Adventure Race race (Exp Oregon) 24:00:00 [4]
Leg 2, part 2 - Packraft/trek. Freezing ass transition to the boats just before sunrise. Valves were freezing up, boats had ice on them, and we did some wind sprints on dry suits to try to warm up. Fought of the pre-dawn sleep demons and within a couple hours I was overheating in the dry suit. Paddle was pretty straightforward across the lake and down the river. Back to heavy awkward packs for the hot trek into TA2. This was a burly leg that we underestimated. My feet took some damage from the last trek due to lack of dry anything to wear. Ended up keeping it in control, but was a silly mistake. Ran out of water on this one too, and we knew there was little to no water on the next leg. Our water strategy was NOT winning so far.
Leg 3 - Orienteering. There were 16 total O points on two courses. 3 O-points equalled 1 Pro point, so you got a skip. You received maps for both at this TA so you could make and educated skip. Better skips were DEFINITELY on the second O course due to technicality and elevation of the terrain, but we decided to skip O-1 on the first to save some time to hopefully still clear the bike points on the next leg.
Leg 4 - Bike. I was not feeling well to start this leg. I got a chest cold days before the start and it really got me on the bike. A couple coughing fits almost sent me off the road. We had a prolonged stop at a gas station so I could get some cold meds and we could all get water. Oh, and some salty fried chicken! I was bonking a bit at this point which was terrible timing. My nav gets a little panicky and desperate when I'm like this and I know that. I bobbled CP17 badly due to lack of discipline. Anna did a great job of figuring out where we were and avoiding a complete reset. Sill, we spent 3:15 covering a km that should have taken at the most 0:30. Once we were back on track we got to CP18 and had a team pow wow. It was obvious that if the rest of this leg were even remotely similar to what we had seen terrain and nav wise, it didn't make sense to even go for CP19. Plus, it was cold and we had not slept yet. Decision was made to cut CP19-21 so that we could make the critical paddle cutoff at TA4. On the way to CP22 we found a luxuriously sized "rustic washroom" (pIt toilet) in a state rec area. So yeah, we slept there for two hours. It was out of the wind, but the concrete floor was not ideal. Based on teammate accounts of my snoring, I actually got a good sleep here. Thankfully we had a healthy climb immediately after our sleep to get warm. CP22 was actually a little tricky due to deadfall and snow. Would have been a real treat in the dark. From here to TA 4 was smooth sailing with lots of outstanding singletrack. The sun was up and we were warm, which always makes things better after freezing your ass off all night.