and now I'm really frustrated. We're right were it should be, where is it. As I'm staring at the map trying to figure this out Tom suddenly yells out... "Found it" and then he picks the flag up off the ground. Damn it had fallen off the tree. So we punch it, re-hand it and head out happy we had finally figure this out. Got the last two and then it was a run down the ski hills into the finish. The whole way down we're all thinking that we just cost ourselves the race. Into the finish hand in the control card, and discover we'd won. Wow, couldn't believe it after all the different problems we'd had that we still won it.

Going into this race we figured we'd be competitive, but we never thought we'd win. Even after the first trek we figured it was impossible, but we never stopped racing and in the end we were rewarded for all that hard work. I think the most important thing I learned in this race is that you can never stop in an adventure race because you never know what else is going on.

Congrats to the Bobkittens who after the first trek totally smoked the course. They ended up as the 2nd place team and 4th overall.

Barb: Is this good enough for you???

Cheers.

C • More Detailed Report 3

At the gym.

On the arm bike.

Abs/Core.

Along the waterfront, rest week before the race on Friday.