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Saturday Sep 5, 2009 #
Adventure Racing race 7:11:30 [4] 73.4 km (5:53 / km)
shoes: Salomon XT Wings - Tomato
Logs, Rocks & Steel
Garmin Forerunner Data
Trail Running - 15.1 km, 2 hrs 5 min
Transition - 3 min
Paddling/Portaging - 13.4 km, 1 hr 44 min
Transition - 7 min (I was inefficient...)
Mountain Biking - 44.7 km, 3 hrs 14 min
Our 13th wedding anniversary falls on Labour Day this year, and - as with most couples - the burning question for 'Bent and me was, "What race shall we do to celebrate?" September is chock full of great events, but this year we decided to go with Logs, Rocks and Steel co-organized by our friend BobTheNavigator.
Thanks to our trip overseas, I logged 10 whole hours of run/bike/paddle training in August. So - although I hate to brag - I'd probably done the best taper of anyone in the race. 'Bent had his tow rope ready.
The Male Solo category had the most competitive field of any event in recent memory, and there were 4 or 5 very strong women competing for the Female Solo title. We weren't sure what the Coed Team of Two category would be like, but on the night before the race, we got our answer. Coach Bill Trayling (our former paddling coach and Pan American Games kayaking medalist) and Kari Ferlatte (who placed 3rd in the TransRockies MTB Challenge and 10th in the 24-hr Solo MTB World Champs) were in the race. Yikes!!
Coach showed us the C2 he had brought along as their "canoe". It's the same model of boat that the Buday brothers used in the Olympics. Heck, knowing Coach, it probably IS the Budays' boat! In this photo, FB's son Will demonstrates how much wider he is than this sleek racing craft.
It was great to see Bill & Kari, but looking at that speedy boat sure knocked my optimism down about 10 notches! In fact, I resigned myself to our fate and had a margarita with dinner - not part of my usual pre-race nutrition/hydration plan.
It was awesome to see so many friends - especially fellow Attackpointers - at this event. Here is Funderstorm with her teammate Marcus.
Here's FB with Hammer Lane and Kirikou in the background.
Wanda and Dee
STORM and Gally
Nosnhoj (although we prefer to call him Fast Eddie)
T Rex
And many more! Some other friends and Attackpointers will appear later in the finish line shots. BTW, ace AR photographer Bill Young and our friend Jildo took almost half the photos in this report - and probably *all* the good ones. :-)
Racers were bussed or driven to the starting line near the Stanhope Community Centre. We assembled on a bridge over the beautiful Gull River. Keep a close eye on on those two guys at the front right... you'll see them again in this story.
We started by running up a hill on double track trail. Within 2 minutes, I went on 'Bent's tow rope and stayed there for almost the entire 15.1 km run.
We crossed back over the river to the north side of the road, following a beautiful, rocky single track trail along a ridgeline. It was an awesome run - loads of fun. I had to keep a close eye on my feet to avoid tripping on rocks and roots, but once in awhile I stole a glance at the beautiful views.
Mostly though, my view was of 'Bent's back as he worked to keep us moving well through technical terrain without pulling me onto my face! There was a strong-looking female runner close behind for the first 10K, but otherwise we didn't see anyone after the first kilometer.
At the paddle transition area at Big Hawk Marina, someone told us that Coach Bill and his speedy C2 had departed about 10 minutes earlier. We didn't know who else might be ahead, but we figured they were probably leading our category. Although we had no support crew, Leanimal's sister Jildo did us a *huge* favour by transporting our pre-assembled paddles and laying our paddle gear out in our canoe. That made for a quick transition. Thank you!!
The only bad thing about the 13.4 km paddle was that we couldn't stop and hang out at one of the beautiful campsites we saw along the way. I would have loved for the paddle to go on twice as long - it was a great canoe route and loads of fun.
