Training Log Archive: glewis

I had made a route plan, and immediately messed it up here as I now approached 32B instead of 29A. Thinking of how to fix this mistake must have been on my mind as we crested our first hill and saw UntamedNE.com moving quickly. My instinct is always to go where Dave Lamb goes, and I got pulled off course by them for 100m or so. When we entered the creek where 32B should have been we could not find the right reentrant pattern. Everything lined up except the specific pair of reentrants that I wanted. We must have spent 45 minutes hunting before I decided that we were hopelessly lost and needed to shoot panic bearing #2 of the section. We chose southeast, and I picked a spot on the road that we would hit if I was correct about our location. After a short walk we saw lights and Kevin ran ahead to see who/where they were. It is hard to overstate how hopeless we felt at this moment. It was team thisABILITY, and they were exactly where I thought we'd be. Chip was nice enough to let us join him on his attack to 32B. Everything was identical again, except the reentrants were there! The point was punched, we thanked them again, and moved on to grab its partner. In retrospect, I think we were 500m west in the same creek bed, but it was tough to spot at the time. We made a point to use trails whenever possible from here out. They were decent, but poorly mapped (in terms of distinction) which made them very tough to hit from the side. We moved south from 32A to 29B where we ran into the Cherubini Bros. just north of the reentrant. We had seen them earlier on the bike leg and were more than happy to point them to the control - they were close but the exact location was evading them. With them we moved towards 29A before parting ways. Sticking to the trails was helping even though we were moving slowly. We also knew that time was getting away from us - we had crossed the northern 3 bike points off of our list and knew that it would be tough to get all of the dogbone pairs. With this in mind we decided to work north to 33B and 33A, which we hit with no issue. We followed trails all the way around to 28B. I had been getting sleepy, but nothing compared to Becca, who walked into a few trees on the way. She and Kevin struck up some "stay-awake" conversation. This was fine, but as we left 28B I found us walking in the wrong direction - east instead of north. We corrected, but didn't hit the trail. The dark played trick on us for 20-30 minutes, as we found false trails and wrong reentrants. We debated another panic bearing, but Kevin eventually convinced me that an original guess was right and that we had wondered 300m north onto the wrong spur. Some careful backtracking found the trail (albeit covered by brush). With my confidence thoroughly shattered we moved to 28A, being very careful to return correctly. We again struggled with the trail, as it was covered by a down tree. There was an orange-duct-tape blaze on a tree that I made sure to not lose as we rerouted ourselves. We hung our tail between our legs and slowly worked back to TA, with an extra bushwhack up a hill to avoid private property for good measure. We had left 3 pairs out in the woods, meaning that we got only 5CPs in 8 hours, coming in at 6:30. Never have I struggled so much with a section, and never have I been so demoralized (embarrassed?) by my navigation. I've spent the last year working as hard as possible to improve, and it felt horrible to have it all melt away on this leg.

We hoped on the bikes in the chilly morning air - we still had an hour before I would lose my raincoat and gloves. The ride back was smooth, as I had checked with a local the day prior about the riding conditions of Combs Road. We were yo-yoing with Fragile Flowers, who were moving well enough for themselves. We were just painfully slow, with lots of coasting and no pacelining. We ended up running into UNE Masters at the turn onto the trail for CP21. Jeff had lost his bike computer, so I was happy to loan my reading as we found the CP simply enough. They pulled away on the trail ride out and were climbing the tower at CP22 when we arrived. From there, we had a smooth ride on some beautiful ridge roads (the best riding of the race) that we took slowly.

We pulled into TA 4 to reboard the boats along with UNE Masters, the Cherubini Bros., and Rib Mountain. We knew that Rib had chosen to ride right to Story and left all of the bike points for the ride home, so it was interesting to hear how their race had gone. We pushed off and paddled for home, docking at CP36 and running to the Start/Finish/TA5 at 10:48, giving us over 2 hours left for 4km of trekking. It seemed simple, but Indiana had one last set of laughs at my expense. We misjudged a spur and had to backtrack to find CP38, and then struggled mightily with the mapped/unmapped trails on the way to CP37. It was so bad that we found ourselves reattacking near Kuat before finding the point...which turned out to be CP40! CP37 was still tough, as we tried and failed to find the correct reentrant mouth to dive down into. There was so team arguing (terrible navigation does that), and I was being persuaded to leave and head to the finish. Before I could give up, I felt a strong sense that worth as a racer was tied directly to these last two points - crazy of course, but I was tired. The map started lining up, and I followed a reentrant that looked right all the way to the CP! We had somehow been 300m west. We shot a bearing to CP39, and ran into the road before finding it. Becca had enough of my bad navigating and Kevin was getting there. Fortunately he believed in resilience and let me stomp around reentrants for a bit before finding the CP in a place that looked nothing like the map. A massive sense of relief washed over us as we broke free of the woods and ran the road back to the finish, just over 2 hours after we began this section and 29:50 into the race.

