GOALS AR 101 Clinic Follow Up

GOALS ARA had a terrific “Intro to AR” clinic at the Conshohocken REI on March 12th. Thirty or so folks showed up to take in a stunning multimedia presentation delivered by Bill Gibbons. But then his new Vista operating system struggled to deliver the slide show. However, Bill’s seasoning in SAR, Corporate Team Building and AR prepared him well for this type of unplanned disaster. Lesson #1 in AR: stuff is going to go wrong. It’s what you do afterwards that determines your success. And Bill came through with two solid hours of introductory info and Q&A.

Right at the end of the session (and moments before the store closing time) somebody asked “what should I focus on if I’m just interested in a sprint race”? We ddin't have enough time to really do it some justice so I’m going to take a crack at answering now.

Not all “sprint” races are created equal. But largely speaking you can expect to paddle a boat, ride a bike and do some trail running together with a teammate or teammates. You’ll probably receive a map with checkpoints already plotted on it. And in some cases you may have some special tests either integrated into the race or as a field breaker at the start. Some examples of a special test might be climbing a cargo net or running to the top of a hill near the start line to retrieve the team passport/punch card.

Not every race is created the same but it’s safe to say that most race promoters will tell you what gear you must bring in order to compete. They won’t necessarily tell you what else you might find useful to improve your team performance. That’s where you can:



a.) Have experience

or

b.) Read the rest of this

#1: Know how to read a map and how to use a compass. You may be able to run all day and bike all night. But if you don’t know where you are going none of that will matter much. At most sprint races you won’t be overwhelmed by the navigational difficulty. Much of the navigation will involve following trails that are marked on the map to easily identified features where the controls will be placed. Examples of those features might be: trail intersections, stream crossings, lakes or hilltops. There might be a little off-trail navigation but for the most part if you can use a road map you’ll probably be able to figure out the navigation. When there is off-trail navigation it will most likely involve reaching an attack point that is on trail and then following a bearing or perhaps a feature like a stream a short distance to some other feature that can be identified on the map.



Want some practice? Go to an orienteering event (DVOA runs events in southern NJ, Eastern PA and Delaware), get some basic instruction and then try a yellow course to get the basics of map reading. Once you’re comfortable with Yellow (which may well be the first time through) step up and try an Orange course. This will get you a little off-trail.



#2: Minimize the weight that you carry. If you carry something it should be worth carrying. Not carrying mandatory gear can get you disqualified. Therefore it is worth carrying. If you believe otherwise please send a check for $200 and I’ll happily kick you out of the next race I direct. Doesn’t sound very rewarding, does it? ;)



Everything else you can not carry is fair game. For example: many sprint races feature some sort of a central transition area. In a sprint race that estimates 4-6 hours of competition and has two or three transitions that means you might reasonably expect to pass through every one to two hours. Provided, of course, you've followed my first piece of advice and know where you are going. Carry one energy bar, or a brownie or a bag of chips in your pack and eat it if you need it. Leave most of your food in the transition area and plan on eating each time you pass through transition. Same goes with liquid. Start with a full camelback and go train for an hour or two. Stop and check how much you drank. I'm going to guess that it will be something less than a full 100oz bladder. You can trim a few pounds of weight carried if you dial in the right amount to carry. Again, be sure to refill in transition and also have a bottle of water or sports drink in the TA that you can consume with your snack and leave behind. The more proficient you get the more you'll be able to shave this weight down. There are tons of other items that you can shave weight with and still not put major risk on completing the event. For example: patches weigh less than tubes (although having at least one tube can be worth it even if not mandatory).

#3: Know how to use your bike repair stuff. Ever see an auto racing event? Changing a tire isn't a one person affair. Somebody runs the jack, somebody removes the lugnut(s), somebody removes the wheel and somebody mounts the replacement wheel. It's precison teamwork. You can be much the same way with your bikes. Somebody should be getting the wheel off the bike while somebody is grabbing tools to remove the tire. While the tire is coming off the rim someone should be partially inflating the replacement tube, etc.... You can add ten minutes to your race time by thinking of a flat repair as racing. Same thing with a chain break tool. It can happen, so know how to repair a broken chain and be able to have multiple hands in the project.

#4: Is it a three person team? Are you using canoes for the paddle leg? If the answer is yes to both of those questions then bring something for the person in the middle of the boat to sit on. Some canoes have a built in middle seat but that is the exception rather than the rule. One easy soltion is to bring a milk crate and something to tie it to the center yoke with. If you don't provide some means for the third person to sit up they will probably have a devil of a time producing any kind of paddle power. Yes, they could kneel for the entire paddle leg. But if you think that's the best idea then be willing to be the person that kneels in the middle of the boat on the rocks and sand that are inevitably in the bottom of the boat. Be willing to explain to significant others and riding buddies how you developed abrasions on your knees while out "racing". :) Anyhow, if you don't have some sort of solution to get that middle paddler up, you'll end up with one teammate effectively being dead weight.

