Cereberus Expedition Stage Race - Day 3

40 miles, 4500 feet

8 mile trek, 8 mile bike, 1 mile trek, 7 mile bike, 6 mile paddle, 10 mile bike

5 am wake-up, 5:05 am scare as I looked into the mirror seeing someone who looked like they lost a boxing match, 5:10 am coffee feeling some life come back into this battered and bruised body, and the best breakfast ever at 5:45 am ... corned beef hash! Although it may look like dog food, it tastes like heaven!

Today's leg started off with taking 3 bearings from the start: 110m @ 60 degrees, 260m @ 180 degrees, and 300m @ 305 degrees.  There were 12 maps at each location and 31 teams, so choose wisely based on running speeds. We took off on the 60 degree bearing, which involved crossing Craig Creek.  Wet feet, nice way to start the day.

The first leg was a bike to the Lignite Mines.  At the first CP, we would receive a secret map, that we would need to get the next CP's 7-3 through 7-6.. At the CP, race director Mark Lattanzi's long lost identical twin, with a Irish accent?? was there handing out the "treasure" map.

Cute, real cute.  There was about 10 minutes of reading through the jibber jabber to get to the important stuff, like where the CP's were. After nabbing CP 7-2, we made our way to the mine, dropping our bikes and proceeding on foot to acquire the 4 CP's from the treasure map. CP 7-4 had us scrambling up a steep red earthern almost cliff-like hillside. CP 7-5 was pretty cool and I had to scramble down into a cave about 10 m to punch. The last one was a butt slide down into a pit and then a crawl back out of.

We ran back to the bikes and pedaled to the TA where we transitioned to our pack raft.  No near CP misses today! This paddle was 6 miles which allowed us to stay ahead of the top teams.   They didn't catch us until the take out.  

The next leg was a trek in the Craig Creek Recreation Area.  I did not realize just how fatigued I was until Lisa shot straight up a 40% grade to attack CP 9-1.  I looked for my book of matches, but found it empty.  I was definitely on the struggle bus, grabbing saplings as I could to help me up the mountain.

Despite how slow I felt, we were still able to catch Pretty Reckless, the leading women's team of 4, which included some heavy hitters:  Mari Chandler, Kit Vreeland, Abby Perkiss, and Ashley Eaton.  We slowly pulled away from them after nabbing CP 9-2.  Heading towards the next one, we ended up running with Sojourners, the #2 coed team.  Every time we came upon another team, Lisa managed to pick up the pace even more.  Good Lord, she's trying to kill me!  

The biggest issue was the gut bomb I had.  Nothing like running with a sloshy GI tract.  I was probably also a little dehydrated and my BeFree filter was not playing nice.  Eventually I just took a chance and drank the water unfiltered.

After a few more steep ups and downs, we nabbed the final CP (thank God!) and ran back to the TA.  Now to just get back to the finish by bike with only 1 CP left. Despite how terrible I felt on foot, I did not feel bad at all on the bike.  It was mostly a flat pedal back on pavement and rail-trail.  But Lisa did manage to put the final nail in my coffin by having us bikewhack up to the rail trail ... oomph!

We arrived back at the Wilderness Adventure Center at 2:37pm. We were the 4th team back, behind Enabled Tracking, No Complaints, and Chip Dodd.  

We ended up finishing second in Women's and 7th overall.  The top 6 teams had cleared the course.  While we were definitely disappointed not clearing the course, we were stoked about our overall time of 25:21, the third fastest.  We feel we have a good shot at being a podium contender at AR Nationals this October in Oregon.  Especially with Susie on our team and our secret weapon, the Super Yooper.

I want to give a shout out to Lisa.  She has sharpened her nav skills over the past year.  I was very impressed how fast she could nav on the fly this year.  We were always moving, having very little down time. 7 minutes on Day 1, 8 minutes on Day 2, and 15 minutes on Day 3, of which 8 of those was reading the jibber jabber map.  And the TA Nazi Lisa is, our transition times were close to lightning fast.