Since my last blog entry both Scott and I have completed our main races of the season. Scott raced Ironman Canada with a great race time of 9:49. I am so proud of him. He is happy, but quick to add he made some mistakes and could have cut some time down here and there. Yadda yadda yadda I tell him. Honey you're amazing!!
My main race was the Vahalla Pure Adventure Race in Kelowna which was last weekend. I am starting to recover finally from it. We had 8 hours to complete a course of mountain biking, paddling and trekking all with our own navigation. I raced solo. Most everyone had a team, which consisted of 3 people. When I showed up for registration the volunteer asked if I was really going to race it solo! Or was I going to hook up with another team? I told her it was me, myself and I, as I didn't know any of the other racers!
Race day arrived and I was happy that all the training and planning were coming together. AR Racing is a logistical puzzle with gear being driven all over the place. I was ready to work the plan. Tina Hoeben whom was doing the longer race loaned me her beautiful Outrigger Canoe (OC1) for the race. As a solo racer I had to provide my own boat. The other teams had race organization provided standard canoes that held 3 people. Early on when my achilles was first torn I spent hours upon hours paddling with the outrigger club here in Penticton. It was pretty much all I could do at the time and it paid off in the race!
Early on race day morning they released our race maps and Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates. The coordinates are all 6 digits and 3 represent the northing point and 3 represent the easting point. Where they meet in the middle is your check point (CP). We had 6 CP's to get to all in a certain order. Then you take the maps and figure out as much as you can your route. The maps are topographic maps which have dirt roads and contour lines on them. But most of the time you follow your nose and if a trail seems to be going in the right direction you take it!
Finally we were off. We started on the bike. I couldn't have been more lucky with the start arrangement. I was in the front. So I jumped right to the front guys and rode out with them. Draft legal race so I rode behind a team of 3 boys. The one other solo racer was in the pack as well. I checked back after 10 minutes of riding and we had dropped the rest of the field. I quickly grew confidence at that point. We came upon the first CP to get our passports stamped. The race director punched mine first and was surprised to see me! Here is where the good mountain biking on McDougal Trail began. I could almost hang with the team of 3 boys. Almost. We helped eachother with navigating and got to know eachother joking around about cult classice cycling movies a bit. Once the climbing was over there was a terrific downhill single track section. I kept catching them and finally past them as they had to wait for their 3rd teamate whom wasn't as fast. Rules for the teams are they must all stay together throughout the race. I bombed ahead and wanted badly to be first off the bike. However, they did catch me at one point towards the end of the bike ride, so I was 2nd into the checkpoint after close to 4 hours of mountain biking.
I quickly got in and out of transistion and the team of boys were right behind me. We were on foot for this section. I saw that bush-wacking for the next 15 minutes was going to be the fastest route to the trail I wanted, so I went for it. They were so much faster than me at bush-wacking. Obviously with the ankle injuries and recent achilles tear my proprioception is not even close to where it used to be. It will come back!! The boys quickly were out of sight. But they were loud so I could still hear them and quickly figured out they went the opposite way I had planned to go. I second guessed my decision for about 3 seconds and then pressed on. This was my 'Big Move'....didn't even know it at the time. The trek was close to 2 hours, with about 1 hour of it running. The most I have ran in months on the achilles and it didn't even bother me. Actually the rest of my body was starting to get really sore by this point, all except my right achilles! I began singing songs and making up rhymes to scare any bears away. I was loving it.
Eventually I popped out onto a road and met up with the other solo racer whom had gone a completely different way. We took one more trail down to the water and found our boats.
I quickly assembled the outrigger and pushed off. I didn't even look back and focused on the bridge. Just get past the brige and pull into the marina. My legs were cramping up. Being on the water on this HOT day was a nice repreive from the dirt. The paddle went by fast. I made up 10 minutes on the other solo guy by the time I pulled the boat out of the water.
Now was one last bike section to the finish line. The camara crew was shocked I was leading the race and kept asking me to comment on the course and what I had for breakfast. I said I needed to get going to give my self time to get lost. I hammered the bike home, one last bit of single track and on home to the finish. 1st person to cross the finish line in 7 hours 29 minutes. Perfect day.
