Gear, Gear Everywhere!

We are frantically doing our last minute packing and shopping for the upcoming Michigan Expedition Race. Thanks to all those who we had to bum gear from, as packing for an unsupported 3-4 day race is no easy task. Cramming all our food, clothing, and gear in two gear boxes has provided quite the challenge for me. Anybody know what the shelf life is of PB&J in a dark, enclosed bin? Anybody have extra room for my 4th and 5th pairs of running shoes? Did I mention the weatherman is calling for rain during the race next week? No worries, as we thrive on being soggy. If you ain't chafin', you ain't workin...

Once we figure out how to fit all our shizzle in our gear boxes, we have to figure out how we're gonna fit all this stuff in the car AND still have room to pick up Goble from the airport. I guess he can ride on the roof, as he's never been the picky type.

We embark on our journey at 5 am tomorrow morning with our sights set on St. Ignace. More to come...

Our Newest Trick

Look for us to be shaving hours off our race times with this new bike-swim technique..

Another weekend, another win

Lisa Randall, Neal Radford, and Bill Fletcher (of Snickers Marathon fame) took another overall win at this past weekend's Save-The-World Adventure Race in South Carolina. They managed to find 42 of the 46 total checkpoints on the "modified-rogaine" course format... and did so with nearly 2 hours left to play with. As was the case with the team's 2 previous wins at STW in '05 & '06, route selection and execution with nav were keys to defending their title. The victory serves as the team's 5th straight, and 6th of the year.

Prior to the start of the STW race, Lisa participated in her first Xterra event (Fort Yargo) and earned a podium position among the women's overall. Despite a bruising & eye-opening start in the washing machine-esque opening swim leg, she mounted an impressive campaign with top bike and run splits to close the gap and nearly win her age group. Enjoy the victory while you can, ladies, because Lisa's coming.

Alive and kicking... butt.

Yes, we've been neglecting our blog so hideously that no excuse can begin to justify it. Well, maybe one. We've been out training and racing like crazy and just haven't had time to do much of anything else. Get the house ready for sale? No. Clean the car? No. Update the blog? No. Just racing racing racing.

To make a long update short, here's a contrite list of bullet points:
-Picked up local bike shop sponsor Outspokin' Bikes, who we're proud to represent this year and have helped us out with some new Turner whips, and trick uni's which we'll be certain to soil soon.
-5 wins in 6 adventure races so far this year. Not perfect and not necessarily even pretty but not too shabby for a bunch of punks:
Sandmann AR - 1st (Lisa, James, and Dave Witherow)
Woodstock Goldrush 24 AR - 1st(Bryan, Lisa and Bo Martin)
Checkpoint Zero AR - 1st (Lisa, James, Bryan)
Blue Ridge Mountains AR - 1st (Allen, Bryan, Lisa)
Odyssey Efix AR - 1st (Bryan)
Florida Swamp Stomp - 6th (James, Allen, Bryan, Lisa)
-We've held a couple nav, biking and AR 101 clinics
-We slept a couple days in February, but haven't since then.

Coming up:
The Save-The-World Adventure Race will test Lisa, Neal Radford and Bill Fletcher's navigation prowess. A full-on multisport rogaine, they'll have lots of route & discipline choices.

The Michigan Expedition Race (MIX) will be one of the biggest domestic races of the year. 4 days in the Upper Penninsula against a stacked field is likely going to be one of our biggest challenges of the year.

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Sell your stuff...

The team is organizing a flea market and day of clinics in a couple of weekends up in Roswell, GA. I did this a few years back with TrailBlazers and it seemed to be a hit. Since then, we've re-accumulated alot of gear so we decided to do it all over again.

Details & Registration Here!

Ahh... the off season? Don't blink.

