Training Log Archive: wilbertoIn the 1 days ending May 5, 2012:
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Saturday May 5, 2012 #
Event: Frontier Adventure Challenge
10 AM
Adventure Racing race 7:51:00 [4]
FAC Huntsville with Team See You Later, Navigator
Decided I want to continue an early May tradition and get out to kickstart my season with the FAC in Huntsville. Checked with the regular Lather.Rinse.Repeat. lineup and unfortunately noone was able to go, but I wanted to race. Registered as a solo, but put out some feelers looking for teammates, as racing alone wasn’t my first choice. Kevin from See You Later Navigator got back to me saying there was an open spot with him and Dave, so a Masters AR Superteam (Lather, Rinse you later Navigator?) was born!
Plan was the early Sat. am drive up, then crash at Deerhurst Sat. night, so the 4:40 am alarm was pretty early. Good check in with quick plotting, although with everyone bringing mandatory gear, we had to sort out who was carrying what. Plenty of time to get sorted and loaded onto the bus to the start.
Mass bike start up the road, so we were careful to stay in the pack and get up to speed. Bike ahead of me kicked up a small pebble that hit me square on the end of my nose. Ouch. Follow the pack up the hills to the first bike drop. Decided to make the quick switch to trek shoes, then back down the road towards CP2. Seeing teams ahead pop out of the bush on bearing to CP3, we simply jumped in on their bearing and down to the swamp and the CP2. Right back out on the bearing, across the road and up the hill to CP3, then back over on bearing to the bikes. Unfortunate part of a tight loop like that is for us in the middle of the pack, we took advantage of going to school on other teams. Sure it helped us, but not ideal. Biking back, stopped where the other teams were and scooted down to the lake to get CP5. Ride back to the start camp and crossed the road for a canoe.
For a team with 2 big guys and never paddling together, I thought we moved pretty well. Strange lake as we had a headwind and tailwind, even though we were travelling straight. Pleased coming to the end of the paddle to only meet a couple solos coming out, so a little surprised that the front of the race was still in sight. Quick no-brainer slog up the creek and back (just followed the muddy trail) to the canoes. Same strange wind back down the lake and transition to bikes. I took a little longer than I wanted to change socks, but knew I had to protect my legs with longer socks.
Off we go down the road and plenty of time for the Advanced decision at CP9. Up and across to CPA with no big issues. Tough grind coming down to CP10, with lots of on/off pushbiking through the muck. Rode with solo Adrenaline Rush Dan for awhile and joked we were the “Masters Peloton”. I didn’t transpose the trail from the supp map to the topo very well, so I was a little unsure on the trail and distance to 10, but luckily found another team jumping off the bridge to get in and get CP10. More bike/slog out of 10 until finally better trail when we headed west and over to 11. Made the cutoff by 20 minutes, so discussed strategy a little before electing to do what we could on the trek. Dave paced us down the road, then we jumped off over to the swamp and got CP12 pretty close. Back towards 13 on a bearing, but decided to not drop down and skirted along the top of the ridge before dropping in. Knowing we had the elbow of the river for backing, we cheated North and sounds like we missed a lot of the thick stuff had we stayed on bearing. Headed for the river and picked up the old trail right to the CP13. Bearing back toward bike drop, we cheated a little south and then found nice open gullies to climb, climb, climb up the 5 contours and the road. Thankfully the hunting blind we passed was empty. Had been joking all day with Andrew of Mtn Hardwear/Enigma that we were “coming for him” and saw him around 12, but then they disappeared. Found out later they decided to not risk getting cutoff and skipped 13. In hindsight, we were borderline. If we hadn’t hit 13 right away like we did, we wouldn’t have made it.
Back at the bikedrop and pleased that we nailed the trek. I’m watching the clock as we start our road ride back to Deerhurst, but figure we’ll be okay. Moving well, but the tired legs are showing on the hills for all of us. I had a braincramp that meant a briefly missed turn, but Kevin got me back on track and we slogged home. I felt good as we hit the smooth highway pavement and worked to pull us up to the turnoff. Around by Hidden Valley and home to the finish line with 9 minutes to spare in 7:51.
Sadly the promise of instant sportident results disappeared into a software snafu, but figure we’re happily in the upper half of the pack. Having never raced with Dave and Kevin before, we moved well at a pretty good pace, worked well together to nail the nav and cleared the full, tough course in time. And had a good time doing it. Thanks for the spot on See You Later Navigator, gentlemen.
Putting the unfortunate results snafu aside, a pretty good event by Geoff and crew. Don’t love the out and backs, but I guess logistics sometimes necessitates those. As I said before, actually helped us in the pack several times. Long bike was a grind, but overall a good challenge. Curious to see how the back of the pack fared, as this was a tough course. Hope they still had fun.
