Wild Turkey Burn 2006

Turkey Burn 2006
Team Travel Country Outdoors (Ron Eaglin, Greg Corbitt, Jamie Sheriff, Ken Richmond)

Wow! The Turkey has always been one of my favorite races, complex navigation, challenging terrain, strong competition – all these come together to make up an incredible experience. This year’s burn was held on the Tossohatchee State Preserve – one of the most incredible pieces of land bordering the west side of the St. Johns River. One of the factors that makes the TB such a challenging race is the Linear Rogaine format. For those of you not familiar with Rogaine and Linear Rogaine, in a Rogaine style race teams are allows to “get” checkpoints in any order with a minimum of rules. In Linear Rogaine there is a basic course made up of mandatory checkpoints – but the real race lies in getting as many of the optional or “bonus” checkpoints you can. Both of these styles have a time limit, so the challenge is in optimizing your time to gather as many as possible – while still making it to the finish within the time limit.

This year the race featured a 4 AM start – guaranteeing the teams some early darkness in the race. The real race for me though started at 3 AM when we received the maps, the time between 3 and 4 AM is a frantic effort to mark your maps, plot the unplotted checkpoints, make sure you have all the gear you need or want for the race (and have it packed and ready), make it to the starting line and then go all out. After receiving the maps we went to Greg camper (parked across the street from the start in a camping area) and worked non-stop until we heard the actual start. At that time I threw the maps in my map case and we took off running to the start. There were still a few other teams straggling in to the start, but the bulk of the pack had taken off pushing their bikes (for the first mile our bikes were disabled by zip ties). We grabbed our bikes and headed off at a trot – currently about 5 minutes behind the main pack.

We took a well trodden road heading north along the western fence line of the park – heading for the power lines where we would turn east and go to where we would receive our bike control card and get the zip ties cut off our bike. As we reached the power lines we could see at least 20 sets of bike lights due north of us, it appeared that a large number of teams had not turned correctly and were now running back. The team hesitated slightly – but I reassured them we were going correctly and soon we saw Nicci at the bike punch location who gave us our card and told us we could start riding.

After heading east and then north we found the vague trail that would take us to MB1 located just after a small bridge crossing. In the dark we passed up the control – but I sent Greg to the bridge, Ken down the trail west, and Jamie east and within a minute we had found it – with an extra minute to get the control cards (with Jamie) to the control to punch it. The trail from MB1 to MB2 was quite ride-able and we were moving well (losing the trail once for about 2 minutes) and also having to slow for teams that somehow were coming from the other direction. The continuation from MB2 to BB1 and all the navigation choices we quite easy and we moved quickly towards the Y intersection preceding BB2 very quickly. At this point we also had a long trail of bike lights behind us with at least 3 teams within ¼ mile. After taking the eastern turn we overshot the southern trail heading towards BB2 and got into a very wet section of road where Greg and I both took a good dunking as we tipped over on our bikes (solidly clipped in) when the water got too deep to maintain forward progress. It too us much too long to realize our mistake and even longer to make the correction – we lost 7-10 minutes going back and finding the correct turn. Meanwhile the huge group of bikes behind us had been sitting at the Y intersection (we could see the lights) and ended up taking the southwest heading road after they saw us returning. Also at this point Jamie’s lone bike light gave out. Luckily I had 2 spares (because of the rush at the start I simply threw everything into my pack including 2 headlamps and 2 extra bike lights). The trail to BB2 and then to MP3 was moderately ride-able, with lots of logs where we had to stop, and jump the logs. As we rode/walked we saw Team Nature Calls buswhacking in to BB2 from the road – I mentioned that it was an unconventional route – but it was working for them. As we left MP3 (it also took us about 2 minutes there to actually turn around and notice the control sitting obviously on a tree) we rode with one team with wonderful HID lights (we had nothing bright on our bikes) 0 but still had a hard time keeping the trail and ended up bushwhacking to the road – which did allow us to go after BB4. Unfortunately it also meant a long (0.6 mile) backtrack along the trail to BB3. Finding the true entrance to the white blazed trail leading to BB3 also cost us a good 5 minutes and now the time was starting to add up. We ended up dropping the bikes part way on this trail and running the remainder to BB3 and along this route we ran into Nature Calls and ran (with them biking) alongside of them the rest of the way out from BB3.

