Pangea Lighterknot Adventure Race

Team Florida Xtreme was out and about for another week of adventure racing. For Jeff this was the middle week of 3 weeks of races, 27 hours at USARA in Kentucky, this race, and then next week we are back in Kentucky for a 24 hour race - the Checkpoint Zero finals ( http://www.checkpointtracker.com/ .

For this week, Bruce, Jim, Jeff and I were ready to have some fun. The start was the usual prolog and then a trek to the boat TA. We flew through the prolog and were first to the boats. We headed north to CP7 and CP8 so that we would beat some of the offshore wind - but that was a mistake. After getting the 2 CP's to the north we headed south into the maze of channels. CP9, 10, and 11 were all pretty easy. CP12 looked challenging - we decided to attack it along the west channel which quickly became clogged and too shallow to paddle. We ended up collecting about a half dozen teams in this area - none of which could make it across to the east and CP12. The red line on the map below shows our path into and out of this area - though we did not paddle far, the rough terrain and the uncertainty of our location made it a 45 minute complete backtrack.



View Lighterknot in a larger map

After the using a route that had a little more water - we found CP12 (with a few teams in tow) and then also CP13 and CP14. As we approached the boat TA we saw that there were 5 dirty canoes out of the water. We knew that Team Primal accounted for 2 of them, but weren't sure who the other boats belonged to. I like having teams to try and chase down (kind of a bird dog thing) - so I was motivated to race hard the remainder of the race. We decided to transition to the trek next. This proved to be a good choice - we were relatively fresh and were able to keep a decent running pace for the the entire trek - nailing each control. The one that was a big surprise was CP16. The year before we had a CP on a hilltop in deep pine woods very close to where CP16 was located. As we approached the area it was completely barren. The area around the CP was completely stripped of trees and even the ground was nearly barren. It did make for fast running. To see the area before the clearcut look at http://eaglinar.blogspot.com/2010/10/lighterknot-2010.html and look at the video at time stamp 1:30 (those are the same woods!). We made a quick transition to bikes after the run and headed out - though I knew that Primal had a very good lead. I was not sure who else was in front of us at this point. On the bike I did make 2 mistakes - the first one was following the road to the right into the open field just before CP3 (and then backtracking back to the main road). Then one minute later doing the same thing to the left - doh! I quickly got my brain back into the game. At CP21 all of us ran right by the CP - which was just beyond the gate and spent a few extra minutes searching (we saw it as we headed back out). CP22 was in a really nice wooded area and trail network - great location and one I will visit later. We pushed really hard on the sand roads at CP24 and then into the finish for a 3rd place. Primal Instinct had a well deserved first place finish, followed by Get to the Chopper (who were a few minutes in front of us). It was a great workout and an excellent race. Here is a bit of video of the race to enjoy (with some music).