Nature Calls Adventure Racing

Monday, July 28, 2014

The Luminescent 8-Hour AR (2014)

The 2014 8-Hour Luminescent Adventure Race returned to River Breeze Park (where it was held in 2012). Having raced there before, I knew the paddle would be pretty tough, and I was not really looking forward to it. But things turned out much better than I had expected...

The Paddle

The paddle was going to be long. We knew that going in. There were a total of 15 CPs to find and we actually had a 4-hour time limit. In other words, we had to finish the paddle in under 4-hours or risk getting penalties.

Paddling Mosquito Lagoon requires some good navigational skills. There are tons of small islands everywhere. So you have to stay on the right track in order to find the one you want. To make it worse, the race takes place during a 'new moon' which means there is no moonlight to help you navigate. Without moonlight, you can not see the islands until you are basically right on them.

We knew we ween't going to be able to get all 15 CPs in the 4-hour time limit, so we decided to skip the five furthest points.

We ended up finding all the 10 CPs we went after, and with little issues. Finding CP4 was probably the only one that gave us a hard time, but even then it was only a few minutes lost. Also CP1, in the middle of the island, was kinda hard to find, but again, only a few minutes lost.

We ended up with the fastest paddling split of the race (3:40). And we tied a few teams for the most points in the paddling section (10).

The Bio-Luminescense

This race is called the Luminescent because of the possibility of experiencing the bio-luminescent effects in the water. And I will tell you, it was amazing! We noticed it really well on our paddle from CP05 to CP06, and again on the paddle from CP03 to CP02. Each paddle stroke stirred the water enough to produce this bright, florescent like color. The wake of the boat did the same thing. But the best part was the fish. They were swimming just below the surface, and they would leave a bright fluorescent trail behind them. It's hard to explain, but it really was incredible to experience.

The Bike (part 1)

After returning to the TA off the paddle, we quickly transitioned to our bikes and went off on a 2-hour bike ride looking for CPs 16-21.

We did very well in this section. We were the only team to get all the bike points, including the very hard to find, CP20.

Then we biked down to the Grove TA to start what we knew was going to be a very tough trekking section.

The Trek

There were a total of 17 different points on this trekking leg. We only had about 2.5 hours to make it back to the finish line, so we knew we would have to skip a few.

We did not get the trekking map at the start of the race. It was handed to us at the Grove TA. So I only had a few minutes to look at it before we took off. I decided to attack the points in a counter-clockwise fashion, only because I knew exactly where CP38 was, so I figured better start off with an easy one and go from there.

After quickly finding CP38 we struggled looking for CP36 and 37. Spent a good amount of time looking for the right trail, but eventually decided to skip them and move on.

We ended up teaming up with Jeff and Hunter (Team Florida Xtreme/Hunter) for a few of the points in this section. Because of our limited time we only ended up collecting a total of 9 points before we had to get back to the Grove TA as we still had an 11km bike ride to the finish line.

The Bike (part 2)

After leaving Grove TA we only had one more point to collect on our bikes before heading to the finish line. This point was the same as CP13 on the paddle, so we knew exactly where it was and getting it was very easy.

The Finish

We finished the race in 7:46 and ended up with 2nd place overall. We were very happy with that!

So thank you to my teammates, Scott, and Chris. And thanks to Pangea and all the great volunteers!

See you all at the Nocturnal 18-Hour Adventure Race next month!

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

The SCAR 6-Hr AR (2014)

This year's Father's Day SCAR Adventure Race took place in the Kings Landing/Kelly Park area around Rock Springs. It was a great venue which provided some great trekking, paddling and biking...

The Trek

The race started at 0745. There were four legs to complete (bike, run, paddle, tubing) and teams had the choice to do them in any order they wanted. This was really nice. So Jason and I decided to trek first and get that out of the way.

The CPs were plotted on the orienteering map, but there were no clues as to their location. Also, the punch card did not have the usual CP numbers printed on it so that one could cross reference and make sure they were at the correct control. Plus there were several control flags for the other races placed close to some of the Elite controls. You had to know exactly where you were, and be confident about it. Otherwise, you could end up punching the wrong control. In other words, this was true orienteering, and Jason and I loved it!

We found all controls without too much trouble, except for CP6. CP6 was plotted on one side of the trail, but was actually placed (as we found out much later) on the other side of the trail. When we arrived at the plotted location for CP6, which was a very deep depression, Jason went down into the depression while I ran around the depression looking for the control. We could not find it. We then started looking around the area at some of the other depressions. But after consulting the map several times, we knew without a doubt that we were at the correct place and that the control was simply not there. So after about 15 minutes of looking, we made a decision to go on without punching this control.

This map show my GPS track while looking for CP6 (coming in and exiting from below):

We finished the trekking section in about 49 minutes and quickly left the Main TA ready to paddle.

Here's our entire trek:

The Paddle

We decided to do the paddle leg as our second leg. So picked up our paddles and headed to the Boat TA.

The paddling leg was great. There were no other boats in the water (except for a couple of park visitors), so Jason and I had the river to ourselves. The CPs were all right along the river and very easy to find. It only took us about 40 minutes to get all the CPs and get back to the Boat TA.