I could go on all day but those are my big tips based on the things that I've seen while racing. These are the big ticket items that clearly separate novice from experienced teams. And these are no cost/low cost items that will most likely make a much larger improvement in your performance than that new carbon fiber mountain bike you've been lusting to purchase. :)

Happy Vernal Equinox!!!

OK, I'm a little slow to wishing everybody a happy spring. But it's officially on.

Check out this cool article about NYARA's High Rock Challenge. I've managed to do a pretty good job of missing this over the years. And once again will be racing at Odyssey's bigger badder Endorphin Fix when HRC competitors hit the mud pits. But jeez that looks like a ton of fun. Nasty, filthy, fun challenges like the old school Hi-TEC/Balance Bar Sprints without having to paddle inflatable pool toys. Yeehaw!!

Got my first weekly Orienteering meet fix last week with the DVOA event at Nolde. Officially the Team GOALS ARA orienteering scoreboard reads:

Hare 1
Tortoise 0

One wrong turn and one trail blown past was too many mistakes to hold off the young and speedy (don't be fooled by that M40, it's a typo). Conditions were rocky, wet and slippery at Nolde as evidenced by the compass I crushed while falling. I'm going to have to do more intervals and hills before the woods get drier and faster or the hare is going to run it up like UCLA did on Mississippi Valley State last night. Hey, Kevin Love, why you gotta do Jerry Rice's alma mater like that??? :)

CLEARLY not Adventure Racing related

Part of my morning ritual in my Finance/IT universe is a quick scan of the morning's market headlines.

Seems the US dollar's valuation isn't doing so hot these days for several trillion reasons of outstanding national debt etc.... And there are of course tons of other factors that affect currency valuation that I'm not even going to pretend to understand or explain. It boils down to this. The dollar just doesn't buy what it used to:

20 years ago $3,000 got you this for a week

Now $4,300 gets you 2 hours in a hotel room with this

Ba dum dum....thank you ladies and gentlemen, I'll be playing here all week. :)

NYARA Viewer Mail

NYARA is a 501(c)3 and as part of it's mission we provide some of the following:

• Promote adventure racing in the tri-state area.
• Act as an informed source to our members on such things as gear, technical advice, upcoming races in our area, etc.
• Offer formal and informal group and team training sessions and educational clinics

Today I'll be "acting like an informed source" and answering one of the "ask an expert" questions that rolled in recently. What makes me an expert? Well, I can type.....

QUESTION: Is it better to plot all your points on a particular leg and then go out, or plot the first point and the navigator plot the next points on the fly. For example the navigator drop and plot after reaching a point while the rest of the team seraches?

ANSWER: Some racers can get themselves sweatier than two rats going at it in a wool sock just debating the race worthiness of plotting on the clock. But let's assume the gun has sounded, you have a list of coordinates along with a Sharpie and a UTM plotter in hand and the time for debating is over. The answer of what you should do next is dependent on a few variables. Some of the variables are skill based and can be practiced to precision. Others are course and condition specific.

1.) Do the maps have a grid on them or just tick marks? If the map doesn't have a grid on it I'd recommend taking a few minutes, using the straight edge(s) you've brought to the race and connecting the tick marks to build a proper grid on the map(s).

2.) So now you have a map with a grid on it. Plotting a coordinate onto this map is a two step exercise. Step one, find the grid box that has your coordinate. Step two, plot a point within that grid box. If I give you this map:


and this coordinate: 4549770 565440E we'll do a quick example. The last three digits in 4549770 and 565440 are there to help us with step two. In step one we use the rest (4549 and 565) to locate the bottom left corner of the grid box for our point.

In step two you can use your handy UTM plotter to slide 770 meters north and 440 meters east of the bottom left corner of your box and mark your spot.

Do you need to be standing perfectly still to do those two steps? Probably not.

3.) Do you really need the plotter? Think about the steps to plotting a coordinate above. Once you get to the right box the potential for epic-sized race breaking error is almost gone. Again using 4549770 565440E as the example get yourself to the 4549 and 565 box. Now without a plotter put your pen on a point that is a little over three quarters of the way up the box and a little under half way across the box. Not that hard to get in the ballpark. If you can do this and there is a control description provided in your instructions (trail intersection, hiltop, stream junction, etc....) then you can get near and then place a mark on the described feature. Be aware if there are multiple similar features in the area. Pick one of the features and if it isn't there when you arrive be flexible and scan the nearby similarities. Of course, bring your UTM card and stop to plot more precisely if the ballpark estimate doesn't pan out. In our example the description might read 'West side of knoll'. There are some other small knolls nearby but none so far that you couldn't head to the one you plot but quickly search the others if you weren't exact.

