Training Log Archive: P-K

This leg is what I'll remember most from this race.

We launched probably right at midnight. And about 50 ft out we were completely engulfed in fog. I could barely see 5 feet in front of me. We tried to use our lights but quickly learned that the lights would reflect off the moisture in the air taking visbility to absoulte 0 so we opted for no lights. We tried to follow a bearing W across the first bay and to be honest I think we got lucky finding the first opening.

I could hear teams all around us going every which direction and I could tell it would be a long night if we ever got even 100m out of place on the map.

To make matters worse, Bob had given us a really good map of the park to paddle with but the grid on it was offset the wrong direction from true north which meant that it wasn't very easy to eyeball which way to go next without taking a bearing. It means I had to shift back and forth between the park map and the 1:50k map to make sure I wasn't picking the wrong direction.

We muddled along for several hours. Sometimes the fog would clear for 10-15 minutes and we'd get a clear view by moonlight of the land around us. Other times it would roll in so thick that I couldn't see JF sitting 4 ft in front of me.

The eeriest part would be when we would get this feeling that we might be getting close to land, but we couldn't see anything - so we would pull out the lights and when we turned them on we'd see we were literally 5ft from running into an alder swamp that we could not see at all without the lights on. We ran headfirst into some pretty big landmasses...

But by slowly creeping from left coast to right coast we made our way finally into Port Rawson Bay (helped a great deal by the big blue sign that told us we were indeed in Port Rawson Bay) and found CP13.

From there it was a bit easier going with fewer gaps to hit and less route choices. We didn't make good time but we kept moving the right direction and got into CP14 but not even close to making the 4am cutoff (we were in around 6:30).

Dawn broke as we left 14 and we finished up in bright sunlight feeling great about overcoming some really tough nav overnight albeit not moving quickly.

All in all, we finished 15th overall which is our best WT finish and were about 2hrs out from 10th place.

I felt this was by far our best race overnight and I was helped a ton by RB navigating the daytime trek which let me take a break before doing the bike and paddle overnight.

This is probably the last year of the Beer Barons in this format as we're probably bringing on new people next year and JF is probably done - but a great final race and we're thrilled with the result.

364 days until WT next year! Better get training!

Event: Wilderness Traverse
 

3 CPs on foot to start 2017 Wilderness Traverse. RB was going to have to spend the race fighting a bad hamstring so we took it as slow as possible out of the gate which gave me a great view of the 'sea of orange' making it's way up the Tapattoo resort road. CP3 on top of the hill caught us a bit but rolled back into the resort to transition to the short bike feeling good.

Short bike leg was a trip down memory lane to a few years ago when the race finished on this section of the Seguin trail. That year, the only year we pulled off a full course finish, and we did it with about 90 seconds to spare to the 2pm deadline which means this last section of trail took every once of energy we had at at the time. Needless to say it was much more pleasant this year. Also with Friday's rain the sand was a bit easier to ride than I remember.

The trek leg looked long to us and was setup as a trail runner's dream with lots of ATV trail and road to get you where you were going but with RB's hamstring we were not moving as fast as we wanted.

I also made a very bad route choice into CP6 opting to take trails to the east side of Jelso lake and then cut down to the road and loop back to CP6 rather than taking the straight line approach to the CP. At best it cost us 30 minutes, at worst more than an hour. The split from 5-6 is our worst of the race and it was pretty heart-breaking to walk the road to CP6 seeing every team in the race going to the other way. I should've checked it closer but the terrain on the straight line approach looked bad to us on google earth so we avoided it. Biggest mistake of the race and I made it before we even got to the start line.

All splits are for short course 3 teams: 22nd place split from 5-6, then 7th from 6-7 and 5th from 7-8. Overall 14th in our category (short course 3) for the trek but easily 1hr15 slower than we could have been.

Marathon bike leg that combined some of the most beautiful flat road I've ever seen on an adventure race with some knee deep mud that was a bit more typical of races we've done.

We've moved really well on the road and it was clear that JF had done some real work on the bike legs.

We suffered one major mechanical with RB welding his chain in between his rear cassette and spokes. We tried from probably 20 minutes to finesse it out...then he got frustrated and 'fixed' it the old fashioned way - by cranking his pedals as hard as he possibly could. The chain came out but broke three turns later. So after we fixed that we were off again. Probably 20 minutes lost. But I'm pretty sure we saw almost every team sidelined at some point on this bike with a mechanical of some kind. The mud was everywhere and wrought havoc on everyone's bike. At one point I was trudging behind a guy who's real wheel was so caked with mud that it wasn't even spinning - and he didn't care. He was just dragging his back wheel through ATV ditches. Ah what a great sport.

It was probably 10pm by the time we hit the road and we cruised well into the TA to hit the long paddle leg.

Burrard St. to Canada Place and back. I love this city. Wish I ran here all the time.