Adventure Racing 24:00:00 [3]
We began this long leg on roads chasing CP Psychosis, with Tower further in front of us. While we tried to push the pace a bit harder, I struggled to both consult the map and maintain my place in a paceline at any speed above 25km/h. Tom did a good job of keeping a strong pace, and we felt strong as we moved east across the course. It's really important to remember that despite the amount of road riding in this race, the actual crux are the foot sections. It's hard make significant changes on the road sections (as an example, I think that a team who was truly hammering would have struggled to put 30 minutes into us). Case-in-point: after 3 hours of riding, we met up with CPP and Tower at a CP and passed them. Consistency was crucial. This leg included a fun ride around the northern perimeter of Lake Apopka. Soon after that section, Tom and I began getting sleepy. Kit correctly noted that we were crawling, and she gave us some caffeine (this became a helpful theme for the race) to get us moving again. The sun began making itself known as we arrived at the WP near CP28. The WP itself was confusing - it was a locked gate with a large No Trespassing sign... Regardless, we found the CP and were off on a fun portion of the leg that had some singletrack in some pine forest. CP 31 was a little squirrely for us, but we found it after I got my head straightened out. From there we had to find a WP to get us across a river into the trail system that was near TA2. The WP wasn't marked (what is the point of unmarked waypoints...?), but CPP arrived as we were hunting for a crossing. Eric Olsen unfortunately confirmed that his pre-race google-earth-ing put the cross right at the large "Warning: Alligators! No Swimming!" sign. It ended up being quick and shallow enough, and we were across with all limbs intact. I had scoped out the travel from here to TA on strava pre-race, but our route was horrible. It was a swampy, muddy, unrideable passage for a km, which led out onto sugar sand trails that were intermittently rideable. The bikes were screaming at us to stop, clogging drive trains and destroying brakes. The most welcome sight of this part was Randy, whose mere existence let us know that the TA was within walking distance. With a few more turnarounds, we rolled into TA just before 9AM, pretty blasted and demoralized from the struggle.
Spirits were lifted with the arrival as we found a number of teams who had yet to make much progress. Good 'Nuff had been out on the team trek for 3 hours, (ARGeorgia and MRC were also on it) and Bones had a teammate on the o-relay. I had been convinced that Bones was much further ahead, so it was nice to see that they suffered overnight as much as we did. The plan was to attack the team trek first, but the TA was looking to take a long time, so I volunteered to do the first relay. Tom and Kit could get some rest and take their time in the TA. At the time it seemed like the best choice, but in retrospect the team trek first would have put the relays overnight, when sleep would have been easier and when the flags would have been easier to spot.
It took me a bit to get acclimated to my map (o-relay B0, as a major road on the map didn't exist. I was able to get oriented just before I arrived at my first attackpoint, which was a small hill just outside of a bend in the road. I attacked a swamp/marsh from there, and found nothing. I searched and then reattacked, and found myself in the same place again. I even travelled a bit too far, knowing that my pace count was most likely low. Nothing again. I began to search using topography, trying to find the "westside of marsh". I reattacked again and again, getting nowhere except more frustrated. It had been more than an hour since I started, it was getting rather hot, and my brand new Trimtex pants were showing the effects of the thorns. I retreated the same way that I came in and went back through the TA towards my next two points. I tried running when I could, but the heat was oppressive (mid-80s) and the trails were sandy. The second point was incredibly easy, as I spotted it from 50meters away (misplotted, but still). My final point showed itself on the edge of a peninsula by a lake...it was not. I trudged wwwaaaayyy too far into a marsh, but never really found a peninsula. Convinced that I was too far, I turned around to find a drier way back to the trail where I began, and ran right into the flag. The map showed the flag just on the edge of a lake. GPS nothing, this thing was wrong. (Edit: the tracker shows that I walked right on top of the point on the way out into the marsh. The location where I found the flag was north of that, towards the opposite side of the peninsula) I shuffled back to TA with the plan to find Kit and/or Tom and have them come with me to get the one that I couldn't find. I was searching for them sleeping, and instead I found Charles and Mari from Bones who were STILL waiting for Roy to come off of o-relay A. I found Kit and had her come out to help me. I had her do it all on her own, and she ended up EXACTLY WHERE I WAS. Again, we trudged around and couldn't find anything. Another reattack had the same result. She suggested that maybe the may was wronger than we thought, and we began hunting in stupider places, way more than the supposedly correct 125m from the attackpoint. In a moment of complete luck, I turned my head to the right and found the flag, nowhere close to the westside of a marsh, and at least 250meters from the hilltop where we attacked from. We headed back to TA convinced that no other team would ever find it. Edit: After viewing the tracker, it was definitely mishung to the north.
