Training Log Archive: Bash

Went up to Horseshoe with Hammer and MrPither to hang flags for the marathon-length Navstock Raid. After wandering around the area alone for many hours this year preparing for the two Raids, it was a treat to have company for a change, and it sure made things go quickly. Slice came along to do some training, but since she is doing the race, we had to send her away during all the top-secret business.

Bob-the-Navigator had vetted the course on Thursday - many thanks. Was he able to get all the CPs within the 6-hr time limit? Sorry, but that's classified information. Did he get any mosquito bites? Um, yes, I expect so, based on my day in the woods.

Logging in one area wasn't as bad as advertised, so Hammer and I added a new control in a very pretty section of forest. It was a treat to watch Hammer running through the woods on his bionic knee. I've run behind lots of people in the forest, and it's cool to watch what's different about the way a talented orienteer moves - light steps, looking ahead to make good micro-route choices, and not slowing nor seemingly even caring about slips, off-balance moments or even what appeared to be minor ankle twists.

Got together with my ESAR teammates, Hurtn and Damuhl, for a canoe paddling practice session around Island Lake. It was raining, but warm enough that it wasn't an issue. Hurtn and Damuhl both had canoe paddles, and I was in the bow with the choice of my kayak or canoe paddle. Hurtn checked out our speed on the GPS, and there wasn't a huge increase when I used the kayak paddle. Makes sense, since the boys either had to slow down their normal pace to keep in synch with one side of my stroke, or else they had to speed up to stroke whenever my paddle hit the water. So we used canoe paddles most of the time, and that's what we'll do in the race. Our paddling went well - it's going to be a good discipline for us. The only potential problem is that my teammates are avid fishermen who get a little distracted whenever we get near likely-looking shallow areas...

It was still raining a bit, and we decided that we'd squeeze in a bike ride and a short run. We went through Palgrave West to Palgrave East and got through the first part of Salty Steven. Damuhl had an incident where his pedal hit something, and he bounced up, then came down hard on his seat, which tipped forward and down, freeing his leg to get dragged down along the gears. He's a tough guy (or maybe a rough guy), so he persevered for another few minutes before he realized that he was losing *way* too much blood out there. We headed back home where Dr. Hurtn did a fine job of fixing him up. When it was flushed out, it was kinda scary how much flesh he'd torn off his calf - and yet he'd kept on biking stoically. Obviously a true adventure racer! But now I am feeling guilty for attempting to kill my teammate...

Hard Core Live with Caron - last class until September.

Power yoga class. The forward bend is my friend.

'Bent and I rode to and from Albion Hills for the inaugural 2008 Wednesday morning group ride.

Another perfect day! Cold enough to wear arm warmers at 9 a.m., but warm enough to take them off after half an hour. Beautiful sunshine and great company for our ride - Leanimal, Ross, Dunc... and eventually Rocky, who had to arrive late. Nice job of successfully guessing where we were and chasing us down! Our group rides are intervals of good technical riding at our own pace interspersed with social chat (not logged) at trail junctions where we regroup before heading into the next section.

'Bent and I turned for home near the north end so that he could get ready for work. Halfway up Duffy's Lane, he glanced in his rear view mirror and said, "I wonder who's chasing us down?" I looked back and recognized VO2Max in the distance. He hadn't had the same good fortune as Rocky! He'd arrived late and spent half the morning riding around Albion Hills looking for bike tracks, watching for clouds of dust, putting his ear to the ground to listen for approaching herds (or social chat), etc. At least it was a good training ride for him, and we got to say a final farewell before he heads off to Whistler tomorrow to start training for next year's skiing, lucky guy.

Fantastic cool, sunny day - perfect for running! My legs are still a little tired from Saturday, so I did an easy run of the 5K trail loop that I measured out on April 28. I aimed to run up all the hills but not go anaerobic, and I didn't let myself push hard or look at my watch. Not bad - my previous time trial on this loop was just over a minute faster, although that time I had to bushwhack around a big fallen tree that has since been cleaned up.

