Running (Woods) 55:00 [2] ***
slept:6.0
Final vetting of the Tree Hugger Invitational race course. Much relief to discover that all 26 flags were still there after yesterday's course test. Temperature dropped below freezing, so the goopy mud was mostly gone. On the flip side, my feet got icy cold in the wet areas!
Note
3rd Tree Hugger Invitational Race and Party.
'Bent and I are truly fortunate to know so many fun, interesting, talented and generous people. Everyone contributed to the event in some way, whether by donating prizes, making an appetizer, presenting a slide show, compiling race results, holding a baby, moving furniture, taking photos... the list goes on and on. We had an amazing list of 11 event sponsors, and almost all of them approached me without my asking. We even had an inflatable finish line brought by the ECCO-ESAR folks!
There were 46 race participants this year, up from 36 last year. Overall winner was Eugene, with Leanimal, Hansel and Zoolander finishing close together in 2nd, 3rd and 4th place respectively. I am SO proud of Leanimal for coming so close to winning the whole event overall in a field that included some top adventure athletes, male and female. Everyone did well though. Most of the orienteering was of moderate difficulty, and it definitely took a lot of skill and fitness to complete the entire course in 90 minutes.
Racers had to answer a question at each control, and these questions covered a wide range of topics. The question that most people got wrong concerned the order of the planets from the sun - and I even agreed to accept two different planet names because the wording of the question was ambiguous. It was interesting that a number of native Canadians had never noticed the word "érable" on their maple syrup bottles. The most fun answer to read was the one where people had to write a sentence using "PINES" as a verb.
'Bent and I had a great time today, although we were mostly too busy to chat for long with anyone until the end of the night, when just a few folks were left. We had a total of 60 adults and 17 kids, most of whom stayed for dinner and the slide show, so it was cozy in our living room! Great presentations by Hammer, Slice, BobTheNavigator and some non-APers, including a wonderful little girl who presented a Powerpoint on her first adventure race last spring at age 9. Teamed with her Dad, she finished 7th of 32 Coed teams in Storm The Trent, and she's eager to race again this year.
We raised over $850 for our two charitable causes, both of which mean a lot to us personally because they involve good friends from the AR community:
- AndyCam is cycling across Africa in the Tour d'Afrique and raising money to buy bikes for native healthcare professionals.
- Tree Huggers Gazelle and Gazette have moved to Tajikistan (boo hoo!) where they are working through a charity to run an adventure travel company and bring money into the very poor local economy.
Great to have so many people here, and fun to hear their stories from the 2006 AR season. Now the countdown begins... The 2007 AR season starts in less than 5 days.