Although I hadn't expected my nav skills to be of much use in this race, we did gain time on some other racers who took less direct routes across the water - especially on Big Hawk Lake. There were four portages ranging from 70 m to 815 m. 'Bent and I always say that portaging is our best discipline after doing 37 portages in five days on our honeymoon. We passed a number of racers in this paddle/portage section. (Now that results are published, I see that we had a faster paddle split than any of the male teams - yay!) However... our most spectacular wipe-out of the day happened on the second portage when 'Bent caught the tip of our canoe in a tree, wrenched his injured neck and flung the canoe down at the same time as he crashed noisily onto some rocks. It left a big dent in his shin, but the silly boy still wanted to run the portages.
We paddled through Sherborne Lake, then passed Crash (with her plastic tub boat) and Nosnhoj on the final portage into St. Nora Lake. We knew we would see both of them again in the mountain bike section - it's a lot tougher to portage a kayak than a canoe. As we started paddling toward the Frost Centre, we did a double take. Could that really be a C2 heading south of St. Margaret Island? We came into the paddle/bike transition 3 minutes behind Coach Bill & Kari - we'd gained over 8 minutes on the paddle section! (Although we've had some great paddling instruction from Coach Bill, I'm sure we gained our time from the nav and portage aspects of this race leg - not the paddling itself. C2s aren't the easiest boats to portage.)
I had an inefficient transition, forgetting the map on the canoe till the last minute - that sort of thing. It seemed to take forever to switch shoes and packs and get my helmet on, but my GPS says we were only there about 7 minutes. We headed across to the west side of Hwy 35 for 45 km of tough and varied mountain biking.
The first section was fun and almost all rideable, although my semi-slick tires felt heavy in the mud. 'Bent was riding really well. About 18 km into the ride, we came around a bend to see Coach Bill pushing two bikes and Kari looking pained. They had been towing on the technical trails, and Kari had crashed hard. We stopped to see how they were doing, and 'Bent gave them some Advil. We assumed that they would start riding again (and they did), so we spent the rest of the race telling ourselves that they were just behind us.
The next bit was the part that racers described to one another as "the part that wasn't really a trail" - an old logging road with big holes, random boulders and lots of raspberry bushes. I kept looking at my bike computer and wondering if we would finish before dark. Then we came out onto nice ATV trails and finally a long rolling dirt road that took us back toward Hwy 35 with some good hill climbs and fun descents. The last 3 km were on pavement on Hwy 35. It was the only time we considered towing in the bike section, but the traffic was moving so quickly that I vetoed it in favour of drafting 'Bent. The entire bike section had felt like a near-wilderness experience - not as consistently fun as the run and the paddle, but still pretty good. We were passed by 3 people - Crash, Ursula and a male solo we didn't know. Nosnhoj passed us temporarily, then got sidetracked by a call of nature.
We had a moment of confusion trying to find the finish line at the Frost Centre, then it was time to enjoy the great post-race set-up - cold chocolate milk, wet face towels, hot showers, BBQ, picnic tables, shopping for nice GUATS shirts, and sitting in the sun talking with friends.
Our good friends from Caledon, Leanimal and Crash, placed 1st and 2nd respectively in the female solo category, with Ursula placing 3rd. Congrats to all - you ladies are awesome!!
There had been a lot of speculation about the male solo category. In the end, Frankenjack placed 1st in his first-ever adventure race. Well done! Dr. Wells was 2nd, and Relentless was 3rd, just 2 seconds back. Winning time was 5 hrs 28 min (compared to our 7:11).
Bill Logie was 4th, and Hammer Lane was 5th. STORM had been in 4th place when he got his 2nd flat tire in the bike section. Rather than drop out, he ran 13 km to the finish. Good training for the AR World Champs! (And he still beat us.) FB, Gally and Kirikou were in the top ten, and I'm undoubtedly forgetting other friends who put in great performances.
Frankenjack and Leanimal got champagne and sprayed the crowd!
'Bent and I were pleasantly surprised to win the Coed category, with Coach Bill & Kari placing 2nd and a team from Mansfield placing 3rd. We were 3rd of 13 teams (including the male teams and one female team), but got our butts kicked by a lot of solos! :-)
Congrats to Harper and John R who won the Male Team category! John Yip's team was 3rd.
It looks like Kari's arm might be broken - she'll need an X-ray. Ouch.
For me, there were a couple of highlights from the shorter Frost Centre course. 2-Min raced for the first time in 9 years, placing 5th in the female solo category.