We had a farewell lunch with VO2Max, since he's heading out to Whistler to start training for the 2008/09 nordic ski season. He mentioned that their coaches tell them to focus on technique whenever they get tired, since that makes them use their energy more efficiently, even though it seems harder. Since I was a little tired today, that's what I did, focusing on posture and moving the arms in a back-and-forth direction without much side to side motion. After spending a full day volunteering at a triathlon, I was reminded about the "triathlon arms" that we learned about in Robert Taylor's running clinic a couple of years ago - where your arms move sideways across your body instead of helping to provide forward momentum. I'll never be speedy, but surely I can learn to swing my arms in the right direction!

Caron's Power Yoga DVD #2

More Kids of Steel photos from the professional photographer, who also works for Sports Illustrated. These little kids are soooo determined (and the big kids, too)!
http://www.trishots.com/08/kinetico/index.html

Volunteered at the Caledon Kids of Steel triathlon today. So much fun! Especially when I get to play bike goalie for the 3-5 year olds.



Thumbs-of-Death's daughter is a tough competitor like her Dad. She should be in the 3-5 year old category, but she raced up a category to get more challenge from the 6-7 year olds!

The most joyous event of the day was the fairy tale wedding of Bender to Venus. Beautiful ceremony and fun celebration at the wonderful Piller Stonehouse Farm. All the best to the happy newlyweds! :-))

And the 2nd most joyous event of the day was the Sulphur Springs 25K Trail Run! 'Bent burned up the course in 1:55, finishing just a few minutes behind Tarno and a few more behind Almageddon - 12th of 141 racers overall.

And I broke 2:30, which was entirely unexpected after my test run earlier in the week. I ran all the hills until close to the end, which was not de rigueur in my part of the pack. Actually, I think most racers thought I was a little crazy to do it. But I just tried to visualize the way that Slowrunner dances up hills on trails. I think it helped me to run, since I'm slower relative to other runners on the flats.

The race got off to an exciting start with Mrs. Gally's water bottle bouncing on the trail - and Dee Rispolie bouncing herself on the trail after hitting a metal post hard. But they both recovered and finished strong in the 50K along with Audrey.

This was the first time in a long time that I've run very far without a Camelbak. I decided to experiment and see what it was like to depend on aid stations. It worked OK, and I never felt thirsty or hungry, but the jury is out on what I'll do next time, since it does take some time from the race. I did learn one important thing - never take 2 fig newtons away from the aid station and try to eat them on the run when you have nothing to drink. Especially if there is a rule that you get disqualified for littering, and there are people running right behind you. After choking down as many dry bites of fig newton as I could, I casually let my hand drift into a bush as we rounded a corner, dropped the remaining cookie, and - so far - have not been DQed.

I managed to screw up my Garmin Forerunner shortly before the start. I pressed some random buttons in an attempt to fix it, and it seemed to be OK. I'd hoped to watch my minutes per kilometer pace, but that definitely wasn't what I was seeing. Without being able to squint too closely at the fine print, it appeared that I was seeing my elapsed time and miles, but no pace. That was better than nothing, so throughout the race, I was constantly converting miles to kilometers and vice versa, and things were coming out about right, with just a little error, so that helped me with my pacing. When I finished the race and looked closely, I realized that it was telling me that I'd burned 1630 calories - not run 16.3 miles! Oh well, it worked out...

As someone who isn't a great natural runner, I was excited to finish 4th of 21 women in my age category, 10th of 55 women overall, and 58th of 141 runners. (Nothing compared to Dog Runner's amazing race this weekend, but I'm still darned happy.)

Congrats to MrPither on an awesome 2nd place finish!

Not sure if it's a shortage of sleep, but I felt lousy today. Definitely dehydrated going into tomorrow's race. :-(

It's been a big week for adventure racing babies! Gazelle & Gazette started the trend with the birth of Justin on Saturday. Then Lawrence & Trish had a son on Monday, and John Yip's son Jackson is coming next Tuesday. These three guys are going to be an awesome AR team!

Power Yoga DVD. It's been far too long - I really needed this.

Biked over to Palgrave with 'Bent and Hurtn for tonight's MTB-O training night with the Caledon Navigators.

