The big NASCAR event of the season is the Daytona 500 which is also the first race of the year. That's an odd concept in the world of sport where usually the last event of the year is "the big one". Snowgaine (minus the 300,000 people and with significantly lower blood alcohol content) has that same feel to me. It is my absolute favorite event of the year but it is generally the first event on my race calendar. It's not an adventure race but it has a good number of AR familiar faces when you look around at the participants. And, for me at least, it's the sign that the long winter is just about over and spring racing is near.
Why do I love this event? It's two eight hour days of rogaine format orienteering with "anything human powered" goes means of transport. Running, snowshoeing, xc skiing and biking are all generally deployed. One of these years I'd like to bring a sled or something else (kick bike?) just for a goof. Did I mention the event is $35 per person and there's a feast waiting at the finish line each day (Burgers, dogs, stew, chili, cookies, sodas, etc...)? You can't beat the entertainment to price ratio with a stick. Wanna get in on the fun? Look here: cnyo.us.orienteering.org sometime in January 2008 for an announcement of the date (usually the first weekend in March).
Day One: I wake up at 6am and spend 15 minutes having a major coughing fit, blowing my nose and generally feeling crappy. It's been a rough week and the best thing going is my 102F fever I dragged around all week seems to have broken. I'm facing at 8 hours of temps in the 30s with the potential for rainfall late in the day. This is gonna hurt but I'm giddy for all the aforementioned reasons. Until I reach the breakfast situation in my hotel.....
Suppose you're the manager of Holiday Inn that happens to be near a small regional ski resort far away from most urban centers. You probably aren't all that busy except Saturday and Sunday mornings a few weeks a year when the ski business picks up. You'd think that the phrase "breakfast buffet" would come to mind. That way the crush of people wanting to get to the lift opening for the morning ski races etc.... would be able to move through breakfast quickly. You'd think. But not at the Holiday Inn Cortland. Turns out my hotel has sit down breakfast with menus and ordering and a half dozen plateless tables packed full of hungry hotel patrons staring hopefully at the kitchen. Fortunately, Bruce is next door at the Hampton Inn and they have a buffet. I go there and raid yogurts and bananas.
Bruce and I have decided to try a bike and snowshoe strategy this year after a few years of having run this event in snowshoes. Putting bikes on a roof rack near a ski resort in an area that has a couple feet of snow on the ground is a sure fire conversation starter. Telling the skiiers you actually plan to ride them nearby that day is a good way to get a laugh.
Maps are dished out 45 minutes before the Saturday morning start. Generally speaking there are too many points to clear in the two day time period. And the key to day one is not making a mess of the map and leaving a good supply of close points for day 2 late scoring. We did quite well and chose one big clockwise loop heading north out of the start point and clearing the east side of the map. Look near the center of the photo for the start/finish marker (triangle inside circle) then follow to control #22 and then to #47. Our general strategy was to ride roads (mostly clear of snow) and duck in and out to score points. There were a couple good cross country bike hauls though: from the plowline on Hoxie Gorge Road up to 105 and then from 105 up to 103. Having 30 lbs of bike slung over your shoulder while climbing out of a steep re-entrant with two feet of snow sliding out from underneath your snowshoes is the stuff that cursing tapestries are woven from. But there really wasn't too much of that and mixing that with time periods of 20mph cruising speeds on paved roads made the strategy seem worthwhile. Late in the day when the rains moved in my lack of hydration and general bad health hurt a bit. All my extremities went numb as we rode the roads from #81 to #88 and on to #66. The original plan had been to haul up to #83 on day one and finish up from there. Instead we soft pedalled into the finish picking up only #25 and finished with a good 15 minutes to spare. Late slacking aside we were in good shape at the end of day 1 with 893 points: our loop was (22->47->82->107->105->103->41->101->61->81->88->66->25). Standings are a mystery until the end but it was the fourth best score of the day behind 894, 913 and a whopping 1014 (by AR stars Team ATP).
Day Two: I'm up earlier, feeling shabby but I manage to reach the Holiday Inn breakfast 30 minutes earlier than the day before. So did the rest of the hotel patrons. Can't quite bring myself to raiding the Hampton buffet a second straight day so it's across the road for Mickey D's sausage and egg biscuits. Lots of calories in 'em but not so much smarts.
In short...our route selection for the day left something to be desired. Read this as maybe a clinic in how not to design a rogaine loop. It started out OK, we took the bikes out to pick up three nearby big controls including #83 that we had bailed on late Saturday. This first loop was fine except that we passed a couple controls (67 and 45) that we would end up coming back to get later in the day. Generally speaking it's bad policy to spend the time required to reach an attack point without actually going for the control but we thought we were opening time to approach other points later. So after the short loop we returned to the start area, dropped our bikes and cleaned a foot loop north of the start line. We thought we would pick up 67 as we returned down the power line trail from 62. But by the time we reached this point the afternoon sun had come out and ruined the consistency of the snow. Hard and frozen was turning into a soupy mush. So we bailed at Clute Road and resolved to head to some points at the far west end of the course via bike. Which ended up being just one point as we realized at 69 that we maybe had time to get 104 and nothing else. So we rode back, picked up 21, 45 and (finally!) 67 and then returned to the start to drop our bikes again. We had a ton of time to spare, walked casually to 23 (the only control left on the planet that we could reach in the final 30 minutes) and finished with time to spare. Our loop(y?) for day two was: (83->109->87->29->27->108->84->62->69->21->45->67->23) which yielded only 753 points (ick!) and dropped us back to 6th place. I think going to bed on Saturday night we thought we had designed a plan for approximately 900 points but it just didn't work out that way. If we had it to do again the better route might have been to contineue past 83 and attack a series of controls behind Greek Peek (63, 106, etc....) but live and learn.
