Adventure Racing race 8:05:00 [3]
ahr:157 max:186 shoes: Brooks CP Green
Storm the Trent Trek Elite MXR with Bash and VO2-max.
We started with a 3-cp run for one teammate, and sent out VO2-max with instructions to follow Bob Miller. By the second CP he was leading the race, and flew in ahead of the zippy Hotshot Lawyer!
Next we paddled to Warsaw Caves, passed 2 teams and came in behind Urban Athlete and Running Free.
A fairly smooth run, with VO2-max handling the tow rope, then paddle back to the start/CP to bikes.
Biking started out fine as we picked off the advanced CPs, with V-max handling the bike tow. We saw XTWings (Slice, Bender &Andycam) walking in the road around the half way mark, but they claimed they were "fine".
Scooting back to 43 we waved at Beowulf and MBR (Tiny was looking intently at the left side of the road), and we missed a critical roadsign. We ended up overshooting through slow trails, backtracking, finding a ribbon but no CP, then finding the CP misplaced a bit, right where Tiny was looking. This set us back maybe 20-30 minutes.
VO2-max had done stalwart tow duty up to now while I was relatively fresh, so I towed where I could. Some fun snowmobile trails, nice bouncy rock sections that the 'bent handled well, some bikewhacking and we made it to the final paddle, a bit tight on time. We saw XTW there again, and I assumed they were back from the paddle and on the way to France, but found out that Slice had probably broken her wrist! Bash smartly decided to skip the paddle and get the rest of the optional CPs on the bike, which we did with XTW and RF (who had paddled across and got 20 extra points on us). On the road XTW lost us, we towed past RF and all came in to the finish within a few minutes of each other, just behind Beowulf, with 620 pts. UA came in late with no chain on Dr.W's bike, lots of points but time penalties so the results were *very* close. A lot of teams were quite late and got big-time penalties.
RF won the day with 640, and UA had better brush up on their French.
We ended up 4th overall in the MXR series.
I always said Slice could beat us with one hand tied behind her back, and she proved it over some very rough riding indeed. Wow!
It was great racing with VO2-max. He's not used to such a long event, but had a blast all around. He was especially thrilled when we won nice packs. Thanks, Phatty!
No technical issues or injuries for us this time, just a great fun race.