Discussion: 36 Hr Cradle

w/ 120+ CPs

"The first 24-hour race Brent and I directed was a 36-48 hour course, and knowing that Tom is a good navigator who had this amazing playground to work with, I'd been expecting something big and bold."

Brent and I own that one :)

this recap so reminds me of the 2013 CPT Nationals (RD Peter Jolles!) where there were a bunch of points at the start, a long linear river paddle with a few clusters of trek CPs, and a bunch of points at the finish. memorably, we were the first team to figure out the timing of the paddle and give ourselves enough time to maximize the finish CPs, leading to the W. but dang, it takes a lot of guts to pull away from early CPs, especially when the competition is so close. tough call.

It was an adventure! Paddling down a raging river at night trying to find controls on small islands would have made it better though :-) I am glad we at least had a map :-/

And I stand corrected 115 CPs
https://ar.attackpoint.org/viewlog.jsp/user_10132/...

I still think canceling the paddle was a missed opportunity ;)

@Silky, yes, this one definitely required careful decision-making from the start! I've seen you guys make those gutsy calls at more than one race.

There's a funny story here - I spent a good chunk of the pre-race mapping process on the phone with Kate, who had just finished ARWC, so I missed the strategy and decision-making session. Kit and Evan both knew the Kingdom Trails well and they felt like our time was better spent there than in the first O section, and they also set a time cutoff for getting to the second paddle. If I had known what we were going to do in terms of skipping so much of the first trek, I would have probably fought it. But we were already in the TA by then, and so I decided to go with the plan. That was definitely the right move!

@abiperk, in what way was canceling the paddle a missed opportunity? Just trying to work out your thinking.

Oh, that was a reference to the paddle in our 2012 Cradle! And also a joke :)

The river was a torrent - something like triple or quadruple the usual CFS - and all of the flags were underwater. So, we canceled the section and had teams bike on a rail trail to the next TA instead.

... and it was at night.

now that SM mentions it, i think self-imposed time cutoffs are the best way to manage unclearable courses like these. it's what we used at CPT - "have to start paddling at XX:XX o'clock". cutoffs and suppressing the heartbreak that comes with skipping CPs early.