For starters, Ultramax did an overall tremendous job in designing, executing, and organizing this first-time race for them. We were super excited for starters because this kicks off the 2010 race season for us, but we weren't too sure what to expect from Ultramax since this was their first stab at putting one of these races on. I won't say that my expectations were necessarily low, but I figured they would have some "hiccups" along the way and there was only one which I will get to later...
Ok, since Ken Chappell couldn't race with us on this one we picked up Elizabeth Sparks who is an accomplished triathlete who lives here in Cape Girardeau. She is very strong, brings navigation skills to the table, and is tremendously easy to get along with in a team environment. Perfect racing partner, period.
The Friday night mandatory gear check and team meeting was late, and by the time we got our maps (killer, by the way), found out the 6 am start time (ouch, 24 degrees) and drove back to Jill's house in St. Chuck, we didn't even start plotting (21 CP's) until 10:30 and I got to bed at about 1 am after I stayed up a bit longer just to familiarize myself with the overall course map and flow. Wakeup time was agreed upon by all to be 3:30 am and that sucked but there would be time to sleep on Saturday night after the race.
Saturday morning we did a bike drop below a lake dam at 5 am, then drove to the parking area/Race HQ, tried to stay warm, hit the toilets, and lined up for the headlamp trekking start. We ran on a gravel trail and hit CP1 easily as daylight began to flirt with us, then the mass group began to thin out some but still quite a few pockets of racers in line. CP2 looked super easy on the map but I stupidly followed some groups that blew right past it and then made another turn away from it. This ended up causing us to 'wander' for a little bit and we finally went back and the pond was concealed by evergreen trees. Ok, not a good way to start off, costing us alot of time early. My fault.
Next we hit CP3 on a hilltop easily, then somehow I had us heading South towards CP4 when Elizabeth quickly noticed that we made a wrong turn at CP3 and that we should be heading W instead of S, so we quickly righted ourselves back to CP3, then easily went on to hit CP4. CP4 was at the bottom of a reentrant in one of the steepest hillsides I have seen on any adv race terrain. CP5 & CP6 were nailed, then we headed on up to the transition at the lake to hit the paddling leg.
The paddling leg was uneventful except for the awesome fiberglass canoes and the frozen coves. So many canoes going back into the coves were breaking up the one inch thick ice which was causing some slow going for teams but otherwise no big deal.
We finished the canoes, transitioned to foot and trekked to CP8 where we picked up bikes.
The bike leg hitting CP9 thru CP14 was mostly gravel roads, some doubletrack/horse trails, and quite a few creek crossings to get the ole feet wet, wet, wet. It was probably about 18 km and the CP's were easy. No problems here.
When we arrived at CP14 on bikes we dropped them and transitioned back to trek where we would be going out on about a 5 km orienteering course to find CP15 thru CP19 in any order (Rogaine style). CP15 was super easy following a powerline, CP16 also easy at the edge of a lake, CP17 was in a very pronounced reentrant feeding into another large reentrant, and from there we could see a hilltop that we shot up, then followed the flat terrain SE and around a reentrant, then a turn W to where the land had 4 distinct ridges overlooking a valley and Charette Creek below. The terrain was unmistakeable and I was confident since we were just ticking these CP's off so well. When we came upon the ridge where CP18 was plotted on the map, we went out onto the ridge and could not find it. Repeatedly looking at the map and comparing it to the terrain, I was sure it had to be there....Well it wasn't. Soon other teams started showing up and we compared plots, thinking maybe I mis-plotted. Nope. Had it right on. I then decide that maybe the race director plotted it over onto another ridge mistakenly so we went out onto another one and the same thing....Nowhere to be found. We had wasted alot of time by now. Forum Dental came along and told us that they had been to the TA and the volunteer told them that teams were finding CP18 so it had to exist. Hmmmm.
We went ahead and made our way towards CP19 and a four male team said that they found it but that it was indeed mis-plotted onto the wrong ridge. So we proceeded to go S and nailed CP19, then on our way back went over and sure enough, we found the mis-plotted CP18 on a paralell ridge but the ridges were very different from each other. The Race director realized the error and in a very professional way acknowledged it on the website. While all CP's were checked by GPS by the race management, I think they found out the hard way that the GPS method of checking CP's is not always accurate.
Next we hooked up our running tow system and made our way back to the CP14/20 Transition area and transitioned back to bike where we just had to go bike about 5k, hit CP21 and then on to the Finish Area where a "Challenge Course" would be waiting.
The Challenge course consisted of taking an empty sandbag, running to a lake about 3/4 mile away (guessing), filling it with a minimum of 30 lbs of sand, then each team member had to carry the sandbag back to the Race Finish to complete a small obstacel type course with their sandbag. The 'kicker' was that when you filled the sandbag, there was not a scale there, and if you returned to the Finish/Race HQ and the bag did not weigh 30 lbs, you and every team member had to go back to the beach to bring the weight up to 30 lbs. The mental side of that translates to "I'll be damned if I am going to take any chance of having to carry this thing all the way back here," so you end up wayyy overfilling it to make sure, sure, sure. When we took the bags back to the Finish area they all met the minimum weight.
We crossed the Finish at 8 hrs 31 minutes, good for 4th place in 4 person co-ed and 12th place overall. It was a nice event, great weather, and we all felt pretty strong. Innsbrook is a great setting for an adventure race. We plan on being back next year. I would be willing to bet that Ultramax learned a hard lesson about the misplaced CP and will go over and above double and triple checking them for accuracy in the future.
Post by Bryan Greaser
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