MTB orienteering training night - thanks to Jeff and Keith for putting this on. Hurtn and I did this one together, and after the first few controls, he took over the navigation. As an artist, he's got terrific map memory and a good feel for how that translates to the terrain. We got to the right spot every time - although a couple of the controls were a wee bit off. Great group of people, nice evening light - fun!

I just got this photo from Monday. 'Bent, Knobless and I were hiking in the area where the forest fire burned last year. Our ecologist friend Knobless told us that morel mushrooms like to grow near dead elms and in burnt areas. And apparently, he was right! This was a first for me - I've never eaten mushrooms that I've picked. But according to my mushroom book (and Knobless and 'Bent), it's almost impossible to screw up morel identification. They were yummy in garlic and butter!

All of these activities were part of 8.5 hrs in the Barrie area today, setting the course for the Navstock Raid. Times are approximate and greatly reduced to account for time spent standing and thinking, or driving to the next location.

Whose idea was it to put on a marathon-distance adventure run?! It was fun, but I am soooooo tired tonight. Amazing that I went for hours on end without seeing anyone else in the woods. I've had cold rain on my last two trips up there, and I hope that I'm taking the brunt so that the racers will get awesome weather. At one point, I couldn't change into my big bike gear because I'd lost too much dexterity in the cold - yikes.

It's going to be a fun and demanding course (I hope). I'll know better after BobTheNavigator tests it. And we still haven't added in Hammer's patented cruelty section.

For the first time in a long time, I stopped in Barrie and allowed myself to have a Lick's Homeburger with cheese. That's right folks, cheese! So much for fitting into that new dress for Bender's wedding.

Ran the red trail in Palgrave East starting from the Hwy 50 entrance and going counterclockwise so that the roller coaster hill section was saved for the 2nd half. Perfect cool temperature and sun - nice! I had my Forerunner 305, and I was trying to run at the pace I would need to go to break 2:30 in this Saturday's hilly 25K trail race. I just missed the required pace on a run of 8K, so unless adrenaline counts for a lot more than I think it will, my goal seems a little ambitious. Yes, I know that 6 min/km (9:40/mile) would be slow for a *real* trail runner, but I'd be thrilled if I could pull it off.

Just realized that we've got plenty of time to squeeze in our first trip to the Sulphur Springs 25K trail run before Bender's wedding next Saturday. Yay - a last chance to shed a pound or two before wearing a dress (gasp) in public!

Hard Core Monday

'Bent and I started out on a trail run, but turned around due to high winds. Given that the nearby forest is full of dying trees post-forest fire, it felt a little kamikaze.

'Bent, Bulletdog and I explored the beautiful Beaver Valley. It sure would be a great area for an adventure race, except the hills are *way* too high! :-)



We did some trail running in the rain, mostly in Old Baldy Conservation Area. I don't think I've ever seen so many trilliums! This is the kind of forest where companies should come to photograph ads for their trail running shoes, such as SALOMON XT WINGS. ;-)





Hunting is usually popular in areas like this, so we were surprised to see so many "No Hunting" signs. Then we saw several signs showing the photo of a smiling man, with the words "No hunting in memory of ..., killed by hunters in 2005". Sad.

'Bent and I met Slowrunner and Rocky for an 8 a.m. run on the Humber Valley Trail. When the alarm went off at 6:50 a.m. and I saw dark-grey skies out the window, I had to fight the temptation to pull the covers up a little higher. But 'Bent delivered some emergency coffee in bed, and I squeezed my eyes shut to visualize how pleased I'd be with myself to be home at 10 a.m. with a good training session under my belt. And thus we showed up on time, ready for a fun run that started damp and finished in steady rain.

Slowrunner, 'Bent and Bulletdog (on her first long run post-surgery) stayed a short distance ahead. It was great to chat and catch up with Rocky, the newest Boston Marathon-qualified person in our circle of friends. I'm looking forward to training with her more over the next while, since she pushes me beyond my limits, but it's usually manageable (except when she does speed intervals - yikes). We ran from Duffy's Lane to Duffy's Lane, then 'Bent and I turned around to go back to our car while the winning female team of the 2008 Trans Rockies Challenge continued back to Bolton. (As their new media agent, I'm trying to build some hype.)

