SRACAR 2010

The Savannah River/Augusta Canal Adventure Race was our last AR for 2010. We still have other non-AR races in which we will be competing this year including a back-to-back 10K and mountain bike races at Callaway Gardens next month. This is a race we always enjoy and look forward to doing each year. We competed in this race as a 2-person coed team and we raced with our sometimes teammates Mark and Jeremy. They were teamed up in the 2-person male category.

Like the two previous races here, the race started at 7am at the Savannah Rapids Pavilion in Augusta and had a 3pm finish deadline without penalty. The penalty was one CP for each 15 minutes late. The objective of the race was to acquire the most CPs by the cutoff; so there was no penalty for CPs missed or skipped. New for this year was the option of acquiring the CPs using boat, bike or run. We quickly say the advantage of taking our bikes with us on the paddle. There were also two negatives; less room and less stability through the rapids. These did not outweigh the advantage of riding the last eight miles to the finish as opposed to running those miles. Most teams did not choose the option to bring their bikes and the 3-person teams didn’t have the room.

We started with a two-mile trail run at the end of which we picked-up our passports. Then we took our bikes to the canal. From there we ran to the canoes and portaged them to the canal, loaded the bikes and headed down the canal.

We had an eight mile paddle section ahead of us including two portages. Our strategy was to paddle down the canal to the narrowest point and portage over the island to the river, cross the river and collect all the CPs on the South Carolina side of the river. We had to work our way through a number of rapids as we worked our way to the SC side. Our first stop was to punch CPs 5, 6, 7 and 8. This required exiting the canoes and trekking to the CP’s. We lost some time looking for CP 5 but were able to locate all four and head back to the canoes.

Back in the canoes we had to paddle through the worst set of rapids in the race. Cathy was not very happy about that, but she worked hard and we made it through. After the race we learned that other teams including their bikes had spilled here.

Our next CP was 10. It was supposed to be on the river bank, but was not there. Unlike some other teams we did not waste any time looking for it. At the end of the race we learned that no teams found the CP because it had been taken. Next we had to pull to the bank of the river and climb a steep hill to find CP 11. The next CP after that was the rappel/zip line stop. We only had to complete one and choose the rappel since it was faster.

After the rappel we had one more CP on the SC side and then paddle up river to a creek and added another CP were the river and creek joined. Front her we paddled to the end of the creek and had to portage the canoes and bikes back to the canal.

From there it was a 25-minute paddle to the take out on Lake Olmstead. We quickly unloaded our bikes and transitioned to the last section of the race. It was 140pm when we headed back toward the finish. We still had a number of CPs to collect and finish by 3pm. We passed up two CPs due to time constraints and punched the remaining points from short treks and climbs. Also, on the way back we passed many teams that were travelling on foot.

We crossed the finish line at 2:53pm. We finished first in 2-person coed division with 14 of the 17 check points. Pretty good considering most of the other teams in the division were half our age and none of them finished by 3pm. Mark and Jeremy finished third in their 2-person male category.