4.) Special course considerations: Is there a potential bottleneck early in the course? If you're in a short race and there is a ropes section you may want to plot only the points needed to get to the ropes and worry about the rest afterwards. If you are slow getting to the ropes it's something productive you can do while waiting. If you beat the crowd to the ropes by hustling onto the course then all the better.

5.) Special weather considerations: Is it a downpour at the start of the race and the maps are plain paper? You'll probably want to plot before starting. Is it 5 below zero at the start line with no indoor access but you know there are bonfires at each of the CPs? You'll probably want to plot one CP and get moving.

Like I said, there's no perfect answer. Only perfect answers given skill, comfort and conditions. In AR forward motion is only worthwhile if it is taking you towards the target.

Snowgaine Maps

Aha! The scanner was working. The spam filter on my e-mail was being overly aggressive and dumping the maps into my "Junk" folder.

Here's the South Map which has the Start/Finish Triangle.

And this is the North Map. There's a good chunk of overlap (Note CP30 is on both maps).

More stuff to come soon, including an answer to a question about "Plottting on the Fly"from a NYARA member. Plus, Team GOALS ARA will be making its 2008 season debut at the Planet Adventure Race near Story, Indiana.

Snowgaine 2008 Part II

We knew that we were hosed at this point. It was two kilometers of shoving to the next cluster of houses in North Boylston. But we also knew that the intersecting road would be plowed as we had seen it earlier in the day. When we reached our destination it was 4:45 pm and we faced a hard choice. 14km of biking around to the finish on known plowed roads or 3km of bike push plus 3km of bike riding. Given the road conditions we figured either option would take about an hour. We selected the latter on the chance that the 3km push might get lucky and encounter some rideable snowmobile tracks or that the plow line might extend up the road a bit. No windfalls came our way and we finished at 5:40pm. Good for a two hour time penalty on Sunday. (Three minutes of penalty for every one minute over). Given the lack of plowing on Wart Road the long road ride around probably would have been faster. The underlying math question was "can you ride a bike 11km in shallow snow faster than you can push a bike 3km in deep snow?" If somebody out there with ready access to snow wants to do a few time trials I'd appreciate hearing your findings. :)


Day two was substantially more relaxed. We hung out for two hours after the field start at 9am and even loaned out the bikes to another team that had (like us) stayed out far past 5pm and faced too high of a hurdle to take home any kind of top prize. Even if everybody were still in it we would have loaned them out. Its just that type of event. Bruce and I set up our intent the night before and settled on a clockwise route around the southern map: (45, 70, 37, 62, 44, 52, 33, 72 and 54) would be our CP order. We set out running fairly hard, so in hard in fact that we blew past the forest boundary leading out to CP45. We quickly corrected that . But then comically and for good measure we blew past McKibben Road which led west to CP70. We were almost to the next road down (shown just at the edge of the map). By then and just elected to continue on and take the westbound county road out of Smartsville. It was a plowed road versus a snow packed trail so we were able to run faster but it was clear we weren't all that focused.

After that we settled in and made quick work out of everything in our path. After punching CP52 and reaching Bargy Road at 2pm (the north to south road between CP52 and CP33) we debated a run to CPs 65 and 41. We figured we'd have to bust a whole lot more hump and probably have to sacrifice CP 72 in order to make it work. On the other hand there would be cheeseburgers and hot dogs on the grill by 4pm. For an extra 34 points we took a pass and finished off the next couple points with relative ease. We even stopped to dump our snowshoes at Bruce's van on the way in to the finish line. We came in just before 4pm with 1104 points for the weekend. A nice total (good for 6th or 7th place overall) but still only good for 2nd place on the ride home!!! Brent and Abby did a better job of managing the clock both days and rolled in with a score around 1180 not including the points for CP44 which they had visited but failed to punch. Oddly enough they were not alone in this feat. Another team had done the exact same thing. I don't recall free beer or any similarly distracting items in the vicinity of CP44 but for some reason it eluded two teams.

Post script: That's a really crappy digital photo of the map in the Wart Road post. My scanner isn't playing nice. Check back in a few days and I promise a higher quality set of images.

Wart Road

“Uh oh, Wart Road isn’t plowed.”

In the back of my mind I could hear the dulcet tones of the recently departed Myron Cope: “Yoi!” And. “Double Yoi!” The deep snow spelled trouble for us indeed. Any thought to the contrary would be pure gorgonzola.