From here is was pretty good riding until crossing under 528. We spent too much time (about 5 minutes) deciding to take the frontage trail to BB5 (and then BB6) and did most of this ride (it was mostly rideable) with team Dirty Fish, who we rode with all the way to the bike drop. At the bike drop we learned that Team Flight had also gotten all the CP’s but had a solid 30 minute lead on us (I was estimating that they would only be 20 minutes up at the time – but also knew that we had made enough mistakes to have cost us well over 30 minutes on the ride (if we had done it without the mistakes and pauses). We now had light and it was still wonderfully cool out – though for some reason we were slow in this transition (almost 10 minutes). Nevertheless we were heading out on a trek with challenging navigation (my favorite). We quickly found BT8 and then used the vegetation boundary to slowly make our way to BT7 (fairly thick terrain). The ground was pretty open from BT7 to the road so we headed southeast and then took an attack point to BT6 that would allow us to identify the marsh (shown on the map) and attack it from the west. Open wood from BT6 to BT5 allowed us to essentially do a direct bearing and we nailed both BT5 and MT1. From there is was basically a run – though we did spend a little extra time on BT1 as the clearing described in the passport (northwest of clearing) did not (to me at least) match the actual location – though the physical location of the flag was exactly as it was on the map. As we jogged back to the bikes I read the passport and realized that we might not make the 11 AM cutoff at the power lines – which I had thought was the cutoff to the boat pick up.

We mounted bikes quickly and rode hard – as we rode Greg got a flat tire, but we decided on the sand and mud roads, with a cutoff looming over our heads – was not worth changing until after the paddle.

The paddle started with a long (over a mile) portage down a grassy road towards the river. This also would be a huge time cost and I was quickly realizing that barring a miracle or a southerly gale force wind – we would not make it to the cutoff by 11 AM. A few shortcuts on the river did help our time, but it was 10:27 AM when we actually put our boats in the water. We reached BP1 at 11:05 AM and the power lines at 11:20 AM and were informed that 4 teams had made the cutoff. This took some of the pressure off our team – we had only missed one CP at this point (BT4 as I forgot to take the map it was on with me on the trek). I also had not even looked at the maps for any part of the race after this point, all I knew is we had more paddling, a trek and then a bike. The diversion to short course did take some pressure off our pace and we were now traveling with multiple teams in the second half of the paddle.

This was the most enjoyable part of the race for me, we got to truly do navigation on the river as we had to find the various lakes and side streams and oxbows that would lead us to each of the bonus points. We were able to hop out of the boats at various points and jog along the edge of the streams to most of the bonus points. There was no place where the water was more then thigh deep so even when we were on the wrong side of the stream from the control (we were on BP7) it was no big deal to wade across. We finished the paddle with a small armada of boats and the finish and the incredible scenery at Jim Creek (I cannot even describe it – you simply have to see it) lifted the team spirits quite a bit. As we portaged our boats to the final boat drop we had a little scare. I saw a snake a few feet ahead of us in the grass, Jamie screamed a hollered “Rattlesnake!” My response was “That’s not a rattlesnake – it’s a water moccasin.” Nevertheless it was still a poisonous snake and it was scared and coiled to strike so we called to the boats behind us to divert around the frightened snake – which slithered off as soon as it had an opening. Amazingly Audrey Nettlow’s team of three women had dragged their boat right over the snake (probably waking it up).

We were now once again on foot – along with a lot of other teams. We took an extra couple of minutes in the transition fueling up and all the other teams were trudging along the power lines headed west as we caught up with them in a trot. Since we were low on time we headed towards BT11 (but decided to bail on BT18). We picked up BT17 purely by accident (I had not plotted it) – but it was directly along the route we were taking to MT11. We were still jogging and sloshing (it was quite wet out there) along this route. We spent about 10 minutes searching for BT13 and as I learned later we were literally on top of it – but somehow did not find it. I did not want to waste a lot of time so I called the search for BT13 short and we headed back. Our plan was to pick up BT12 on the way back – we did find it, though somehow it seemed to me (at the time) to be east of where I plotted it (of course it could have been my plotting – since I was doing it on the run). We jogged a solid pace all the way back into the TA. On the way back we saw Team Flight for the first time in the race – they were biking strong. We still had a flat tire to change, so while Greg and Jamie changed the tire – Ken and I helped change their shoes and get us ready to do the short (6 miles?) bike back to the start. We decided to simply bring it in and not fight with any more CP’s (we had plenty).

In the end missing the cutoff cost us, though Ken and Greg were 2nd place male and Jamie and I preserved a podium finish with 3rd place coed. More important though is we raced what we though was an excellent race. We did not push ourselves to the point of exhaustion as we normally do in a very tight race – but spent some time enjoying the course. My favorite parts were the challenging navigation and the incredible terrain. The entire race was extremely well-organized and flawlessly executed. The level of challenge was exactly what each team made of it. Once again Dave and the Sun-tek crew proved they can provide a race that challenges all of the teams at all levels.