Training Log Archive: wokitoki

Event: Wilderness Traverse
 

Fast rail trail run to get the blood flowing.
A short jaunt on the bikes to the trek. o-store whipped past us on the way and Liza was hooting (i think she was a little pumped up to get this race started).
CP2 was a nice start to the race, lake was a big back stop, we followed running free and a few other teams into it.
We decided to take the direct route to CP3 as the woods weren't that thick. we came down the ridge before the CP right on bearing but for some reason i left the bearing and decided to follow the ditch up (thought it would lead to the pond). it pulled us too far north and seeing nothing to relocate to, we went out to rail trail and back in to finally get it - not a great start.
then we biked to massassauga - i thought it would be quicker to take the roads than the rail trail, so when we hit the highway we jogged east then south to the roads. another bad call, it was slower.
we caught a few teams before the transition, but were quite a ways back of running free.

i really enjoyed this paddle.
first major decision of the race was to go through the swampy section at the start or paddle 5k around. how bad could it be we thought - real bad as it turned out. dragging boats through knee deep swamp and fighting through the sticks was brutal. finally we clued in that the adjacent woods would be better and we ploughed through. though i haven't seen the tracking, i think it turned out quicker.
i definitely plan to bring the family here next summer, i saw some awesome campsites en route.
i seem to always get cold after paddles, and it wasn't even that cold out. i threw on more layers, but i guess i gotta get out of the damp layers. anyways, in my haste to get moving and after running free, i somehow left my race bib. what a bone head mistake. not sure how i did it, we went back to the bin after getting water to pack everything up and didn't see it.

with big catching features for CP10 and CP12, CP11 was the main challenge. having no better idea, we simply did a straight bearing and skirted or went through quite a few marshes. i see now that a more southerly bearing would have been drier. we hardly got up to a jog between CP9 until the trails into CP12, but we were steady, constantly moving.
got the news about my bib penalty from Angus at CP11. after apologizing to my teammates, there wasn't anything to do but push hard, and so we did.
i have never eaten so few gels and bars in a race and so much real food (sandwiches, boiled eggs, etc) and it seemed to work great, no gut issues at all this race.

we arrived at the TA as dark set in. a hot coffee from the volunteers was awesome!
greg had a huge bail on the trail down to the snowmobile bridge 5mins into the bike section. he was shaken up and took a head bonk, but sucked it up and we chugged on.
vince was feeling the wear of the race and didn't want to navigate, so i did this section as well. we took the road around into CP13 as the power line trail was eating us up. as soon as we hit the road, my gears started clunking - i was trying to get through this race on an old chain - damn. clunked all the way to the finish line.
the guys worked so hard, we knew we'd be hard pressed to gain any time on the chasers.
in the end we came up a couple of minutes short of the win due to the penalty. personally, i'm not really concerned about the placing, but it is a little rough to deny your teammates of that satisfaction.
anyhoo, another great race put on by the WT team (Bob/Barb) and their volunteers - having done quite a few of these races around N/A now, we are very fortunate to have such dialed race organizers.

C • Congratulations! :) 9