I've included a high res photo that you should be able to download and view in blow up. Day one controls are numbered in order of approach 1 through 13. Day two controls are numbered in order of approach 1' through 13'.
Why do I love this event? It's two eight hour days of rogaine format orienteering with "anything human powered" goes means of transport. Running, snowshoeing, xc skiing and biking are all generally deployed. One of these years I'd like to bring a sled or something else (kick bike?) just for a goof. Did I mention the event is $35 per person and there's a feast waiting at the finish line each day (Burgers, dogs, stew, chili, cookies, sodas, etc...)? You can't beat the entertainment to price ratio with a stick. Wanna get in on the fun? Look here: cnyo.us.orienteering.org sometime in January 2008 for an announcement of the date (usually the first weekend in March).
Day One: I wake up at 6am and spend 15 minutes having a major coughing fit, blowing my nose and generally feeling crappy. It's been a rough week and the best thing going is my 102F fever I dragged around all week seems to have broken. I'm facing at 8 hours of temps in the 30s with the potential for rainfall late in the day. This is gonna hurt but I'm giddy for all the aforementioned reasons. Until I reach the breakfast situation in my hotel.....
Suppose you're the manager of Holiday Inn that happens to be near a small regional ski resort far away from most urban centers. You probably aren't all that busy except Saturday and Sunday mornings a few weeks a year when the ski business picks up. You'd think that the phrase "breakfast buffet" would come to mind. That way the crush of people wanting to get to the lift opening for the morning ski races etc.... would be able to move through breakfast quickly. You'd think. But not at the Holiday Inn Cortland. Turns out my hotel has sit down breakfast with menus and ordering and a half dozen plateless tables packed full of hungry hotel patrons staring hopefully at the kitchen. Fortunately, Bruce is next door at the Hampton Inn and they have a buffet. I go there and raid yogurts and bananas.
Bruce and I have decided to try a bike and snowshoe strategy this year after a few years of having run this event in snowshoes. Putting bikes on a roof rack near a ski resort in an area that has a couple feet of snow on the ground is a sure fire conversation starter. Telling the skiiers you actually plan to ride them nearby that day is a good way to get a laugh.
Maps are dished out 45 minutes before the Saturday morning start. Generally speaking there are too many points to clear in the two day time period. And the key to day one is not making a mess of the map and leaving a good supply of close points for day 2 late scoring. We did quite well and chose one big clockwise loop heading north out of the start point and clearing the east side of the map. Look near the center of the photo for the start/finish marker (triangle inside circle) then follow to control #22 and then to #47. Our general strategy was to ride roads (mostly clear of snow) and duck in and out to score points. There were a couple good cross country bike hauls though: from the plowline on Hoxie Gorge Road up to 105 and then from 105 up to 103. Having 30 lbs of bike slung over your shoulder while climbing out of a steep re-entrant with two feet of snow sliding out from underneath your snowshoes is the stuff that cursing tapestries are woven from. But there really wasn't too much of that and mixing that with time periods of 20mph cruising speeds on paved roads made the strategy seem worthwhile. Late in the day when the rains moved in my lack of hydration and general bad health hurt a bit. All my extremities went numb as we rode the roads from #81 to #88 and on to #66. The original plan had been to haul up to #83 on day one and finish up from there. Instead we soft pedalled into the finish picking up only #25 and finished with a good 15 minutes to spare. Late slacking aside we were in good shape at the end of day 1 with 893 points: our loop was (22->47->82->107->105->103->41->101->61->81->88->66->25). Standings are a mystery until the end but it was the fourth best score of the day behind 894, 913 and a whopping 1014 (by AR stars Team ATP).
Day Two: I'm up earlier, feeling shabby but I manage to reach the Holiday Inn breakfast 30 minutes earlier than the day before. So did the rest of the hotel patrons. Can't quite bring myself to raiding the Hampton buffet a second straight day so it's across the road for Mickey D's sausage and egg biscuits. Lots of calories in 'em but not so much smarts.
In short...our route selection for the day left something to be desired. Read this as maybe a clinic in how not to design a rogaine loop. It started out OK, we took the bikes out to pick up three nearby big controls including #83 that we had bailed on late Saturday. This first loop was fine except that we passed a couple controls (67 and 45) that we would end up coming back to get later in the day. Generally speaking it's bad policy to spend the time required to reach an attack point without actually going for the control but we thought we were opening time to approach other points later. So after the short loop we returned to the start area, dropped our bikes and cleaned a foot loop north of the start line. We thought we would pick up 67 as we returned down the power line trail from 62. But by the time we reached this point the afternoon sun had come out and ruined the consistency of the snow. Hard and frozen was turning into a soupy mush. So we bailed at Clute Road and resolved to head to some points at the far west end of the course via bike. Which ended up being just one point as we realized at 69 that we maybe had time to get 104 and nothing else. So we rode back, picked up 21, 45 and (finally!) 67 and then returned to the start to drop our bikes again. We had a ton of time to spare, walked casually to 23 (the only control left on the planet that we could reach in the final 30 minutes) and finished with time to spare. Our loop(y?) for day two was: (83->109->87->29->27->108->84->62->69->21->45->67->23) which yielded only 753 points (ick!) and dropped us back to 6th place. I think going to bed on Saturday night we thought we had designed a plan for approximately 900 points but it just didn't work out that way. If we had it to do again the better route might have been to contineue past 83 and attack a series of controls behind Greek Peek (63, 106, etc....) but live and learn.
I've included a high res photo that you should be able to download and view in blow up. Day one controls are numbered in order of approach 1 through 13. Day two controls are numbered in order of approach 1' through 13'.
0 comments:
Post a Comment