The Compass Award (Part One)

First off. A big "hell yeah" for Team Eastern Mountain Sports racking up another Checkpoint Tracker Series win at the Planet Adventure 24 Hour Challenge. They look to have a ton of shots left at landing a perfect score and at least a share of that title.

Speaking of "hell yeah's" where have those NYARANEDG shout-outs gone? With all these great Northeast racing results it's almost as if somebody is distracted or would rather be doing something else....Could her recent interests somehow outweigh' better adventure racing attention, perhaps? Only time will tell...... ;)

Pre-race was a bit hectic for Team GOALS ARA. Well, at least for one of us. Bruce spends some of his work life in Indianapolis and arrived a couple days early. Tracey and UI showed up middle afternoon on Friday after blowing off work for the day. Brent, unfortunately, had to work on Friday and became a victim of weather and/or the recent rash of mechanical inspection shutdowns that have been plaguing the airlines. His airline was nice enough to call and let him know that all evening flights from Philadelphia had been cancelled. And that they'd be happy to fly him to Indianapolis the next morning. Unfortunately post time was 8am an hour south of Indianapolis so into the car he and Abby jumped for the 11 hour drive to Story, Indiana. Maps and CPs were dished out at a 9pm race meeting and by the time we had points plotted and routes planned it was midnight and bedtime. Brent rolled in around 2:30am and we did a quick review of what to expect in the morning. Our 6am wake up came fast. I felt groggy and secretly hoped that we had somehow been transported to Central Time and that it was really 5am. Then Tracey started the coffee and everything was alright.

It was chilly for the 8am running start and during the previous nigt's meeting we had been warned of the potential for a thigh deep water crossing near the first CP. Sweet, run a mile to get warm and then get wet and cold. AR rocks! Fortunately, the thigh deep section of flooded road had drained overnight but that might have at least slowed down the pack. As it was the field cruised to the first CP en masse at a good Saturday morning 10K run clip. Then the first of many hills and many route choices showed up and within 5 minutes we were down to two teams of travel companions. After CP2 we made chose to head off trail and directly towrds CP3 and were completely alone with only distant voices calling out occasionally in the heavy early morning fog.

During our course discussion the previous night I was animated about our opportunity to run a good race. Many of the CPs had off trail placement and there would be plenty of opportunity to straightline from CP to CP using spurs and re-entrants to guide the way. These are, generally speaking, big positives for a slow, fat person that is good with maps (namely me). We hit CP3 alone and as we headed towards CP4 we passed EMS and CP0 running the trails back in towards CP3. The early part of the day was going well. Speed kills on trail though and EMS caught us by the time we all reached CP4. We hung on and managed to reach CP5 and the bike drop with EMS in sight and with Alpine Shop, Bonk Hard and CP0 arriving within two minutes. OK, maybe we weren't THAT alone out there in the fog but it sure seemed it. :)

We transitioned to bikes quickly and were off riding the Nebo Ridge Trail. Sweet, smooth singletrack to be sure. A little wet and muddy with the recent heavy rains but it's gotta be fantastic riding in June. We slowed a little for CP6. It was placed off-trail in a steep re-entrant and rather than accidentally pass we poked our noses into one re-entrant just before the correct one. Doing this allowed CP0 and Alpine Shop catch up and we punched CP6 en masse. The next couple points were straight forward although EMS rejoined the front after taking a sidetrip near CP7 and Alpine Shop fell back a little. And we reached the Orienteering section in close order with EMS and CP0.

The organizers estimated 3-7 hours time to gather 16 out of 17 points on the course. We were instructed to drop one of our choosing. Between that and being able to approach points in any order there was ample opportunity for route diversification. Below I've provided a copy of the map and traced our exact route using my JPS data (Jonathan Positioning System). You can see my original intended route written on the top of the map but we made a field change when we realized K and R were in same drain. So our final route was ABCDPQEFTJKRSNOM (dropping L). The big oops for us was the location of the flood waters near J. They weren't quite as high as the marked flood plain but close enough that we had to backtrack to avoid a short swim on the way to K. Something that didn't hit me in the planning stage.

What do you think? Leave comments below on route selection if so inclined. If anybody has Indiana Topo! I'd love to see some net distance and elevation profile data for alternates. Why? Because despite being dead on the whole course and moving fairly well we dropped to 5th as Citgo Gray Goat and Alpine Shop slipped by. EMS really put the hammer down and piled up a 40 minute lead over us. BTW they shared their route with me afterwards (ABCDEFTQPORKLSNM....Drop J). I like their route a little better than ours.

More tomorrow.......