Training Log Archive: Bash

Untamed New England Day 3

Our 2-hour nap ended when the alarm went off in the first dim light. Compared to other long races, I found it easier to get up after this nap and was amazed at how "rested" it made me feel. Apparently, there is something about gunning for the podium that helps you deal better with sleep deprivation. Who knew? I remember hearing GUATS as they headed out for their swim - not sure if that was before or after our alarm but I was excited for them!



My watch face was torn off in last night's brutal bushwhack, leaving only the strap around my wrist (!), so I'm not sure of times after sunset on Day 2. I do know that we somehow spent 3 hrs 55 min at TA3 before leaving on the short bike loop. That's hard to believe, given that we only slept for 2 hours, got up promptly and always seemed to be busy doing stuff. We must have been moving a lot more slowly than it felt like. Anyway, it was great to head off on the bike again after spending so long on our feet. This bike leg had been shortened so we only needed to visit one CP under a bridge - about 22 km return mostly on fun, rolling gravel roads and a good quality snowmobile trail.



We saw Milton Basement Racers and Goals ARA (maybe EMS too?) on our way down the road, all looking a little ragged after the trek - just as we had looked coming up that road last night. We figured that they'd probably slept in the woods so we'd better keep our pace up.

Back at the Primus TA, we prepared quickly for the swim/trek leg while watching the final teams come in for the 8 a.m. cut-off to make the full course.



Oooh, that was close! There would be 8 teams competing for the podium over the final section. We were still in 4th.



No photographers joined us for our swim/trek section but these teams did it the same way we did - putting mandatory gear into a dry bag for flotation along with the mandatory PFD, then using fins to kick. Besides, it would be just wrong of me to deny you this chance to see Getawaystix in his sexy swimming cap.



Like the other sections, the swim/trek leg had been reduced. We could choose 3 of 4 UTMs on the list. Because of worsening blister issues for Harps, we jumped at the opportunity to focus on swimming and limit our bushwhacking. He wasn't sure why it happened in this race since he's done longer races like Patagonia without serious issues. Last night's bushwhack was nasty though and a few pieces of grit could really wreak havoc if they got into your socks. I still have a few funny marks on my feet from that.

There were three CPs on islands and peninsulas along Aziscohos Lake. The easiest way to access them was to do a few kms of jogging/hiking along a road that ran parallel to the long edge of the lake, then bushwhack in to the shore. One CP was a few kms south of the TA and the other was a couple of kms north. Coming back from the first CP, Harps stepped into a wasp nest or something and managed to get stung a couple of times when he was already hurting. Unfair! The final CP was across from the camp so we ran right through the TA to get there. Our swimming system worked well and the water felt fantastic on this hot day. I'd planned to bring fuzzy rubber along for warmth but I didn't - in fact, I was wishing that I'd just worn a sports bra instead of a shirt. (Which alert observers may have noticed I did until 8 p.m. on Day 1. Mrs. Gally, you're a bad influence!)





After the long road marches, we were looking forward to more time on our bikes. Back at the TA, Harps took a final look at the maps for the rest of the race - advertised as a 100 km bike leg, but two CPs had been removed so it was somewhat less. We filled our water, replenished our food and made our packs as light as possible for the final push. It was relatively warm so I took out a vest and fleece that hadn't been used during the race. It wasn't much further now and it was warm. We were going to do this!



We rode some fun, hilly gravel roads and collected a CP or two before we arrived at the Team Waterfall Climb CP. Confident nav by Harps as always, riding by a few short course teams standing at the side of the road with question marks swirling around their heads.



This was a busy CP. We would be doing the waterfall climb (whatever the heck that was!), a conservation project and a bike & tie leg. We dropped our bikes and learned that Skandia had been out for a long time on the bike & tie and that Granite was not far ahead of us. Great - time to push harder! For the waterfall "climb", the four of us were carabinered onto a short loop of climbing rope and the biners were duct-taped closed. We had to make our way about 800 m up a rocky stream, punching 8 orienteering flags along the way, then we would climb up a steep trail beside the waterfall and be directed to our conservation project.

Harps and I had brought cycling shoes with some tread for this leg of the race, figuring that it made sense to save the weight of carrying trekking shoes when they would be needed so little. We hadn't counted on wading through a stream though! Cycling shoes were the absolute worst thing for negotiating the wet, sloped, mossy rocks.



At first, I just accepted that I would slip and fall a lot, and I didn't want to complain about it. But then my (usually) good knee started to swell up in pain after I'd splatted my kneecap on a rock. I realized that this little exercise could end our race so I started being ultra-careful, using my hands and feet to move along the ground where possible and aiming for little patches of gravel where I could get traction. Not the easiest thing to do when you've got 4 people on a rope and one of them needs to get the passport over to an orienteering punch, but we made it to the waterfall relatively unscathed. (That turned out to be my worst and most painful injury from Untamed. Nine days later, it appears that I lucked out with an external injury that made things swell up a lot for a week but didn't cause any internal damage.)









At last we reached the steep path up beside the waterfall where a volunteer checked that we hadn't removed the duct tape then told us we could get off the rope and follow the marked path to the trail work section.



