Oak Mountain 10 Hour Adventure Race

Lisa and I once again teamed up for OMAR.  Two years ago, this was my first adventure race, where I barely managed to hang on to her maniacal pace.  Now, having a few more under my belt, I felt more confident about keeping up as well as being able to help out with nav, should Lisa need it.  

60 teams of 1-4 people had signed up.  There were a total of 36 checkpoints up for grabs.  There were 2 treks, 2 bikes, 1 canoe paddle, and 1 paddle board section.  Having arrived at 6 am, Lisa had 2 hours to plot CP's and determine our course.  There were two TA's (Transition Areas). TA 1 was at the Start/Finish.  We decided to start with the first trek, since it was a nippy 42 degrees. 

When the gun went off, Lisa took off like a bat out of hell.  Oh, Lord, my legs were not quite ready for her speed.  We took the CW approach of collecting the 6 CP's on this first trek, starting with CP2. A 1/2 mile in and I was thinking, "There is no way in hell I can keep this pace up for 10 hours."  The first 3 controls were easy peasy.  We bushwhacked to where CP4 shoulda been, but there was nothing.  We traveled further up along the creek, then back tracked further down the creek, to no avail.  Lisa finally made the call that the control was NOT put in the correct spot, so we headed to CP 5.  Along the way, we found a post with a punch, but no tape.  I punched it, thinking that this was probably #4.  We then nabbed CP5, and ran the road back to the Start/Finish and did an out/back to get #6.  We over ran CP6, only seeing it when we turned around and headed back; didn't cost us but a minute or two.

Heading back to TA1 after the first trek

Quickly changing shoes and acquiring more food at TA1, we then headed out for the first bike leg.  Heading up Peavine Road, Lisa's greyhound speed leveled off to more of a wolfpack running down a caribou; a much more sustainable pace.  We picked off the first 3 CP's with ease.  CP10 was only difficult to find because our navigator jumped from Map 1 Bike to Map 3 Bike.  So we started looking for it too early, but being the Queen that she is, Lisa quickly figured it out and we found 10 quickly thereafter.

From CP10, we bike whacked up a steep ass re-entrant to hit a hiking trail that eventually took us to CP11.  That was a killer short cut and my glutes and calves let me know it!

25% grade up that re-entrant

After grabbing CP11, we motored down to TA2.  We decided to do the second trek before the paddle board segment.  We quickly changed into trekking pants, as we did not want to have to run around for a couple hours in clammy shammies.  

Lisa planned a near perfect route to nab CP's 14-22. She was like a blood hound on this section while I was a lemming. There was a sh!t ton of off trail bushwhacking, but her skillful nav landed us darn near every CP, or at least within 30-40 meters, where then my eagle eyes would take over and locate the orange control flag. A majority of the controls were on the tippy top of ridges and knobs.  So much so that Lisa began singing "Take this Knob and Shove It." It took us 2 1/2 hours to collect all the trekking CP's.

Heading out on the second trek

Just one of a 1/2 dozen rock scrambles 

Once back to the TA, Lisa was feeling some impending cramps, so I let her drink what was left of the LMNT in my bottle.  She then went out on the paddle board to collect the 2 CP's at the opposite ends of the lake.  While she was doing that, I changed back into my bike shorts, drank a Coke and ate 2 bags of potato chips. I had eaten all my food, save for 1 gel, on the trek.  So, for the bike back to the Start/Finish, all I had nutrition wise was Skratch (160 kcal) and 1 caffeinated Gu (80 kcal).  Lisa asked me to find a packet of LMNT in her feed bag and refill her bottles.  Unfortunately, there was no LMNT to be found (insert foreshadowing here).

Back on the bikes we headed down Belcher Byway Trail, one of the new trails at Oak Mountain.  It was way FUNNER the direction we were headed (all downhill) than the directions quite a few teams were taking. The CP's along this trail and Lunker Lake were pretty straight forward, although CP24 had us wandering and wondering a little bit (we overshot it) before we found it ... across the creek.

Once we started on BLT, that is when the wheels began to fall off Lisa's bus.  The lack of LMNT was wreaking havoc on her legs and feet, as she continually had to slow down to stave off cramps. Fortunately the remaining bike legs was on mostly flat flowy trail.

CP28

The CP just off Garret's Gulch was overhanging a creek.  Not willing to reach precariously down and grab it, I opted for getting my feet wet and getting in the creek to punch it. Despite Lisa's struggle, her brain was still firing on all cylinders, allowing us to nab the remaining biking CP's with surgical precision.  That damn Jekyll trail went ... on ... forever!  

We finally rolled back to the Start/Finish, where we quickly transitioned to the paddle.  5 CP's to acquire on Double Oak Lake.  I fought with the spiderweb of PFD's to grab one for myself.  It took a frustrating moment to put the straps back through the PFD correctly. Meanwhile, Lisa was ready to go, telling me in the nicest way possible, with all of her muscles wanting to seize up, to get my a$$ in the canoe! 😆😆😆

Lisa let me take over the navigation after we punched CP32. The remaining CP's were not on our map.  We had to view a hanging map at CP32 to see the location of CP33, and so on and so forth for the remaining 4 CP's.  It was all on me to memorize each location.  Even though the nav was easy and straight forward, I, still being new to this game, was so nervous I would let Lisa down.  I wavered a bit on CP34, to which Lisa helped me get to the correct re-entrant.  But after that, I invoked my inner bloodhound and found 35 and 36 fairly easily.  I was glad for all the gym work I have put in over the past year, as I figured out how to use more of my core and less of my arms to paddle more efficiently.  I just wish the canoe had foot pegs.

We ran to the finish line with a time of 9:25, 35 minutes to spare.  We ended up winning the overall (out of 60 teams and solos), and were 1 of  2 teams to clear the course.

Our win was was over 95% Lisa and 5% me.  Watching her navigate and putting us right on top of the CP's most of the time was just magical! I can only hope to be 3/4 as good as her in the future.  I am definitely looking at some solo adventures, in which I can hopefully hone my skills.  We have the Cerebrus 3 Day Expedition Stage Race coming up in May and there are some heavy hitters showing up for this one.  I am nervously excited about this one.