As you can see, 'Bent is quite happy to get up early to run with the girls.

We've been planning a Victoria Day canoe trip for weeks, and when the weather forecast for our intended trip turned to rain for Saturday and Sunday (when we planned to return), I kept packing. When a frost warning was added to the rain, I kept packing. When the 70 km/hr winds were added to the forecast - and later a possible thunderstorm, I turned into a princess. It's been a tough week with bedtimes after 2 a.m. Even though I have the gear for it, and even though it's always nice to be out in nature, I just didn't look forward to spending hours in a tent with two wet 70 lb dogs while the trees outside threatened to blow down on us. 'Bent was surprisingly easy to convince...

Since today was the day with the best weather forecast, we decided to paddle the Nottawasaga River north of Alliston. It's only 40 minutes away, but somehow we've never paddled it except for ESAR 2007. It's actually quite nice!



We thought of it as a big farm country river in a deep, forested valley with minimal current - and we were correct, except for the current part. It quickly became clear that we'd better not go too far before turning around, since we estimated that it would take 3 times as long to go upstream.

The best place for a dog in our canoe is in the bow ahead of me. But we have two big dogs, so one of them sits ahead of the stern paddler at the widest part of the canoe, shifting her significant weight from one side of the boat to another to follow new smells and keep us on our toes. This was Bulletdog's turn in the middle.



And here was Thunderdog's shift. You can tell that she is the more experienced canoeist because she uses a PFD.



Some people don't know that trees have spring colours as well as autumn colours.



We stopped for lunch on one of the many beaches. The dogs had a fantastic time! (This trip was more for them than us.)





We went for a short hike, and there were beautiful ferns everywhere.



One of the highlights was paddling under a railway bridge while a double-decker train went over. Thunderdog, who ironically is afraid of thunder, was not pleased about that.

When the time came to turn around, it took a little more than twice the time to paddle back upstream. I wished that I had my GPS to settle the debate between 'Bent and me as to whether we were going faster against the stronger current in deeper water or in shallower, slower water close to the shore where we couldn't dig our paddles in properly. When we hit some Class 1 water near where we started, we were paddling as hard as we could, but making little progress. We finally pulled out about 50 meters short of where we started rather than fight the last little bit. Fun afternoon! And the pooches were totally worn out by the time we got back to the van. Yahoo - it's a bit like having energetic toddlers in the house; it's great when we can tire them out.

Free at last! Not really, but I've made it past a couple of deadlines, even though I failed to get all the flags up for the Navstock Raid, which was on the list for this week. Given that I was working until 3:30 a.m. last night, there were some things that just weren't going to happen this week.

It was a stunning spring day, but I didn't make it out the door until 7 p.m. It was beautiful then too - nice evening light, cool air, lots of trilliums. After the long winter, it's mind-boggling to see the forest bursting with life and growth. What an amazing time of year! (But then, I think they *all* are.) Didn't see any people, just one white-tailed deer. Glad to see that the poison ivy isn't out yet, but it's got to be close.

I had an assignment related to my volunteer stewardship work for the TRCA. They had indicated on their map where they were going to put boardwalks over muddy areas, but they had missed several areas that have been trashed by horses in the last couple of years. I was asked to go out and mark them on a map. I sure enjoy outdoor activities that have a higher purpose - like volunteer work or travelling to an ice cream shop. And if that higher purpose involves a map, well, I'm pretty much in heaven. So it was a nice evening.

Another day that was way too busy - but mostly very positive!

There is more good news from the world of science:

"Recent research suggests that hip and thigh fat may offer some unique protection against heart disease."

Woo hoo.

Didn't mean to take 3 days off after STORM, but that's what happened. Too many deadlines and commitments converging at once. :-(

Besides, I'm injured. Sure, Slice is hogging all the attention with her "broken arm" in that cute pink cast. But hey, I biked into the ragged, pointy end of a 1" diameter tree branch, leading with my face, and now I have to wear - gasp - make-up to hide the divot. Oh, the horror.

