Pangea - Atomic AR, Elite 30hr

Three Canyonero members from last year set out to return to Blue Ridge, GA.  It was a race we excitedly anticipated returning to for a year.  We were joined by Bill Dean, my backup navigator from team We Blame Javan, and Nate Whitaker, who has raced with me for the most of the last year or so.  This would be their first time racing in the mountains and paddling in the rapids.

Team Canyoneros and Canyoneros II - Nate Whitaker (left), Hien Nguyen, Greg Watson, Robert Foster, Bill Dean

I received my giant tablecloth of a map in the morning and really only had time to merely locate the 53 CPs that were marked.  With the added access to 90,000 acres, folding the map into the map bag was quite a chore!

race orders given at the start

Foot 1

We were bused to Skeenah Mill, an area that had over 150yrs of heritage, to start on foot.  A quick 10 minute jog led us ascending immediately into the mountains for a rough warm-up.  CP1 and 2 were found with the aid of the mass start.

climbing mountains

As we headed down the trail to CP3, I realized that the topo maps given were going to have the usual inaccurate illustrations.  For instance, getting to CP3 was a matter of following a trail that went primarily south.  In actuality, there was a section that curved north, causing me to backtrack a little just to make sure we did not get distracted onto another trail.  Furthermore, the trail used to attack to CP3 wasn't even illustrated close to where it was in real life.  The CP ended up on the west side of the trail, as opposed to the mapped east side.  Thanks to Ron Eaglin's team for that one.

On our way to CP4, we met a cool friendly team called the Bearded Bastards.  These guys were the epitome of slow and steady.  Every time we took off running, somehow we saw them around the next corner.  These bearded guys were there passing us again and again, only walking with their trekking poles.  We had never seen anyone walk as fast as they did, even up cliffs!  It was quite comedic :)

Bearded Bastards (left)

CP5 was was a matter of following the boundary of the open field.  On our way to CP6, again the map's resolution was not the greatest, so we missed it completely.

As we ascended to the top of a mountain that housed CP7, the grand mountains in the distance revealed itself around us, some steaming with smoke.  The burnt path towards this control was voted to be the most visually interesting.  It even had funny history to it.  Ten years or so ago, this mountain was apparently the mistaken location of a controlled burn that went out of control.  The trees and ground were charred from top to bottom, painting us completely black by the time we found the control.

Up until this point, we had climbed mountains.  There was no way to CP8, except to descend steeply.  Down we went towards the nearest trail.  Here's a video of it.

(video of descending a mountain)

Bill did a great job identifying the road split and mapped creek that we would use to attack a direct bearing into CP8.  Our incredible sharpshooting did not even lead us an inch away from the control.

There really was no other efficient way to CP9, except to cross a river with powerfully flowing water.  We followed the creek north to get us to the river and used the intersection to shoot a bearing from.  Crossing the river was something we did last year in the thick of the rainy night, not knowing how deep the water was.

(video of river crossing)

Canoe 1

After transitioning into the canoes from CP9, we paddled effortlessly downstream with the aid of the current.  It was a very pleasant paddle.  Nate and Bill were excited and a little nervous after hearing all of our stories of the previous year.

We completely missed CP10 in the mayhem of several rapids in a row.  From then on out, I prioritized finding the CPs over dodging rocks :P  This is what happens:

(video of crashing into rocks)

Then came the moment I was never able to record footage of last year because we paddled in the dark.  The capsize!  Watch the video to see how Bill lost his glasses in the plunge and miraculously managed to find it in the canoe after we flipped it upside down to dump the water out!  What better way to experience rapids than to get the two Blue Ridge first-timers overboard, hahaha.  It was a great incident to recharge our adrenaline.  Amazingly, Greg and Foster did not capsize once--something they did about ten times last year.

(video of capsize)

Bike 1

We made our way to Stanley TA, finding 5 controls along the way.  This was pinpoint navigation at its best, except for CP18.  I attacked in at the pseudo parking lot, rather than the hidden path near the bridge there.  Once we saw another team attack in there successfully, we followed suit and found it as well.

