Superhero Adventure Race - September 28, 2013

Here is a little rundown for Team Honey Stinger (Jim Gorton, Caryn Ciesla, in the Superhero Adventure Race. The race was held at Blue Springs State Par. Teams were staggered by minute intervals and also split between a paddle leg and a foot/tube leg for the start. We started at 9:05 on the foo/ tubing section. The navigation was pretty easy and we quickly caught up with the other teams on the foot portion of this leg and were the first to hit the tubes. We took full advantage of the 100 meter rule on the tube section and let Jim do the hard swimming while Caryn and I had a pretty easy float. We ended up posting the fastest time of all teams for this section of 37 minutes.

Foot/Tubing Section Map

We transitioned very quickly to the boats and headed upstream first to CP15, then CP11, CP14, CP12, CP13 and CP10. This leg was very uneventful other than CP13 being a little north of the mapped location. We posted the second fastest time on this leg - and had the lead as we headed out to the single track biking leg next.

The single track biking was a lot of fun. We moved quickly through the trail network. We had a prescribed course to follow with 2 Checkpoints along different sections. As we got to the bailout on the Green course we had only gotten 5 of the 6 checkpoints that were supposed to be at the unmapped locations. Instead of following the course out - I thought we had missed one and we ended up doing the orange trail (I call it rattlesnake) again. We ran into a few times that were doing it for the first time and I realized we had not missed it. We jumped onto yellow trail where it connected with the green bailout and quickly found the missing CP. We were now with a large group of teams - I recorded the locations of 2 controls at the trailhead and we headed out to get those points. We were leading a small pack of teams towards the main TA, about 100 meters out when Jim gave me the turnaround signal. He had realized we had not checked out of the bike course - so we headed back to bike course entrance - that cost us about 15-20 minutes, oops.

  
Now we knew we had some real time to make up (and one section of course to do it in). The next section was a bike to a trek and a bike back. We caught the first group of teams at CP25. The bike section was long and sandy and we eventually reached the bike drop and took off on the trek. Caryn struggles a bit with the bike - but Jim assisted with a tow, so we were making good progress.The trek was an awesome one with lots of navigation and off road and trail travel - not much to say here, we hit every control pretty much dead-on, but it was not enough to get us back to the lead - there are some good teams out there.

After we biked back and had a small issue with CP34 (I ended up on the wrong side of a fence). At the finish we found that it was an incredibly close race. Pinnacle Mobfit (they were with us when we turned back to get the bike TA checkout) had been narrowly edged out by Cow Tipping Dwarfs. Unfortunately the Dwarf's had failed to return to the main TA after the singletrack bike and had not gotten their passport - thus costing them a CP (which pushed them back behind all the course clearing teams). The Dwarfs did prove that they belong in elite racing, though and were really just edged out by a rookie mistake that would have only added a few minutes to their time (going back to the main TA from CP24/34). Bike Works showed that given an opportunity they are quite capable of hitting the top of the podium, and the Canyoneeros used sheer force of will for a great finish.

We got 5th overall and 2nd coed - and had a great time.

Here is a little video of the course;

Results at http://pangeaadventureracing.com/event-details/events/2013-superhero-ar