I’m baaaack!
I started Agonically Challenged earlier this year to track my racing exploits and after a couple good months, wrecked my knee, came down with an unidentified infection and welcomed my son Finn to the world. All of that meant no racing or racing related updates. Until now.
What a difference a year makes! GOALS ARA returned to Green Lane for this year’s running of The Edge adventure race. A year ago me, Bruce Wong and Baby Momma reached the finish line first but ended up in second place after a time penalty. Baby momma and I were a tad late to the start line. We were “looking for coffee” and maybe missed some of the pre-race instructions and sent some extra gear with our paddles to the canoe put-in as a result. Stuff we were supposed to carry, oops. Something we would have known had we had time to pay attention.....
Bruce and I were ready for this year’s event but Sue wouldn’t be joining us as the recovery schedule from Finn’s arrival is just now allowing her to run again. Ali Bronsdon of Suburban Strangers filled in nicely for Sue. Chiefly, she consistently kicked my butt during the running sections (that was Sue’s role before). My summer of strange diseases and knee surgery has moved my normally “challenged” running skills a little further down the scale but Ali is super strong and everybody at GOALS will be pulling for her, Brent and John as the Strangers take on the field at USARA Nationals in a couple weeks.
New race directors Marc Bress and Steve Herzog stepped in to give GOALS founder Bill Gibbons an easier day at the office. They promised (and delivered) a course with a little more thinking and a bonus rogaine section for the faster teams. There were brain teasers and special challenges sprinkled throughout the course. As an example there was a bucket of walnuts at a giant cargo net crossing. Instructions told us to take the bucket across the cargo net without letting any walnuts touch the ground. We shoved the walnuts into Bruce’s hydration pack, into our race jersey pockets and (who could resist) a couple into my Go-Lite stride shorts (sorry, no photo). We then crossed the net with bucket in hand and walnuts safely stowed. When we finished the nice staff guy told us if we read a bit more carefully that all we had to take across the net was the bucket. We could have left the nuts in a nearby bin. Brains teased, we moved on.
One challenge that did help was a special test of bike tire tube changing skills. As always GOALS splits their sprint race courses into four sections (Canoe, Bike, Run and Challenges). We opened with the bike section and quickly realized that our (sick? evil? twisted?) race directors had removed some of the randomness of the order of events. Local sprint race rivals Tryad Personal Fitness and USARA Point shopping Berlin Bike were doing the four sections in the same order. Marc later confessed that they placed us in the same order in order to “turn up the heat”. It was fun but mildly technical placements on the bike had us reaching the CP vicinity and then having to look around a bit to find the flag (behind trees, low in pits, etc….) We seemed to be leading the way most of the time but I couldn’t quite scramble in and out from a punch point without someone getting in visual range thus eliminating their minute of looking around. Bike CP7 was where we finally made a little break. On the map the single track between BCP6 and BCP7 looped around a bit in the woods. In pre-race Bruce and I thought we could cut down time by just bushwhacking a short distance across a creek and up into the clearing where the point was. When we jumped off our bikes and headed through the brush I think we might have raised some eyebrows because we reached the tube swap challenge at BCP7 and were a minute or so into making the change when Berlin Bike arrived. We had a small cushion and grabbed the final three points undetected.
Challenges were next (a stretcher carry, a knot passing exercise on a rope and the aforementioned walnut/bucket test). We churned through the tests and headed out onto the orienteering loop. Controls could be approached in any order on the foot section. We ran a sequence that left OCP1 (marshy area) for last and started with OCP2. Green Lane isn’t all that big of a park but it makes up for lack of size with a lack of flatness. Not West Virginia but a lot tougher than the Fairmount Park sections of Kelly and West River Drives where most of my recovery runs have occurred. I’ll have to start adding supplemental stair sets at the Art Museum (less the corny Rocky Balboa arm pumping and shuffle steps at the top) to my evening runs. Why? Because I wanted to die every time we climbed the one big hill on the run, on the way to the canoe and later on the rogaine. Given our route selection it was eight times up and down (or at least most of the way up) during the race. It’s Tuesday after the race and my legs are still torn up from the lactic acid and cramping I was fighting the last half of the race.