When you're on paved road going downhill, you just keep accelerating and accelerating.  Without effort, my max speed was 56kmh on these slick roads.

Along this route, Greg's tubeless rear tire kept going flat--most likely due to not having enough sealant in there to begin with.  We pumped it up with CO2 cartridges before finally giving in to a lengthier procedure of returning it to a tubed tire.

Bike 2

At Stanley TA again, we refueled with Domino's pizzas that Greg and Foster ordered and packed the night before.  It was completely nightfall by now.  Our strategy changed to avoid the more challenging CPs here in an effort to put more energy towards the Sport race at the end, which should be better bang for the buck.

We grabbed only CP21 on this leg, basically by walking our bikes to it.  I had to keep track of where we were on a turn-by-turn basis since there were very few clear attack points to distinguish proximity.  So what goes up, must come down even faster!  Our return route consisted of coasting the entire way down at gut-wrenching off-pavement speeds that had you on the brakes more than the pedals.  We all risked the chance of bouncing off a rock and tumbling down a cliff in favor of the thrill rush of speed around curves in the night.  It was by far the most exhilarating part of our race.

Foot 2

We knew the CPs were the toughest of the race here.  We immediately dropped the furthest, most difficult ones and went for CP29, 24, and 25.  CP29 was a drone march uphill for a 1½ hr.  Again, I kept track of our positioning by thumbing the map, turn-by-turn.  Once we punched CP29, a storm came down hard.  It was another 1hr going back downhill, this time hammering our toes as they banged off the fronts of our shoes. Two and a half hours for one CP--this wasn't adding up too well.

When we returned to Stanley TA, the officials told us they had to shut down the technical bike section due to the rain.  We would have to take the paved road back to the Main TA instead.  This provided more time for the trek, so we went for CP24.  It was a steep climb to find this one.  Foster was constantly reading out the reading on his altimeter watch.  The CP was located much higher than the map's elevation showed, yet another indication that the map was not too accurate.

We mountain-whacked towards CP25 by evaluating a few areas along the river before crossing it.  There appeared a trail that we followed.  I incorrectly identified the river bend much too soon and had the team count paces to attack the control.  As we dipped down from the path to the river in multiple locations, we found nothing.  Turns out, upon GPS replay, we did not even go half way there.  Mountain whacking is a very slow mode of transportation that skews a Florida racer's sense of distance across time.

Bike 3

The rain thickened and fell harder.  We biked conservatively on Aska Rd with rain sandblasting in our eyes.  At times I just let the brakes go to allow the bike to free-fall and accelerate.  Those times forced me to squint my eyes to the point I just saw tiny dots of light from the biker in front of me.  It became a video game.  If I hit something and fly off my bike, I just push restart...right?  Judgement was not really great now, seeing how badly I missed CP25 earlier.

Main TA

The team was beat and tired.  They voted to chill in the car with the heater on.  I succumbed and fell asleep in Bill's car within 10 seconds.  The sleep was deep, accompanied with dreams.  It wasn't very long before we woke up at daylight to take the canoes out.

Sport Canoe/Trek

I was fading, as I made several mistakes heading to CP9, dipping into every nook.  Good thing Bill still had his wits with him.  Good thing he knows how to navigate as well.  He basically corrected me with everything on this leg of the race.

some Georgia wildlife

Once we found the right area, we shot a direct bearing to CP4.  It was easy to find.  Up to this point, our sharpshooting was extremely accurate.  We shot another direct bearing to CP5, but ended up about 100m north of it.  There was a scramble of finding other attack points and trying to read the elevation before we called it off.  The team was hurting so badly with feet blisters and chaffage, that the constant up-and-down route to CP5 finally broke their spirits...the towel was thrown in :(  One more re-attack for CP5 was out of the question.  On this Sport section, if we obtained the controls out of order, it would be for not.  There would be no point in getting anymore.  We took the flatter jeep trail back, gave up some 6hrs, and ended the race.

bike distance traveled - 68.88km

FLO - Woodpecker West

I had to run solo today.  My usual buddies were all out of the state.  I have never been to Ocala National Forest before, so I came into this one completely blind.  No homework.  That's been the theme for the last several months to prepare me for all things in Blue Ridge, GA.  I immediately attacked FLO's toughest course for the day, the blue course.

