Salomon Dontgetlost.ca Raid The Hammer 2010
Tree Huggers at the start line: Crash, Bash and Hingo
Wil Smith getting focused at the start line:
This was another fun, challenging, well-organized Raid The Hammer. I'm so grateful to all the sponsors and hard working volunteers who make this possible! It may have been the longest and hardest RTH our team has done. The wet weather gave us lots of slippery leaves, mud and rocks to negotiate.
We started with a Matrix. Crash unfortunately lived up to her nickname by smashing her face into a rock in the slippery reentrant where she was the 4th person to punch control E. I found my controls (A & C) easily but lost some time when my attempt to knock GHOSlow out of the way at a control was unsuccessful. (Oops - sorry 'bout that!) We were one of the early teams out of the Matrix.
And... we promptly blew our race on the second map when we thought CP2 was in a different location, which made the interesting bullseye map impossible to use. Once we finally stumbled on the real CP2 (just flagging tape, not a control we needed to punch), the other controls went just fine. This section took us 63 minutes compared to 24 minutes for the fastest team and the only good news was that we were not alone in screwing it up. In fact, Winsplits didn't even identify it as an error for us, which is a little scary. We figured that the whole world must have passed us in this section but the results say we only dropped 8 places.
After that, the rest of our day went well albeit with a couple of slower route choices, in particular an ill-chosen (by me) sidehill route to CP5 in the halfpipe. The wet leaves and muddy slopes were so slippery that we and the racers around us had numerous wipe-outs. Hingo in particular is going to have some sore joints tomorrow. I crashed on my good shoulder there and heard a crunch so I'm hoping it'll be OK for paddling.
We were running better than the Tree Huggers usually do and I was glad to feel good late in the race, given that I'm training for a 17-hour race. Crash was following the map quite well by the end and was often the first to spot a control at a distance. It was a fun race with an awesome couple of teammates!
Alas, we couldn't overcome our early screw-up but we moved up and finished 7 minutes behind the winning Masters team Lost Bearings, who were leading us by 18 minutes after our disaster. (Please, nobody point out how many minutes it took me to take all these photos - and more. Remember: we thought that our only remaining hope for a prize was the photo contest.) We were 12th overall out of 68 teams and 4th coed team behind MBR, Untamed and Jackson Triggs (although not officially ranked as coeds). So we are happy with our recovery.
There were some beautiful places.
Lots of tricky terrain.
We saw less cheating this time. Most teams around us had each teammate touching the control flag. I took this photo of Crash punching a control, then Hingo and I touched the flag. Although we didn't realize it until afterward, a volunteer was quietly watching for this. I see now that his knee is sticking out from behind a tree trunk at the left of this photo!
While we were racing, 'Bent was working the CP3 aid station with Funderstorm. As teams came through, he tried to get photos. Some people stopped their race to pose.
While others, like PhattyJR, just stopped to punch.
M&M didn't even stop - but she touched the flag as she screamed past the aid station.
As a favour to me, 'Bent got the leading Masters team to stop and pose for a photo. He also did a mandatory gear check with them, "Can you show me your bicycle pump?" It didn't slow them down enough but at least he tried.
Trav didn't have his bicycle pump either.
Pixie and the Wonderbroads had dressed with the plan to pose for photos.
Thanks again to everyone involved!