Adventure Race race 21:15:00 [3] **** 90.0 mi (14:10 / mi)
spiked:52/55c
Thunder Rolls AR: Gerry puts on a great race. By the end of the first 90 minutes we had done a 100' ascent up a cliff, rappelled down the same distance, were neck deep in water, trekked several 100 feet in to a cave and back, attacked by bats and were in first place!!!
We gave up a few spots over the course of the next 20 hours, but had a good race overall. The paddle was pretty epic with a lot of fog, log jams to cross, and 1-2 huge strainers per mile. Made it through with no major issues, but thoroughly soaked. Two major issues in the "Advanced" section of the course. The first, I got lazy, the 2nd I got unlucky.... On the 2nd, I navigated to where the control should have been, searched lower on the spur, searched higher on the spur, tried to nav to the next control to then locate in reverse, failed, eventually went back to the preceding control (no easy feat), and took an alternate (safer???) route to find the control. Ended up in the same location we were at 90 minutes earlier. This control was optional, so we abandoned, walked 20 meters and ran in to the flag.... so frustrating. The rest of the course was straight forward except we had to battle heat exhaustion (creek flop), lack of water (garden hose at an empty house (water was hose/iron flavored, YUM), and a lot of towing by yours truly.
Ended up in 4th place Coed. Not sure how many other teams finished in front of us. We were probably top 7 out of 30+ teams.