The breakdown...

Everything was just about pinpoint, except CP4.  The faint trail that was mapped was non-existent from the main road, so I resorted to trying to read elevation and contour lines.  Unfortunately, that put me too far out and I attacked the wrong area, before backtracking and finding it again.  It was kinda nasty, about 10minutes lost.

Onto CP5, I decided to try to find the fastest route possible, so that included a lot of bushwhacking across terrain.  I doubted myself a few times after not seeing the trail with the T near it, but I really started getting the hang of reading elevation at this point, so I chased down the highest point north of CP5, before honing in on it.  This CP was my proudest moment :)

CP8 was also a great one.  There was no obvious attack point to get there from any direction.  The first choice I had in mind was an epic long 1km bushwhack.  Even 1km is too far for our superior sharpshooting through forestry.  So I went to the main road for faster terrain and noticed there were power line towers every 200m or so.  Then I measured it on map, and sure enough, the little tick marks I saw on the map (red arrows) were the power line towers!  I used one of them to attack off of and that brought the attacking distance within reason.

The rest was a slam dunk home :)  Then I did the orange and white course after.

One thing that helped tremendously was that I counted paces at every attack point until hitting the CP.  It allowed me to really understand where I was on map and when I overshot.  The contour lines added a second layer of positional confirmation (amazingly, there was enough elevational changes in Ocala to really use them to my advantage).

I missed having my teammates on this one.  I was so tied up doing everything and had no planning for the next CP til I punched the current CP :)

GPS route

Pangea - Dixie Conquest AR, Elite 10hr

New to this year is the Dixie Challenge AR, a race that seemingly replaced the Nocatee AR of prior years.  Looking at the weather forecast ahead of time and knowing the reputation of Jeff Leininger's race designs, we braced for a challenging, muddy event.  He organized the race in a fashion that you would only get one of six maps at the start of each leg, forcing you to strategize on the fly.  We really enjoyed the format.  Immediately after setting up tent, it was pouring cats and dogs already.  Temperatures were in the cool 50's, which was perfect for racing, but when coupled with rain, it rattled your bones.  Apparently, I was the only one who didn't get the memo on bringing rain/cold gear.

Team Canyoneros - Nate Whitaker (left), Hien Nguyen, Robert Jordan, Bill Dean

This race began the forging of two powerhouses--team Canyoneros and team We Blame Javan.  We had previously started training with Bill at FLO events leading up to this race.  Bill will also join us at the 30hr Atomic AR next month.  Robert is a veteran navigator who would provide me strong navigational support.  And Nate is the hound dog who always reliably sniffs out the CPs with uncanny ability.  Everyone was at the same atmospheric level of fitness as we raced our first event together.

race clues and a non-orthographic prologue map

 

Prologue (foot)

mass start from the main transition area

There were 7 control points (CPs) to warm you up.  We all agreed to start slow and accurate and do not let other teams distract us.  The CPs were all pretty basic, except maybe one that you had to have an idea of your distance traveled.  Surprisingly, our intended slow start still had us first back in transition.

Robert (left), Bill, Nate, punching controls and running to the next, all at the same time

Bike to Canoe TA

There was nothing too eventful heading to the Canoe TA.  I kept on top of our positioning the entire time with the help of data provided by my teammates, just in case an unexpected trail popped out of nowhere.  Again, we were the first to Canoe TA with the fastest time of 38min.

Canoe

Heading out on the canoe voyage, we were in awe of a mystical thick layer of fog hovering on the midst of St. John's river.

