What is a Bubba Goat?

Florida Orienteering hosted a Bubba Goat race Dec. 9. Of course the FLO championships were Dec. 8 and due to family obligations I had to choose one or the other, of course I chose the Bubba.

Now - what is the Bubba Goat? Well it is an orienteering run, kind of like regular orienteering except ....

1. It has a mass start.
2. It has (slightly) different rules that ca be different for each event
3. It is really long (in this case 17K as the crow flies and we are not crows)

Now for most endurance road athletes - 17K is not really that far, but it is pretty far for a few reasons. You really don't go in a straight line making it more like 20-25K, you have to actually find the controls as in orienteering, and the terrain is brutal - in this case soft sand, high grass, Caesar Weed, and palmetto.

This Bubba Goat started with a 7 control prolog. All maps are placed on the ground, someone says go, everyone picks up their maps, and the you go. Racers were assigned a handicap based on age and sex - I had a one control handicap allowing me to only have to do 6 of 7 - though I did not use my handicap. Here is the map of the prolog (I did my route in pink);

After we got to the "Finish" it was actually the start of the long courses, an it was long. We ended up using a lot more trail as the rough open was really rough open. For example leaving CP3 and heading for CP4 we headed North to the trail to avoid the roughest terrain, though it did open up nicely in spots.

The off trail section from CP4 to CP5 was extremely difficult, Jim Gorton and I were running together through this section and Gareth Hearn who was with us near CP4 took the trail to the west and saved some time.

 Leaving CP5 was also pretty tough and this area is very open - we could see a few racers in front of us, an a few behind us. The uphill climb to the trail from CP5 was tough. The toughest part of this leg was actually the approach to CP7. M plan was to run the ridgeline off of the trail. As we left the trail - we entered the world of Caesar Weed. This stuff is aweful and particularly awful this time of year. The little sticky seeds coated pretty much every racer that wen through here - it was everywhere. When going through this stuff it is tempting to stop and pull it off. In a race this is not an option - plus we were covered!

We decided to skip CP8 (we were allowed to skip one CP) and head to CP9. This was most all trail, though it was very sandy trail. The length of this leg was about 2-2.5K, that is a long orienteering leg. Jim and I were running together at this point and running strong. Since we adventure race together for team Florida Xtreme 2 (and we had just won the Pangea premiere series in adventure racing) we were all about racing as a team.

This next set of CP's was quite a bit of fun. I especially liked CP11 to CP12 which allowed us to follow a thin strip of white woods (though some racers went around via trail) along the marsh. That was pretty cool. 

We kept the pace up to CP13, but after CP13 I started developing cramp in my toes, calf, and hamstrings - nothing like getting cramps everywhere! This reduced my pace to a fast walk (I do have a pretty fast - fast walk), even though Jim could have easily run the last few controls - he stuck with me. Our navigation was clean, if slow, all the way to the finish line - just below 3 hours (2 hours, 59 minutes, and some odd seconds).

 I was really hurting at the end, legs were cramping bad, stomach was upset. I took an ice cold shower (they had showers at the end - if you don't mind cold water) chatted a bit and headed home. (Jim had a 2-3 hour drive, I had just over 1 hour). My drive ended up being a bit longer as I had to stop and empty a barf bag I had the foresight to put on the seat next to me. That is 2 times puking at the end of 2 races! I must be pushing too hard. Of course afterwards you feel so much better.

Now after a nice hot bath (solves the cramping) and a Steak and Shake meal - I am planning the next race - Oh yea - next week! the Pangea Christmas in Christmas race with team Mojitas on Monday next week.

For pics and upcoming events - see http://www.floridaorienteering.org/