Lighterknot Adventure Race 2013

I originally as not planning on racing this race as it was falling during a very busy time for me. However - knowing that Sheriff's Posse always puts on a great race and the new location at Haw Creek - we put together Honey Stinger with Courtney, Junos, and Jim and decided to make a strong go of it.

Foot 1

At the start teams could choose to do a bike or a foot leg - we chose foot and we also were assigned a starting time that would make us the only team choosing to do it backwards (you can go in any order). This worked out quite well at first as we moved through the first few controls with just small corrections as I adjusted to the map scale (1:20K). We made it to the special challenge at the boat TA with no other teams around and just USAF coming off the water in front of us. Shortly after that we saw a large number of other teams coming from the other direction - they had clustered a little bit as they worked through the challenging controls at the start of their direction.

When we got to where I thought CP8 was - we simply could not find the control. After about 15 minutes of searching we went to the "last known location" strategy. In this case we actually headed north up the trail rather than backtracking because I knew there was a distinctive large intersection north. Because CP7 was also near that intersection we picked that one up and also decided to get CP6 while we were there. We worked with FLXtreme/Hunter as they had completed the bike leg and were now doing the foot section. After finding CP7 and CP6 - it was quite easy to find CP8 and some compass work and pace counting put us right on the control. We headed back to the TA to learn that after the first leg of the race pretty much every other team was now 30 minutes in front of us.

USAF  0:45
Rink Side Sports 0:50
AR Milita  0:58
BikeWorks 1:00
Honey Stinger 1:25

Bike 1

The first bike leg had very simple navigation and a lot of road miles. It was a simple set the odometer and ride hard in a tight bike line to the control. We made up a little of the lost time on this section - but were still significantly behind the pack when we finished the bike leg and headed to the boats for the paddle.

AR Militia 0:56
FLX Hunter 0:57
USAF 0:58
Honey Stinger 1:00
Bike Works 1:02
Rink Side Sports 1:06

Paddle 

Haw Creek is simply awesome paddling and there were enough side channels to make the navigation interesting. The only control to give us any trouble was CP14 - we blew right by it as it was down a creek a small way and not terribly visible. The clue was creek within a creek. I quickly realized we had gone too far and we spotted it as we backtracked out. It was a long out and back paddle to CP19 - and we pushed hard. The creek was good paddling and we could see Bikeworks and Rink Side Sports in the distance as we would hit straightaways. In the end we pulled up into the boat TA just as Bikeworks was leaving for the next leg - estimating that we were probably 2 minutes behind them at this point.

USAF 2:05
Honey Stinger 2:07
AR Militia  2:13
FLX Hunter 2:14
Rink Side Sports 2:27
Bike works 2:30

 Bike 2

I changed a lot of strategy as we approached this bike leg - we would start with CP24-CP25-CP26 and then come back around and do the first loop that was intended by the cotrol order. We had a little bit of trouble with CP25 - I rode to the gate on the map and then backtracked 100 meters - but the control was more like 90 meters so it took a few extra minutes searching. We planned on taking a trail straight across from CP25 to CP26 - but never found so ended up going back to CP24 an taking the trail straight due south. None of the trails were very bikeable in this section, it was mostly slogging and bikewhacking. Still we were moving fast and nailing each one. We also made a great decision on the last bike whack (CP22). The WP had us going east into the heavy dog fennel. We got the control and pushed on past it to a very good road on the east boundary of the park. This took us directly to CP23 and then it was a road ride in to the main TA.

USAF 1:30
Honey Stinger 1:34
FLX/Hunter 1:33
Bikeworks 1:54
Rink Side Sports 1:57

Trek 2

This trek was all about navigation and strategy. I felt pretty good about the map at this point and was determined to make no errors. We hit pretty much every control dead on and I had pre-plotted the bearing controls which allowed us to go straight for them. I started with CP27 due south down the berm to the small trail. Easy find. Then it was a bearing to CP28, dead on. Then due south to the river and follow river to "Bluff" and CP29. Again easy find. From there it was back to the main road and right at the trail heading toward CP21, I had already plotted this so we headed straight for the marsh - found the marsh (clue was west side of marsh) and then found CP30. CP31 was a bearing from CP30 - dead on, found it easily. We bushwhacked out to the field and the campground - took a bearing from the NE corner of the field and went straight to CP32. From there it was pretty much due north to the mowed road. We went to the WP, took the bearing and once again were dead on the control. I was nearly exhausted as we made the final run back to the TA - but felt we would be in a decent position, we had no ideas where the other teams were at this point and pretty much gave everything we had to bringing it in hard.

USAF 1:09
Honey Stinger 1:17
Rink Side 1:23
Bike Works 1:25
FLX/Hunter 1:39

Finale

In the end - USAF ran a perfect race, fast and dead on in every section. we had a great race after the first foot section, not quite as fast but the navigation was solid. The course was fantastic with a little mix of everything - swamp, woods, trail, road, and incredible paddling. Making up the early time was also really gratifying to the team - we never gave up or even got down, we just kept going at 100% and it paid off in the end.

