Andrew, Roger, Heather and I planned to drive down to Oakville Friday night and camp at the rodeo fairgrounds where the Trioba HQ was situated for the weekend. Packed and ready to go, I got a call from Roger that he had acute food poisoning and couldn't make it. I relayed Roger's predicament to Andrew and Heather. Heather was having a tough week and decided to stay home as well, as fame and fortune were only truly awarded to the four person co-ed teams that participated, and we would probably not have a full team. Andrew and I shuffled some gear and headed on down as a two person team, fame and fortune be darned.
We crawled out of our tents to a bluebird morning, and found that many teams had arrived during the night. There was now a sizable crowd for the race, about eighty people on two dozen teams. We picked up our maps at 6am and got to work planning our route, which was fairly straightforward. I copied a couple of road and trail names onto our Trioba maps from the Capitol
Forest map that I had brought with me before putting it back in the car. Outside maps were not allowed once we started the race, but we could use all of our resources ahead of time to help us plan our route and assist our future navigation.
Andrew and I went to stage our kayak gear at the kayak put-in a mile down the road, and our bikes at the kayak take-out 7 miles after that. The Chehalis was flowing at several times its normal volume, but was still a reasonably mild river with only class 1 rapids and a few snags. We made it back just in time for the pre-race meeting. Glenn informed us that teams would get bonus time for picking up aluminum cans (30 seconds each) and shotgun shells (5 seconds each). I salivated at the thought of getting a BONUS for picking up cans. I have a somewhat compulsive tendency to pick up aluminum cans, so I definitely have been training for this particular skill set, and I was ready to go. I am glad I brought my larger backpack along.
At the start, we followed a horseback rider out of the rodeo grounds and ran a mile down the road to our kayaks. Andrew and I reached the kayaks near the front, and with our well-placed boat, we were second on the water. Andrew set the tone for the day by running into the water up to his knees while getting in the boat. Let's not worry about getting our shoes wet, shall we? We quickly passed the only boat - a canoe - in front of us, and we had the
Chehalis to ourselves.The water was moving at a reasonable speed, and we kept a steady pace as we tried to stay in the faster current around the occasional gravel bar and snagged tree in the water. I discovered that my kayak paddle was feathered at 100 degrees instead of the usual 60, but the wing paddle has some funny locking mechanism that was hard to get undone while we were cruising down the water, so I just decided to go with it. At one point, the current took a strong left around a large log pile in the middle of the river. We almost went right, but Andrew warned me to go left, which was the better choice. I heard that at least a couple other teams flipped while on the water, and I imagined that this log pile might have taken a bite out of some of them if they weren't paying close attention.
Andrew and I got off the water at the Porter boat landing ahead of the crowd and attempted to transition to our bikes. Andrew accidentally yanked his pants down while taking off his spray skirt, to the shock of the spectators. After a quick apology, he joined me as we yanked our bike shoes/helmet out of the bin, threw the kayak gear in, grabbed our bikes and were off.
From Porter, we followed the Porter road and C-line up, up, up to the Mima Porter trailhead. I was a little faster than Andrew on this part; however, instead of employing the traditional bike tow to help even out our pace, I rode a little bit ahead and looked for cans. When I found one, I jumped off my bike, grabbed and smashed it, hopped back on my bike as I slid the can into a side pocket on my pack. At this point I was a little behind Andrew and then raced to catch up, as our team was required to stay within 30 meters of each other. We were still in the lead, but Castelli was slowly closing in on us.
At the Mima Porter trailhead, we transitioned to singletrack. The trailhead was at a "road end" blocked by a downed log, and the singletrack initially headed the wrong direction for 50 yards or so. I was confused about which way to go for a few seconds before we headed up the singletrack. Apparently, the first four teams went the correct way, but many other teams continued on the decommissioned road, heading who-knows-where.
Along the Mima Porter trail, the CPs were fairly straightforward.
I hadn't spent too much time looking at the map ahead of the race, although apparently I should have. Verve followed a short road section and got ahead of us, whereas we crossed the road on the singletrack, continued a few hundred yards, then crossed back across the road. Forest roads are much faster on bike than dirt trails. We caught up with Verve and passed them. Verve passed us again when they stayed on a road whereas I got back on the singletrack a little early. Peteris is a great map reader and knows how to squeeze out small gains by optimal route choices.To make matters worse, the map board mounted on my bicycle loosened up. Mounted on my handlebars, the board normally stands straight up and allows me to read my map while biking. However, now it occasionally wobbled during heavy bumps and rotated sideways. I decided not to stop to deal with it, as it was still somewhat functional.