I wanted to grab the northern CP8 first so we could ride the waves the entire length down to gather the rest afterwards.  CP8 was the killer of most all teams.  After digging deep in the area, we headed back out and went north into another channel.  Teams who saw us followed suit as we f'd them up.  The search party executed their hunt here, as well as several other teams, but again with no luck.  We decided to head back to the first channel for a third attempt.  This time, I triangulated our position using the docks nearby and confirmed that this was the right channel.  Then I shot a bearing and said we will truck down anything in our path to the CP from here.  It worked.  In fact, it worked too well, as it was right in front of our face as we docked our boat at the Y-intersection.  We spent a whopping 40 minutes finding this from the time we landed on this channel the first time around.

the elusive CP8

While paddling through channels with lush tropical rainforest-like vegetation hanging all around us, I envisioned what Indians and settlers saw back in the primitive days of exploration.

locating and tearing our way into CP9

We found the rest of the CPs with speed and accuracy by measuring distance and angles, and adhering to a stopwatch to estimate distance traveled.  Through training, we understood how long it takes us to paddle one kilometer and was able to use that information to our advantage.  Waves churned up and allowed us to ride them quickly to the south.  We saw teams struggling to paddle the opposite direction of us and knew we would have to face it eventually.  Sure enough, on the way back from the final canoe CP12, we fought these intense waves that see-sawed our canoe, belly flopped the front end into the water, and had us caught almost toppling over on a few occasions--all while a cold front rained through to add insanity to the mix.  We laughed it up like madmen.  This was the most epic and exciting paddling I had done in Florida.

crashing waves

Bike 2

On our way out of the Canoe TA, Nate turned up the turbo to max boost and completely tore the chain off his bike.  Robert had spare links, and Bill was a pro bike mechanic, who had him back up and running in no time, even with all of us shivering uncontrollably with symptoms of hypothermia.  During extreme conditions like this, you need calories and you need to burn calories to produce heat, which means eat and move!

the chain pit crew reconnects chain in record fashion

One of the challenge of the race was that you had multiple maps where you had to connect one to another  with varying scales.  The first CP on bike would be off of a trail from the main road.  There were multiple trails that branched off of this road, but knowing Jeff's maps, he will purposely not map all of them.  To counter this, I identified a obvious known road as close to the first bike CP as possible and measured the distance to it via highly accurate technique of 'eyeballing on the bike'.  ~800 meters from this road will get me to the trail I need.  I saw another team stop prematurely at an earlier set of trails, but we continued forward confidently and nailed the correct one.

Upon arriving near CP13, we saw another team hunting for it, but we grabbed it first.  Then we shot a bearing towards CP14 for our first bikewhack through forestry.  We must have crossed 3 or 4 swamps on our way over.  The mud was loose, deep, and shoe suctioning.  Several other teams followed suit.  We purposely walked more to the left in order to hit the trail, as opposed to accidently overshooting the trail to the right, which ends at CP14.

crossing swamps with bikes

CP15 was slightly tough to find, but as usual, trusty Nate honed in on it.  On our way to the trail that led down to CP16, we again saw a team question a trail right before it.  Not us, as we continued forward, not to be distracted.

Bike 3

Once we learned we were the 2nd team back in transition, we turned up our speed and focus.  This leg was the most effective portion of our race.  We had a "Tower Challenge" where one guy climbed to the top of a wooden tower to spot control points that the guys on the ground could not see at eye level.  The guy on the tower had to relay information, via screaming and hand signals to direct the CP attacker towards the destination.

view from top of tower

Robert commanded the tower, Nate and Bill hunted the CPs, and I planned our remaining route to complete our team skills.  We were literally nipping at the heels of Team JAX here (overall race winner) with no one in sight behind us.

CP24, 25, and 30 were straightforward and easy to locate.  We did not have to find CP 26-29 as told by the race volunteers.

