Thursday, April 24, 2014

Dixie Challenge Sport AR

Dixie got off with a twist.  Jeff Leininger once again designed the course.  Last year, it was an interesting tower-sighting feature.  This year, the prologue to the race included an easter egg hunt!  The stakes were raised as there was only enough eggs for each team to find their four.. and finding the last egg will be a real challenge!

Teams were given their choice of segment order.  We selected Foot-Boat-Bike, it is one of our favorites since we prefer to not finish with either boat or run.

Prologue
Assembling at the start

Eggcellent, found one
Back at 'cha Kevin


Foot


Foot started out fast, in an attempt to regain time after the picture taking.  There were a number of similar looking fire breaks and paths -- we took several quick conferences to ensure we knew our location along these trails.
Left turn at Albuquerque?

Muckity muck

A key time saver that Ben "the Nav" devised was regarding CP4: "From Observation Tower (T) on map 300m, 282 degMN Along fire break."  By plotting this out on the map beforehand, we could attempt to locate the CP directly and avoiding the run out to the tower.  Once sighted, we used a compass bearing to verify we were close.

Spotting the tower

Boat


The canoeing was mostly straightforward.  CP 11, furthest away, was worth 2 points.  On the way to "Up a creek" we bumped into a tree, and poof! there was a two foot snake in our canoe!  A tail grab and a oar was enough to clear it from and move on for our two point CP.

Enough is enough! I have had it with these monkey fighting snakes on this Monday through Friday canoe!

Bike


Immediately after the first CP, we came across Coconutz/Sheriffs Posse finishing their bike portion.  So we knew it would be between their run time and our remaining bike portion.  Despite overshooting one checkpoint, we were able to maintain our pace and complete the race to claim first place with a time of 2:34:01.


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