Here are some scenes from the race

  

We ended up 2nd overall and 1st coed

All results at http://pangeaadventureracing.com/event-details/events/2013-lighterknot-ar

USARA National Championship - Team Pangea

I knew a lot of folks were waiting for this - the writeup of the USARA National championship. Team Pangea consisted of Ron Eaglin, Greg Owens, and May-Li Cuypers. We would be racing in an extremely competitive Masters category and against the best teams in the country. The race was in Nashville Indiana, and incredibly picturesque town in Central Indiana.

Greg and I actually rented bikes (29") from a local bike shop (Hesitation Point Bike shop). We arrived before checkin, got our bikes and headed to the checkin. Brown County has an incredible set of single track bike trails and and IMBA Epic designation - so we were looking forward to some wonderful single track. We were also looking forward to some great weather - highs near 80. lows near 60.

We received our maps at 6 AM Friday morning, 2 massive 1:24K scale topo maps, and 20 points to plot. I got to plotting while May-Li and Greg got to planning. We finished at 7:45 AM and were just in time to make the 8 AM start time.

Start and Leg 1

We started with a 1 mile cross country run to split the teams up before hitting the single track. This would be followed with a 15 mile marked single track bike course. We went out incredibly fast with the strategy of getting a good placement heading into the single track. Of course so did 180  other top class athletes. We flew through the run and the next section was pure concentration, flying single track at all levels (beginner through expert), no CP's - marked course and some fast biking. It was also for me - battling cramps (many other experienced cramping due to the ultra-fast start). After 15 miles of screaming single track - we arrived at Hesitation Point and CP1. From this point on it would switch from a bike race to an adventure race as we would be navigating.

  
Despite the early cramps we were moving well and picked up CP2 quickly, though not as quickly as I would have liked, since I was still getting used to the map and the terrain. I handed the map to Greg to find CP3 - while I concentrated on controlling my cramps. (I don't remember anything from this section at all other than pain). After what seemed like hours (it was probably 15 minutes) - I was feeling better and took the navigation back - and we took an interesting off-road bush-whacky route to the road leading to CP4 and CP5 which was a long out and back. As we headed south to CP4 we saw some of the lead teams heading back (and biking at an unbelievable pace). CP4 and CP5 went without incident - and we were with a number of other teams at that point. Interesting because we did not see any teams due to route choice from CP3.

From CP5 it was north to the TA and the start of the paddle. We would be passing through a small town called Helmsburg and I had high hopes for a convenience store. It worked out pretty well, there was a corner store where we purchased Gatorade and Milk - which we drank in the TA just a mile from the store.

The Paddle

From the looks of the TA there were at least 40 teams in front of us at TA1. The instructions were to drop the bikes and take our boats and head for the water. Well water would be a strong word for it, the sliver of a creek on the map was just that, a sliver of a creek. We proceeded with the boat-whack/portage section of the race. After Patagonia 2012 no portage looks hard and Greg worked hard dragging the boat along through the shallow water. In some spots we were actually able to get in and paddle - but the real paddling did not start until we reached the wider channel east of Lake Lemon.

The checkpoints on the lake were pretty easy, especially since the prior racers had really turned the routes into foot trails. We had fun with CP9, where we had to squeeze through a culvert to get a point where we were allowed to drop our boats. It was all pretty straight-forward and we were feeling pretty good when we got to CP10.

Split Up

As we approached CP10 we could see 2 person teams rafting from CP11 to CP10. We were not sure what this meant - but we soon found out. At CP10 the team was split up. I headed out into the darkness 2 checkpoints (blue dots I drew on the map) and Greg and May-Li had to paddle the canoe across the lake to CP11 where they dropped the canoe and then rafted back. Even though it was dark I had no real trouble with the 2 checkpoints - there were lots of other folks out there looking for them, and we worked together to find them. It took me nearly 45 minutes - much more than what I estimated it would take Greg and May-li to paddle 1 km, drop a boat, and paddle back. Sure enough they had been waiting for about 30 minutes when I came jogging in. Had we planned it better I would have gotten the map and took off while they messed around with gear (the opposite of what we did). Now back together - we headed out on the long trek and our only issue of the race.

Long Trek

The  next section was a long trek 5 checkpoints. We did not get off to a great start here. We attacked CP12 from the south re-entrant - and did it again. And again. Eventually after about 90 minutes of attacks and re-attacks we gave up and moved on. The remaining controls proved much easier and we even took some risky route choices - including an almost direct route from CP15 to CP16. This leg still took us nearly 7 hours and we were really happy to pull into TA1 again.

Orienteering

At TA3 we were given and Orienteering map and we headed out on my favorite - orienteering. This was pair orienteering - so some strategy was involved. In pair orienteering you are given checkpoints in pairs - and you must collect both points in each pair for them to count. So there will be a CP A1 and CP A2 - you must visit them both to get credit. The strategy is that we only needed to collect 4 of 7 controls pairs - so you must decide which ones to visit. We completed this section in just under 3 hours - my legs by now were toasted - though we still were jogging a lot of the downhills.

  Bike to Start/Finish

The sun came up during the orienteering, and now it was early morning with 2 sections left, a bike ride to the main TA with 4 checkpoints (CP17-20)

and the final orienteering. The bike leg was easy - Greg navigated it and we had one minor error. We ended up at the main TA with 2 hours left to race. We only had enough time to get one checkpoint and chose to get AA (it was far, but easy).