Foot 2

At the Bayard TA, we looked at the map and decided to take direct bearings to all of them.  From CP17 to 18 to 20, we crossed half a dozen vast swamps.  The environment is what I imagine the FL Everglades to be--it was incredible in a crazy, adventure racer mindset.

After easily finding CP21, we had just two left.  We must have had an hour lead over the next team at this point.  However, just when things were going so perfectly, we ran into a fatal mistake that cost us 50 minutes.  We erroneously ran up the trail towards CP23, hunted forever to find CP22 but somehow found CP23, thinking it was 22.  And that snowballed and contributed into a period where we dropped four places finding the next CP23 that was never there!  NOOOOOOOOOOO!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Once Robert found us CP23 again, Bill finally realized our mistake and it was off to find CP22 again.  The morale quickly plummeted as we had no choice but to continue doing what we needed to do.

Bike 4

We jogged to Bayard TA and then biked back to the Main TA to finish in 6th place.  It was demoralizing yet very encouraging to the team to know we had 2nd place just about the entire race until the second to last CP.  We were proud to see our split times were fastest in many of them.  After a finish like that, we discussed what went well and blamed Javan for everything else :D

See you guys in Blue Ridge, Georgia next month at the 30hr Atomic AR!  We'll be ready!

video compilation, courtesy of Robert Jordan

our GPS route

Pangea - Treasure Coast AR, Elite 6hr

Nate and I woke up at 2am after a few hours of sleep on a Saturday morning while our significant others just about went to bed.  We embarked on a 3hr ride to Hobe Sound through the night, chatting up past stories of adventure racing and looking towards future ones, namely the 30hr Atomic AR.  We used the Treasure Coast AR as practice for coming into a race with absolutely no intel on the area--something the Atomic AR in Georgia would not allow us the luxury of.  Sure, we browsed Google Earth images, but everything looks much different on ground level anyways.  On top of that, we only reviewed last year's routes from other teams who had raced it.  As it turns out, the race was held on entirely different sections of Jonathan Dickinson State Park.  Good...this was the true test of the unknown for us.


Prologue & Boat (CP1->2->3->4->5->6->7->8->9->10)

We nailed every prologue and boat control point (CP) with speed and precision.  I use basic geometric visualization methods to hone in on the water CPs.  For example, if I rounded a corner, what kind of line can I draw to the CP and at what angle, both on map and on field?  Most CPs were located in a distinct feature, such as small channel off of a main river, so it helped identifying easier.

great to see pine trees that kept the forest open

Foot 1 (CP16->15->13->14->12->11)

While map planning in the morning, we realized that this section was probably going to be the most challenging section to navigate.  You could barely make out the faintly visible trails in the area, blurred by the jpeg compression that Google Earth applies to their images.  CP16 was found early on by heading down a trail somewhat near Trapper TA.  We took a bearing to CP15 at a distinct trail curve.

race map

We wanted to head back to the North-to-South trail to the west of us to get to CP13, but could no longer find the trail, so we decided to head south and hit the next perpedicular trail that ran west to east.  We never found a distinct enough trail either.  At this point, there were three teams looking for this control, each with wildly different approaches. Team BikeWorks were the first to find it and we all gathered in.

first blood!

Knowing that trails weren't well maintained here, Nate and I kept it safe by taking a direct bearing to CP14 and to our delight, ran into a clearly distinguishable trail that was somewhat showing on the map.  We retook another bearing from a distinct bend in the trail and quickly found it first before disappearing out with no one in sight. After gathering CP12 and 11 to complete the counter-clockwise loop, we headed back to the main transition area (Main TA) in a blazing 22 minutes.

boats on water, boats on land

Bike 1 (CP17-24->26->25)

Up to this point, we had raced an exceedingly satisfactory race.  We transitioned out of the Main TA and headed to the Bike TA to start Camp Murphy single-track bike trails.  This reminded me of Turkey Burn 2011 and doing the Chuck Lennon trails, only these weren't nearly as technical.  They were so brutal--curvy trails with thick sugar sanded uphills.  We were told controls were placed obviously on the trail so that you could focus more on the riding.