We're all now decompressing from an uber-successful year of racing that goes a little something like this (let the shameful bragging begin):
-9 overall wins
-3 of those wins were USARA Regional Championship Races (North Georgia AR, Save-The-World AR, Adventure24 AR)
-17 trips to the podium in 19 attempts
-Ranked second in the USARA's frequent shopper program
-3rd place finish at the USARA National Championships
-Over $10,000 in winnings (unfortunately, we still didn't quite break even)
-1147 miles covered in races. Several thousand more miles in training.
-8 AR clinics hosted

We've got quite a few people to thank for helping us reach many of our goals and make it all happen, so those will be coming as soon as we can prepare a suitable way to thank them.

Over the next few weeks, we'll begin the planning process for 2007. As of right now, the CheckpointZero 30-hr adventure race is the only race we're confirmed for, but obviously our schedule will grow once we sit down to review this year and asess (or is it asses?) our goals for 2007.

Stay tuned!

USARA Nationals Pre-recap

USARA Nationals Draft Recap - 3rd place

The starting beach run, coasteering was fast and furious, and the bathtub paddle lived up to expectations. I heard that there were a few isolated encounters with the surf, but for the most part it was very tame. Unbeknowst to Lisa and I, the floor of our boat managed to deflate itself mid-paddle, so we slowly plodded through the leg, emerging at our first bike leg in approx 10th place. We managed to pick up a few spots on the way up our first big bike climb up Romero Canyon Rd/trail, from sea level to the mtn range approx 3000 feet above. The first half of the ride was nice FS road, the upper half turned into semi techical singletrack. Beatiful views of the Ocean and Santa Barbara below. We slogged up the trail and finally emerged at the bike drop TA about 10-15 behind the lead pack of Revo 1&2, EMS 1&2 and Silly Rabbits/Ultimate Direction. The following section was a 3 point circuitous rogaine foot section in & around Blue Canyon, which again was beautiful. We chose a CP 4, 5, 6 order-route which followed our same strategy we used in Overmountain Extreme; long fast FS downhill run out & a short but steep uphill return. EMS 1&2 chose to do the opposite and attack CP 6, 4, 5, I believe. Anyhoo, we caught Revo's and Silly Rabbits by the time we reached 5 and we crossed paths with EMS as they were heading from CP 6 to CP 4&5.

Unfortunately, CP 6 had been misplaced 225 meters from where it was supposed to be, and that kind of skewed the playing field a bit, which is always disappointing in our sport. We invested 2 hrs searching for it before making an extremely difficult risky and difficult decision to cut bait and continuing on. Many teams stumbled upon it by wandering around while others, like us, gave up on it.

The plotted location of the point 6

Someone else will have to post the actual location.

In most grass roots racing, if I think I'm in the right place, I usually stick to a policy of hunting for a CP for 15-20 minutes before bailing on a point, but in the pre-race meeting we were assured that the course had been set by Dan Barger, vetted with the help of Jason Middleton (former team Earthlink member with Robyn Benincasa) and that most CP's would be manned by volunteers, but those volunteers would be escorted to the appropriate location by race management. Further, Dan even emphasized using the same plotters that he used to extract the UTM's for the course, and they provided every team copies of the same plotter used. It was clear to me that Dan knows first hand the intricacies around nav, but something got screwed up in the execution of the placement.

The situation was almost exactly the same as what had happened at the ARWC New Zealand last year and from USARA Nationals a few years back... but at least this year there was a pre-published rule that stated:

Teams that miss a CP will be ranked after teams that obtain all CPs provided that all CPs are in the correct spot. Teams will not be penalized for missing a CP if the missed CP is over 100 meters from the correct location of the CP.

So after pleading our case to Dan Barger, explaining our search efforts, he went out and verified that the CP was in fact misplaced. They made the decision to enact the rule. We would not be DQ'd, but it did nothing to recoup the 2hrs we had spent looking for it. I don't know how long other teams spent looking for it or stumbling upon it before moving on, but it definitely impacted everyone in one way or another, some positively, some negatively. But I'm confident that no other team was impacted more negatively than us.