And 80-year-old Robert Schad, a businessman and philanthropist well-known in our area, completed his first adventure race. Wow!
PhattyJR sat the race out to heal an injury. He tested 'Bent's recumbent bike and did really well. Most people are afraid to lean back so it doesn't work for them.
The post-race festivities concluded with a big bonfire, and the organizers even provided ingredients to make S'mores - yum.
'Bent and I focus on navigation events, so I wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy LR&S, but we had a great time. The race was well-organized, the course was carefully marked (although we still managed a couple of brief moments of confusion), and the Frost Centre was an excellent host site. It was fun to hang out with so many friends in one place and see so many top competitors go head to head in a fast, tough race. Good times!
Garmin Forerunner Data
Trail Running - 15.1 km, 2 hrs 5 min
Transition - 3 min
Paddling/Portaging - 13.4 km, 1 hr 44 min
Transition - 7 min (I was inefficient...)
Mountain Biking - 44.7 km, 3 hrs 14 min
Our 13th wedding anniversary falls on Labour Day this year, and - as with most couples - the burning question for 'Bent and me was, "What race shall we do to celebrate?" September is chock full of great events, but this year we decided to go with Logs, Rocks and Steel co-organized by our friend BobTheNavigator.
Thanks to our trip overseas, I logged 10 whole hours of run/bike/paddle training in August. So - although I hate to brag - I'd probably done the best taper of anyone in the race. 'Bent had his tow rope ready.
The Male Solo category had the most competitive field of any event in recent memory, and there were 4 or 5 very strong women competing for the Female Solo title. We weren't sure what the Coed Team of Two category would be like, but on the night before the race, we got our answer. Coach Bill Trayling (our former paddling coach and Pan American Games kayaking medalist) and Kari Ferlatte (who placed 3rd in the TransRockies MTB Challenge and 10th in the 24-hr Solo MTB World Champs) were in the race. Yikes!!
Coach showed us the C2 he had brought along as their "canoe". It's the same model of boat that the Buday brothers used in the Olympics. Heck, knowing Coach, it probably IS the Budays' boat! In this photo, FB's son Will demonstrates how much wider he is than this sleek racing craft.
It was great to see Bill & Kari, but looking at that speedy boat sure knocked my optimism down about 10 notches! In fact, I resigned myself to our fate and had a margarita with dinner - not part of my usual pre-race nutrition/hydration plan.
It was awesome to see so many friends - especially fellow Attackpointers - at this event. Here is Funderstorm with her teammate Marcus.
Here's FB with Hammer Lane and Kirikou in the background.
Wanda and Dee
STORM and Gally
Nosnhoj (although we prefer to call him Fast Eddie)
T Rex
And many more! Some other friends and Attackpointers will appear later in the finish line shots. BTW, ace AR photographer Bill Young and our friend Jildo took almost half the photos in this report - and probably *all* the good ones. :-)
Racers were bussed or driven to the starting line near the Stanhope Community Centre. We assembled on a bridge over the beautiful Gull River. Keep a close eye on on those two guys at the front right... you'll see them again in this story.
We started by running up a hill on double track trail. Within 2 minutes, I went on 'Bent's tow rope and stayed there for almost the entire 15.1 km run.
We crossed back over the river to the north side of the road, following a beautiful, rocky single track trail along a ridgeline. It was an awesome run - loads of fun. I had to keep a close eye on my feet to avoid tripping on rocks and roots, but once in awhile I stole a glance at the beautiful views.
Mostly though, my view was of 'Bent's back as he worked to keep us moving well through technical terrain without pulling me onto my face! There was a strong-looking female runner close behind for the first 10K, but otherwise we didn't see anyone after the first kilometer.
At the paddle transition area at Big Hawk Marina, someone told us that Coach Bill and his speedy C2 had departed about 10 minutes earlier. We didn't know who else might be ahead, but we figured they were probably leading our category. Although we had no support crew, Leanimal's sister Jildo did us a *huge* favour by transporting our pre-assembled paddles and laying our paddle gear out in our canoe. That made for a quick transition. Thank you!!
