The race started at 8am and we had to finish by 630pm, 10 and 1/2 hours total time. At the start Mark biked 6.6 miles from NC, Cathy started the 3.6 run in McKaysville, TN and Zach started the 3.4 mile paddle on the Toccoa River in GA. We all ended up CP1 at Horseshoe Bend Park. Despite our thoughts to the contrary, we arrived at CP1, the first transition, about the same time.
From there we had an 8 mile paddle on the Toccoa River. In our haste to start paddling we forgot to pick-up our passport, something we had never done in all our years of racing. About a mile down the River Mark asked who had the passport. No one did. We pulled over on the side of the River and Cathy climbed up the side of a steep muddy bank and ran back to get it. We lost about a half hour and we in dead last place of 80 plus teams. We paddle through some white water to CP2. On the way to CP3 we had been warned about a four-foot weir (man-made waterfall) so we were on the left side of the river to portage around it. We couldn’t see the weir but could hear it roaring and pulled off in time to portage around and not go over. Many teams didn’t know about the weir and went over and spilled out.
We paddled toward CP3 thinking it farther down river than it actually was. Luckily we saw another team on the bank of the river and pulled over to check it out. Sure enough it was CP3. On our way to the canoe take-out we passed many teams still looking for CP3. We were back in the race and on our schedule of noon at the transition to the bikes.
Since we do not have a lot of speed on the bike leg our strategy was to skip five CPs and go directly to the trekking section. After two hours of mostly uphill riding we arrived at the trekking section at 2pm. We had figured two hours on this trekking section before we had to leave on the bikes for the last leg. It was a steep climb to CP12 and even steeper climb to the top of the mountain and CP15. From there we headed to the bonus CP which would take an hour off our total time. We trekked down the mountain right to it. Time was running short so we decided to go straight down the mountain and follow the creek to the trail and then take the trail back to the bikes. Not the best choice. The trek down was very steep, covered with briars and thick rhododendron. It took longer to get back to the bikes than we anticipated.
We were back at the CP and our bikes at 430pm. At that point we had two hours to get to the finish line. As we took off Cathy realized she had a flat tire. Never in our 12 years of racing had that happened. That set us back about 10 minutes. From there it was a three-mile ride on a very muddy trail and then we had about 10 miles on paved road to the finish. By this time our legs were pretty spent and we skipped CP18 and took an alternate route to the finish.
We weren’t quite sure which road to take but we consulted with another team and went down Holly St in McKaysville. The road took us to a trail. At the end of the trail we were on a cliff overlooking the River and finish line which was on the on the other side of the River. We had 14 minutes until time ran out on us and no direct route to the River crossing. We went straight down the cliff like wild men with briars slicing our legs in many places. We arrived at the river with six minutes remaining. Mark was first to start crossing, Zach second and Cathy was last. The river current was pushing hard and Cathy was having trouble making any headway. The clock kept ticking. We could hear people on the other side of the river encouraging us and counting down the time. Cathy was making no headway and Zach went back grabbed her bike and they got across, struggled out of the river and ran to the fin ish line.
We finished at 5:28:28 with a full 92 seconds sparing. We finished 37th overall out of 82 teams and 5th in Masters Division. We were one of less than 10 teams to find the bonus CP. Not bad for a team with an average age of 56.
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