We all had the same course direction, starting with the Orienteering course. There was no compass work, just a rudimentary park map with checkpoint locations. scaling was way off, but we couldn't blame our first hiccup on that. Our second major hiccup was do to not paying attention to detail. Toby wins the "attention to detail" award. After collecting all the checkpoints, we headed back to the staging area, where I ended up slightly twisting my ankle.
Next up was the Challenge section comprised of a rock wall, partner carry and get the ping pong ball. Jimmie rocked the rock wall. The partner carry was hilarious and hurtful on my ankle. Jimmie carried me fireman style, which I'm sure hurt me more than it hurt him. On to the ping pong section. The objective was to fill up a five foot PVC pipe with lake water to get a ping pong ball to the top. The kickers - there were two holes on the pipe, which one team member had to hold. The teammates had to alternate positions every time, so there was some skill to the matter. In the end, I leveraged my beer pong skills by blowing in the pipe to get the ball out. See, I did learn something in college.
After the challenges, it was on to the canoe. I never knew how far and difficult five miles was on still water. This lake seemed like an ocean. By the last checkpoint I thought I was going to need shoulder surgery. Obviously, paddling is my weak point.
Thankfully it was on to biking. This was where we should've made up some time. But alas, our map skills floundered and we got turned around a bunch of times. We ended up missing one checkpoint, which sucked but we had a great day. Toby and Hop were able to find the last checkpoint...kudos on the first race!
I took Monday off to recover...I haven't been this sore since the first Snowshoe race. Note to self: Take more nutrition on the trail then you think you need.
Toby Carson, Matt Hoppe, moi, Jimmie Lobley
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