On Friday evening we pretty much found out for sure that due to heavy recent spring rains, the Gasconade was swollen out of its banks and the race personnel determined that it was not safe to have us do the paddling portion of this race. Bummer, two years in a row that this has happened to this race. Mother Nature wins again. So we get the maps on Saturday morning at the 5:15 am map handout, and we learn that instead of doing the paddling leg down the Gasconade to get from CP 9 to CP 11, we now had to trek about 7 miles additional to make up for that segment. Anyway, getting ahead of myself here....
We take off at 7 am for the start of what was a 9 CP trekking leg/orienteering leg. We (ahemm, I) made our usual blunders and had a few snafu's in finding a few of the CP's. We came into CP 9 frustrated because we were near the front of the pack from CP1 to CP 5, but I screwed up on CP 6 and 7 and we lost time. We checked in with the volunteer, then began the trek back to the Race Start/HQ/Transition Area where our bikes were awaiting us.
The bike leg(s) of this race were surprisingly good. They were on some horse trails but were very "singletrack like." Once I heard that the river was swollen and the paddling was cancelled, I had assumed that the trails would be sloppy, muddy, rutted out and essentially unrideable. I had envisioned pushing bikes for 50 percent of the trail sections, but boy was I wrong. I would say it was more like 95 percent rideable, 5 percent pushing your bike. RIght on, I'll take that. We hit the CP's without incident, no nav problems and no bike mechanicals.
The bike/orienteering leg was pretty cool. It actually gave some good route choices. We also hit this section pretty much without incident and hit all CP's quite well with the exception of the fact that somehow I had nav'd us right past a pond where a CP was located. We did a full circle and came back and found it. Sigh.....
Now, the poo hit the fan when I, out of the blue, had some crazy dang allergic reaction to who knows what. Trouncing around in the forest on a hot, sweaty 88+ degree afternoon in poison ivy, oak, psumac, thorns, and everything else under the sun, well.....The toxins must have finally penetrated into my bloodstream and I puffed up. I was a little worried, my face was puffy, eyes were swollen, heart was a little racy, and my throat was a bit constricted, but we only had an hour on the bike (roads) back to the finish left. With only a few easy turns on roads, I threw the map at Marc and Ken and told them to figure out where to go from here back to the finish. I couldn't hardly see out of my swollen eyes to read the map. We took off on the bikes and came through the finish line not really having any idea what place we were in.
So, the results were in: We finished in 6th place out of 36 teams in 4 person co-ed, and 12th overall out of 79 teams which included 2 person teams as well as about a half dozen solo racers. The top teams really cooked the course, somewhere just over 6 hrs. Downhill Bikes blitzed into first place. Man those guys are awesome. Great athletes, great attitudes. I love getting our butts kicked by them!!!! Our race time was 9 hrs 35 minutes.
It was the first really hot day of the year, where temps approached 90 degrees, so there were alot of DNF's. The attrition rate for this race was higher than years past. We had our own issues, dehydration, allergies, etc. but overall, we laid down a solid race. It was a very good day to be an adventure racer. Marc, Ken and Jill all did great all day long. I was proud to have them as my teammates and I always have been. I was illin' from that allergy thing so badly that I didn' even get to back down to the campsite to hang out with my teamies after the race. Heck, I didn't even get a Fat Tire afterwards.
Post by Bryan Greaser