We finished the foot section just as my gas tank hit the yellow warning light. Still leading and with a good opportunity for a status check. After transition we headed to the canoe launch and had to run past OCP1 along the way. Bruce clocked Tryad at three minutes out along the way (running and looking good). A couple minutes later we saw Berlin at OCP1. So we had 6-10 minutes of lead as the first wave of really good cramps hit my legs. I was drinking, eating, mixing in salts. Doing all the good things nutritionally but hadn’t gone three hours in a workout since the Michigan Expedition Race in May much less three hours at sprint race pace. We reached the canoe put in and had to solve a riddle: You have two cups, one holds three ounces of water and the other holds five ounces of water. You need exactly four ounces of water. How do you get the right volume? The answer hit me pretty fast but I explained it at light speed to one of the judges who said: “No that’s not it”. So I slowed down and ran the same solution past Steve who approved. I’m not telling the answer. Figure it out on your own peoples. J
The canoe sling seat: once upon a time it seemed like a good idea to purchase a sling seat to put in the middle of our team canoe in three person races. I’m not certain why. The sling seat is lightweight, portable and adjustable. But every time we use it lately it seems to sag, slide forward off the midpoint of the boat and sag more. Ali had the burden of trying to paddle through these conditions and attempted an assortment of solutions (sitting on the bottom of the boat, kneeling and leaning against the yoke). It was humorous to watch from the back after my leg cramps subsided. After that Bruce and I dug in to make up for giving Ali such a lousy setup. We’ll come up with a better technical solution in the spring. The spread was a little harder to judge on the water. We had done a counter clockwise loop, Tryad was going clockwise and Berlin must have been going counter clockwise because I don’t recall seeing them. We were on our return when we passed Tryad but it felt like the gap had shrunk a bit. Our goal at the end of the canoe leg was to climb up the long straight hill and not be seen.
We succeeded and returned to the transition. Three hours and thirty five minutes on the regular course. Our reward for finishing in less than four hours was a really long rogaine section. I’d estimate it was twice as long as the foot section on the regular course if you went all the way to the big point valued point RH (worth 90 points), which of course we did. Did I mention my legs were cramping? Before the race I was secretly hoping that we would finish first in four hours and one minute that way we wouldn’t have to do extra running. No such luck for the wicked. I bitched and whined and cursed my fate while doing my best AR-shuffle all the way out. Bruce and Ali could have easily run away from me at any time but that pesky 100 meter rule was in play, so I kept on and kept the whining at low enough volume that they couldn’t hear it and wouldn’t be tempted to run away. We scooped up RE, RF and RG in sequence along the way and reached the end of the known universe at RH in about one hour. There was time to get out to the end of the course for anybody coming in under four hours if they made a beeline for it. But there was the risk tolerance of going for it and losing all rogaine points scored. By the race rules a team returning one second late at this rogaine would lose all the points earned. OUCH! Who’s evil now? As we were coming back in we passed Tryad on their way to RF with not enough time (by my estimate) to reach RH and get back to the finish line. They had elected to clear RA-RG but skip the far away RH.
On the return trip I kept an eye on our pace and studied the maps to try to figure out the location of two bonus rogaine points. (For those scoring at home those would be the bonus checkpoints on the bonus section not to be confused with the regular checkpoints on the bonus section). We had been receiving words as clues to their locations at each of the marked rogaine points. One was at a private boat ramp and the other was on a tennis court both near the finish line. We picked up those along with RB and RC and were back at the finish line with a little over 15 minutes to go. RA was 600 meters away from the finish line and we were the first team in. I was fairly confident that Tryad wouldn’t reach RH and have a full course clearing and thought that Berlin (being behind) would have chosen something safe as well. I looked into the distance, couldn’t see any teams approaching and asked if we could skip the dash out and back for the extra 10 points for our score. Bruce and Ali agreed to let me turn off the pain machine and we chilled out. Tryad Personal Fitness rolled in with three or four minutes to spare and without the 90 points from RH. But Berlin Bike tried to defy my mental math by rallying to pass Tryad on the rogaine. They finished with 40 seconds to spare and only two controls (worth 20 points) shy of clearing. Final score: Team GOALS ARA 230, Berlin Bike 220 and Tryad Personal Fitness 120(?)
