Salomon Snowshoe Raid 2014
Dee kindly agreed to race with me again in spite of my gimpy foot with the plan that we would do more walking than usual. My last long run was 4 months ago, and before that, it was UTMB last August. Hmm.
(Note to self: Bring a real camera next year! This phone is no good.)
This year's format was different and very interesting. It was a 3-hour rogaine where we would get Map 1 at the start. We could pick up Map 2, which covered the same area, at the finish line after 90 minutes. Map 1 had about 50% more points on it than Map 2 but that's all we were told. If we happened to stumble on any Map 2 checkpoints before we had Map 2, it was OK to punch them. It seemed highly unlikely that anyone would clear the course, which is the way I like my rogaines!
Most teams would have done something different if they'd seen both maps at once so when all of us review our strategies, we have to measure them against the information we had at the time. Bob could have done anything with the 2nd map - even a Matrix - so there were many "correct" ways to approach Map 1.
Bob generously removed the long road run sections from this year's race but the trade-off was a steep climb up the Mountain Springs trail right from the start. Wow, this will be an awesome trail to do hill training for UTMB! (213 m elevation gain)
Dee and I were making good progress, even though steep uphills are the worst thing for my injured heel. Then we caught up with Simpy and BugsinTeeth. Simpy was looking down and smiling at a friendly golden retriever. I know his golden retriever Goose goes for 3-hour runs with him so it only seemed a little unusual since I've seen lots of dogs in orienteering events before.
I called, "Hey Goose!" The dog romped down to say hi. I expected him to run back to Simpy but he continued downhill. I looked back and saw him checking in with the racers behind me, wagging his tail and moving down the trail. Oh crap, he's looking for Simpy, and it's my fault for calling him away. So I went down past the line of climbing racers. When I called his name, he would look at me, then he would check with the next racer down the hill. I called down to ask someone to grab his collar, then a women on the side of the trail said, "Oh that's my dog!" Arggghhh! The Bash Dog-in-Race Curse strikes again! So I marched back up to Dee behind all the racers who had passed me. It felt like forever but the GPS track says this only took 2 minutes. Sigh, whatta dork. Because it felt like it took so long, I decided to run more in the race than I'd been planning since I wanted to make it up to Dee.
136-137-138-139-135
We debated the tempting blue-flagged route from 139 to 140, then down to 203 and onto the east side of the main trail. However, that meant dropping 80 m and climbing a little higher to get up the other side, all for just 60 points. (We expected to return to the northeast on Map 2 so we weren't planning to do anything else there.) Although we had mixed feelings about it, we returned to the road from 139 and ran through the finish line to 135, where we met Hammer & 'Bent, Double_Downon11 & Hermes, and Harps & Logie. At that point, we'd been racing exactly 1 hour.
The controls in the northwest quadrant were valuable, and we've had good success in that area before. The climbs aren't as big, and I love the terrain. On our way there, we noticed 92 from Map 2 - yay. Too bad that was the only one we lucked into!
92-97-103-104-132
We'd planned to dash back to the finish for Map 2 but Dee suggested continuing around the main trail clockwise rather than doing a long run without points. We'd aimed to pick up Map 2 at the 1:50 mark but it was going to be about 2:05 now, and it made more sense to get points enroute since our time with Map 2 would be more limited. I think this was a good change to make on the fly, although we shouldn't have dipped down to get 203 since that took 10 hard minutes, and there *had* to be an easier way to get 30 points on Map 2.
206-205-164-203-145
We picked up Map 2 with 28 minutes remaining and dashed out to 163, where we had 18 minutes left. We'd considered 134 (40 pts) and didn't notice that 141 was worth 50 pts or we might have gone for it. We were worried about arriving late so headed straight back at a more relaxed pace, picking up 61(20 pts) enroute.
163-61
Really fun race - excellent conditions, interesting course, fantastic teammate and lots of good friends to chat with (although never enough time). We won Female Masters and were 10 points behind WandAR and Red, who did an awesome job to clinch the Female category.
Team Batkins took the overall victory again by a 10-pt margin. Ryan plunged into a snow-covered well near the ski hill and fortunately caught himself with his arms, although he got soaked in water up to his waist. If that *had* to happen to someone, it's a good thing it was the World's Toughest Mudder who probably does that kind of thing for training on a daily basis! I'm sure Blue Mountain will want to deal with that soon...
Harps and Logie, who were 2nd, accidentally finished 13 minutes early due to a watch problem.
'Bent and Hammer, who were 3rd and also 10 pts behind the winners, dropped a control that would have cost them a couple of penalty minutes but it would have been enough to win the race.
Tiny and Nosnhoj were close behind in 4th, followed by Nick and Ursula (1st Coed), and STORM and Gally. It's going to be a big battle next year! :)
I got a headache partway through the race that stuck around for 24 hours. Not sure whether it was the unaccustomed 2nd glass of red wine with dinner or the fact that my bladder hose froze inside its nice new insulation so I didn't drink anything in the race. I didn't eat enough either. My foot felt OK after the race but by the time we got home, I was limping and unable to push up onto my left toe. The pain is much less the day after the race so maybe this is just the type of post-run soreness I can expect with the gimpy foot. I'll know more tomorrow.
Great to see everyone and congrats to all the Attackpointers who did so well! Big thanks to Bob for all his hard work on this and to the many dedicated volunteers, including Wilberto, Frankenjack, JYip and others. Special kudos to Hermes for the awesome cookie medals - much more practical than traditional medals and very yummy! My medal "disappeared" quickly but I took Caron's medal home for her.