Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Christmas in Christmas AR Report

The Cow Tippers aren't known for their Elitism, but a 3.5 hour Elite race?  That we can get behind.

What we didn't get behind were the ACTUAL COWS that blocked the area early that morning, according to Greg.  Sorry we weren't handy to assist.

Finally recuperated from our sicknesses/laziness from last race, we were looking to make our mark on our favorite of all Elite races.

This race looked to be a bit more substantial with several key decisions required that would affect our efficiency and speed.  Our sequence was pre-determined:  BOAT, BIKE, and FOOT.

THE PLAN

Some of our considerations:

BOAT:
Which direction to head out on the boat would be a race-time decision, based on how many groups were ahead of us.  Racers were given the heads up that CP 14 and 15 would be in a narrow part; so we didn't want to end up clustered in canoes.

BIKE:
Always the question -- should we take the hardpack or the trail.  Often the hardpack road is more reliable to gauge condition than the trail... unless the hardpack turns into sugar sand!  Also, we saw an opportunity to grab a CP by bushwacking a short segment between hardpack and trail, cutting out a lot of slow stuff.  But it would be a racetime decision based on how thick the ground cover was.

FOOT:
Not surprisingly, if you are good with course bearings you can cut a lot of time off by avoiding the longer trails and going straight to the site.  This can backfire if you miss your bearing/distance, but often you can hit the trail if you overshoot, and reorient from there.  CP's 2, 3, and 5 were great opportunities here.  The downside?  Late race bushwacking can often lead to cramping in our experience.

THE RACE  

a.k.a. where the plan falls apart.  Its always fun to discuss where things go really well or not so hot, right?

We got off to a fast start, hoping to overtake some teams and avoid a canoe jam.  But once we got there, we divided to grab two canoes, two team members each.  There was some confusion, and we ended up portaging the canoes on separate sides of the waterway.  One side was definitely faster, and we lost about 5 minutes here.  We ended up jogging with the canoes on our shoulders to catch up!

Full Beast Mode!


Which way did he go, George?

Next on the bike section we made a decision to bushwack with the bikes... again... after our experience at Lighter Knot this maybe was foolhardy.  But it worked.  From CP 7 we took at shot out to hit the bike trail.  Shortly thereafter we were well on our way to CP 8.  It remains to be seen whether or not coming back down to the main road inbetween CP's 7 and 8 would have been faster, would be interested to know other teams' experiences on that.  Overall, going this route from CP 7 to 8 took ~10 minutes this way.



On the run, we hit some more interesting issues.  Again we planned to make a series of bearing shots on the lower parts of the course to cut some extra distances off the route.  We ran CP 1,4,5,3,2.  We were fairly good on the bearings.  We lost time taking about 10 minutes to locate CP 3 after getting there.  Vegetation Boundary clues are always tricky for us.  Only bearing with errors was from CP3 to CP2, where we were off and came up on the trail north of our target.  CP 2 was indicated as close only 30 m off the trail, so we looked for the telltale bend in the trail, and reshot.  Time to get back to Main TA!  But we assumed the direction other teams were coming were from the Main TA, and went out opposite their direction.  That was determined to be wrong, as we found ourselves headed south -- time to turn around.  That mistake cost us about 5 minutes.  We got in to find we were third to turn in... but others may still arrive and beat us.



Summary of lost time:

Canoe direction -- 5-6 minutes
Locate CP3 -- 10 minutes
CP2 misshot -- 4 minutes
Wrong Direction to MTA -- 5 minutes

Excluding any potential time savings from CP 7 to CP 8 on bike (assuming not) then our total time lost due to errors totaled 25 minutes.  A perfect race would have put us in medal contention.  But it wouldn't have been enough to win!  We completed the course within 2:42:55 to claim 4th place.  Elite win continues to elude us!




UCF Turkey Burn AR Race Report

During our pre-race texts we all positioned to claim the anchor position:
"Dude, I only ran twice since last race, you'll have to pull me"
"Hah joke is on you I haven't run either"
"I'm sick as hell and not running either, sounds like we're primed to win!"
"Uh guys, I'm at the Dr's office trying to get meds for Montezuma's revenge... just got back from Cabo and haven't run for 3 weeks... so I will be the anchor."

An auspicious prelude to the Turkey Burn AR race, this year being held on the UCF Campus.  We also did a lot of theorizing what might be in store for the race.  I personally thought we'd be looking on multiple parking garage floors for the CP's.  Other team members were scouting for water features for the canoe portion.  We arrived with a wide open mind ready for anything, not certain how an 'urban' adventure race might be run.

Being a Sport level 4 hour race, we knew that the bulk of the CP's would not be too difficult, and that the race would hinge on good speed and smart decisions.  This was especially true this race, looking at the results a large portion of racers completed the course making it a very competitive field.

An oversize course map with the UCF Campus got us started.  Our UCF alumnus quickly took to labeling key landmarks, streets and building names to ensure we didn't lose our orientation. Having a former student was key in knowing exactly where we were and best routes to get places.

Luck of the draw gave us the Bike-Run-Boat order, not our favorite, and we would start in the fourth wave at 12:03.

The bike portion was entirely on the campus, and we were able to stick mainly to the roads to get the best overall speed, even in some cases where shorter routes were available by trails.  Some of the CP's like 18 near the retaining ponds would be audibles, based on ground condition... whether to head back to the road or just slug it out on softer ground.  These kind of in-race decisions can sometimes make or break the race.

The bike portion was straightforward, and we were able to quickly clear this portion in a tidy 30 minutes.   Now off to the run.

We hadn't run much, and we felt it, using CP's as an excuse to catch our breaths.  We did another straightforward clearing, although the CP's locations were a bit more difficult to optimize.  Our run completed in 35 minutes.

At this point we returned to the Main TA to head out to the boat portion.  It was stated that the canoes were in short supply with the ongoing Elite race, and that if needed they would credit waiting time.  But this made it very hard to gauge our progress, as both the bike and run were fairly quick, and the unknown of waiting times for other teams meant we didn't know how hard boat would be, or where other teams were.  It's not unusual to be in the dark, and frankly we go as fast as we can regardless.  But that waiting time through in some added uncertainty!

The biking to the Boat TA was windy of course, and made for a long trek out.  Some things we know about our team:
1) Boat is our most inconsistent discipline
2) We either win or lose on boat

The water levels were a big low, and made for some interesting obstacles in the way.  It was strange looking up ten feet to see the top of the river bank.  That's a lot of elevation change for Florida.  Again, apart from the difficult maneuvering (especially with oncoming canoes!) the CP's were largely on the creek, and as long as you kept the clues in mind the locating of the CP's was logical.

A quick ride back against the wind and into the Main TA and we completed the course in good time, placing second to the Rum Runners, 5 minutes off first place pace with 02:36:57.

Our hats go off to Team Zackless, who placed third on their first-ever AR.  Congrats guys, we're sure that Zack regrets not getting a medal!