The only bad thing about the 13.4 km paddle was that we couldn't stop and hang out at one of the beautiful campsites we saw along the way. I would have loved for the paddle to go on twice as long - it was a great canoe route and loads of fun.
Although I hadn't expected my nav skills to be of much use in this race, we did gain time on some other racers who took less direct routes across the water - especially on Big Hawk Lake. There were four portages ranging from 70 m to 815 m. 'Bent and I always say that portaging is our best discipline after doing 37 portages in five days on our honeymoon. We passed a number of racers in this paddle/portage section. (Now that results are published, I see that we had a faster paddle split than any of the male teams - yay!) However... our most spectacular wipe-out of the day happened on the second portage when 'Bent caught the tip of our canoe in a tree, wrenched his injured neck and flung the canoe down at the same time as he crashed noisily onto some rocks. It left a big dent in his shin, but the silly boy still wanted to run the portages.
We paddled through Sherborne Lake, then passed Crash (with her plastic tub boat) and Nosnhoj on the final portage into St. Nora Lake. We knew we would see both of them again in the mountain bike section - it's a lot tougher to portage a kayak than a canoe. As we started paddling toward the Frost Centre, we did a double take. Could that really be a C2 heading south of St. Margaret Island? We came into the paddle/bike transition 3 minutes behind Coach Bill & Kari - we'd gained over 8 minutes on the paddle section! (Although we've had some great paddling instruction from Coach Bill, I'm sure we gained our time from the nav and portage aspects of this race leg - not the paddling itself. C2s aren't the easiest boats to portage.)
I had an inefficient transition, forgetting the map on the canoe till the last minute - that sort of thing. It seemed to take forever to switch shoes and packs and get my helmet on, but my GPS says we were only there about 7 minutes. We headed across to the west side of Hwy 35 for 45 km of tough and varied mountain biking.
The first section was fun and almost all rideable, although my semi-slick tires felt heavy in the mud. 'Bent was riding really well. About 18 km into the ride, we came around a bend to see Coach Bill pushing two bikes and Kari looking pained. They had been towing on the technical trails, and Kari had crashed hard. We stopped to see how they were doing, and 'Bent gave them some Advil. We assumed that they would start riding again (and they did), so we spent the rest of the race telling ourselves that they were just behind us.
The next bit was the part that racers described to one another as "the part that wasn't really a trail" - an old logging road with big holes, random boulders and lots of raspberry bushes. I kept looking at my bike computer and wondering if we would finish before dark. Then we came out onto nice ATV trails and finally a long rolling dirt road that took us back toward Hwy 35 with some good hill climbs and fun descents. The last 3 km were on pavement on Hwy 35. It was the only time we considered towing in the bike section, but the traffic was moving so quickly that I vetoed it in favour of drafting 'Bent. The entire bike section had felt like a near-wilderness experience - not as consistently fun as the run and the paddle, but still pretty good. We were passed by 3 people - Crash, Ursula and a male solo we didn't know. Nosnhoj passed us temporarily, then got sidetracked by a call of nature.
We had a moment of confusion trying to find the finish line at the Frost Centre, then it was time to enjoy the great post-race set-up - cold chocolate milk, wet face towels, hot showers, BBQ, picnic tables, shopping for nice GUATS shirts, and sitting in the sun talking with friends.
Our good friends from Caledon, Leanimal and Crash, placed 1st and 2nd respectively in the female solo category, with Ursula placing 3rd. Congrats to all - you ladies are awesome!!
There had been a lot of speculation about the male solo category. In the end, Frankenjack placed 1st in his first-ever adventure race. Well done! Dr. Wells was 2nd, and Relentless was 3rd, just 2 seconds back. Winning time was 5 hrs 28 min (compared to our 7:11).
Bill Logie was 4th, and Hammer Lane was 5th. STORM had been in 4th place when he got his 2nd flat tire in the bike section. Rather than drop out, he ran 13 km to the finish. Good training for the AR World Champs! (And he still beat us.) FB, Gally and Kirikou were in the top ten, and I'm undoubtedly forgetting other friends who put in great performances.
Frankenjack and Leanimal got champagne and sprayed the crowd!