Storm The Trent - Trek Elite

It's been a long time since an adventure race has sold out around here, so it was exciting to see Storm The Trent hit its limit of 450 racers a couple of weeks ago. Sean Roper puts on a terrific, well-organized event, offering 3 levels of race distance/difficulty and supporting almost every type of solo or team category, including the only Female Solo Masters category that I've seen in adventure sports. (Luv ya, Sean.)

In order to take part in the Saab-Salomon Mountain X-Race qualifier, we entered the Trek Elite event (the longest race course) in a team of three. We knew that the Tree Huggers would never win the trip to France, but it was fun to compete against such a tough field.

'Bent and I have raced with awesome fun, fit teammates this year - 3PinJim, Slowrunner and Goose. We got lucky once again when VO2Max agreed to join us today. As a member of Canada's under-23 cross-country ski team, he trains fulltime most of the year, and we were lucky to catch him during some downtime when he is supposed to stay active before starting ski-specific training for next season. An unexpected bonus was that his tights from last year's National XC Ski Team Development Centre greatly improved our team's visibility in traffic.



The race started with each team opening an envelope that contained a map showing a few controls distributed around the village of Warsaw. One team member would race around to punch these controls, then we would jump into the canoes. VO2Max is an ace paddler, runner and cyclist with minimal navigation experience, but we just pointed out BobTheNavigator, Beowulf and Hot Shot Lawyer, with instructions to follow one of them. The first time we saw runners passing by the park, VO2Max was running right behind Hot Shot Lawyer - awesome! But apparently, he cut the corner to get to the 2nd control, and when they passed by the park again, he was in the lead with Hot Shot Lawyer falling behind. "Oh NO, who's he going to follow NOW?", I thought. But we needn't have worried - he's a better navigator than he let on, and he came tearing back into the park in 1st place. This was probably the only time in history that the Tree Huggers have been in the lead after 16 minutes of a major adventure race - YAY!!

We hopped into canoes (getting passed by several teams in a sloppy transition) and paddled 5 km up the Indian River to Warsaw Caves Conservation Area. Our paddling went well, and we passed two teams. We threw in occasional intervals of 20 higher intensity strokes to keep ourselves in race mode.

We dropped the canoes at the dock at Warsaw Caves, then we had about 12 km of navigation with 8 controls to find. Mostly it was trail running, and I put VO2Max to work towing me right away. There were some rocky sections, so I had to stay alert and choose safe times to look at the map so that I wouldn't do a faceplant. (Well OK, I did one.) There were a couple of minor things that we would have done differently, but this section went very smoothly. It is a *really* pretty little conservation area.



We paddled 5 km back to race HQ, then hopped on our bikes for a ride that ultimately lasted 85 km. We enjoyed this year's rogaine-style format for the race. There were only a few mandatory CPs and lots of optional CPs, including 5 of the 8 CPs we had already picked up on the first trek. During the bike section, there were many places where we had to decide whether to go off on side trails to find CPs of different values. We hadn't had much time to plan our maps, so it wasn't possible to apply any sophisticated analysis to the problem. Our strategy was the same as a lot of other teams - pick up all the controls along the way until it was time to cut and run for the finish.

It was fantastic weather, and there was a lot of fast riding on paved and dirt roads. Many of the snowmobile trails were quite civilized and road-like - I looked down at one point and realized that we were going 35 kph on a snowmobile trail! There were a few stretches later in the race where the trails got quite rough and rocky, and we had some powerline riding too. This happened when we were getting tired, so I walked some of the nastier stuff. Around the same time, VO2Max announced that this race would be recorded as serious training in his log - and that his rear end wasn't quite ready for 6 hours in the saddle this early in the season!

We only made one error, but it was significant and silly. We were riding along, looking for a sign that said "Brookwood Wildlife Area". At the crucial moment, two teams of friends passed us coming the other way. We turned to say hello, and thus none of us saw a sign that was about 2' wide. We ended up spending an extra 25 minutes looking for CP43, and actually we suspect that it was supposed to be about 100 meters further northeast, where we found an orange flag marked "STORM". But if one of us had seen the darned sign when we should have, that wouldn't have mattered. Too bad, because that would have changed our standing in the race by two positions - but everyone had problems today. That's typical in races this long, so you really can't play the "what if?" game. VO2Max towed me through much of the road biking section, earning his promised $25/km until he had totally paid off his debt for the race entry fee and accommodation!



