Training Log Archive: Bash

I ran from The Minister's condo along the Sea Wall, then around the perimeter of Stanley Park. It was beautiful scenery with good people-watching to keep things entertaining. My legs were willing to go for a moderately-paced run, but made it clear that I'd better not push my luck. I think that another couple of rest days are in order, then maybe I should focus on bike riding rather than running for the next week.

A sunny morning in Vancouver! :-)) Rented kayaks on Granville Island and paddled to Jericho Beach, then down False Creek a bit, then back to Granville Island. Absolutely beautiful.

North American Rogaine Champs - Day 2

Compared to our previous rogaine, the hours of darkness were extremely unproductive. Honestly, we might as well have curled up for a 3-hour nap. We got 220 of our 1370 points in the dark. Crazy. Normally I enjoy night nav, but this was too tough for me to do well. Looking at the other teams' results after the fact, I guess that nobody was finding the course to be a cakewalk.

At first light, Sherpa and I were on the ball again - finding controls and starting to gather points. We ran into a team who had spent the night at the Hash House and had heard all the discussion about how difficult the course was. That made us feel better.

Then I got greedy. I was pretty sure that we could snag one last 50-pointer further south around 10 a.m., then start our trip back to the Hash House. We had to stop to purify water from a watercourse that we affectionately referred to as the Cow Poo Stream. By the time we got to the area of the control, time was tight. It was supposed to be within 100 meters of a bend in the road, but we didn't see it on our first foray. I wanted to take a bearing and try again, but Sherpa wisely put her foot down. It was time to go back. And boy was she right!

We followed some fences, expecting to be led to the road. We hit a creek and I convinced Sherpa that we should follow it to the road because there was a 70-point control at a bend in the stream. She raised an eyebrow, but agreed. We found the control behind an 8-foot fence in an area that we had thought was out of bounds. And actually, it was. But we naturally thought that we were on the wrong side of the fence, so we climbed over to where the control was, which put us in an area with a bunch of fences, wet areas, and even a bit of B.C. dark green for good measure. So... we hit the road at 11:12 a.m., still quite a way from the Hash House.

For the first time ever, I had to tow. Sherpa hooked up to me and I ran as hard as I could in the sweltering heat. It was my greed for points that had made us late, so I had to get us out of this. Sherpa was amazing - pushing on without complaining in spite of painful blisters, a fluttery stomach, and fatigue after her first-ever 24-hour trek. We kept running and I kept looking at the map and my watch. I lied to her about the remaining distance. "We only need to push as hard as we can for 2 more kilometers!" With less than 2 minutes to go, I spotted vehicles and we gave it one last push as spectators cheered. We made it to the finish control just 11 seconds before the 100 points/minute penalty would have kicked in! Then we collapsed in the finish tent and didn't do much for the next hour or so. Sherpa was surprisingly pleasant about it, but I have (hopefully) learned my lesson for the next rogaine!

Result: We were awarded 1st prize in the Open Women's division with 1370 points. However, the Super Veteran Women's team led by the amazing Sharon Crawford got 50 more points than we did, so we feel more like silver medalists. Still, we finished 20th/55 teams, ahead of all but one of the mixed teams, so we are very proud! The winning team got 2010 points, so it turns out that nobody came close to getting all the controls. Everyone had planned to do a lot more than they ended up doing. Our guys' team got 1490 points and finished 6th in the Veteran Men's division. Based on their competitors' names, they think they might have been the first North Americans in their division, which isn't a bad showing either.

Anyway, it was lots of fun - but perhaps a few too many bears!!!

Event: 2005 North American Rogaine Championships
 

North American Rogaine Champs - Day 1.

Sherpa and I entered the Open Female category - it was her first rogaine and my second. Bent and Hingo entered as a Veteran Male team. The Hat Creek Valley is a beautiful place with some great views, so we looked forward to our chance to take 24 hours to explore it. Both of our teams chose a similar route - starting in the northeast with a big climb to access some high-valued controls that looked more difficult. Then at night we would travel along a north-south corridor where a line of controls roughly followed a dirt road. By morning, we would be in the southwest quadrant, getting some final high-pointers. We planned to get about 2300 points out of approximately 3600 points available.

How wrong we were!

Right from the start, things went more slowly than expected. I'd forgotten that distances are a lot farther when you climb up or down 200 meters on a steep mountainside. As we approached the third control after a particularly steep climb, Sherpa asked: "What's that by the pond?" I saw a small, dark animal and wondered what she was so concerned about. Then I saw the big Mama bear and both her cubs, romping around about 100 meters beyond the control. Oh oh. Then we noticed Bent and Hingo sitting on a rock about 150 meters away from the control on the opposite side. I called out, "Are you waiting for the bear to leave?" and they didn't seem to hear us. Then Sherpa and I decided that there would be safety in numbers, so we swung wide around the field toward the guys. Before we got there, the guys left. It turned out that Hingo had heard me ask about the bear, but Bent assured him that I was just kidding. They had wondered, however, why we hadn't visited the control yet. Sherpa and I didn't want to give up that easily, so we talked loudly and sang a few choruses of "The Other Day I Saw a Bear, A Great Big Bear Away Out There". Then we took a wide loop around the field and couldn't see the bears, but were still worried because the control was on a little rise and we couldn't see right behind it. Finally, we got our nerve up. I darted over and jammed my SportIdent into the box while Sherpa held her bear spray at the ready. We didn't bother filling in the intention sheet!

From there, the remainder of the afternoon was uneventful, other than the growing realization that we weren't going to end up where we had planned to be before dark. The controls were more difficult than our last rogaine. The flags were low to the ground and some of the features were very small and obscure on a 1:40,000 map, especially given the lack of detail (or incorrect detail, such as misplaced fences) available for choosing attackpoints, etc. A couple of the controls were in dubious locations too, but as an adventure racer, I am used to that. Interestingly, we and our guys' team took turns leapfrogging each other. They ran when they could, but we just walked. We ran into them half a dozen times in the race.

Shortly after dark, we were introduced to "British Columbia dark green". Holy cow. Sherpa and I had to get through 100 meters of the nastiest stuff I've ever seen. There was practically no way through - and our legs would fall through stacks of dead wood into swampy ground, getting trapped so that we couldn't take our next step. A couple of European men arrived and we hoped to follow their path through this crap. We watched surreptitiously as they made some attempts. Then they politely said in a strong accent: "We wish you good luck. We are going back." We eventually crashed through and headed down the road to start our "night corridor". A short distance along the road, we met Bent and Hingo coming toward us. They had just been to our next control, but hadn't punched it. As Bent approached, he had seen not one, but three reflectors. Then two of the reflectors had turned and looked at him - and they were pretty far apart. According to Hingo, it went something like this: "Hey Hingo, I've found the control. Oh oh... Nice bear! Good bear! OK, I'm not going to bother getting this one. Let's go!!!!" Given that the boys were ultimately given credit for this control by the organizers, we are suspicious that they concocted this story to keep us away from a control that looked fairly easy, but at the time, we decided to take their advice and skip that one too.

Continued on Day 2...