The finish line area was filled with stories and friendship - and even some Deviate beers! The rest of the evening was great as well. We ate with GOALS Masters and were joined by the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary team. It was fun to hear about their thoughts on the race as an inexperienced team. We sat next to Rootstock and Chaos Machine and had a great time laughing about the prizes and stretching with mine and Joel's new calf stretchers. The awards were what we expected - super excited for our Rootstock friends to have been co-champions! I spent the after banquet time talking to Cliff, Kate and Rick, hearing about their equally-terrible dogbone-o and finding out about the illness that pulled them off the course.

This race was brutal. Not so much physically - I recovered quickly and well. The small hills of Indiana destroyed my mind; I was able to salvage some confidence with the final 2 trekking points. I have some work to do if I want to be successful in this type of terrain in the future. But above all, I think I'll remember how much fun I had with the AR community. The people are fantastic, and the post-race camaraderie more than made up for the rough race.

C • eaten up 4

Event: USARA Nationals
 

USARA Nationals - GOALS ARA with Kevin and Becca.

Lots of team composition issues leading up to the race. We had ended up being settled on an all-male team, but Mark and Becca switched places just a week before the race. Kevin and I were ready to roll with anything; it was nice to have a team back in the coed division, but I had a change in mindset going in - less about speed and more about teamwork.

We left Downingtown at 4:09AM on Thursday to drive out to Bloomington. We arrived with just enough time to get settled in to our room, visit registration, and do the bike drop before dinner at 5:30 and team meeting at 7. It's always nice to run into racers that we know, and the lead up to Nationals is great for that. We enjoyed chatting with the other teams before we got down to business. Bruce and Bruce (racing with Val as GOALS ARA Masters) had brought some maps of the area to dinner, and Bruce Wong seemed to know that we'd be visiting Story, so he brought that o-map out to look at. There was much speculation about the course, but nothing of consequence that really mattered. The pre-race meeting saw more of the same, as we went over the rules and got some information about 2 sections of the race: the "Triple Triple" and the Story o-section, which would be done as a "dogbone," something that none of us were familiar with. Bruce Kuo really wanted to talk strategy again after the meeting, so he laid out some more maps to try to guess where the course would go. It was causing me more stress than I needed (and was entirely speculative and not super useful) so we excused ourselves and got ready to sleep. Before we could even get into bed I got my first surprise, in the form of a Glen-Gibson-holding-an-apple picture slid under our door. Garrison's favorite memory of me from Untamed had manifested itself in physical form. I held my giggling in and went to sleep. A midnight bathroom trip cost me additional sleep, and I kicked the bathroom door jam and put a nice sized cut into my left little toe.

We were up at 5, and I took a quick shower to get the body moving. Some tape on the new toe-gash, and the usual pre-race routine had us ready to go with plenty of time for maps at 6:30. Why we had to wait until 6:30, I don't think I'll understand. There was hardly enough time to get the map looked over and finalize gear before a brief meeting and the cannon to start the race at 7AM. It was still dark out, so I needed a headlamp to make the 3-4 minute run down the boats. We realized just as we pushed off that this would be a paddle unlike any other. We expected it to be as easy as they come, with a lake paddle marked by following the lead pack of boats. But there was fog; dense, thick fog that seemed like something out of a horror movie. We could not see more than 30 meters in any direction at times, and had to focus much more than usual on navigating. We used a bearing and time traveled to help guide us. We were with the same 3-4 teams, coming into and out of sight. At one point, Deviate made a sudden and sharp right turn. I should have taken this as a sign, but I was hoping to be slow and steady and stay found. We actually ran into land on the right, and after finding land on the left soon thereafter realized that we had traveled into the wrong creek, but only 300m or so. We were with GOALS Masters and Kuat at the time, and we actually convinced them both of their wrong location as we turned around (Bruce insisted that we were 4km further up towards CP1). I wonder what would have transpired for them had we not turned with them...

The fog began to clear slightly as the sun brightened, and we had 100m visibility by the time we entered the small creek at CP1, 2 hours into the paddle. We left the boats, and had a short trek up the wet, muddy ground to CP1, where we plotted CP2-7. CP2-5 were on the same spit of land as CP1, but CP5-7 were ~10km across the lake. We chose to attack the first three in a clockwise direction, using trails when possible and nailing each CP dead on. We passed Rootstock early on going in the opposite direction, and later ran into Chaos Machine for the first of many times travelling in the same direction as us. We moved very well on trails, but struggled with a few distance saving bushwhacks. We even came off of one and turned the wrong way on a trail, costing us a few minutes. In retrospect, the best way would have been to motor on the trails, especially considering how fast we move on foot and that we had a long paddle to rest the legs and lungs afterward. Regardless, we arrived back at the boats to find a new picture of Glen Gibson on my canoe seat. We estimated that we arrived at CP1 originally in 25th place, and we were the 15th team out (and quickly passed by MRC/MainNerve), so we did well on that loop. The paddle across the lake to CP5-7 took less time than initially estimated - we arrived after just about 90 minutes - a decent rate for this poor-paddling team. I left a snack of cheesy crackers on Garrison's canoe seat just as we departed to say thanks for the Glen Gibson. We did 5, 7, 6 without much issue, just a few minutes at two different times, and got back into the boats an hour after we started. We were passed near CP 7 by a sprinting Chaos Machine, and spent the rest of the leg and the paddle back debating where they were, because there was no conceivable way that they were as far ahead of us as the boats on the water that we could see. We had settled into a nice window with only Chaffing the Dream just ahead, and no one else for 20 minutes it seemed. We arrived at the takeout on the north side of Allen's Creek Recreation Area after 100 minutes, and portaged quickly up and over the hill to the TA, thanks to Kevin strapping the boat to his waist and hauling it with me pushing.