bike trails at Camp Murphy

For the first quarter of the trails, we made good speed, passing a team or two.  But as I looked back, I could tell Nate wasn't in it.  His head was down and he seemed to be pushing a 90% effort level.  I slowed the pace and things continued getting worse and worse.  Half way in, after taking a couple falls each, we were basically walking our bikes from there on out.  Nate was going into full heat exhaustion--fatigue, muscle cramps, pale skin with red face, profuse sweating, rapid heartbeat, and later, bouts of dizziness and confusion.  He took all the salt pills, Gatorade, and gels he had to try to combat it, but nothing worked.

using pliers to pull a cactus thorn out that pierced through foot and shoe

I told Nate as soon as we can hit road, I was putting him on the tow to get back to the Bike TA, where he could cool down with the water jugs there, and perhaps end the race.  Once you hit the wall, it's extremely tough to come back.  Trails become the longest trails ever, and hilltops become the most scorching open areas.  I encouraged stops and rest, yet the stubborn Canyonero wished to push forward.  Nate tells me, with eyes rolling to the back his head, "we're not driving 6hrs from Orlando to Hobe Sound and back just so I can bail now, keep going!"  The season in Orlando had not hit 90 degrees for the year, so we had not held training sessions in substantial heat yet.  To further compound the situation, Nate is an Englishman, who hails from a country that sees 70 degrees possibly twice a year.  Today, Hobe Sound roasted him.

bridges that look like they have been built in the 1600s

Foot 2 (CP30->29->27)

To my surprised, Nate was still breathing, somewhat upright, even after traveling through the most desolate-looking terrain, filled with bike sinking sugar sand.  The sun baked him from the top and the white sand broiled him with its radiant energy from the bottom.  I kept a close eye on him.  We transitioned onto foot where I aimed to grab CP27 first.  We counted paces to the trail that CP27 was supposed to be located, but had to go much further before we saw a trail.  About 100m before the CP, I told Nate I would run to the CP while he walked over.  It was the tactic we used to cool Nate down.  However, again, I had to go quite far before finding a CP near a bridge.

the wall makes everything look like this

After punching it, I realized we were at CP30!  What??  It did not make sense whatsoever to me.  I reviewed the map and traced our routes back from the Bike TA...yep, everything still looks correct.  As Nate stumbled over to catch up, even in his delirious state, he asked if my map was rotated.  Damn, yes it was.  That "North" indication got me, and I was not the one in heat exhaustion.

disorienting race map

On our way to CP29, we met Team BikeWorks, who graciously gave us a tip to CP29, while we returned the favor to CP30 (go to the second bridge, not the first that you will encounter, which we saw several teams do).

At CP29, I shot a direct bearing from the trail intersection.  I shouted my bearing to Nate, who asked me to read the clue.  I measured a bearing of 40* and the clue was "NW of trail intersection" and started trucking through palmettos to reach it.  I looked back and Nate was scratching his steaming head...."40 degrees is not NW, is your mapped rotated?"  Damn, yes again.  I bolted in, searched and found it.  I can always appreciate a great backup.

At this point, he was not looking good at all.  Bouts of dizziness overcame him, and he reported his actual stomach organ was cramping and making a fist.  I was really concerned so we called it and headed back.  I have never witnessed a mere mortal suffering for this long without throwing in the towel much sooner.  I had to give it to him.  He raced through 3½ hours of heat exhaustion (although I do not encourage anyone sucking this up whatsoever!).

On the way back, I calculated 3 minutes for me to dart in and out of a trail to get CP27--my time estimate was bang on.


Bike 2

We had about 20 minutes left so we skipped the remaining bike CPs and booked it back with Nate on the tow.  We had no doubt that we could clear the course with our initial progression of the race had it not been for unfortunate circumstances.  But even on our worst physically-performing day, Canyoneros still mustered a respectable 5th place.

