Hide & Seek

Yesterday I raced the Two Rivers Rogaine with my bivy sack buddy(A story for another time) Jason Coleman. We raced as Napoleon & Pedro. I told Jason I wasn't super enthused about racing so don't expect me to take it too seriously. Jason knows me pretty well so he knew better. It seems the word "GO" has some effect on my brain that causes me to go balls to the wall. I'll have get CTS to do some research on this for me.

Normally in a Team Rogaine each member gets a map & a clue sheet. We only got one map & no clues. Cool Jason's naving & I'm punching the passport since in his words "Your a better runner". It also seems whenever Jason wants me to do more work he tells me this, i.e. "Your a better biker, swimmer, boater, reader, eater, drinker, etc(you get the idea)." No big deal I have no need to work on my nav so a little extra scrambling to the punches is fine by me.


The first checkpoint was right near the start so we decided to make a counter clockwise loop. At "Go" we took off & I had to look back & ask Jason if he was going to catch up. A quick punch as he runs on to the next punch where a bottle neck forms. About 10 teams are wandering around looking "in the right place" for the marker. After 5 minutes Jason shows me the map & the 2 of us decide without a doubt we are in the right place & the marker isn't here. HMMMM??? Well I decide to look about 50 meters to the east. Low & behold what do I find up in a tree? Yep the marker. Its off by a good 50 meters. In Orienteering this is a bunch & in heavy woods you can't see very far so no one but me has seen it for now. So I quietly punch & run towards Jason & declare to Jason loud enough for everyone to hear "Its not here lets skip it & move on". Suckers!

We now make the first of a few course decision errors, but no big deal I like making the course harder by running extra loops & Jason did a great job taking us through every sticker bush in the county. So we skip 2 points & head to the Finley River to pick up a series of markers along & across the river. One involved wading up to our private parts to get. Another involved standing on a dead branch over the river that I just knew was going to break & dump me in the river, brrrr. Another on a rock ledge that Jason had to help hold me up while I punched. Oh I've forgotten to mention the theme of the markers location so far has been hidden. A few involved some real looking for. We ran right past several since in AR racing we're used to running 1000 meter squares & this map was 500 meter squares. It took us about half the controls to get a feel for the distance scale. We did find one more marker missed marked. The map had it high & we found it low. In hindsight I'm guessing this marker might have been moved since I don't remember it being tied & it was laying on the ground.

We did find one of the mystery prizes by being the first to one of the Markers. A nice Pack Towel; since Jason carried it most of the race, I told him he earned it, hehe got him to carry some extra weight, sucker. After sweeping back to get the earlier missed markers. One being hidden in a barn, we headed up & I mean up to the finish to find out we we're 2nd by about 5 min. Jason & I get a good laugh since we know we've wasted over 30 min at various points. So our finish time of 2:14 in a 3 hour race was OK. But a little later a twist is thrown in. Turns out the "winning" team didn't find the 2nd marker that was mismarked & the race directors told them where it was & they went back out & found it just before we finished. So to be fair since Jason & I found all the controls on our own they declared a tie giving us both first. We won a nice pair of Smartwool socks each for our efforts.

The race had a good turn out & everyone seemed to have fun. Even those who wore shorts & tore the hell out of their legs. Seems AR Nationals was a little more followed than I thought got congratulated by about 4 or 5 people including a couple of people I'd never met before. Does seem that some people don't appreciate free advertisement though.


Heres a little edited pic from the last time Jason & I both won races "together." The 2004 Berryman AR Race. He won the 4 person team & I won the 2 person team.