By the time we emerged from the trek, we were fairly demoralized, it was cold, dark, we had plummeted in the rankings from 1st-3rd-ish to 15-20th and we still had the toughest terrain to come. But we bundled up, rallied the troops and pressed on, quickly reeling in team after team on more techincal singletrack descents on the Cold springs trail, withstanding a painful endo for me. Despite my best intentions to stop and cramp up every mile of climb, with James pushing me up every climb, we mounted a huge campaign up the rankings and managed to climb back into fourth place.

MORE TO COME... but a quick summary:
Last trek leg was cancelled, which was a bummer for us as we had caught everyone on the first trek.
Silly Rabbit/Ultimate Direction crossed the line 1st, but had inadvertently taken a forbidden route and were assessed a 4hr penalty dropping them to 9th. This could have been avoided with an additional CP placed somewhere along the mandatory route... a bummer for UD.
EMS 1&2 came across together and were awarded 1st and 2nd
We came across next, but not sure how far back we were (but interested to see the gap and know how much time EMS spent looking for CP6.
Dogs in Space were fourth
Bagelworks/Loki fifth?
It's a blur from there and a lot of what if's

If you're interested in seeing some pics of the singletrack we rode, which was both adventurous and intimidating to say the least, check out:
http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~djhintz/images/2005%20Jul%20Little%20Pine%20climbing%20Santa%20Cruz%20trail/index.html
They're not from nationals, but they'll show you what we rode... only we did it at night.

Cyclocrossin'

What better way to get ready for Nationals than with 45 minutes of suffering above your lactate threshold, otherwise known as Cyclocross. Being off my cross bike for two years, I spent the first lap getting used to the bike, figuring out the lines through the corners and basically sitting in and gauging everyone else. Once we reached the sand pit and some barriers I was able to run around about 4 people which moved me up to third place. As I got more comfortable on the bike, I was able to close the gap on second place and pass her the next time through the sand pit. Her chain went in the spokes right as I passed her but I swear I had nothing to do with it. Not looking back I took off and held onto second place, though I did have some serious chasers.

I was pretty pleased with the result considering my racing these days is geared towards endurance events and it was a good way to open up the legs for Nationals which are 3 days away!

Lazy Weekend

Rather than squeeze in one more monster training, we all decided to scale things back and take advantage of the taper theory. That didn't keep us from doing a little somethin somethin though.

For Lisa & I, Saturday night was spent running around in the woods with our spouses at the Georgia Orienteering Club's annual night-O even at Cochran Mill. It was chilly and dark at the start, but our Niterider Moabs always do a ridiculously good job of turning night into day, so spotting the controls wasn't so bad. It was a mass-start, score-O format with a 90 minute time limit, which essentially means you can go in any order and the winner is whoever gets the most number of punches in the least amount of time. Not wanting to get wet in the cold, my wife Eva instituted a "no river crossing" restriction so our route choice was largely governed by that, but after hearing a few horror stories it probably was a good thing we stayed on the south side. We still managed to bag 16 controls and came in with 30 seconds to spare. Chris and Lisa bagged 16 as well, but they crossed the river which I heard by a few people was a tougher section to locate points.

It was the first time I'd attended a meet since GAOC purchased their E-punch system and it was pretty darn cool not having to fumble for my punchcard at each control. Even better, it's the same system that will be used at the USARA Nationals this Friday. They even printed out our results & split times within a minute of finishing. The coolest part about the system is that a day later, once the data was all loaded, you can view everybody's order/route choice via the internet and watch an animated version of everyone. It doesn't track people by GPS, so you have to manually draw in your specific route, but since the system keeps track of the split times, it generally is fairly accurate with your route:
http://www.forreststokes.com/gadget/cgi-bin/reitti.pl
This is a great analysis tool for anyone wanting to learn more about the techniques that orienteerers use. Months ago, I guess there was a debate on whether GAOC should procure the E-punch system, but I'm so glad they did. It really does enrich the whole experience.

Yesterday, Eva and I visited Kennesaw Mountain for a little tourist hiking at sunset. Not quite epic, but I was a great evening to be out instead of sitting at home watching foosball on TV.

Not sure what James was up to, but knowing him, he probably bagged a triple century with his roadie crew.