By the way, the faster Sport teams should switch to Elite :)

our GPS-recorded route (24.72km was bike)

Pangea - Boar AR, Elite 6hr

Canyoneros finally took a podium spot after two years of mucking through waist-deep mud and cow dung fields as fast as we could!  Only a few can appreciate this madness, and to me, my first medallion is a reminder of how exhilarating and wild the sport can get sometimes.

Team Canyoneros - Stuart White (left), Hien Nguyen

This race marks the debut of Stuart White, a triathlete who approached us at the RDV Sportsplex, expressing interest in the apparently crazy sport we do.  So we brought him out to a Florida Orienteering event, where he passed the test of not hesitating to jump into creeks to cross them, a sign of a Canyonero, marked with tunnel vision of the bigger goal in mind--orange and white CP boxes.  He also pushed our running pace so fast that we cleared their white course for warm-ups in an official time of 4 minutes, the next best being 44 minutes :)


Foot 1 -> CP1, 2, 3, 5, 4 order

We started at the back of the pack due to my prolonged map strategizing, but quickly accelerated our bikes towards the front after a minute or two of heading towards the Foot TA (transition area). There, we dropped our bikes and our paddles and headed south into the red trails.

race instructions (yes, that is Canyonero blood)

CP1 was a matter of following the trail curves and bends, both on trail and on map, until the southwest bend was apparent, and then shooting a bearing directly to the CP.  We then went clockwise on the rest (CP2, 3, 5, 4).  The main reason we chose this orientation was because we felt it lent itself to more accurate attack points, namely CP5, which appeared to be in the middle of the woods.  There was a distinct trail corner to attack from, and luckily, there was a non-mapped trail leading to it, but there was no path leading down into it from the north, unless you accurately counted paces before you headed directly south into the control point--this was the riskier option to me.

CP4 was a matter of going to the furthest, most eastern part of the trail curve and then shooting a bearing in until you saw a wetland.  The wetland was big enough to provide a margin of compass and human error.

Canoe - CP11, 12, 14, 13, 18, 20, 19, 16, 17, 15 order

carrying paddles on the way to the Boat TA

Once done with the first trek portion, we headed back to Foot TA to pick up paddles and bike to the Boat TA.  You can do all the Google Earth research you want beforehand, but it hardly prepares you for the Swiss cheese that is St. Johns River, filled with sporadic lakes and channels.  Last year when I raced the Boar, we purposely chose to only gather the CPs on the main route and nothing in the hairy interior of St. Johns.

race map

With one year's experience since the last Boar AR, I have to admit that I've gained the confidence to navigate rivers you can easily get lost in--minus the nighttime, that is.  Stuart and I hit CP11, 12, 14, 13, precisely, before stumbling on CP18.  Our first attempt at docking the boat was correct (image below), but unfortunately, we listened to a following team who thought we had not gone far enough.  We moved forward and identified another potential docking point, ran on foot until I saw the boat ramps.  That's when I knew we overshot it, and that our first docking point was the correct one.

first attempt--me shooting a direct bearing to the line of trees that housed CP18

So we called off CP18 and from there on out, it was a battle against the almighty winds, shallow seagrass, and the airboats manned by guys who looked like Afghan terrorist soldiers.  In many areas we had to get out of the boat and pull it forward because the waves turned the canoe backwards if you stayed in to fight it.

waves surging against us

Our plan of going counter-clockwise in this section was due to the fact that you had a wall of land to the west that kept you from getting lost on the return route.  It was a safer for us to go out towards the unknown and return back along the known.  After missing CP18, we pinpointed CP20, 19, 16, 17, and 15 with no issues or second attempts.  In fact, it was too good for how I have historically navigated in water, but I'm not complaining :)

knee-deep in the smelliest water ever

Going south and rounding the river towards CP15, it was too shallow so we walked in shoe-stealing mud.  I got the idea that it doesn't take two to push it, so I ran on the shore and alongside the "palm grouping" to find the CP while Stuart pushed the canoe to meet me down the river.  It worked and saved us the time we would have spent to push the canoe and then find it.  Why not do both at once?


