Discussion: awesome race

lady!!

Nice job, way to go.

Yes! Congratulations on an awesome race.

Thanks for the compliments on the Mounds map and the O' course. (Mike Minium did the course design---I just printed the maps and put out the controls on Friday.)

I estimated the minimum course length at 15km. Britt's GPS track shows 13.75 miles, or 22.1km in about 3 hours 15 minutes.

Alpine Shop arrived at 7:07 (memory) and left the transition about 10:45 for 3 hours 38 minutes. So biking looks really attractive.

When I was listening to Alpine Shop plan, I wasn't sure anyone on your team saw the vehicle track that led to the field above 22, which seemed like an obvious first control before getting the western two controls 17 and 18. And David Frei dragged his finger along the prominent N-S vehicle track that takes you towards the two southern controls 19 and 24, but he didn't trace the zig-zag part of it that takes you to the boat ramp. I assumed you might have used that coming north during the bike, but I wasn't sure, but it really seemed like David missed it (which is really easy to do with maps, because (IMO) you really have to look at a map to see what it's telling you). However, we really should ask him, because I'm not certain.

And again, really impressive victory.

Nice work as always!! :)

cedarcreek - do you have a pic of the o-map you can upload? no idea where our copy of the map ended up. i'll share your comments w Mr. Frei and see what he remembers. i do know he used my eyes a couple times to figure out if lines were faint trails or fences, those were hard to tell apart.

I agree, the black dots leading to CP21, I thought were rocks but was indicating a drainage ditch. I realized that when we found the CP. The low light and tired eyes made it difficult after looking at a USGS map all day. Good race Emily. Too bad we didn't ever see you out there.

I posted a map image to Facebook, but here's a downloadable link.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByT47rdvlO-lTF8wT...

I assume there were no boats involved for this part. Looks like a lot of trails and roads to take advantage of.

I think I'd have done (17, 18), 20, 21, 22, (19,24), 23

Was there a big benefit to using the vehicle track @ 22 vs the trail? There's green stuff between 22 and the track. They're both flat, but the track might be better between the road and 21.

Biggest question for me is where to cross the stream on the way from 19 to 23. From 22 to 19, I'd have taken the white woods west of the clue sheet, if the woods were really open.

20 is interesting but there are good safe routes from the NW and WSW, depending on what the stream is like.

Adding my 2 cents.

I know I had complete map detail overload when I first saw the map. 15+ hours of non-detailed USGS and then one of the better O-maps I've had the opportunity to use. Fortunately, I've still got pretty good eyes. Nice map.

Because of Rachel's questionable bike situation and not knowing how long it would take us to get to the finish if it died again, I opted to get easy/quick points first, thinking that might be all we could do. We opted to ride in part to see how the bike did.

Rode up to 21, then to 18. This went super fast and the bike seemed to be working. 18 was the first indication that the trails were good so we rode to 17 with absolutely no problems. I hadn't intended to get that one at first.

Our time was still good so we ducked in for 20 on the way back. At that point I knew we'd have no problems getting 22 and 23. Almost considered 19 but math suggested it would make no difference, and there was no direct route.

Not sure if we would have picked that route without the bike issues. In hind sight, I'm not totally sure how having bike issues led me to think that doing this section on the bike was a good idea, but in the end I felt pretty good about it.

Just re-read the paragraph on this section. Hadn't realized this was being done in the dark. That would def make the brown dots look black.

With all the roads, mix of bike/run would have been my choice, I think. Now the vehicle track question makes sense.

Rules question: On the final section, if a bike dies, can you leave it behind and retrieve it after the race?

If you want to run 20k to the finish :)

And considering many of us had already logged 20+ k of road running that was NOT going to be an option...

Not really. But on this map, it might have been an option. Worst case on this map is probably 5 or 6k? That said, I don't know what the mechanical was. Just thinking 'out loud'. It's not something I've ever contemplated during a race, but I also haven't had a race section like that one with an awesome map and mode of travel options.

The finish line was 20k of roads away from this section. This was not the finish of the race. Alpine and my team were the only 2 to clear this section. Alpine did it via foot. We did it on bike. Even with a significant bushwhack at the end, biking ended up being about 20min faster.