orienteering race 7:34:00 [2]
the first 5hrs of this rogaine were sooo horrible!!! holy macaroni it was my dad and i running together and we just had so much trouble finding the controls. it seemed like complete luck because there was nothing to precision to orienteer off of. it was really just wandering around looking for those miniature orienteering flags. ahhh!!! we did have a couple controls we aced though. my dad was mr. compass-bearing guru!! there were no flies on us when it came down to that!! after we hit the 5hr mark, i was exhausted, and starving, and sleep deprived... basically on the way to going insane. i was a dinosaur tramping through the fields with grass over my head. and a ballerina leaping across streams. oh and not to mention a ninja. "alright ninja kempy, your next mission is to find control 46. however, there is an additional challenge of towing the wise ninja kemper. goodluck."
yeah... it was that bad. we pushed sooo hard for those last 2 1/2 hrs though because we wanted to beat francis' team. we saw him and benoit coming out of one section ( so just two controls ahead of us). the route choice was to either go in, pick up 3 controls and then run back the same way to continue on. or to go in, cross the massive swamp and cut off the big trail run. francis and benoit took the trail run, which was our plan, but once we got to the decision point i wondered just how bad the swamp could be... it was pretty bad. the first 300m was all grass and water just past the ankles. then we got to this little island and we could see the control just on the other side but there was a super dee duper overflowed swamp in between us. i'd say that it was a good couple meters deep but thank goodness there was a handy dandy beaver who had been doing his job. because of all the rain it was totally overflowed; on one side there was about 3 feet of water followed by who knows how much muck. and then on the other side it was a 2 foot drop down to an icky looking swamp. woot! we tightroped all the way along but the whole thing was overgrown with bushes and grass and it was all over my head. quite epic really. almost fell over each side a couple times and i think that that beaver is pretty pissed at us because a few more leaks may have sprung in his dam. so definitely a horrible route choice there. oh and we also lost a lot of time at one control which was misplaced. we found the ribbons no problemo, but the control was quite a ways away and it took us a good 20min to find.
we managed to find all the controls though. not exactly sure of the distance but i think that it's up and around 40km. francis and benoit beat us by 11min and both of us had pretty big flameouts so it would be interesting to see how we would've done without the blundering around. i was definitely happy with how it went and i definitely wasn't in as much pain like after the laurentides rogaine. yet another fabulous gatineau rogaine!! :)