This race was our first opportunity to race as a two- person team and to use our kayak this year. Due to the hot summer days the race directors decided to start the race at midnight. The finish time was no later than noon that day. We decided to race with another team consisting of our teammates from other races Mark and Mike. We received our maps at 1130 and were still plotting grid coordinates when the race started. We were a few minutes behind the other teams when we finally started. We had a short run to the boats and a short portage to the water. There were four checkpoints of the first paddle leg. Zach wanted to do CPs 1 and 4, skipping 2 and 3 because they would take too long to find. Skipping CPs was ok since it was a Rogaine format. Mike wanted to do CPs 1, 2 and 4. After we did CP1 we headed to CP2. We decided to land on a peninsula and two of us would run to the CP and two would paddle the boats to the other side. The only problem was the peninsula was an island and we blew right past it and ended up one cove too far. Cathy and Mike ran down the wrong trail and Zach and Mark paddled to the wrong cove to wait for them to return. After an hour plus Zach and Mark realized something was amiss and paddles back to where they had left Cathy and Mike. Fortunately, Cathy was thinking the same and she and Mike ended up there about the same time. What could have a disaster ended up about an hour plus delay.
After that we had no more time to look for paddle CPs, so we headed to the TA. On the way there we had to weave our way through hundreds of stumps that were covering most of the northwest side of the lake. By the time we transitioned to our bikes it was about 330am. We had lots of riding ahead. CP 7 was on the Ocmulgee River and we would be returning to it later for a river swim. The ride to CP 8 took a long time and seemed uphill the entire way. When we arrived at CP8 it was approaching dawn and we had six hours to finish so we decided to return to CP7 which was also CP14 in order to do the river swim and final paddle. On the way back the roads seemed uphill the entire way. How is that possible?
We arrived at the swim (CP14) picked up our boogie boards and headed for the river. We had to wade through rapids across most of the river to get to CP15. From there it was a mile swim down the river, the first part through a lot of rapids. The boogie boards came in handy to absorb the shock from hitting the rocks. After getting through the rocks we went through varying depths of water sometimes swimming and sometimes walking through the water. Eventually we reached the take out and had to run a mile back to the TA. We picked up four CPs during that leg. That was the only section of the race that required all CPs to get credit for any.
By the time we finished the swim and returned to our bikes we had only three hours left. We had to ride hard back to the TA with the boats. On the way back Zach and Cathy had to stop to add air to Zach’s rear tire. Unbeknownst to us Mark and Mike took a wrong turn on the way back. When we arrived at the TA there were two bikes there so we thought Mike and Mark had already left on the paddle when actually there hadn’t yet arrived. So, we took off in a hurry to try and catch them and since we only had two hours to finish the paddle. We paddled hard since we didn’t know how long it would take us since we had spent so much time on the lake earlier. In the daylight the stumps were no problem. We had to punch two CPs on the way back. We finished the paddle in about an hour and 15 minutes. We then had the short portage and discovered to our surprise that Mark’s and Mike’s boat was not there. We run to the finish line. Mark and Mike finished about 15 minutes later.
After the race we had to drive home which was very difficult on no sleep. Zach drove as long as he could before Cathy took over. It was only a few days later we found out we were second in the 2-person coed division. We would have taken first had we gone with Zach’s plan on the lake.
No comments:
Post a Comment