That opening statement sums up my weekend at CNYO’s annual Snowgaine event. I can still chalk it up as two days of good training. And a great time with a small group of folks who consistently show up to host and/or compete at what is certainly my favorite event of the year every year. Have I mentioned that Snowgaine is my favorite event recently? ;)

The road trip up on Friday night was a mini-adventure in of itself. Bruce and I carpooled up to the event with GOALS teammate(s) Brent and Abby. Brent is fully corrupted and on board for the upcoming season. Abby is still in project phase. She’ll be doing some racing but still has ironman and marathon issues to work out. Which to me is as simple as this: would you rather eat gu and talk about negative splits and PRs or chow down a big chocolate chip cookie and talk about the barbed wire fence that interrupted your bushwhack through four feet of snow? No contest.

An Alberta Clipper was busy slamming I-81 North with snow and the efficacy of snow plows and salt trucks was mixed at best. The crews in Wilkes Barre get a failing grade with a dozen cars off the road in the center median and no visible pavement. However, just up the road in Scranton the salt was working hard and we had clean pavement. Binghamton was the same as Wilkes Barre. Syracuse had the Scranton plan working. Alternating between 60mph or 40mph depending on where we were led to a late night arrival at the 1880 House. Situated in the heart lovely downtown Pulaski, NY I’d recommend it to anybody after staying there twice over the years.

Among Snowgaine’s many charms is the “anything goes” format for the competition. You can ski, you can snowshoe, you can run and if you’re so inclined you can bike. That’s where Bruce and I (and a few others each year) come in. The critical rule is all gear that you take with you from the start must be in your possession at all times. Bikes might be speedy on open road but most of the controls are in the woods. Bushwhacking a kilometer through deep snow with a bike on shoulder is entertaining the first three or four controls. After that it settles in to be a bit of hard work or insanity. You be the judge.

When we received the maps 30 minutes before the start on Saturday it seemed 2008 might really be a good year for a strategy of biking on day one and snowshoeing on day two. There was a nice loop around the outside of the course that appeared to be on roads of a relatively plowed condition. Our intent was a counter-clockwise loop that would visit: 67, 35, 53, 61, 76, 36, 57, 40, 60, 77, 34, 43, 47, 66, 74, 37, 70 and 45. We thought that all the light brown roads on the map would all be similar to Center Road which we had driven on to lovely downtown Boylston. (Our start location marked by a blue triangle near the center of the southern edge the map). Whereas the gray colored roads would be the unplowed snowmobile trail/dirt roads in the interior of the course. There were even several controls (67 in the SE corner and 76 on the E edge) plunked next to the road that would be easy scores for us. Conditions were a little ugly in the morning. Dark gray clouds and some snowfall but the weather forecast had seemed to indicate clearing conditions as the day progressed. So after a brief debate we decided to stick with the bikes and not reverse our days.

How can you tell a meteorologist is lying? Their lips are moving. It never cleared up. In fact conditions degraded as the day went. The snow was whipped by the wind and riding the roads was painful at times. Stingy little ice pellets for the face and wind gusts to chill anything wet or exposed. The plowed roads filled with enough snow to slow our bikes a bit and allow skiers to approach easy targets like CP76 on skis via the road. Good times. Our planned lap around the outside progressed well until reaching Marsh Road which might have transported us into CP57. It was marked in gray on the map so we knew it was likely to be unplowed. In fact only the very top of the Marsh Road sign post was even visible after being buried with the plow clearings off the County Route 92 we were using to move North along the east side of the map. We figured if we left CP57 and CP60 we could loop them on day 2 with CP65 and CP75.

The most fun I had was the approach to CP77 which involved a little faith based navigation. What's drawn on the map was our early morning plan. However, after punching CP40 and continuing North, we found Sharp Road to be buried in much the same fashion as Marsh Road. We had hoped there might be a hard pack from snowmobile usage (which is often rideable) but no luck. Fresh soft snow. So instead of shoving the bikes along Sharp Road we continued North and found the plowed Westbound Road that you can see a scrap of at the intersection of Sharp and Brown Road. Brown Road was rideable up to the last farm houses shown in the clearing and from there we rolled our bikes to the boundary line that guided us into CP77.

The Monday Morning Navigator says CP34 was OK because it was along the way once we exited to the nearest rideable road. But he thinks the real time trouble started with the forays into CP43 and CP47. I thought we were getting late and not allowing a cushion for bad events when we left the corner of Dixon road to attack CP43 from the north side of the steep hill. But we still had 2+ hours and the roads we thought would be plowed were still plowed. So we continued on until we punched CP66 at 4pm. Now at this point we knew we had to beeline back thus putting the kabosh on CP74 and CP37. But we thought we could make it with maybe a small time penalty. Unfortunately when we made the right turn back onto Wart Road off Van Wormer Road we rode a few hundred yards and realized:

“Uh oh, Wart Road isn’t plowed.”

I'll wrap this up in my next post.........