Training Log Archive: FoxShadowIn the 7 days ending Sep 30, 2012:
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Sunday Sep 30, 2012 #
Adventure Race 15:10:00 [4] 40.0 mi (22:45 / mi)
Saturday Sep 29, 2012 #
Adventure Race 13:50:00 [3] 70.0 mi (11:51 / mi)
CPT nationals.
What a huge event, lots of memorable moments.
After spending more time getting ready for a race than I have in a long time, sorting our gear into "duffle 1" and "duffle 2", and going to a pre-race meeting filled with off-topic sponsorship stuff, we made it onto the buses wearing thick neoprene ready to take on the lower Gauley, filled with class 4 and 5 goodness.
We were paired up with Odyssey/Imonpoint for the rafting, which is great because they are a high energy and hard working crew of bad assess. The raft was blast, not quite as fun or as big as last time (on the new river with near record high levels of water when we did the race in this location in 2010) but still a blast.
Out of the transition we got got SMOKED by SOG who TA'ed in about half the time we did. Within minutes they were gone, really flying up the 1600 foot (!) climb to the top of a radio tower.
We bounced back and forth with SOG for much of the day, taking the lead with some good nav, then narrowly giving it back when they were able to use their local knowledge of the area to find some trail heads faster than we were.
Into the night, we maintained a good steady pace on the bikes, Kelly was not enjoying it but she was strong and kept racing like a champ. We arrived at a night-O section around 10PM during which we were allowed to split up and navigate individually. We knew this would be an important section.
Kelly was assigned one moderately difficult control, Stephen, two, Biz two difficult controls that were far away, and me two medium and one difficult (a ways away but clustered together). Biz and I ran up a big hill and decided to meet back at that location in about 30 minutes if we had difficulty. After 30 minutes I had only found one of my controls, but was never "lost", I just did not see the damn control. The clue was "top of reentrant", but there really were no reentrants on the map or in reality. I meet up with Biz, and we looked for another 30 minutes TO NO AVAIL. Other teams were racing around the thick underbrush and having similarly bad luck. Finally I returned to the location I thought it was originally (using my watch as well as pace counting to judge scale, as I was very concentrated, using every tool I had to ensure I did not let the team down) and I saw it at the bottom of a 50-60 foot hill, in a feature that should not have been considered a reentrant. There was a bit of a reentrant there, but these are Appalachian foothills, so a 10 wobble should not be used as a feature when the contour lines on the map are 12 meter contours! Biz and I shared our disgust with the control and went and grabbed my last control. We returned after two hours, certain that we had given up the lead to SOG, and likely Odyssey as well. As we signed out of the TA, we were in the lead, and the other teams had not returned! Great news.
The overnight bike navigation was VERY difficult because one of the main roads was not mapped. Biz had trouble, but slowly worked through it, awesome. After grabbing the first two controls we saw what we thought may have been SOG patrolling the area, and new that they were not far behind.
Soon thereafter we had to choose whether to skip two controls that we knew were going to take a lot of time and effort. We were told that sweeping the course was an impossibility, so these would be good controls to skip. After surveying our success up until that point, we choose to go get them, a decision that was tough to make. It took us over two hours to obtain the two of them. The only recompense the fact that they were both awesome spots, one a brilliant overlook, the other a huge cave.
We battled on. The sun rose as we put on our wetsuits for the 12 mile riverboard section. We swam as fast as we could to keep warm, and later learned that we had the fastest split on the river.
The next morning it started to look increasingly likely that we could sweep. After spending so much time getting those tough overnight controls, we knew we had to sweep to guarantee a victory. This is when we raced the hardest. I took Kelly's pack again during the biking, and Biz and Kelly carried mine during the trekking. We crushed controls like we were in a 12 hour (6 hour?) event, sweating and red lining around the woods with a hazy fervor of adrenaline soaked delirium.
Kelly and I both got stung by wasps, we had 4 flat tires, but we crossed the line with 20 minutes remaining, all controls obtained.
2012 national champs!
We were all super strong out there, and worked together very well. Kelly's strength and Biz's leadership were two huge components of our success out there. Thanks to my awesome teammates for making it happen.
What a huge event, lots of memorable moments.