As we approached the end of a bike-whacking section about 5 km from the next paddling leg, I realized that our time was running short. After the next CP, we had an optional section where we could paddle 2.5 km across a lake to pick up 1-4 controls in a nature preserve on the far side. We were looking forward to getting out of the saddle, but it wasn't meant to be. When I started counting the kilometers remaining, I realized that we were going to have to stay on our bikes at the next CP and head for the finish line, about 90 minutes away.

There were a few surprises at the paddling put-in. I'd been feeling a bit like a failure for wanting to abandon the paddle. But we learned that only 3 teams had transitioned to canoes there. Beowulf had left a short time earlier, continuing on their bikes as we intended to do. That was great news - and we also had a wonderful surprise when VO2Max's grandparents met us at the CP! Hugs all around. They were in the neighbourhood, and they'd only been told that VO2Max was in a race in a town starting with the letter "W". Somehow they found us. I expected that Leanimal or Phatty were involved, and sure enough - Leanimal had directed them to our CP. A very unhappy surprise at the same CP was running into Bender, AndyCam and Slice (Team Salomon XT Wings). Slice's arm was wrapped up, and she said calmly, "I think I've broken my wrist." This happened in a bike crash on the road long before the rough snowmobile trail section, but she had stuck it out. Wow, I'm in awe. I've always said that Slice could beat me in a race with one arm tied behind her back, and today she proved it.



After a short road ride, we were back in the woods on rough trails, riding with Team Salomon XT Wings and also with Team Running Free, who had gotten one low-value CP on the 2nd paddle, which meant that they could finish behind the rest of us who didn't paddle a 2nd time, and they would still be ahead of us. The trails got better and we came out to roads. Team Salomon XT Wings took off, since this terrain was much better for one-armed bikers. Running Free passed us, but we managed to pass them again and hold them off until the finish. By the end, 'Bent was towing me to give VO2Max a rest. Much appreciated by both of us!

We finished with 620 pts in a pack of teams with point values and finish times very close together. Team Running Free won today's race with 640 pts a few minutes behind us. It was exciting to be racing with some of the best racers in Ontario - and even Canada. It was a fun, tough, high intensity race with a couple of great teammates!



The biggest excitement was watching the clock after it struck 4 p.m. Teams lost 10 pts per minute after 4 p.m., and we knew that Team Urban Athlete (BobTheNavigator, Billy Wells and Hansel) had done some of the 2nd paddle/trek section. But... they were late. Team Salomon XT Wings had been tied with Team Urban Athlete in the MXR Canada qualifier coming into today's event, and when Team Urban Athlete rolled into the finish line 10 minutes late, having missed some CPs, we weren't sure how it would turn out.

In the end, Team Urban Athlete won the competition by just a few points. They will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to the French Alps for the Saab-Salomon Mountain-X race in July.



By the way, Phatty is my hero. Not only did he orchestrate the exciting MXR qualifier, he also made sure that I came home with a beeYOOtifull baby blue Salomon MXR jacket and a vest pack. He's using his position at Salomon to do amazing things for adventure sports in Ontario, and I take my (Salomon) hat off to him.

It was great to spend time with a whole bunch of our adventure sports friends today, sitting on the grass in the sunshine, catching up and sharing race stories. Fun! We were especially proud of 3PinJim and his 8-year-old daughter Skye, who - with some friends - won the Coed division in the shortest race distance today - about 4 hrs.



Thanks to Sean (STORM) and all the fantastic race volunteers - Phatty, Leanimal, Flatfoot, Mique, Vin and so many others! This was a truly epic race. Really, really fun day!

After a fun race at FAR Deerhurst last year, 'Bent and I are looking forward to teaming up with VO2Max again at the Storm The Trent Trek Elite race this weekend. As a member of the Canadian Under 23 Cross-country ski team, he trains seriously for almost 11 months a year, but this is his annual break when he's just supposed to stay generally active and have fun. Since he's the fittest and youngest of all our Tree Hugger teammates, I expect to be *seriously* tired on Saturday night!

