We started with an orienteering leg that took us in a loop around the eastern areas of Salt Lake WMA. The top teams moved through this as a group in about 40-45 minutes and we headed out on the bike leg to the boats about 30 seconds behind Team Jax and just in front of Mojitos on Monday. We got into a tight bike line with Dave Shuman setting a great pace, however they turned at War Admiral which was not my race strategy - that was the last we would see of them in a while. We hit the bike checkpoints with Team Jax, and because of a last minute wrong turn by them came into the TA literally 30 seconds in front of them.
The paddle was really nice. Greg had asked us to place glowsticks on the northern controls for the sport teams - so we headed south first. This worked out well as Team Jax and our team went south first and most of the other teams wen north first. This meant that the elite teams were able to visit the controls pre-glowstick while the slower teams and the sport teams got the benefit of the glowsticks. We and Team Jax were never more than 2 minutes apart this entire paddle and the only minor error we made was not seeing the entrance as we left CP3 (on south island) and headed to CP4. This had us doing a little curve backwards to get CP4.
The bike back was completely uneventful, we rode by the school and found the clue War Eagles without slowing down for our last CP. The next leg was a choice of bike or trek - we chose to bike since we were in our bike shoes and ready to go. Jax had a 2 minute lead out the TA, but we caught them at the second control. We worked together through the next couple of controls until we got to CP19. They found this one quickly and headed on. We missed it by about 20 yards on our first attack and ended up spending about 15 minutes searching. I figured out our best attack at about the same time Team Mojitos came by the CP - we found it and then were on to CP20. On the way to CP20 we ran into Team Jax coming back towards us. This made no sense since they there were no controls back that way. They had not found CP20 yet - but had scoured the bike trails. This helped me decide on a conservative approach to CP20. We stopped at a T-Intersection south of the control and took a bearing through a nice deep swamp - that took us right to the CP. Team Mojitos - who had been with us at CP19 had taken a different turn on the way to CP20. As we got back to the bikes after our swamp whack to CP20 - we ran into Mojitos again. We stayed with Jax working together to finish the bike leg.
The last leg was a trek and looked pretty challenging. We had no issues with any of the navigation and lightly jogged most of this. We came up behin Team Jax at the last control and simply jogged behind them to the finish line - avoiding a last minute sprint to the finish. It was really good to work with them and they ran a great race.
Results at http://pangeaadventureracing.com/event-details/events/2013-luminescent-ar
Great pictures at https://www.facebook.com/pangeaadventureracing
Also - new gear recommendation. I tried the Cree 3600 lumen light cannon. For less than $40 this light puts out a ton of light and can be easily used on the bike or as a headlamp. I recommend it -
SecurityIng 3800 Lumen Headlight
No comments:
Post a Comment