Kit and Tom geared up to head out while I got them prepped with some map advice. Bones was nowhere to be found, and Good 'Nuff was still not back. I took a short nap, prepped some gear, ate, drank, drank, ate, drank, slept, and talked to anyone who would listen to me - I probably slept a bit more than 45 minutes and consumed more than a gallon of liquid while rubbing ice on my head in an effort to cool down. Also included in that was seeing Mari and Charles filling up waters - they revealed that Roy was still out on his relay and they were now helping him but had run out of water. This happened again 2 hours later. I have never felt so much sadness for another team's luck during a race. By the time that Kit and Tom returned 4 hours later, Good 'Nuff had just returned after 10 hours on the team trek (they also knew it was exactly 32 miles...how did they know that?). It was fair to say that we may have somehow taken the lead from them if we could make good work of the team trek and if they struggled the same way that we did on the relay. Fast forward a bit, and they somehow finished the relay legs in less than 2 hours each - how a professional triathlete was able to walk right up to a point that took some much better navigators 4+ hours to find is a mystery that I don't think I want the answer to.
We grabbed enough food and water for the leg and had a moment of panic as the map for the leg had gone missing. After I negotiated SBB's map from Mark Montague, we found ours in Ron Eaglin's bin - whew. We took off for our relay expecting it to be long but manageable. Last year, we had great success by moving fast on our feet - this was not to be the case this year. Tom was suffering greatly in the feet, and Kit wasn't doing much better. Neither of them had slept at all and the heat during their trek had been tough. We resolved to walk, but my trekking pace was much higher than theirs. This leg only gave us one CP to start, where would find a map containing the location of the next. We had gotten some warning that the CPs would require us to trek back and forth across the map. The first 4 were simple, but then it began to get repetitive, as we traveled on the same set of trails 4 times, going back and forth across the park. I don't mean to be negative, but it was just stupid. Someone made this leg with the intention of frustrating teams. As we worked our way to our 8th point, we were 6+ hours in and it was fully night. Tom and Kit were barely moving, and we were passed by Hunter on an o-relay, running sub 8min/mile. He gave us some encouragement but also a warning that the final 2 points took 2 hours each for his team. We grabbed CP 39 (point 8/11) and then set off towards 40, where the wheels fully came off. I had offered Tom a nap a number of times, but he refused, instead getting super quiet and reserved. Kit had made a small recovery, and she and I spent some time talking about how to deal with Tom's issues. This focus on conversation led to my only real significant error of the race, as I lost contact with the map and took 30 minutes to get us back on track. At that point, Tom was falling more and more into a hole, to the point where he laid under his space blanket on the side of the trail while Kit and I found CP 40 (which was incredibly challenging and much further than we expected from the attackpoint). The subsequent point that I marked on the map was a full 6km from where we were now. It was 2AM, and there was no way that we could get it, finish the leg, sleep, and leave before the TA closed at 6AM. Our decision was made even easier when Tom asked about quitting. It was simple enough for us to realize that he needed attention quickly. We wrapped him up with his space blanket and coat and marched ourselves back to TA, a 3+mile journey that took 70 minutes.