If you ever want a trail built, call Relentless. We had to put in 30 minutes of trail clearing, and while all the racers made a decent effort, everyone was aware that this was a good chance to take the intensity down a notch, get some food down, etc. But Relentless went full out chopping down major trees, sawing through logs and snipping around the edges for neatness. I was amazed the volunteer let him leave after our 30 minutes was up. I figured he was hired.

From here, we had to bushwhack for about 10 minutes, following flagging tape through fairly thick woods to return to the CP for our next task. Upon our arrival, the volunteer asked to see our sat phone. There had been lots of mandatory gear checks throughout the race - something I like to see. Our sat phone had already been checked earlier. As one teammate dug into his pack, the volunteer quietly informed the rest of us that he wasn't going to find it because the organizers had found our sat phone at the Primus TA. Not the greatest way to tell us bad news!

After the swim/trek, we'd done some rearranging since our gear had been configured differently for swimming. The sat phone was set carefully on a nearby gear bin as things were being rearranged and, unfortunately, that's where it was found after our departure by the owner of said gear bin. Easy enough for something like that to happen, given the fatigue after 3 days of racing. Everyone was philosophical and accepting, and it was my impression that the only team member who felt angry about this at all was the one who was supposed to have the sat phone.

The cruel irony is that Team Running Free is extremely meticulous about mandatory gear. Even when we were doing a 2-minute swim many kilometers away from the nearest race official and out of sight of any other racer, the team culture was to follow the rules to the letter. "If you're not swimming with your pack in that dry bag, make sure you've got a whistle on your PFD!"

So the deal was, we would go out on the bike & tie, then we'd serve a 2-hour penalty at the CP from about 7-9 p.m. This would use up the final hours of daylight - not that the remaining daylight would have taken us into the next area of tough navigation but it's still good for the psyche to be moving when there's light.

Like the waterfall climb, the bike and tie turned out to be different from what we expected. There were two CPs along the same re-entrant - one high and one about 200 meters downstream along the same re-entrant. There was no trail down the re-entrant - just bush. It was a couple of kms along a gravel road, then a steep climb on an ATV trail to get to the re-entrant. Total round trip distance about 7-8 km. The bike had a "wrist strap" on it to ensure that the bike was carried through the bush to both CPs and punched at the controls.

The only other bike & tie I've seen was along a rail trail where the strategy was interesting since teammates had to figure out when to switch from bike to run to keep their average speed the same. In this case, the challenge was all about the bikewhacking which didn't get any of us too excited.

We'd expected the bike & tie to use two bikes and I had always assumed that I'd be doing a good percentage of the riding, given that these guys are all strong runners. But the bike & tie involved only one bike (fortunately, due to the bikewhacking) and as the teammate with the fewest blisters, I obviously had to be on foot. This was my psychological low point of the race - a combination of the upcoming penalty and the fact that I hadn't expected to need to run uphill after a bike at a time when every second had suddenly become very precious to us. The guys were great, taking my pack and even trying to tow me from the bike, which was interesting indeed! I snapped out of it quickly enough and hopefully didn't whine too much with my outside voice.

We met Team Spirit on this section - nice to see friendly faces. The downhill CP was a loooong way down the re-entrant. After we arrived, Harps handed the map to me to lead Relentless and Kirikou down to the bottom of the main valley, then a steep climb up the other side to a road that would provide a shorter downhill run back to the CP. Meanwhile, he would undertake the nasty task of getting the bike back uphill through the bush to the road we'd come in on. That was less bushwhacking than the route we would be taking and we hoped this would even out our time. (For any AR afficionados who may be wondering, the 100 meter rule was waived for this section.) The runners got back a little ahead of the bike, then we settled in for a 2-hour penalty stint.

We didn't want to advertise our penalty to our competitors so we tried to look like we were just hanging around doing essential things - and indeed we were. We tried to do things during our penalty time that would save us time later in the race. Harps reviewed maps; I purified water for everyone; we got our lights ready for the bike section; we ate; we drank; we took care of our feet. The one negative was that it got chilly and a little buggy. We were damp and (as you may remember) I had confidently removed some of my extra clothing from my pack since I didn't expect to need it on such a warm night. It wasn't a problem since eventually I unwrapped the tarp from around myself to go stand by a campfire a short distance away. It was at this CP that my little waterproof camera disappeared from the front pouch of Relentless' pack. Boo.

We kept an eye on the 2-hour countdown and were clipped in and ready to start pedalling the second the stopwatch went off. It felt soooo good to tear off into the cool night and start attacking the hills on the gravel road. Incredibly, we were still in 4th place but other teams had moved up closer behind us. I was most worried about MBR since they're so strong on the bike. We knew we would need to kick butt in this next section to have any chance of making the podium. We'd heard that Granite had spent quite awhile at the CP preparing for the next section, so it was still anyone's race and there was a lot of tough navigation left to go.

We climbed and turned and climbed some more and then we climbed a steeper section, all on gravel roads. We stopped near the entrance to a snowmobile trail system and looked at a big sign showing the map. It would have been great to have my camera to take a photo but the sign seemed to have a similar (inaccurate, as it turned out) trail map to the one we had on paper. Then we turned into the snowmobile trail system - and that is probably a good arbitrary point to make the break between Day 3 and Day 4 of the race...