One nice thing about cash-hungry university student teammates is that they can be easily bribed. We've promised him $25 off his share of the race and accommodation costs for every kilometer that he tows me on bike or foot. I have a feeling that our young friend will end up racing for free... ;-)

With light to heavy rain for most of the day, it would have been nice to just hide indoors with my laptop and a steaming cup of coffee. However, I managed to convince myself (just barely) that I enjoy adventure more than comfort, so I went to Barrie to hang ribbons in top-secret locations for the Salomon Navstock Raid.

Since this is going to be a 6-hr race, I thought I might save some time by bringing my mountain bike and helmet. But that didn't turn out to be an effective strategy, given that my bike shoes remained at home detoxing from the weekend mud. :-( So I did some running, some walking and lots of hill climbing. There were acres of trilliums, and I confess that I eventually gave up tiptoeing around them all.

After our recent discussion here on good course setting, I was totally paranoid about the control locations, changing a number of them for various reasons. Still lots of work to do. It's not often that anyone has to set a marathon-length orienteering course!

After getting completely drenched during my outing on the final map of the day, I rewarded myself with a Lick's Homeburger - yum. My big sacrifice was skipping the cheese. Lately I've been purposely buying some nice clothes that will not fit well if I gain back even a little bit of the weight I've lost.

Trail run in the Humber Valley with Leanimal - partly on HVT and partly on the CSI trail, as recommended by Rocky. We ran into Slowrunner, who was keeping an eye out for the stooopid group of schoolkids who had littered our (actually Slowrunner's) beautiful trail with pop cans and water bottles - grrr. Nice cool weather and a good chat. It felt like a decent pace too, which is encouraging after our 6-hr race on Saturday

FAR Deerhust Adventure Challenge with 'Bent and Goose

Frontier Adventure Challenge Deerhurst - This was a very different concept for Frontier, whose philosophy has always been that adventure races should feel like point-to-point wilderness journeys. Today's race was a series of loops, like a triathlon. We had only one transition area, and it was at the start/finish line at Deerhurst.

First there was a bike navigation leg, then paddling, then a trek. It wasn't a race format that everyone would like, and I wouldn't want it to become the norm for all FAR races, but I enjoyed doing it once, and it was a good use of Deerhurst and its surrounding terrain. Both the trek and the biking were interesting and challenging. The paddle was challenging due to the cold, rainy weather conditions, but not particularly interesting.

'Bent, Goose and I got off to a great start in the MTB section, which began with a few km of paved road before turning off onto a snowmobile trail. Goose towed me up the hills, and we flew past some teams who had started too quickly.

Then we got into the section labelled "Mountain Bike Orienteering". It's great when adventure race organizers try to incorporate orienteering into their events. Unfortunately, because some of them have little experience orienteering, they may not know the basic principles of setting a course, and this section was a perfect example.

1) Orienteering controls are placed on features visible on the map, and you should be able to navigate to them using other features on the map.

2) This is admittedly very difficult to do on a 1:50,000 topo map, so where the feature isn't a point or isn't visible on the map, it's acceptable in an adventure race to provide extra written instructions, e.g. "at start of a gated trail running generally south of the main trail". (As long as the UTM provided is accurate, and there are features that enable racers to navigate to a nearby attackpoint.)

3) When the locations of CPs have only been verified by GPS (as in this case), it's not orienteering. If the race director is unable to verify the location of CPs using map and compass - the tools that the racers are using - then the CPs have not been verified. It's OK to use GPS as a supplementary tool for back-up, but the organizers have to look at the map too, and they should go through the exercise of drawing UTMs on the map themselves so that they can see what the racers will see and work with.

4) If the map doesn't support your chosen CP location for whatever reason, move your CP to a place that *does* support it. When I set orienteering courses, I probably move 25% of the controls that I've selected in advance in order to be fair to competitors.

Having said all that, I enjoyed most of this section a lot. Even though we were close to Deerhurst, we were riding on fun, mucky snowmobile trails similar to what we would have found a lot farther from town.



