Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Luminescent Sport AR Report


Marking team members second anniversary at Pangea, the Cow Tipping Dwarfs headed to Mims FL for the Luminescent Sport AR challenge.

For those not familiar with the race, the Luminescent is held during the nighttime, avoiding the heat of Florida summer.  The side effect is you get the unusual aspect of adventure racing in the dark.

This race brought me to my first nighttime race, and another teammate to his first adventure race overall.  As luck would have it, his hybrid bike was perfectly suited for the bike portion which was predominately on roads between the main TA and the boat TA.

At the onset we were told it would be a fairly lengthy race, but could be cleared in time.  The race would be split into two sections, bike/boat, and foot.  Overall, the course looked straightforward, but some unexpected mishaps would push our team into recovery mode early.

Bike/Boat

We were lucky to get the early 2am start, and took off early skipping most bike CP's to keep a lead into the water.  This apparently confused some as they didn't see us stop for CP 8 which was close to the start, and drew them past the CP.  Although mostly road, it was approximately 6 miles and took us about 30 minutes to reach the TA.

Bike/Boat markup

Our plan was to hit CP in the order 6,5,3,4.  Initally we landed a little off on the island for 6, but quickly reoriented and got the CP.  By the time we got back into the boats, the next team was already coming to shore.

CP 5 was attempted as a 60° bearing from CP 6.  Unfortunately, we did not seem to take the current into account, and although we kept a constant bearing, we were swept further downstream.  We ended up on the south side of the jetty sticking into the intercoastal!  One thing about nighttime orineteering during paddling without moonlight -- you can't make out the shoreline features or distance.  During they day we could have easily maintained a direct path; in the night you are only able to use your compass.  Imagine my surprise when, confused and disoriented on the jetty, that the bearing back to the boat TA was east of south when expecting it to be west of south!  I thought my compass was broke until we realized our error.

Until we realized this, we had a couple of wrong attempts to find the clue.  My hand got personally acquainted with some cacti thorns when I fell into some shrubs.

Checking the GPS, this error cost us about 20 minutes to correct and locate CP 5.  Unfortunately, as in previous boat disciplines, at least one other group got pulled into our direction, perhaps by group think.  It can be very hard to avoid group think when you see others out ahead, but you have to race your race.  I find it is better to assume other teams are going for completely different CP's than to be drawn in.

Broken Compass?  No, wrong place!



We could easily tell by the error at CP 5, and the number of canoes at the boat TA that we were well behind the lead.  Our only good feeling was the knowledge we completed the boat course, and perhaps not all ahead of us had done this.  But our work was cut out for us, and we'd need to be on our toes if we would have any chance to recover.

The bike return was fast, averaging over 26km/hr between CP's.  We made one error missing the turnoff to the road around the airport.  We successfully overtook several teams on the ride back, and this enthused the team.


Foot

The foot was a straightforward trek, with only a a few wrinkles.  Our plan was CP's in the order 9,10,11,12,13.

Trek markup

As important in night treks, following tree lines and trails are the best option.  Nonetheless, we settled on a bearing bushwhack from CP 11 to 12.  This bushwhack turned from difficult to downright nasty with thickets, bugs, and spiders.  We couldn't breathe without getting so many bugs in our mouth.  The barbs went so high they were scratching arms.  And the spiders... wow the spiders.

The new Luna Protein bar

Once we got thru, we went on our way, but it took a few moments before we determined we didn't break out where we intended.  At this point, our navigator Ben proposed a new solution, using our new location as a direct trail path to 13, then shoot another bearing to get the pesky CP 12.  This worked extremely well as it turned our problems into a reliable path to 13 and a more straightforward bushwhack to 12.

After 12, it was just a matter of returning to the main TA... with 6 minutes left.  We missed a westward trail back to the main north/south trail, and with the time left had to simply barrel thru the woods until we broke out into it.  Fortunately, what we thought was a 1.5 km run was only about 500-600 m, which we completed with 3 minutes to spare despite the massive cramping I encountered on the last leg of our trek.



Completing the course, with a time of 3:56:55, was good enough to claim second place.  We were pleased with our significant recovery, and look forward to the next evening race!