This ranks up there as one of my favorite orienteering races of all time. After a overcast but dry weekend so far, the skies opened up - from drizzle to parking-lot-under-1-2" of water - in the 10-20 minutes before the race started. Shivering while maps were handed out and looking round at the other faces ready for the party in the rain was primal-scream craziness in waiting. And then we were off. Me feeling fit enough (at least for the first hour) to hang with the leaders, and/or lead the chase pack. And then splash, splash, splash down trails that were all-puddle. Pig mud going to be there today!
Too much crazy fun to write it all - a few highlights:
- Leading the chase-pack of ~5+ folks in sight of the lead 2-3 across a major reentrant, then up the stony, under-muddy-waterfall "Pig Stairs" in the stream, then, 'wait', this isn't right, and recovering in seconds...
- Coming in to a control to see Eric coming out "I think I broke my hand", "whoa - it's okay to bail", "no, I think I'll keep going"... oh-kay (and then just win the thing... :)
- Stuck behind some green for 20 seconds - oops lost 5 places... Pack!
- Run the lake bank confidently, and bail well - break-away into 4th.
- Cross of tough reentrant, cut out toward trail, see large pack - think it must be Red course - and then 'oh, ...' that's the Blue pack. Apparently the around route was much better. (splits say 1 minute!)
- For the rest to race, Clem & I were pretty close - and he was awesome - keeping each other going with sarcasm, and self-deprecating humor that became all the more real as we both fell apart - yet saw others doing the same. And we even enjoyed delusions of forcing the organizers to figure out what to do with a tie for 3rd US - only to find 3 folks from the 'pack' we though had fallen off the back already finished.... Apparently 2 had taken a more aggressive cross-reentrant route and pulled out of sight, and Maricel (who I'd just learned was the
'96 JWOC winner) who had disappeared ahead, and then we having though we passed him just a few minutes later - but twas another ChicagO bait-n-switch.
- Chasing "Maricel" to see him dead stopped looking over a steep hill for a way down, and then turning left for a way down I could do - with Clem, while he and the lead MVOC runner turned right - and then while race-climbed parallel spurs on the others side hearing an "aaaaaaa" - looking back, and seeing a little Zac Barker - at the bottom of the slope - with a line of mud behind him at least 4 time as long as he was...
Absolutely incredible adventure.