Our team was riding well, and we were seeing the leaders a lot for much of this section. Between map and instructions, reasonable information was provided to find CPs 1-4. We did CP5 and CP7 next (you could go in any sequence), and I'd say that finding them relied too heavily on luck - but we were lucky there. We were feeling pretty good with just 2K of snowmobile trail left to go and two CPs to find. The first one was CP6. Teams mark their own CPs on the map using UTM coordinates provided, and here is the location we were given for CP6.



Technically, a UTM coordinate can represent any point 50m in any direction from the red point, so we always assume some imprecision. In this case, I'm told that the CP was placed north of the marsh - at least 100 m from the UTM coordinate. I've had a fair bit of course setting experience, and that actually hurt me here. I could imagine a course setter putting the flag in the wrong place on the south side of the marsh, but surely any course setter would recognize the marsh and the marked trails as being the primary features to guide racers to the control, so if they were going to put their CP in the wrong place, they would be wrong in this general area. The CP description was "intersection of two ATV trails", and we knew that the trails weren't on the map. We found and followed lots of trails - spent more than an hour looking for it with no success.

Most of the teams found this control, so there is clearly a lesson to take away. (In spite of our frustration about CP6, one of the things I love about adventure racing is that there is always something new to learn - even after dozens and dozens of races.) The Lesson: When it becomes clear that a GPS error has been made in setting an adventure race course, we should extend our search in all directions, ignoring the map entirely and imagining ourselves as someone navigating with nothing but a GPS in our hands. In this case, we searched extensively east, west and south of the correct UTM coordinate area, but did not try going north of it.

We finally abandoned the search and picked up CP8 on our way back to Deerhurst. We switched to our paddling gear just as the rain started to get more intense. We headed out onto Peninsula Lake for a 12K paddle to visit two CPs on the north and south shores on the east side of the lake. We were fortunate to get a good canoe, since I heard that most teams had whitewater canoes that didn't track well. We passed a couple of teams and sang a bunch of songs. The major discovery of the weekend was that Angus has a phenomenal Elvis voice, which he attributed to his cold, but I think he was being far too modest.

Then we moved onto the final trek, which appeared deceptively easy, given that controls were placed on and near the trail network that Deerhurst has set up for their guests. Several experienced navigators hated this map, which was a cartoon.



I'm one of the few orienteers who liked this section. For me, it was because - unlike the mountain bike orienteering section, where we were given a topo map and should have been able to expect accuracy - it was clear that this map made no such promises, so we had to be creative in which pieces of information we could rely on at different times. The trail descriptions included some distances, but because the map had a 3D component, you couldn't use relative trail lengths on the map. North moved around as you moved around the map, so it provided some information, but not much. Most trails weren't marked (surprisingly), and there were unmarked trails on the map too, so there were only a few things we could depend on firmly, like two cell phone towers, a lookout tower, the hill and the surrounding golf course. No question, if you got lost somewhere in the heart of this map, it would be a pain to relocate!

This section went really well for us, with a bobble at the end where we descended to the wrong road enroute to the Sugar Shack and had to climb partway up the hill again. Goose had cleverly drawn in some tees and greens using the golf course map, and that helped with our attackpoint for control D. Results aren't posted yet, but we made up lot of time through this section and the paddling section, so in spite of our blow-out in the MTB section, I feel good about our teamwork and the way we raced throughout the day.

When we reached the finish line, amazingly, we were in 4th place behind FB's team, Salomon-Suunto and the Salomon Bobkittens. I was prepared to protest the misplacement of CP6, since that would have got us 1st Coed - except for one minor detail. A piece of our sodden passport did not reach the finish line.



No excuses there. The Bobkittens mentioned that they had Mac-tacked their passport. To be honest, we should have known about this - and we had lots of Mactac with us But we've never had an issue with our passports in all the races we've done, and it's just one of those adventure racing details that has never come up. So we were a DNF with no argument (although I'd be happy to teach FAR about the waterproof paper that orienteers use for control cards - a much better system!)

Regardless, it was a fun day of racing with a couple of excellent teammates. I'm disappointed about our result, but I don't feel overly negative about the event, and I feel really good about how we moved through the course - with the exception of CP6. It was great to have the chance to hang out with our AR friends for the rest of the weekend at Deerhurst, since many of us were volunteering for the high school race on Sunday.