What a difference a year makes! GOALS ARA returned to Green Lane for this year’s running of The Edge adventure race. A year ago me, Bruce Wong and Baby Momma reached the finish line first but ended up in second place after a time penalty. Baby momma and I were a tad late to the start line. We were “looking for coffee” and maybe missed some of the pre-race instructions and sent some extra gear with our paddles to the canoe put-in as a result. Stuff we were supposed to carry, oops. Something we would have known had we had time to pay attention.....
Bruce and I were ready for this year’s event but Sue wouldn’t be joining us as the recovery schedule from Finn’s arrival is just now allowing her to run again. Ali Bronsdon of Suburban Strangers filled in nicely for Sue. Chiefly, she consistently kicked my butt during the running sections (that was Sue’s role before). My summer of strange diseases and knee surgery has moved my normally “challenged” running skills a little further down the scale but Ali is super strong and everybody at GOALS will be pulling for her, Brent and John as the Strangers take on the field at USARA Nationals in a couple weeks.
New race directors Marc Bress and Steve Herzog stepped in to give GOALS founder Bill Gibbons an easier day at the office. They promised (and delivered) a course with a little more thinking and a bonus rogaine section for the faster teams. There were brain teasers and special challenges sprinkled throughout the course. As an example there was a bucket of walnuts at a giant cargo net crossing. Instructions told us to take the bucket across the cargo net without letting any walnuts touch the ground. We shoved the walnuts into Bruce’s hydration pack, into our race jersey pockets and (who could resist) a couple into my Go-Lite stride shorts (sorry, no photo). We then crossed the net with bucket in hand and walnuts safely stowed. When we finished the nice staff guy told us if we read a bit more carefully that all we had to take across the net was the bucket. We could have left the nuts in a nearby bin. Brains teased, we moved on.
One challenge that did help was a special test of bike tire tube changing skills. As always GOALS splits their sprint race courses into four sections (Canoe, Bike, Run and Challenges). We opened with the bike section and quickly realized that our (sick? evil? twisted?) race directors had removed some of the randomness of the order of events. Local sprint race rivals Tryad Personal Fitness and USARA Point shopping Berlin Bike were doing the four sections in the same order. Marc later confessed that they placed us in the same order in order to “turn up the heat”. It was fun but mildly technical placements on the bike had us reaching the CP vicinity and then having to look around a bit to find the flag (behind trees, low in pits, etc….) We seemed to be leading the way most of the time but I couldn’t quite scramble in and out from a punch point without someone getting in visual range thus eliminating their minute of looking around. Bike CP7 was where we finally made a little break. On the map the single track between BCP6 and BCP7 looped around a bit in the woods. In pre-race Bruce and I thought we could cut down time by just bushwhacking a short distance across a creek and up into the clearing where the point was. When we jumped off our bikes and headed through the brush I think we might have raised some eyebrows because we reached the tube swap challenge at BCP7 and were a minute or so into making the change when Berlin Bike arrived. We had a small cushion and grabbed the final three points undetected.
Challenges were next (a stretcher carry, a knot passing exercise on a rope and the aforementioned walnut/bucket test). We churned through the tests and headed out onto the orienteering loop. Controls could be approached in any order on the foot section. We ran a sequence that left OCP1 (marshy area) for last and started with OCP2. Green Lane isn’t all that big of a park but it makes up for lack of size with a lack of flatness. Not West Virginia but a lot tougher than the Fairmount Park sections of Kelly and West River Drives where most of my recovery runs have occurred. I’ll have to start adding supplemental stair sets at the Art Museum (less the corny Rocky Balboa arm pumping and shuffle steps at the top) to my evening runs. Why? Because I wanted to die every time we climbed the one big hill on the run, on the way to the canoe and later on the rogaine. Given our route selection it was eight times up and down (or at least most of the way up) during the race. It’s Tuesday after the race and my legs are still torn up from the lactic acid and cramping I was fighting the last half of the race.
