Nature Calls Adventure Racing

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.

The Finish

We finished in 3rd place overall (1st place coed team). We were just 3 minutes behind 2nd place and 19 minutes behind 1st.

Congratulations to everyone that raced, especially Canyoneros on a great win. This race has always been about speed, and this year they brought it.

Thank you to Greg, Pangea, and the volunteers!

And as always thank you to Jason and Nikki for another fun race!

---- Race Photos (click here) ----

Thursday, December 5, 2013

The Turkey Burn 12-Hr AR (2013)

Friday, August 16, 2013

The Nocturnal 18-Hr AR (2013)

Video race report below...

---- Race Photos (click here) ----

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

The Luminescent 8-Hr AR (2013)

I've been really slacking on writing race reports lately, but I definitely want to start writing them again, even though most of you could care less. So here is my race report for this past weekend's race.

This time around it was Greg 'Playa' Trainor and I, as Team Nature Calls. The race took place in and around the Salt Lake WMA.

Trek 1

The race started at 10:00PM on Saturday night with what we thought would be a fairly quick trekking section with only 5 checkpoints (CP21 - 25). Distance wise, it looked pretty short. But the trails and conditions were pretty rough. Some trails under water, other hard to run on. We attacked the points on a counter-clockwise loop. We did a little bushwacking, but what really slowed us down was the trek from CP24 to CP22. On the map it looked like it was an open area, but in reality it was 6' high sawgrass. Slow as hell to move through, and it tore our knees up.

It took us just shy of an hour to complete the 5.6km section. We came in to the Main TA with just five teams behind us. In other words, about nine teams ahead of us.

Bike 1

After the trek we jumped on our bikes for a road ride to the Boat TA, picking up four CPs along the way (CP10, 11, 1, 2). This section was pretty easy. All on paved neighborhood roads.

The map wasn't very clear on road names, but we still managed to find everything fairly easy on our way. The total distance was about 15km.

Paddle

From the Boat TA we started by going to CP8 and CP9 first. The GPS track doesn't show this because my watch died and Greg didn't start his until a few minutes later. It was pitch dark out there. And I mean pitch dark. But thankfully Greg has paddled this area often, so he knew the layout pretty well. We quickly and easily found CPs 8,9, and 7. Heading to the island where CP6 was located was a little tricky, but we picked a bearing and stuck with it. After CP6 we had to fight the headwind and 2-3 foot waves as we went under the 406 bridge and headed to CP3. Going under the bridge was a little sketchy, but fun.

CP3 was an easy get, then we had to make our way to CP4. From CP3 we could not see the shoreline where CP4 was located. So we picked a bearing and went at it. Turned out we went almost directly at CP4. Finding CP5 was pretty easy after that, we just followed the shoreline along the way.

We went into the boats about 5th team from the end, we came out in fourth place. At 2 hours and 9 minutes, we had the fastest boat split of the race. We paddled strong and had near perfect navigation. That helped us a lot. The total paddle distance as about 11km.

Bike 2

Next, we had to bike back to the Main TA, from there we would bike at Salt Lake WMA to find four CPs. The bike ride from tbe Boat TA to the Main TA was easy, again, all on paved roads. It was now around 2:00AM on Sunday morning, so the roads were basically empty.

Back at the SLWMA we quickly head off looking for the four CPs. They were all fairly easy to find. The only one that gave us a hard time was CP20. Getting to CP20 from CP19 I made a slight navigation error that ended up adding a few kilometers to our ride. When we reached the area where CP20 was located, we ran into Team Mojitos on Monday. We all looked for the CP together. From CP20 it was a very short ride back to the Main TA. The total ride distance was about 22km.

Trek 2

The final trek was pretty straightforward. We had already been on most of the trails earlier so we knew the layout pretty well by now. We stayed mostly on the trails, with a couple short bushwhacks, and found all five CPs fairly easy. The final trek distance was about 7km.

We ran into the finish line and finish in 3rd Place Overall. We were pretty happy with our race! Total race distance was about 60km.

It was a great and fun course. As always, Pangea and the volunteers did a fantastic job!