After spending more time getting ready for a race than I have in a long time, sorting our gear into "duffle 1" and "duffle 2", and going to a pre-race meeting filled with off-topic sponsorship stuff, we made it onto the buses wearing thick neoprene ready to take on the lower Gauley, filled with class 4 and 5 goodness.
We were paired up with Odyssey/Imonpoint for the rafting, which is great because they are a high energy and hard working crew of bad assess. The raft was blast, not quite as fun or as big as last time (on the new river with near record high levels of water when we did the race in this location in 2010) but still a blast.
Out of the transition we got got SMOKED by SOG who TA'ed in about half the time we did. Within minutes they were gone, really flying up the 1600 foot (!) climb to the top of a radio tower.
We bounced back and forth with SOG for much of the day, taking the lead with some good nav, then narrowly giving it back when they were able to use their local knowledge of the area to find some trail heads faster than we were.
Into the night, we maintained a good steady pace on the bikes, Kelly was not enjoying it but she was strong and kept racing like a champ. We arrived at a night-O section around 10PM during which we were allowed to split up and navigate individually. We knew this would be an important section.
Kelly was assigned one moderately difficult control, Stephen, two, Biz two difficult controls that were far away, and me two medium and one difficult (a ways away but clustered together). Biz and I ran up a big hill and decided to meet back at that location in about 30 minutes if we had difficulty. After 30 minutes I had only found one of my controls, but was never "lost", I just did not see the damn control. The clue was "top of reentrant", but there really were no reentrants on the map or in reality. I meet up with Biz, and we looked for another 30 minutes TO NO AVAIL. Other teams were racing around the thick underbrush and having similarly bad luck. Finally I returned to the location I thought it was originally (using my watch as well as pace counting to judge scale, as I was very concentrated, using every tool I had to ensure I did not let the team down) and I saw it at the bottom of a 50-60 foot hill, in a feature that should not have been considered a reentrant. There was a bit of a reentrant there, but these are Appalachian foothills, so a 10 wobble should not be used as a feature when the contour lines on the map are 12 meter contours! Biz and I shared our disgust with the control and went and grabbed my last control. We returned after two hours, certain that we had given up the lead to SOG, and likely Odyssey as well. As we signed out of the TA, we were in the lead, and the other teams had not returned! Great news.
The overnight bike navigation was VERY difficult because one of the main roads was not mapped. Biz had trouble, but slowly worked through it, awesome. After grabbing the first two controls we saw what we thought may have been SOG patrolling the area, and new that they were not far behind.
Soon thereafter we had to choose whether to skip two controls that we knew were going to take a lot of time and effort. We were told that sweeping the course was an impossibility, so these would be good controls to skip. After surveying our success up until that point, we choose to go get them, a decision that was tough to make. It took us over two hours to obtain the two of them. The only recompense the fact that they were both awesome spots, one a brilliant overlook, the other a huge cave.
We battled on. The sun rose as we put on our wetsuits for the 12 mile riverboard section. We swam as fast as we could to keep warm, and later learned that we had the fastest split on the river.
The next morning it started to look increasingly likely that we could sweep. After spending so much time getting those tough overnight controls, we knew we had to sweep to guarantee a victory. This is when we raced the hardest. I took Kelly's pack again during the biking, and Biz and Kelly carried mine during the trekking. We crushed controls like we were in a 12 hour (6 hour?) event, sweating and red lining around the woods with a hazy fervor of adrenaline soaked delirium.
Kelly and I both got stung by wasps, we had 4 flat tires, but we crossed the line with 20 minutes remaining, all controls obtained.
2012 national champs!
We were all super strong out there, and worked together very well. Kelly's strength and Biz's leadership were two huge components of our success out there. Thanks to my awesome teammates for making it happen.
Tuesday Sep 25, 2012 #
Running 24:00 [3] 2.8 mi (8:34 / mi)
Morning shredmill
Running 35:00 [3] 3.5 mi (10:00 / mi)
Afternoon run with the dogs at the riverbottoms
Monday Sep 24, 2012 #
Swimming 40:00 [3]
Kick boarding (riverboarding practice) around lake calhoun. Getting our equipment dialed in for national this weekend.