As we dropped the boat, we saw UntamedNE.com prepping for the bike leg, which gave us an idea that the impending "Triple Triple" would take about an hour. I was deciding with Becca and Kevin if we should take our bike gear with as I made accidental eye-contact with Chris Meewes, who nodded assuringly that bikes would be the wise choice. We grabbed gear and ran quickly over to the start of the leg where we received 3 identical maps, each with CPs labeled 8A through 10C. We made a quick appearance on Facebook live (Hi Craig!) as we divvied up the points and set out. Becca ended up getting two on foot with Kate from CM (that answered our previous question!) which Kevin grabbed the middle 3 and I the far 4. There were a few small bobbles (I had only minor attack points) mixed in with sightings of all 3 Deviaters and Rick from CM. I was the last to return, and Kevin had already set up the map on the bike, making me think that we had taken too long. Turns out that we tied Rootstock 1 for the fastest split on the section, which would prove to be a nice boost to our bruised egos. The section was fun, but not exactly what I was hoping for. Some genuine route choice, possibly requiring boats, would have made for a more fun section. Oh well. As we were prepping to leave, Kate and Cliff asked me if I had seen Rick - he should have been back for 15 minutes based on when I saw him. We didn't see him before we left, but it was a confusing few moments for us. We hoped (and knew he was) fine but turned around.

We set off at 3:03 for the long bike leg, ahead of my conservative estimates that I had set 5 hours prior in the boat. We had chosen to hit as many points as possible on the bikes on the way out to Story, leaving us with a more northern route maximizing roads and speed on the way home. We got CP11 with no issue, running into a few teams on the way out. This point is notable because I was stung by a yellow jacket on the way back to our bikes. After not being stung for years, I've had 5 different incidents with more than 10 stings this summer - it's getting old. The sting was right on my calf/shin. It hurt for the rest of the race. We rode near Chaffing the Dream through CP12 and towards CP13, but pulled away as they struggled to stick together. We did well to hit CP13 and CP14 smoothly. I wasn't sure of an attack for CP15, but we saw an unmapped trail that was close to 15, so we began riding. We soon saw GOALS Masters who told us that bikes were a good choice, leading us to decide to follow the trail as long as possible. A short drop and trek to 15 led us to a long, muddy, roundabout ride that eventually led right past 16. We actually rode passed but noticed it as a team approached. We thought that we had taken too much time, but noticed a few teams (Deviate included) approaching by foot and realized that we had actually made up a decent chunk of time. Our only real blunder took place afterwards; during the morning commotion I had neglected to mark a route to CPs 18 and 19, so I had to figure out how to add them to our route. The choice (it was a bad one) was to ride north past 18 and 19 and then circle back south to grab 17. It probably added about 3 miles of riding.

As we approached the trailhead for the Nebo trail we were joined by Chaos Machine. They had found Rick and were flying down the road. I can't decide who was more excited to see who - us or them. We had a wonderful bit of riding with them, paying just enough attention to the map to false start at the wrong trailhead. When we arrived at the correct one, I made a point to get a strong reading on the bike computer, as there was not much to catch as on the way to CP23. We bid farewell to CM, as they prepped their light setup, promising to see them in a few minutes - these can be famous last words in AR, as we spent the next several hours wondering when they would sneak up on us. The trip to CP 23 took longer than I expected and was a full km further than I had estimated. We smoothly nailed 24 afterwards and worked our way around to the Story Dogbone-O TA right before 10PM. We had stopped for water recently, but I took advantage of the free Tailwind to fill up my bladder. I also grabbed all the spare food from my pack - I had neglected to grab fuel from the canoe as we left in a rush and I knew that I would run out.

Most of the day had been spent looking forward to this trek - it is our best section, I love navigating on o-maps at night, and it's where we caught and passed ~10 teams last year. What unfolded was the opposite; an 8-hour disaster where all the wheels fell off the bus - we barely had a bus left. The start control was oddly placed on an indistinct feature 500m deep in the woods. We blew past our first attack point and ran into the finish control. We retried, followed by Kuat and 39 Down and got ourselves...nowhere close. Some wandering, mindless following, and not really reading the map led us to shoot a bearing that would guarantee us to get back to the road. We ended up in a creek bed and found headlamps - we were happy to ask about location. It was Quest, who let us know that they were approaching 35A - that we were so far from where we wanted to be explains just how miserable this section was. We tried to attack the start again, and got closer when we ran into Team Skyler who were just leaving it. We eventually found it after about an hour of wasted time wandering. We slowly worked to 31B and 31A.

C • Race report 4

C • bearing and time traveled 1

C • yellow jacket 2