The Tubing Section

After returning to the oat TA we decided to head off on the tubing section of the race. So we grabbed a couple of inner tubes and ran down to the put in spot (CP24).

This was a great section. The water felt awesome and it was pretty relaxing. The CPs in this section were once again right along the river, so very easy to find.

Every race should have a section like this. :)

We finished the tubing section in about 48 minutes and headed off on our last leg of the race.

The Bike (01)

The bike section was basically along the same trails we had already trekked. And thanks to all the rain we've been getting lately, the usually nasty soft sand was nice and packed, which made for some great and fast riding.

Once again Jason's navigation was 100% spot on, and we were able to quickly find every CP without any issues.

The Finish?

We came into the Main TA at 1030, having just finished the 6-hour race in 2 hours and 45 minutes. We talked to Greg and told him to maybe add another section in. We suggested he make us go back out on the bike, but this time pick up the points we had picked up on the first trekking section. Since it was just a few minutes to the start of the Sports race, he asked us to wait and he'd get back to us.

The Bike 02

At 1055 he gave us the go ahead to go pick up the trekking points on our bike. At the same time the second place team (Doc-n-Neers) finished the race and Greg told them the same thing. So off we went, both teams leaving only a few minutes apart to do one more bike section.

Since we had been to the points before, navigation was very easy. So it was just a matter of riding well. This time we did find CP6 (as we had been told by the volunteers where it was actually located).

Throughout this section we kept running into team Doc-n-Neers who were right on our tail. But we managed to hold them off and finish the race ahead of them.

The Finish?

This time the race was actually over. We had officially won with a time of 3:25:37. But since it was still fairly early and still over two hours until the awards ceremony, Jason and I decided to go back out on foot. This time we went to find all the bike points, but on foot. When we finished that, we crossed over to Kelly Park and went down to watch the rest of the racers start the tubing section.

All in all we had a great and fun race.

Race video:

See you guys at the Luminescent and Nocturnal!

Monday, April 14, 2014

Florida Orienteering (Lake Louisa April 2014)

On Saturday Jason and I did the Florida Orienteering event at Lake Louisa State Park.

We did the Blue course which was marked as an 8.2km course.

The course was fairly straight forward and the points pretty easy to find. It helped that both us of have a home field advantage as this park is 30 minutes from our house. Jason did the navigation and led us directly to every point. Only one point gave us a small issue that costs us maybe 5 minutes. Other than, it was all smooth sailing!

We ended up in second place, with a total distance 10.4km of and a total time of 1:18:25.

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

The BOAR 6-Hr AR (2014)

The 2014 BOAR once again took place out at Seminole Wetlands Park. Last year we won the race, and with a new friend on our team, we came ready to do it again.

The Prologue

The race started with a short 1km run in order to spread the teams apart. The run was through very bad terrain. Rooted up very badly by the cattle in the area. It was during this first run that our teammate Nikki would sprain her ankle. But she is such a bad ass that she wouldn't let us know until much later in the race.

We finished the run quickly and were off on our bikes before everyone else.

The Bike (01)

We had four CPs (CP01-04) to find in this section before making our way to the Boat TA. Unfortunately, during our pre-race planning we failed to notice the nice (white) trail leading out from CP04. So we thought that no matter which way we attacked the points, everyone would have the same route. We were wrong.

We went at CP01 first, then CP04 and so on on a counter-clockwise loop. Had we attacked in on a clockwise loop we would have been able to exit the area via the nice trail next to CP04. Instead, even though we rode well and started the bike section first, we lost time got to the Boat TA behind many teams.

The Paddle

By the time we started the paddle there were several teams in the water already. We paddled well, and by the time we reached CP09 we had passed everyone and were leading the race.

Then came CP12.

We had a slight navigation issue getting to CP12. We ended up to far south of it, so instead of paddling back, we decided to trek to it. This error cost us a good amount of time during which several of the top teams got ahead of us.

The Trek (01)

After the paddle we had a very short bike ride down to the o-course, were Dr. Ron (volunteering there) told us that we were the fourth team in, seven minutes behind the leaders.

We were spot on with out navigation in this section and hit every CP (CP15-20) dead on. No issues. It was right after getting CP19 that Team Canyoneros came up behind us. We both made it to the bikes almost at the same time. It was also around this time that Nikki's sprained foot was really hurting and she couldn't run much. She had taken some Advil earlier but now she was out.

The Bike (02)

We transitioned to our bikes very quickly and took off. After a very quick stop at the Main TA, we went off in search of CP21-26.

At the very first point, CP26, we ran into Canyoneros and Cow Tipping Dwarfs.

The CPs were easy to find and by 1330 we were back at the Main TA ready to start the last leg of the race.

The Trek (02)

We didn't know how far behind we were at this point. But at the very start of the trek Nikki told us she just couldn't run. Her foot was hurting too bad. This is when she first told us she had sprained it at the start of the race. So we walked the entire last leg.

The CPs were easy to find. We once again attacked them in a counter-clockwise loop. We took a gamble on CP29 by shooting a bearing from the trail. It paid off as we came out right on top of it.