Orienteering 5:10:00 [4] ***
Salomon Raid The Hammer with 'Bent and Hingo. This is the same team that we started with in 2002, and now that Hingo is too busy for adventure racing, our adventure runs always feel like a Tree Hugger reunion! In fact, SRTH is a reunion with all kinds of people in the adventure community. This year the race sold out with close to 300 people there - many of them familiar faces.
The day started with a 4:30 a.m. alarm, then we made 5 stops to pick up other Caledon friends who were heading to Hamilton. 'Bent was thrilled, since a 7-person carpool makes him feel less guilty for owning a van.
After years of threats and hints from race directors, the event actually (a) involved school buses, and (b) started at Borer's Falls! Who'd have thunk it?
As always, today's race course was scenic and loads of fun with a variety of navigational challenges and surprises to keep us focused. It was physically tough with more than 1000 meters of climb, but I don't think that explains how awful I felt for a couple of hours in the middle - light-headed and almost sleepy. Picking my way across some rocky sections was difficult and unnerving because I had trouble with balance. I don't know if I hadn't had enough breakfast, or maybe I was dehydrated. After that, I drank a lot and ate as much as I could. It didn't help that I tweaked my knee Thursday, so I was being extremely cautious in the terrain. 'Bent and Hingo were moving pretty quickly while I kept an eye on the maps, so maybe I just tried too hard to keep up early on. Dunno. By the end of the race, I had enough energy to run up the last steep hill, so hopefully there is a simple way to prevent it happening again.
Considering how rusty we all are with our navigation, things went pretty well. The only memorable mistake was when we lost about 5 minutes at the start of the advanced section due to a communication problem. (What I'd *actually* said was "Go north, young man.") But things went smoothly for us in the final section otherwise, and we passed 8 teams between #17 and the finish.
We ended up with a male team on the final hill to the Ancaster Community Centre, and it turned into a dash up the steep hill and across the field to the finish line. They won the race by 6 seconds BUT it turns out that we were 2nd Masters, and there were 3 Masters teams within 90 seconds behind us, so it's a good thing we were running! (In spite of being 2nd, this was one of only 2 splits we won in the Masters category out of 19 splits, which certainly shows that speed is not my forte!)
The 1st place Masters team, repeating from the Salomon Giant's Rib Raid, got us by 19 minutes, so there was not much hope of taking the win. We were 17th of 74 teams overall - not as good as in some years, but the level of competition was super-high, so I'll take it! As usual, we moved up 15 positions after the first 2 hrs. If only if we'd had another 10 hrs of racing! ;-)
Speaking of winning, Slice won her 4th adventure run of the year, including 3 overall victories. In the spring, she was on the first-ever coed team to win an adventure run (Salomon Giant's Rib Raid). In the summer, she and Leanimal were the first female team to win an adventure run overall (Navstock Raid), and now Slice won with a Coed team again - having hooked up with two different guys this time. I just gotta say... WOW!!
Excellent day, and a great crowd of friendly volunteers. Thanks to all!