We caught up with Verve again at the Transition Area before the trekking section, and we all set out on the trek together as a "super team" of 6 people. Andrew and I stayed with Team Verve until we got out of the singletrack trails system and back on the road. Then we moved about 100 yards ahead of them so that we could pick up the occasional can that we saw.
Feeling a little guilty, I pitched a couple cans back on the road for Verve to pick up, but by and large, we came out well ahead on the bonus time by being just a little bit in front here.At the next CP, we had to double back and then bushwhack up the hill to a higher forest road. Perhaps I should have been watching the terrain more closely as we came in and paying less attention to cans. In any case, I decided to pick an animal trail up the ridge through salal early on. Team Verve continued further back to a mudslide section that was very steep at first, but fairly clear up to the higher road. Andrew and I foundered a bit and lost a couple minutes to Verve.
At the next CP, I made a navigational choice that cost more time. We went a ways down a logging road in order to bushwhack up a steep hill to the CP, whereas we could have done a smaller bushwhack up to a trail that went up the ridge. As running on the road was really no faster than running on a trail, but bushwhacking is far more difficult than running up a trail, we should have gone for the ridge trail. We also overshot the CP a little bit and had to double back. Verve was somewhere ahead of us.
When we arrived at the TA where we had left our bikes, a special task was awaiting us. We were instructed to carry a 70 lb bucket of gravel up a trail
to a mud pit and dump it, then come back. I like the idea of doing trail work in the middle of an adventure race. Andrew and I shared carrying the bucket up the trail and dumped it. Team Castelli was fairly close behind us, heading up with their bucket as we were coming down, maybe a few minutes behind us.Transitioning onto bikes again, we now had a lot of fast downhill on forest roads as we headed back out of Capitol Forest. Andrew was faster than I on downhills, as I started to get scared above 30mph on gravelly roads. At one point, Andrew asked me which way to go. Which way? I didn't know there was a route choice here. My map did not show the intersection, so I picked a road (the correct one) based on a general idea of the geography. Castelli apparently picked the other road, then got confused as to where they were, and spent an extra half hour reorienting themselves, leaving them lost in the weeds, so to speak.
At the next CP on a hilltop, I punched the CP while Andrew picked up cans. Then we did another quick search of the area and found a few more cans. Don't throw away those "can" minutes! My backpack was getting full, though. We raced down the logging road to the next CP, and saw Verve exiting as we turned onto the spur road to the CP. They were only a few minutes ahead of us - sweet! More cans. Double sweet!
I made a bad navigation choice by switching my map board to the next map before we were done with the previous one. We just head west, double back to the east, then head west again on a main road, and we're onto the next map. How hard could that be? It wasn't hard at all; however, when we got to the main road, I started to track us on the new map, not realizing that we still needed to go at least another mile before we got onto the new map. When we arrived at a campground at a curve in the road, I thought that we were at a turn off at the further curve in the road, and we spent a few minutes being confused before I figured it out. Duh. Adventure racing is not always about going fast. It's about going to the right place.
We found the correct turn off down the road, and crossed a bridge over the stream to find the second-to-last CP. A trail supposedly continued on from here, but heinous brush covered a grassy sapling-filled decommissioned road, with an occasional tank trap thrown in. We pushed our bikes up the road while I rechecked the map. It sure looked like the right way on the map, but did not feel very fun at all. We came to a mud slope with a rope up it. I crawled up the slope as I carried my bike one handed, then helped Andrew up the incline. After a quarter mile or so (which felt like far longer), we got through the fun forest and back onto a real road again.
Down to the forest boundary and the last CP we sped, then through a couple neighborhoods on paved roads and back into Oakville. We crossed the finish line back at the rodeo fairgrounds only 6 1/2 minutes behind Verve. We pulled cans out of our backpacks and shotgun shells out of our shorts as Glenn counted out our bonus time.
We had collected 16 more cans than Verve did, so got an extra 8 minute bonus, pulling us ahead by half a six-pack. We win! Verve won the four person co-ed, however (the real prizes only go to 4 person co-ed teams) and did an amazing job of navigating and keeping their four person co-ed team on target. Peteris wrote up a few good notes about the navigation. Glenn and his Trioba friends did a really great job of putting on a quality race. Congrats to everyone!Food, beer and bonfire followed. Andrew and I couldn't stay for too long, and had to leave when the party was only just starting to get going. I'll definitely be back next year, though for another excellent race and an excellent time.
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