Atomic AR Report

First off a big thanks to Greg and the guys & gals at Pangea for another great event!  Despite the rainy weather they managed to host another challenging race for the Sport groups!

We headed up to Georgia early for a part man-cation/part race weekend.  Got ourselves a nice cabin on the hills west of Blue Ridge.  A big part of our race prep included lounging around and team building/puzzle piecing.

The Team that puzzles together

The Dwarfs team was greeted early in the morning with lightning, thunder, and severe raining pounding on the tin roof of our cabin.  Our thoughts collectively were for the Elite teams already out on the course, running though the night towards their 30 hour course.  Come the morning, the rain abated a bit but the weather was still ominous.

The TA was up and running when we arrived.  Rain came and went, clearing up in time for the AR 101.  

We then learned that our courses would be adjusted, entirely scrapping the bike course at Deep Gap and the Flat Creek Loop due to significant wetness and potential to harm the trails.  Instead, we were given a number of additional CP's, some new and some would be repeated on the run portion.  Since we would be doing the bike discipline first, we would have to remember these CP's for the run later.

During our planning before the race, we hatched a plan to take a bike trek thru an open field to avoid traveling back the way we came after CP14.  Our plan was to head directly east from CP14 and try to hit the trail to CP9.  Little did we know this course was directly thru some fields with horses, and we steered clear as we had to hop some fences to make our plan.  One gate and three barbed wire fences later, we hit the trail and continued on our way, meeting up with several bikers that had gone around the long way on the roads… so not much time gained there.

We didn't realize the trail to CP9 was readily available to continue out, and instead followed our original plan to follow the waterline to the next CP, leaving our bikes behind.  Once we found the trail, we saw our lead erode as teams continued on by bike, passing us as we ran this portion of the course.

Cow Tipping Dwarfs realize they brought jogging shoes to a biking match

After claiming CP7 we headed back on foot to CP9 to get our bikes, dejected most the way based on our early faltering and missed opportunities.  We would have to double down on our more chancy plans on the canoe/foot discipline to make up time.  We decided to take some more risky bearing shots rather than depending on visual locations to cut some distance off our course.

The Elusive CP6

Part of the novelty this race was the introduction of topography.  Coming from Florida, we aren't used to more than a 30m elevation change in a race.  Sitting at the top of a saddle, well off any trail, sat CP6.  Greg from Pangea advised everyone that the trail on the map was incorrect, and did not run past the checkpoint.  Checking the trail map, it wasn't possible to overlay the two to get an idea of where the trail was respective to CP6.  Our plan was then to drop straight south from the lake finger… but we got the wrong finger to start from.  300 meters later we realized the the wrong lake finger was used and recalibrated.  We were still having trouble, following the isolines around the hill, until we understood what we were looking for.  The epiphany came once we made the connection -- a saddle looks like a pringle chip.  After that, we just keep following around between hills until we hit the saddle.

Saddle is Pringle, Pringle is Saddle!

Plan versus Reality

Spirits were high, and enthused us to continue with our more difficult, time-saving orienteering.  After hitting CP5 we had to make a decision.  The safer trek back to the CP9, which we could easily find along the water, would require a descent and ascent back to get CP4.  We rolled the dice and took a cut across to CP4 to save time and energy.  At this point the team was already feeling the legs.  Maintaining a decent bearing thru up-and-down hills, we nailed the CP4 and made our descent to CP9 and back to the boats to return to the TA.  From there,  we would have a short run to get the remaining CP's, some we already visited on bike.

Immediately following the last checkpoint claim at CP8, we saw a fresh-looking two-person team headed to the same CP.  At this point, all confidence was lost looking at how fast they were running.  Fearing being overtaken, we really pounded the ground ignoring cramping pains hoping to maintain our lead.  We barreled down the last hill to the TA risking complete wipeouts on the wet asphalt, to check-in and complete the course.