We finished the foot section just as my gas tank hit the yellow warning light. Still leading and with a good opportunity for a status check. After transition we headed to the canoe launch and had to run past OCP1 along the way. Bruce clocked Tryad at three minutes out along the way (running and looking good). A couple minutes later we saw Berlin at OCP1. So we had 6-10 minutes of lead as the first wave of really good cramps hit my legs. I was drinking, eating, mixing in salts. Doing all the good things nutritionally but hadn’t gone three hours in a workout since the Michigan Expedition Race in May much less three hours at sprint race pace. We reached the canoe put in and had to solve a riddle: You have two cups, one holds three ounces of water and the other holds five ounces of water. You need exactly four ounces of water. How do you get the right volume? The answer hit me pretty fast but I explained it at light speed to one of the judges who said: “No that’s not it”. So I slowed down and ran the same solution past Steve who approved. I’m not telling the answer. Figure it out on your own peoples. J
The canoe sling seat: once upon a time it seemed like a good idea to purchase a sling seat to put in the middle of our team canoe in three person races. I’m not certain why. The sling seat is lightweight, portable and adjustable. But every time we use it lately it seems to sag, slide forward off the midpoint of the boat and sag more. Ali had the burden of trying to paddle through these conditions and attempted an assortment of solutions (sitting on the bottom of the boat, kneeling and leaning against the yoke). It was humorous to watch from the back after my leg cramps subsided. After that Bruce and I dug in to make up for giving Ali such a lousy setup. We’ll come up with a better technical solution in the spring. The spread was a little harder to judge on the water. We had done a counter clockwise loop, Tryad was going clockwise and Berlin must have been going counter clockwise because I don’t recall seeing them. We were on our return when we passed Tryad but it felt like the gap had shrunk a bit. Our goal at the end of the canoe leg was to climb up the long straight hill and not be seen.
We succeeded and returned to the transition. Three hours and thirty five minutes on the regular course. Our reward for finishing in less than four hours was a really long rogaine section. I’d estimate it was twice as long as the foot section on the regular course if you went all the way to the big point valued point RH (worth 90 points), which of course we did. Did I mention my legs were cramping? Before the race I was secretly hoping that we would finish first in four hours and one minute that way we wouldn’t have to do extra running. No such luck for the wicked. I bitched and whined and cursed my fate while doing my best AR-shuffle all the way out. Bruce and Ali could have easily run away from me at any time but that pesky 100 meter rule was in play, so I kept on and kept the whining at low enough volume that they couldn’t hear it and wouldn’t be tempted to run away. We scooped up RE, RF and RG in sequence along the way and reached the end of the known universe at RH in about one hour. There was time to get out to the end of the course for anybody coming in under four hours if they made a beeline for it. But there was the risk tolerance of going for it and losing all rogaine points scored. By the race rules a team returning one second late at this rogaine would lose all the points earned. OUCH! Who’s evil now? As we were coming back in we passed Tryad on their way to RF with not enough time (by my estimate) to reach RH and get back to the finish line. They had elected to clear RA-RG but skip the far away RH.
On the return trip I kept an eye on our pace and studied the maps to try to figure out the location of two bonus rogaine points. (For those scoring at home those would be the bonus checkpoints on the bonus section not to be confused with the regular checkpoints on the bonus section). We had been receiving words as clues to their locations at each of the marked rogaine points. One was at a private boat ramp and the other was on a tennis court both near the finish line. We picked up those along with RB and RC and were back at the finish line with a little over 15 minutes to go. RA was 600 meters away from the finish line and we were the first team in. I was fairly confident that Tryad wouldn’t reach RH and have a full course clearing and thought that Berlin (being behind) would have chosen something safe as well. I looked into the distance, couldn’t see any teams approaching and asked if we could skip the dash out and back for the extra 10 points for our score. Bruce and Ali agreed to let me turn off the pain machine and we chilled out. Tryad Personal Fitness rolled in with three or four minutes to spare and without the 90 points from RH. But Berlin Bike tried to defy my mental math by rallying to pass Tryad on the rogaine. They finished with 40 seconds to spare and only two controls (worth 20 points) shy of clearing. Final score: Team GOALS ARA 230, Berlin Bike 220 and Tryad Personal Fitness 120(?)
Where’s the nearest Kentucky Fried Chicken? I earned some this week and it’s been too long since I did. :)
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