Snowshoeing 2:55:00 [3]
Mrs. Tiny and I teamed up again for the Snowshoe Raid. Like most folks, if we'd seen Map 2 at the same time as Map 1, I'm sure our plan would have been different and it was easy to identify a few areas of redunancy between our plans for both sections. We had a Plan A and Plan B for Map 1 that depended on the time it was when we got to CP203. Ended up doing Plan B and getting to the Finish around 1:40. One thing we did on the first loop that we probably shouldn't have was go and get 63 right before the finish. We saw Tiny and noshnoj starting out there for Map 2 and realized that hadn't been a good use of our time. Other than that though, we were able to execute our plan without any issues.
Map 1: 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 203 (likely should have gone for 210 here), 164, 205, 145, 63.
Our plan for Map 2 was not to waste too much time route planning but just to pick a direction and sort things out while we were moving. At this point, we were also trying to avoid going out too far. We identified a safe counterclockwise route starting with 61. Of course, this covered all of the same area we'd done on Map 1, but we didn't really care. We were having a great time and Mrs. Tiny was nailing the nav.
Map 2: 61, 141, 204 (should have added 211 or 207 here), 134, 64.
Faceplants: Mrs. Tiny: 2 Funderstorm: 2
We were a few minutes over time last year and one of our goals was not to be this year, but also to come in no more than five minutes early. We were having a hard time at the end deciding whether or not to get 92 or 64 and in hindsight we both realized we would have had time for 92, but 64 was the safer choice. Took off our snowshoes here as we could move a bit faster on the packed stuff and ran it in. Came in at 2:55 and change on my watch - meeting our no more than 5 minutes early goal but also not thinking there was time to get anymore controls.
Given fitness levels and nagging injuries, we didn't go into this with a very competitive mentality, so we were pleasantly surprised to have ranked as well as we did. Mrs. Tiny was a great teammate as always and it was awesome to see so many AR friends. Free beer at the end of the race (even Coors Banquet) was a wonderful surprise and post-event trip to Rusty's was lovely. Only thing I wish could have been different about the day was the sketchy driving home!