Training Log Archive: mayer22

Short ride from the bike drop to the finish. I wore Julia's helmet to use her light (mine was dying). Also her strap broke so we made a strap out of zipties. Quite amusing.

Event: Odyssey Blue Ridge Bear Epic
 

Blue Ridge Bear
Short course. Thought this coming in from the distances but the maps revealed it to be true. There was only one tricky part of the course. We had to make it to the bike drop on the paddle by 1630. We set a personal cutoff for the paddle put in at 1430. This meant we only had 4.5 hours for the first bike/trek section. Any points we didn't collect would have to be captured after the long paddle and trek at the end of the race at night. It would also require an extra out and back to get to the points. If we got them early they would be on our way to the put in.

Bike leg to start the race. Paved roads, double track, single track, hike a bike and trekking.

Luckily Earl realized we could take the road out to the one mandatory point and the trail back instead of an out and back on the trail. This made meeting our paddle deadline much more reasonable. We decided to get points until we needed to bail and head to the boats. We had no problem with the 5 points along the trail. We then crossed 43 to get the other 4 points since we had plenty of time.

Arrived at CP3 without realizing we were there already. Many teams did this because the trails were hard to keep track of. Had trouble finding the last CP (CP1). attacked from an unmarked road and boundary that wasn't marked precisely. Had to check a few spurs before finding the CP.

Made it to the paddle put in at 1pm. 1.5 hours before our self imposed cutoff.

Had to load our bikes and carry them in the boats for 6 miles. Actually went smoother than I thought it might (~10min). Taking off my front wheel and seat made it small enough to slide right in. Unfortunately the map board (which I really didn't use) was in the way from the bike sliding all the way in.

Dropped the bikes and then cruised the rest of the paddle. Paddle time to the bike drop was only an hour as compared to our estimated 1.5 hours. Water level was just barely runnable at 2.3 ft. No walking but had to give a few pushes.

This was the biggest part of the race. A fairly long trek with significant route decisions to make. We traveled these same ridges 6 years ago in the One Day but not quite as many controls to capture.

The controls this time were spread out and not at all linear. All except one looked to be within 300 meters of a road/trail with a few short shwacks between trails. We measured out about 4 different options before the race. Had it narrowed down to two at the start dependent on if it was daylight or not. As we started running on some of the roads we decided to revert back to another option which provided the most road/trail travel so we could jug the whole way. New route was 2.5 mi longer but had .7 mi less shwacking. We hammered the one lonely point out early and then were back traveling with the teams behind us. The shwack wasn't too bad. Might have saved us a bit of time but nothing major.

We had one more big decision. We could again save 1.5 mi but we would have 2 steep uphill shwacks for a total of .7mi and 1100 ft. That was a pretty easy choice not to take. We heard the second of the shwacks ended up being pretty thick as well.

Nav went well on the trek 1 miscue on the end when we had Dan nav. We started down a road without finding an attack point. Searched randomly then backed up 200m and did it right.

We were able to keep the pace pretty high when on trails and roads as planned. Encountered several bee nests along the trek.

PT
Nothing exciting

Ride in.
Borderline cold riding down Lick Run.

Ride home. Almost made it up the driveway. Walked a few meters and then kept going. Most of the driveway has a real smooth track. Felt like I was moving fast.

PT

Great weather. DP dropping. Zitch and I explored one of the last spurs left on the neighbors property and then some other small areas. I worked on some commands and heeling with him. Lost track of my location for a brief moment on the way back following the drainage back up the hill.