Training Log Archive: silkychrome

Event: USARA Nationals
 

USARA Nats - from the back of the back into 4th overall! w Erl and Andrei...WEDALI.

PADDLE 1 (CPs 1-8 and A1-A9, 18 miles, 0900 - 1200?)
a loop around Beltzville SP lake, there was an o-section at CP4.
--we had a terrrrible boat (big bubble in the middle) and spent the first half of the paddle trying different paddling arrangements and 3rd seat locations to try and damage control as we watched the entire pack paddle away from us.
--we had a great o-section, there were 9 points on either side of an inlet, Andrei took north/west side and I took the east side and Erl paddled the canoe to the end of the inlet to pick us each up. this went super smooth and we gained some time back on the lead pack
--then i had a misplot on CP1 (1km off) but luckily we realized it by watching the other boats and caught the mistake before paddling too much extra.

TREK 1 (no CPs, 1 mile, 1200? - 1230?)
just a hot road run up to the TA in a nice lady's yard.

BIKE 1 (CPs 9-29, 62 miles, 1203? - 0045?)
long bike ride, we started this in the back of the pack, tried to motor on the roads and rails/trails but the singletrack was a bit of a struggle, we just didn't ride enough of it to gain time. the DHs were super fun i thought. we stopped at the gas station after 18 to fill up on water/coke with Lupine. 2 crossings of the Lehigh River, one up to my shoulders...with a bike! oddly, the water level that high was easy to manage but waist-deep was harder.
we were caught several times by Mindy's UNE team but they had more nav trouble than we did so ended up looping around a bunch. Kuat caught and passed us at 20 as we were having an overheating moment and they were still recovering from a paddling mistake. we caught a bunch of teams up at the cabin CP, and finally found it with Rib Mtn at an occupied cabin that seemed off-limits based on RD's instructions. but sure enough, the flag was there, and the people at the cabin were super nice and i said hi to their dog Trixie. after we crossed the river the 2nd time, it took FOREVER to find the trail out. we didn't listen to the volunteer's instructions and saw the super-steep bank trail, but thought it was redic and kept going looking for the "real" trail. should have known that nothing is too redic in an AR. once we got on the trail (thx Lupine for helping) it was finally in to TA.

i hope KOM times get posted so we can see how much UntamedNE.com smoked us :)

TREK 2 (orienteering course, O1-O20, ?? miles, 0036 - 0600?)
we could either do a 1:24k USGS trekking loop or a 1:10k orienteering trekking loop first. we chose the o-loop because there were 20 CPs available in shorter distance, plus the o-map might be easier to use at night, plus maybe the o-map would be helpful for the USGS trek later.

i had funny tummy for almost this whole trek and couldn't eat or run much. fortunately/unfortunately there was not a lot of running required due to horrendous vegetation. the o-map was VERY GOOD according to Andrei and we just ticked these off starting with O1 and going mostly numerical order (not sure CW or CCW?). a little trouble with O4, we attacked much too early off of a very vague trail attackpoint, not much to go on the map there. fortunately a couple little streams relocated us and we got it.

TREK 3 (USGS map, CPs 30-41, 0600?-1245?)
we came off the o-loop to news that no one from the USGS loop was back yet, and we were 4th back from o-loop. so kinda/sorta 4th place but not sure really. set off on the USGS loop, again in mostly numerical order (CW). i made a pit stop in the outhouses in TA hoping to cure the funny tummy. ran w Kuat for a couple of the first CPs, i think this really helped us gain some time and was motivating for both teams. Erl carried my pack for a long time and i started feeling better! then we ran into AMK about CP 35 i think (north part of hilltop?) and were back and forth with them for the rest of the course. silly me, i didn't realize they were full course (sorry...) so was really chatty and we were all sharing food and helping with CPs/bushwhacking (then at the TA i realized they had not skipped anything and we were actually competing for a place, whoops, should have been meaner!! ha). they had a better final route from 41 back to TA so gained about 20min on us. we did not put park trails on the USGS map so missed that one.

BIKE 3 (CPS 42-44, 9? miles, 1245-1400?)
took off on bikes, Lattanzi's team was pretty close behind us and i couldn't tell if they had skipped or not, so we had to ride hard but there was just no gas in my legs! it was ugly. thankfully the roads were not terrible but it could have been much worse!

made the finish line in 4th place overall, about 25min behind AMK and the last team to clear the course. this was a pretty great finish for us, i never really felt "great" physically out there, but Andrei kept our nav game super strong and Erl helped me a lot w towing and pack carrying.

i felt the course was really really nice until the trek, even the hike a bike sections weren't too bad. but the veg on the trek was TERRIBLE. just so much mtn lauren and rhodo. sure, we probably went thru it too much when there may have been park trails available, but sounds like even the teams who knew about the trails had to push through a lot of this stuff. it was really frustrating and not fun. so kinda a buzz kill for overall stoke on the area. (and the cabin CP on the bike was overly confusing).

the highlight of the race for me was probably the o-section on the paddle, i had so much fun on my portion of it and i liked that we took advantage of our team's strengths to gain some time. also i liked the town of Jim Thorpe and the 100-mile view CP.

super congrats to Rootstock on the victory and Untamed for 2nd place!! it's very cool to see these strong performances. nav was really the key to this race, there were so many teams with just one or two missed CPs and with the huge distance of the course, there was no room for error.

C • We did that! 4

night road run w Erl. i felt like we were running pretty good pace. but the watch said slower. weird.