Training Log Archive: Work4justice

Event: Fig XVI
 

The Fig with Angel in the Red River Gorge.

Angel and I had been looking for a race to do together, and settled on this since it's in the backyard of her cabin. I love the 361 Adventures guys and like that there are usually quite a few options for their races. Angel has dome some shorter races and an 18 hr. She was nervous about the biking and paddling, and really wanted to do things on her own power. I assured her we would have a great time!

We got the maps, plotted points, worked with the Fishers to confirm, and made a plan. We decided to try for at least a couple of the "out there" bike points and at least five on the last o course. Wheeled and time estimated everything and headed to bed. The course always looks deceptively easy, but can be very challenging.

Woke up with a bad sore throat. Ugh!

The race started with a paddle, then a trek, then bike, o then bike to the finish. Prologue was a road run to the lake, about a mile. The paddle was interesting. It was four points, but there was a roving TA boat that we had to paddle back and forth to, which I wasn't a fan of but had fun with it. We made good time with that, about 52 min, then off on the trek. It has been a long time since I had USGS maps in my hand and forgot that I had to go with really big features, especially with 40ft contour lines. We trotted when we were confident and went slowly around the areas I wanted to be sure I recognized so I wouldn't lose where we were on the map. We got both the points to the bike TA, and came in with some spare time.

Headed to 7, which I was fairly certain would include a hike a bike. Turns out that it did, and when we got through the portion of hike a bike, Angel's shoulder was bothering her. So, we retraced back to the road to attack 10 with 20k road ride. There had been a lot of rain in the area which left a lot of mud everywhere too.

Once we got through that, noticed that my back tire was very low. I had meant to air it up with a proper pump at the bike drop, but the drop was VERY busy and a very small area for cars (like 4-5 at a time) and had to hustle out of there. Stopped to put air in, and my pump fell apart. Tried a C02, and when I tried to remove it, it deflated what I had pumped. Then tried Angel's and it just didn't work. :( There were some climbers where we parked, turned out they had a football inflator, Angel had an adapter, and got aired up and out of there. Lost like 25 minutes. UGH.

Headed to the next bike section and saw the Fishers! Traded back and forth with them a smidge (mostly because they had better entries and exits on the points) and arrived at the TA. Heard that the trek was proving to be tough, so we held firm to our time estimates. Headed to 13, no problem, wound up passing 14, headed to 16 mostly walking, and then came back to 14. Fisher's caught us there, we were in the right RE, but hadn't gone far enough. The pointed it out to us. From there, we ran back to the TA, and within a mile my ankle turned on a bad root, and slowed our last bit.

Angel shared that she wanted to take it a bit easier on the bike. Picked up the last 2 bike points, saw the Fishers dealing with a bike, slowed to see if they needed anything and they waved us on. We finished with 15 points and about 30 min to spare.

We had a great time! Of course, no results yet, but it was a great way to end this season. I learned a lot this year and will carry many lessons learned into next year.

Onto continuing my winter project, BNM 2.0!

Turns out the Thursday class is a little faster. Had to leave early for a meeting but will be back.

Dirt road power pole and hill pushes.

Cruise with Angel. Almost used to the gearing on the 1x.