Saturday, December 29, 2012

Bubba Goat Round 2




What could be better for a Saturday afternoon than a surprise Bubba Run. Yes - it was a return t Lake Louisa State Park for Bubba Round 2. Junos Reed and I headed out there to compete and have a great time. The plan was for us to run as a team and do some serious training for the Sea to Sea.


The Bubba (this time) was a 3 loop race. Each time through the transition area we got a brand new map, and would do another loop. Each loop was about 2 1/2 miles. After we headed out on the first loop Junos and I realized we had different map and after about 10 minutes of confusion we were back on track and heading different directions. From my track - we first started looking at our mistake at 6 1/2 minutes in, and were finally on the correct track at about 15 minutes (ouch!).



Back on track - I ran quickly through the 3 loops with minimal error and ended up placing 2nd behind Dash (Dave Ashley) who ran a great race with no real mistakes. Here is my track


Here are some pictures of the first Bubba

http://www.floridaorienteering.org/photos/gallery3/index.php/Bubba-Goat---Lake-Louisa---9-Dec-2012

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Chrismas in Christmas

I had the fun of doing the Christmas in Christmas Adventure Race in Tossohatchee Wildlife Management Area this Sunday. It is always a lot of fun to race with Erik and Jeanette as Team Mojitas on Monday. I wore my tracker during the race so you can see an bit of an embedded play of what we did. Here is a little narrative


http://www.flickr.com//photos/pangeaadventureracing/sets/72157632281724820/show/

(link to slideshow)

Bike 

 We drew the marble for the bike leg first. I originally did not want this - the last few races I have been the first through the trek and bike legs and have had my share of eating spiders. Sure enough this was the same for the first part of this race, first one through - plenty of spiders. We did however move very fast (45 minutes for leg - fastest of all teams) and later in the day the route got "chewed up" by bikes slowing it down. Nothing really to report - navigation was easy and we were dead on every control.


8
Trek

This was the leg where teams could really get lost. We went first to CP1 and then just went bearing and distance to all the other controls. From CP6 to CP4 brambles forced us a bit too far east - but I used the open area to the west to correct. We nearly completely blew CP5, Looking at the track below, we were heading nearly due south (way off our bearing). We came out at the open area that I was planning on using as a back-stop. I used the "shape" of the tree line to determine we were south of the control, and I corrected us north and back to the marsh where it was located. That was an 11 minute mistake - doh! On the way back north we completely missed the east-west road to CP3 and ended up running the yellow trail instead - no real time loss (maybe 1 minute). Straight trail jog back in and then to boats.

Paddle

The paddle was really a bike leg with a short paddle thrown in. As we headed out we realized Jeanette had forgotten her bike helmet - she was wearing a cap and it is a pretty easy mistake to make. We went back, got the helmet and restarted. The paddle was easy and uneventful and Jeanette navigated this section nicely.-The bike helmet cost us 5 more minutes .

22

In the end Jeanette felt bad about the time lost to the bike helmet - but my mistake on the bearing on CP5 cost us twice as much time as that did. We raced our race and we raced it well and finished well under 3 hours (2:55) for a podium finish.

Sunday, December 09, 2012

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/