Decided I want to continue an early May tradition and get out to kickstart my season with the FAC in Huntsville. Checked with the regular Lather.Rinse.Repeat. lineup and unfortunately noone was able to go, but I wanted to race. Registered as a solo, but put out some feelers looking for teammates, as racing alone wasn’t my first choice. Kevin from See You Later Navigator got back to me saying there was an open spot with him and Dave, so a Masters AR Superteam (Lather, Rinse you later Navigator?) was born!
Plan was the early Sat. am drive up, then crash at Deerhurst Sat. night, so the 4:40 am alarm was pretty early. Good check in with quick plotting, although with everyone bringing mandatory gear, we had to sort out who was carrying what. Plenty of time to get sorted and loaded onto the bus to the start.
Mass bike start up the road, so we were careful to stay in the pack and get up to speed. Bike ahead of me kicked up a small pebble that hit me square on the end of my nose. Ouch. Follow the pack up the hills to the first bike drop. Decided to make the quick switch to trek shoes, then back down the road towards CP2. Seeing teams ahead pop out of the bush on bearing to CP3, we simply jumped in on their bearing and down to the swamp and the CP2. Right back out on the bearing, across the road and up the hill to CP3, then back over on bearing to the bikes. Unfortunate part of a tight loop like that is for us in the middle of the pack, we took advantage of going to school on other teams. Sure it helped us, but not ideal. Biking back, stopped where the other teams were and scooted down to the lake to get CP5. Ride back to the start camp and crossed the road for a canoe.
For a team with 2 big guys and never paddling together, I thought we moved pretty well. Strange lake as we had a headwind and tailwind, even though we were travelling straight. Pleased coming to the end of the paddle to only meet a couple solos coming out, so a little surprised that the front of the race was still in sight. Quick no-brainer slog up the creek and back (just followed the muddy trail) to the canoes. Same strange wind back down the lake and transition to bikes. I took a little longer than I wanted to change socks, but knew I had to protect my legs with longer socks.
Off we go down the road and plenty of time for the Advanced decision at CP9. Up and across to CPA with no big issues. Tough grind coming down to CP10, with lots of on/off pushbiking through the muck. Rode with solo Adrenaline Rush Dan for awhile and joked we were the “Masters Peloton”. I didn’t transpose the trail from the supp map to the topo very well, so I was a little unsure on the trail and distance to 10, but luckily found another team jumping off the bridge to get in and get CP10. More bike/slog out of 10 until finally better trail when we headed west and over to 11. Made the cutoff by 20 minutes, so discussed strategy a little before electing to do what we could on the trek. Dave paced us down the road, then we jumped off over to the swamp and got CP12 pretty close. Back towards 13 on a bearing, but decided to not drop down and skirted along the top of the ridge before dropping in. Knowing we had the elbow of the river for backing, we cheated North and sounds like we missed a lot of the thick stuff had we stayed on bearing. Headed for the river and picked up the old trail right to the CP13. Bearing back toward bike drop, we cheated a little south and then found nice open gullies to climb, climb, climb up the 5 contours and the road. Thankfully the hunting blind we passed was empty. Had been joking all day with Andrew of Mtn Hardwear/Enigma that we were “coming for him” and saw him around 12, but then they disappeared. Found out later they decided to not risk getting cutoff and skipped 13. In hindsight, we were borderline. If we hadn’t hit 13 right away like we did, we wouldn’t have made it.
Back at the bikedrop and pleased that we nailed the trek. I’m watching the clock as we start our road ride back to Deerhurst, but figure we’ll be okay. Moving well, but the tired legs are showing on the hills for all of us. I had a braincramp that meant a briefly missed turn, but Kevin got me back on track and we slogged home. I felt good as we hit the smooth highway pavement and worked to pull us up to the turnoff. Around by Hidden Valley and home to the finish line with 9 minutes to spare in 7:51.
Sadly the promise of instant sportident results disappeared into a software snafu, but figure we’re happily in the upper half of the pack. Having never raced with Dave and Kevin before, we moved well at a pretty good pace, worked well together to nail the nav and cleared the full, tough course in time. And had a good time doing it. Thanks for the spot on See You Later Navigator, gentlemen.
Putting the unfortunate results snafu aside, a pretty good event by Geoff and crew. Don’t love the out and backs, but I guess logistics sometimes necessitates those. As I said before, actually helped us in the pack several times. Long bike was a grind, but overall a good challenge. Curious to see how the back of the pack fared, as this was a tough course. Hope they still had fun.