2005 USARA Nationals Tampa, FL... AKA The Swamp Thing

I've been a little slow in posting the final write up of Nationals. After an 18 hour drive home, a long sleep to rest up, an hour washing out my clothes with a hose so they would be clean enough to put in the washing machine, & catching up on other assorted miscellaneous I just haven't had time. So here goes. I did manage to keep everyone up to date till the start. Have posted a bunch of pics & will have more once I get the "race cam" developed.

Nationals race morning started with a 4:30 am wake up call since we had to be @ the start by 5:45am. For a change a I actually slept the night before an AR race. So after getting up & searching for coffee & getting dressed it was time for the final gear pack & heft the pack for the first time to see how bad it was going to kill the shoulders. This race was an expedition style totally unsupported, so if we were going to need it we had to haul it(which weighs you down). Off to the start line.

Here we get the first twist of the day. The start is a 15 min bus ride away. So one team member(Anna in this case) gets to ride by themselves while the other 2 get the "prologue" map. This map is already plotted for us we just have to find the marker & shoot bearings from them to collect chips to move on to the next marker. At promptly 7:15 AM(Close enough to 7am) the gun goes off & everyone takes off running. Its interesting trying to keep track of your teammates in a jumble of 67 teams. We start off @ our normal clip(which usually puts us @ or near the front) but this is Nationals & there is a lot of fast teams so were in about 20th till we hit the first marker. From there on we steadily move up into the top 8, where we spend most of the day.

After 5 or 6 of these "prologue" checkpoints it was time to get in the canoes. We hit the boats in about 6th place. The first CP was actually upstream @ what the description said was Rapids. Yes rapids, I know its Florida & my Altimeter has read -110' since we got here but they were actual rapids albeit very small ones. From there we turn around & paddle down stream toward CP 2. But first we have to navigate through what is called "The Dead River". Now this sounds bad for a reason, because it was. I willing only glance over this section since no matter how I try I'll never be able to describe it. Pics will help, but they won't do it justice. Needless to say it was the worst 2 hours in a boat I've ever experienced. You never paddle more than 100 meters without portaging the boat, swimming the boat, or pushing it over, under or around logs. This section actually helped us. We're not the strongest flat water paddlers & the other teams had started to pull away from us, but we were able to catch back up because of the literal log jam that formed.

After that nightmare we finally got to pick up a few more checkpoints. These consisted of boat navigating to a spot & getting out & naving to the CP. This made the CP's a little more interesting since you had to pay more attention to the map. We came out of the water in pretty good shape ready to head out on our specialty the mountain bikes.

The bike nav was pretty straight forward & the terrain not to bad. It was Florida so very flat with sand thrown in for good measure. We were still in a pack of about 8 teams going back & forth depending on how each team picked their route to the next CP. We did take one shortcut which involved us wading through waist deep swamp while holding our bikes over our heads. The shortest route being a straight line & all. After hitting all the bike nav CP's we dropped the bikes off to have them transported to a location where we would pick them up later.

Now for some real swamp navigation. We were still off & on in the pack of 8. I was a little thankfull for this since I wan't thrilled about the idea of wading through the swamp by ourselves. On our way to CP 12 one of the other teams right in front of me almost stood on the biggest water moccasin I 've ever seen. This was our only close call with Florida's deadly animals. Why anyone would intentionally wade though the swamp is beyond me, but I guess some people actually like it. I am not one of those people though. The sun finally went down on us as we hit CP 12. It was pretty cool to see 8 teams(24 people) all turn their headlamps on @ the same time. It went from being dark to very bright all at once.

From CP 14-15 I made a little miscalculation on my intended course which lead to a very scary moment in the swamp wondering if we were ever going to get out of the swamp again. But all was well & we hit the road/railroad grade we were looking for 200 meters from the CP(which was about 600 or 700 meters the wrong side of were I was headed, OOPS!). After the race looking at the map I had nothing to worry about because the only way I could have missed the road was by swimming the river. What I should have done was shot a direct bearing & let the declination allow me to shoot off the CP just a bit. Oh well live & learn.

To get to CP 16 we had to swim the alligator infested river not once but TWICE! I made A LOT of noise in the water to let anything in the water know I was there. The swims went a long way to chilling me off & I'd have trouble later warming up. We swam the river & hit CP 16 with no problem.

On to the TA to MTB's were another curveball was thrown at us. Individual Time Trials. Normally in AR Racing your not allowed to be more than 100 yards from your teammates. So this was a huge curveball. One member had to run a semi marked 4 mile course(Anna), one member had to use a map to ride a 10-12 mile MTB loop(John), & one member had to plot an orienteering course & find those 4 points(me).

I'm usually the team navigator but I do better @ the type of nav you have in AR races than in an actual O-course. So I was a little worried especially since if you screwed up a point or mis punched it you had to go back out & redo it. I plotted my 4 points & headed out after putting on my jacket. Sitting down for 20 min chilled me off. I went to the "easiest" point first. Well I walked till I hit my fence & turned around & shot a back bearing knowing I'd somehow missed the marker. So back I went. Well I'd only missed it the first time by about 5 feet. Going back I just happened to notice it since I was standing about 2 feet from it. Great! The markers are hidden, now I really started worrying. Off to find the rest, I hope. After one searching I find 2 more. I finally team up with another guy to locate the last marker since neither of us was having any luck. It turns out quite a few teams teamed up to do the Nav Time Trial since it was so hard to find the markers using an aerial photo @ night as a map.

From here the team was reunited & we got the final part of the course given to us. The TT's accomplished its job of seperating the teams for the most part. Several teams had decided to stick together since 6 set of eyes are better than 3. As the eventual winners did. We ended up working with Team GoLite to find the rest of the bike nav points.

From the bike it was back in the boats to getting the final CP's & the finish. At the turn around another curveball was thrown at us. An easy O course where the team could separate to find the markers & collect more poker chips. So John paddled to the one marker down stream. Anna was going to come with me but I had her wait by the fire & I ran to the other 4 points. Man that fire looked good since I was shivering & had on all my clothes that I had packed but oh well the run warmed me up a little. Who would have thought you could get cold in Florida? So after a quick 2.5 mile run or so we started our paddle back up stream to the finish. Now this river actually had a little flow to it which I was never able to figure out. Florida is flat so there is no gradient to give the river fall. So I'm guessing from the temp of the water its all spring fed.

We lolly gagged a little on the way back & had to sprint paddle the last 10 minutes to keep from getting caught by another team. But we just stayed ahead of them by 2 minutes to finish 8th overall, 7 th in our division. A Masters team tied for first with an open division team. After a quick drive back to the hotel the feeding frenzy ensued. I ate 5 fig newtons, 5 pastries, 4 pieces of pizza, & 2 breadsticks, plus a couple of cokes. I'd later find out when cleaning my pack out I hadn't eaten as much as I thought during the race so that explained why I was so hungry. I guess it was lucky I didn't bonk.

I'd have to say we had a pretty good race. No major nav errors, no injuries. We ran the entire race(where we'd normally start walking after dark) so it was by far the hardest we have ever pushed during a race. We got beat by 3 factory teams & one top 10 nationally ranked team. We beat a lot of other nationally ranked teams in the process. So I'm pretty happy with our 7 th place.

A big thanks to Matt O @ Dynamic Earth for all his help this year & the use of the van to get us to races even though he can't return the thanks.