12 mile paddle, 18 mile bike, 5 mile night-O trek
5 am came earlier than I wanted it to. Coffee at 5:05 am made the tired and somewhat sore awakening bearable. Once again we were provided with a hearty breakfast: I chose the eggs and oatmeal.
At 7 am the games began. Our maps for the day were at 2 different locations: the pavilion and the gazebo. Lisa made the longer run to the pavilion, while I walked to the gazebo. All team members had to be back at the start/finish before we could start blowing up our packrafts. We were one of the first teams in Craig Creek. The first leg was a 12 mile paddle. Since I had gotten chilly during yesterday's paddle (when it was 68 degrees), I threw on a heavy wool base layer, rain jacket, buff, and chemical warmers in my heavy weight gloves. Today's starting temperature was 50 degrees.
Although the creek during this section was deeper, it was still agonizingly slow. 15 minutes into our paddle, we began to hear the MRS Barracudas bearing down upon us in our Kokopelli sausage of a pack raft. Although we are not the strongest nor most technically skilled paddlers, we were getting our doors blown off by teams even less skilled than us. I could smell the smoke coming out of Lisa's ears.
No less than 8 teams passed us during the 3 hours 50 minutes we spent paddling "The Slug," There were still an annoyingly amount of times we either had to butt skooch the raft across rocks or get out and walk for a bit. But there was one Class 2 rapid towards the end that upped the fun factor of this leg.
We came close to repeating yesterday's tragedy by almost paddling on by CP 4-3 ... Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!
Taking out at the TA, we made quick work of packing up our rafts and gear and loading them onto the box truck. Once on our bikes, we turned the afterburners on! The bike points took us up Bald Mountain, a 6 mile 2500 foot climb. In the pre-race briefing, we were told that there would be a KOM/QOM award for the fastest time up Bald. And we were looking for a little redemption from yesterday's fiasco. After nabbing the first CP on this climb, I stopped to take off my base layer as I was now getting hot! Continuing powering up the climb, I realized that if they started the "clock" at the first CP, I wasted 45 seconds of stopped time. I hoped this would not come back to bite us.
This climb is our jam! With a nice steady average grade of 8% and smooth gravel, we were able to get into a good rhythm. CP 5-2 took a little searching and CP 5-3 was tucked away in a boulder field. It was a 30m scramble down and back up, using 3 points of contact. Fortunately there was a team just ahead of us that found it, allowing us to nab it quickly. From there it was a furiously fast descent down to CP 5-4. This one was rather tricky as the old roadbed was very faint. Once again, lady luck was with us, as several teams had dropped their bikes to go get it.
One last CP at a cemetery and then it was a short bike back to the finish. We rolled in at 1:10 pm. Despite our slow ass packraft, we managed to only lose a few minutes to the top teams that so far had cleared the course.
Although the day was done, we still had a Night O course that would begin at 8 pm. We went into recovery mode, eating lunch, squeezing our legs, and taking a short nap. Dinner was some of the best damn chili I have had, with ALL the fixin's. Followed by banana pudding.
At 7 pm, the race directors gave out awards for the fastest paddle and the KOM/QOM. Enabled Tracking won the paddle award. For the KOM/QOM, No Complaints had a time of 70 minutes, Enabled Tracking was 64 minutes, and we took the W with a winning time of 58 minutes! Hell yeah! We received a mountain feedbag, a tow rope, and the best prize of all was a friendship bracelet, with the words "Queen of the Mountain," made by the race director's son. That was so very cool!
The Night-O began at 8 pm with teams going off in 1 minute increments. We started at 8:07, just behind No Complaints. Light was fading fast, but we were going even faster! I think I tasted my chili more than once as we flew past No Complaints going after the 2nd CP. Lisa was on point, smelling those CP's like a bloodhound on the trail of a killer. We did have a little hiccup looking for CP 6-10, managing to be one spur over. This allowed Enabled Tracking to catch up to us, they having started 2 minutes behind us.
From that point on, we were pretty much running with Enabled Tracking. Not wanting to be "dick-ettes" and follow them, as they were taking the same route as we were, we tried to press ahead, but they were on point as well ... and fast! I really don't know what the proper adventure racing etiquette is for this kind of situation, but neither one of us could shake the other.
From CP 6-5 to CP 6-7, we took the "low road," which meant grabbing onto the rocky cliff-face whilst submerging our lower halves in Craig Creek. That was kinda fun, not knowing if we could make it around the cliff face without going for a swim. Lisa led the way and fortunately I never saw her take a step in the creek and disappear.
After nabbing the final CP, it was a foot race back to the finish. My wad was completely blown, as this night O was pretty stiff in the steep climbs/descents department (1400 feet in 5 miles). We finished on the heels of Enabled Tracking in 1 hour 35 minutes. But since they started after us, their finishing time was 1 hour 32 minutes.
We were still 1 CP down from the top 6 teams, but time wise we were the fastest team at 17:46. Enabled Tracking had a total time of 17:50.
We need a strategic Day 3 if we hoped at all to get back into the game.
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