Dixie Conquest 2014

Here is the writeup of the Dixie Conquest that I raced with Jim Gorton and Courtney Spratt. The race was held in Bayard Conservation area near Green Cove Springs. The weather was perfect.

Prolog - We started with Jeff leininger putting us all in a little circle marked with tape and we had to start the race by finding 4 plastic Easter eggs hidden in the bushes. We were pretty fast in finding the eggs and were quickly on to the initial orienteering run. A large group of teams headed out to CP1, due to some really good initial mapping of the bearing and distance on CP4 - we had the lead leaving CP4, but lost it due to missing the trail leading to CP5 - though that only cost us about 30 seconds. We thought we had regained the lead as teams took a wrong turn just after CP6. We did not see them, but Endeavor and Team Jax put a 3 minute lead on us and we were the 3rd team into the TA. 

Paddle 1 - We were in great spirits as we left the TA on bikes and headed for the boats. The first few points were easy and fun and because of the out and back nature we could easily discern the 3 minute lead of both Jax and Endeavor. We also were able to tell where the teams behind us were. None of the lead teams hit 12 before jumping out of the boats to go after the 3 inland controls (13, 14, and 15). We pulled up due east of CP13 and headed west - unfortunately not finding it quickly - so I bailed and we grabbed CP14 and CP15 to the south on foot. Coming back to CP13 we found it easily the second time (not sure how we missed it the first time) - and headed back to the boats. The miss on CP13 cost us more time than I had though, probably 15 minutes total and we were about 15 minutes behind Endeavor and Jax as we got back to the main TA.

Orienteering - We headed out on bikes, our plan was to get CP16 on the way to the orienteering section and then get the remaining bike CP's on the way back. This allowed us to toss our bike shoes in our packs and use trek shoes for the first part of the bike, only switching shoes once after we finished the trek. CP16 was easy - but did require travel on some very wet and unrideable trails. At the Bayard TA - we headed out on foot. It took me a few minutes to realize the north on the map was not the typical straight up - but that did not cost us much time. I think we had the fastest time on this leg, and we really had no issues finding any of the controls, though some of them did require swimming and bushwhacking. If anyone is interested in our approach - let me know. The order of CP's for our team was CP27-28-29-31-32-34-35-33-30. Because CP30 was a bearing and distance I measured it out, found it took us to the edge of the marsh west of CP30 and we headed straight for it. We left CP30 via the road which gave me the chance to plot the bike course on our run back to the TA.

Bike - I had planned the bike course and even done preliminary measurements to find the CP's. We quickly found as we hit CP17 that the scale was not completely accurate. This cost us a few minutes on CP17 and about 10 minutes on CP18, though after CP18 I pretty much had the scale down. We got CP17-18-19 and headed to the east entrance to head to CP21. The trail to CP25 was completely flooded so we bailed to the railroad tracks and rode along the the tracks - bushwhacking back in near CP25. The trail was still under a LOT of water, but got better towards CP22. We continued on to CP22-23-24 and overshot 24 by quite a bit (or it was placed too far north). CP26 was another quick find. Courtney requested that we "hammer" the ride back so we let her set a 23-24 mph pace and simply hung on to the finish line (no real navigation required). We ended up edging out AR Militia, they had left Bayard TA before we passed it - but took a slightly shorter but harder bike route back to the main TA. Dash had led Team Jax to a solid performance to take first.



The results and more write-ups are at

http://www.pangeaadventureracing.com/event-details/events/2014-dixie-conquest-ar