'Bent and I were pleasantly surprised to win the Coed category, with Coach Bill & Kari placing 2nd and a team from Mansfield placing 3rd. We were 3rd of 13 teams (including the male teams and one female team), but got our butts kicked by a lot of solos! :-)
Congrats to Harper and John R who won the Male Team category! John Yip's team was 3rd.
It looks like Kari's arm might be broken - she'll need an X-ray. Ouch.
For me, there were a couple of highlights from the shorter Frost Centre course. 2-Min raced for the first time in 9 years, placing 5th in the female solo category.
And 80-year-old Robert Schad, a businessman and philanthropist well-known in our area, completed his first adventure race. Wow!
PhattyJR sat the race out to heal an injury. He tested 'Bent's recumbent bike and did really well. Most people are afraid to lean back so it doesn't work for them.
The post-race festivities concluded with a big bonfire, and the organizers even provided ingredients to make S'mores - yum.
'Bent and I focus on navigation events, so I wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy LR&S, but we had a great time. The race was well-organized, the course was carefully marked (although we still managed a couple of brief moments of confusion), and the Frost Centre was an excellent host site. It was fun to hang out with so many friends in one place and see so many top competitors go head to head in a fast, tough race. Good times!
Thursday Sep 3, 2009 #
Mountain Biking (Trail (mostly)) 1:23:00 [3] 25.1 km (18.1 kph)
Rode mostly trails to Foodland in Caledon East. Turns out there isn't really a good place to park a bike, so I locked it to a garbage bin by the carts then ran inside to do a very efficient Tour de Store. I was kinda proud of how much I squeezed into my pack, including a big basket of Ontario nectarines! Even with the heavy groceries and the uphill at the end, the ride home took 9 seconds less than the ride there. (It's over 12K each way.) Consistency is nice, but that's just *weird*!
Note
'Bent and I still aren't sure if he'll be able to race LR&S due to the flaring up of an old dental-related neck injury - the same one that forced him to switch to a recumbent bike many years ago. Some tough dentistry on Monday put him in a lot of pain. He needs to turn his entire body to look around because he can't turn his neck. It hurts to watch! Leanimal and Thumbs of Death going to do their best to duct tape him back together, and we've got our fingers crossed. It's strange to be packing when I don't know if I'm actually racing. Or maybe I will race solo, but probably not with an appropriate boat at this point, so it would just be silly.
Tuesday Sep 1, 2009 #
Running (Trail) 1:15:00 [3]
shoes: Salomon XA Pros - light blue
Basked in cool, sunny weather on shady trails!
Then got sprayed by a chemical truck putting dust suppressant on Humber Station Road. :-(
But mostly it was a good run, and my legs felt surprisingly zippy - for me, anyway. I met Crash and the pooches out for a walk and stopped for a chat. I love September.
Then got sprayed by a chemical truck putting dust suppressant on Humber Station Road. :-(
But mostly it was a good run, and my legs felt surprisingly zippy - for me, anyway. I met Crash and the pooches out for a walk and stopped for a chat. I love September.
Monday Aug 31, 2009 #
Power Yoga 23:00 [1]
Rodney Yee Yoga for Flexibility.
Gorgeous weather, but instead of going out, I spent hours playing with web tools, setting up and fixing small issues in the new mass e-mail system for the Salomon Dontgetlost.ca Adventure Running News. I thought there might be time for a bike ride, but nope. In case you haven't heard, registration is now open for Salomon Dontgetlost.ca Raid The Hammer, and earlybird fees apply until Sept. 25. We're racing across Hamilton this year to celebrate the 10th anniversary of RTH. Be there! :-)
http://www.dontgetlost.ca/index.php?option=com_con...
Gorgeous weather, but instead of going out, I spent hours playing with web tools, setting up and fixing small issues in the new mass e-mail system for the Salomon Dontgetlost.ca Adventure Running News. I thought there might be time for a bike ride, but nope. In case you haven't heard, registration is now open for Salomon Dontgetlost.ca Raid The Hammer, and earlybird fees apply until Sept. 25. We're racing across Hamilton this year to celebrate the 10th anniversary of RTH. Be there! :-)
http://www.dontgetlost.ca/index.php?option=com_con...