Bike 1 -> CP7, 6, 8, 9, 10 order

This segment was characterized by pathetic biking grounds, followed by ideal hard-packed trails :)  The "ideal" is only referring to the smoothness of the ground.  We withstood billows of wind that almost knocked us over!

race map

For CP10, you had to go to WP10 (a reference point), shoot a bearing towards the southern most radio control tower you saw to the west, and with that line on the map, make it intersect an imaginary line drawn from WP1 to CP26.

We adventure racers are clever thinkers.  Instead of taking a longer route to WP10, why not just draw the imaginary line and go up every trail that intersects it (green dots above)?  The swamps and fields in between the trails were infested with gators, so chances were high that the CPs were only along the trail.  We were not alone in this, as there were other teams who we saw doing the same, or reported doing it.  However, it was not so convenient, as it had us going to the very last trail that intersected the imaginary line :)  We can imagine it still saved lots of time though.

On our way out of CP7, we rounded a forest cluster and saw a bull or cow bolting towards us!  I was seriously bracing for impact, so I got off my bike and planned to throw it at the bull and jump out of the way if he charged at me.  Luckily, our Canyonero aura scared the bull off, causing him to trip and fall over to avert danger (us).

video of bull charging at us.  He knew better though ;)

Bike 2 -> CP27, 26, 28, 29, 30 order

We were doing fairly well on time and Stuart had picked up a second wind on the biking portion, so we continued to bike.  All of them were picked up with not much navigational focus, but CP28 did have three trail openings nearby that we went into before finding it.

we must have ridden this trail a dozen times during this race

At CP30, we estimated 15-20 minutes to head back and out on foot.  With about an hour left, this was the period of the race where we had to increase our time awareness.  Always ask each other how much time is left after every CP or transition and try to figure out a plan of dropping CPs that are far or tough.


Foot 2 -> CP25, 24, 23 order (skipped the other two)

I am usually the one who drinks the most water, but amazingly, my three liter Camelbak lasted all 6hrs!  On top of that, I finished the race only drinking 3/4 of it, which means my body has been adapting to all the endurance training I'm putting it through.  The cooler weather helps too :)

FL jungles

With 45 minutes left, we reversed our morning plan and ran the route backwards to gather the closest CPs first.  I knew CP24 would be the hardest.  Sure enough, we shot the bearing at the incorrect first sharp turn of the trail to the south (pic below).  We saw a wetland, but the control was nowhere to be found.  We lost 12 minutes on that attempt and called it off.  The race map did not show such a sharp turn where we attacked in, so we figured we had run far enough to the correct second one.  We poked back out on the trail, continued to run towards the next control point, but found Ron Eaglin shooting a bearing into the correct trail corner, so we followed.  He was someone we could trust.  His teammate admitted that they erroneously did the same thing we did, as did a couple more teams I came to learn afterwards.

How do you prevent that?  From CP25 to the correct corner is roughly half a kilometer.  Ideally, one guy would be in charge of using a stopwatch to measure time traveled.  At a pretty good off trail pace (6mph), that's a little more than 3 minutes to travel half a kilometer.  So if the clock shows 2 minutes and 15 seconds after resetting the stopwatch at CP25, then you know you have not gone far enough.  Putting it to practice takes a while to make habit out of, but does wonders for times like this.  Plus, through training, you'll develop a sense of what a 6mph pace is.  The only catch is that if you stop or change average speeds, the measurement becomes less and less accurate, which is what will happen 5hrs into racing :)

After CP23, there was only 20 minutes left, so we headed back and won third place!

falls like this happen pretty frequently; get up and pretend it didn't happen

our recorded GPS route (32.72km of it was biking)