In the past we have not competed in 6-hour races; too short for us. Time has changed that. We had not raced in a while and it was a good warm up for our 14th Blue Ridge Mountain AR coming up on 13 April.
The Jackrabbit started and finished in Hayesville, NC. We were taken by bus to Jackrabbit Beach on Lake Chatuge for the 9 am start. The race started with a short running prologue where we had to find two out of three checkpoints before we could pick up our passports for the rest of the race. That was easy.
Next came the mountain biking section at the Jackrabbit Trails. We are not fast on the bikes anymore. The night before when we were strategizing for the race, we decided to skip Checkpoints (CP) 1 and 2 since they were on the longest out and back loop. That’s what we did. We rode to CP 3 through 9, not in any particular order and were able to find all of them. Cathy commented that those were the nicest single-track trails we had ever biked and she actually enjoyed it (she usually doesn’t like single-track). We knew we had to be back by noon to stay on time for the 3 pm finish. It was 1145 am when we returned to the Transition Area (TA).
Three hours left and we were in the kayak on the way to CP 11, which was located on an island. On the way to the island we passed two teams in canoes. A short climb to the top of the island and we were back in our kayak on the way to the next CP and the boat take out on and start of the portage to the next TA.
After putting on the portage wheels, we pulled the kayak up the trail to the top of the dam, a very big dam. We left our kayak and set out on a three CP trek section. We gave ourselves an hour and a half to complete this section. The first CP was at the bottom of the dam next to the spillway. Then it was on to the next CP that we knew would be difficult. After working our way through briars and brambles to the area we were expecting the CP, we couldn’t find it. We worked our way to a trail above the area and attacked the CP from that direction. Still couldn’t find it. Time was moving on and so did we. Hate when that happens. You know the CP is there; just can’t find it. We followed the trail to the third CP and returned to our kayak on top of the dam. By now, we were plenty scratched up from briars and brambles.
On the portage to the TA, we had to find a CP along the river. We took the wrong approach and ran into a solid wall of briars. We were scratched up enough and running out of time so we passed that CP and kept portaging to the TA.
At this TA, we had to decide to go in the river and paddle to the finish or run back to the finish. Cathy was not comfortable with how fast the river was running; so, we ran back. On the way back we were able to work our way to the river through more briars and brambles to get one of the CPs. We found out when we finished that a number of teams had spilled in the river and had problems with strainers. One team even lost their canoe to the river. Glad we ran back instead!
We finished at 5 hours 46 minutes. We finished 10th overall and 3rd in the 2-person Masters Division. Not bad for grandparents of 11 whom are 20-30 years older than almost all other adventure racers.
