Adventure Racing race 4:58:00 [4] **
FAR Winter Adventure Race at Mansfield.
Luckily, they had hired a minister as the course designer. Allthough we still had 50/50 grass and crunchy snow at 9 p.m. the night before the race, his prayers were answered after we went to bed, bringing a storm that dropped 20 cm of the white stuff. Woo hoo!
Tough call about which skis to use - and we'd brought a van load with all the skis we own! Until shortly before the race, we'd been told that skate skiing was banned on classic trails, plus we could see some off-trail routes that we wanted to follow.. So we went for classic, which was probably NOT the right choice, although Bent and I are new skate skiers, so it's hard to say. During the captains' briefing, they announced that skating would be allowed on classic trails after all, because they hadn't been track set. Not sure, but that might have changed our strategy. Anyway, since it was -0.5C before breakfast, I waxed purple for 0C, and took red along in case I needed more grip.
There was a Lemans start where we ran up a hill to CP1, then ran back down to put on our skis. We could have done this better in a couple of ways, but it was only a few minutes lost, so no biggie. Then we put on our skis and headed up the hill to the trails. Not sure if the temperature dropped after breakfast or if the elevation difference had an effect, but the new wet snow stuck like bricks to our skis. Yikes!! We stuck it out for 20 minutes, trying to wear down the wax, but finally had to dig out the scraper. Whatta waste of time! After that, we skated on our classic skis when we could, and they were better for the off-trail stuff we did.
The "ski scramble" section was fun, with 4 CPs to visit in any order. If you skied on a trail, then you had to ski in the designated direction, but you didn't have to ski on trails.
Because of all our problems, we were shocked to be in 8th place (out of about 50 teams) coming off the ski. I guess some teams must have had it even worse.
We transitioned to biking on very snowy roads, with occasional Close Encounters of the Scary Kind with SUVs, pick-up trucks, snowmobiles and snowplows. We got Bent towing TheMinister, who has been sick over the past month. There was a big climb where we gained elevation that took us from bottom to top of the nearby downhill ski resort. An all-male team had passed us at the bottom, and when I saw them walking their bikes, I couldn't resist pedalling past them all the way to the top. :-)
We dropped our bikes and started our trek by following a marked route up the escarpment - very steep and slippery. Then we headed a couple of km cross-country toward the highest hill in the area. At first, there were tracks going on my bearing, then they turned in a direction I didn't like, so I struck off on my own and broke trail, which probably slowed us down, but I hate not navigating in winter races! Bent had TheMinister on tow for the trekking section, and I was impressed at TheMinister''s ability (which I do not share) to be towed through tangled forest and down slippery hills.
After the first hilly trek, the next two portions of the trek became a run through the bush in well-worn tracks (although not always easy footing). We passed two teams in this section, then crossed into Mansfield and booted it to the finish. It wasn't our best winter race result, but considering TheMinister's recent injury and illness, it was better than expected. We finished 9th, just 3 minutes out of 7th. Most importantly, it was a beautiful winter day and we had a great time being outside in it! :-)
Big congrats to our friends Hammer, Tarno, Adidas PL&A, Tiny, Crash, Rocky, Gazelle and Gazette who all had awesome races!