Last night was spent packing food and gear for the big trip. T-minus 3 days.

Randalls DQ'ed in Controversial Night-O Decision

Ok, so it wasn't controversial, but I had to get your interest somehow. Last Saturday marked the 2006 Night-O put on by the Georgia Orienteering Club. Proving that two heads are NOT necessarily better than one, the Randalls displayed poor judgement and a case of "I thought YOU were looking at the map" and ended up getting themselves DQ'ed for running overtime on the course.

Starting with a fairly clean run of the points on the west side of the creek, they opted to cross the creek to attempt the points on the east side, unaware that they had a scant 30 minutes to make it back to the finish. After considerable delay in finding a reasonable place to cross they realized they had missed one easy point and continued on the trail up a monster climb to obtain another point. After finding this point it was a mad dash back to the finish. Not carefully looking at the trails and terrain on the map, they were lulled into complacency as they ran along the wrong trail for a good distance before heading into the woods to whack down to the creek. When they did not immediately hit the creek, it then became apparent that things had gone very wrong. Convinced now that they would not make the cutoff, they carefully figured out where they were and headed back to the creek crossing and main trail system, and ultimately the finish. It was a devastating loss as the Randalls were upset by the Gobles, whose "No crossing the creek" handicap actually played out in their favor.

Going up!

We had our last big training before Nationals on Saturday. It started of cold (36 degrees) but it turned out to be a beautiful day of climbing in the N. Georgia mountains. The autumn leaves and colors were peaking and it feels like we are as well. Lisa says we logged ~83 miles, 16,500 feet of elevation (11,300 on bike, 5,200 on foot) in a shade around 10 hours. I was feeling good about it until she pointed out that means that after you consider any paddling/coasteering/navigation, the nationals race course will still have to be twice as steep over the same distance as what we did. Great.

Tonight, we pack up our bikes and bid them adieu for their cross country trip to Santa Barbara. Hopefully, we'll see them on the other side.

Checkpoint Zero 30 Hour

Yak of Checkpoint Zero was kind enough to offer Team Enduraventure a comped entry to the Checkpoint Zero 30 hour race in Helen in March of 2007. Were excited to defend our victory from NGAR last year, but I'm starting to feel a little like this...

The team is off to Dahlonega this weekend for one more big training event before packing up for Nationals.

En Fuego. Winning, Training all over the place.

Well this weekend wasn't spent racing, but that didn't stop our winning streak. Like every other conscious adventure racer, I spent the week watching TV coverage of Primal Quest. Anyway, Golite held a contest in conjunction with the broadcast and each day they had a little quiz to enter drawing for a bunch of gear. I usually don't bother with such things, but Golite gear is pretty good, so I entered each day. I just got an email saying that I'd won the grand prize package, which is about $600 worth of gear. Not two days earlier, I'd been shopping for their Xirtam and Wisp jackets, both part of my winning package. Hallelujah! Thanks to Yak at CheckpointZero for publicizing the contest.

As far as this past weekend, we were all out meeting our training quota. Lisa, her husband and oft support crew member Chris, and I kicked off the weekend with both foot and bike orienteering meet on Saturday. The area is one of the better locations in which to orienteer. With lots of rolling terrain and a vast network of trails that switchback all over the place, it's easy to get turned around if you're not paying attention to every little detail. We all managed to fall victim to these pitfalls at some point, but it was a good outing nonetheless. After the meet was over, we stuck around to help with the bag pickup, which I did on bike.

Sunday was team training day and we spent it gaining elevation on our bikes on some of the most difficult, freshly graded gravel roads in Georgia. Great views and got to see some great areas we'd never ridden before and several tucked away waterfalls. It would be a great area to hold an adventure race. MUHAHAHAHA!

Wha-what?!?! A paradigm shift.

110 miles. 31,320 feet of elevation gain. 30 hours.

That's the course description we received today from the organizers of the USARA National Championship race. While we're gung ho about being ready for this race, this will be a significant challenge. Above all else I'm a realist. The elevation doesn't intimidate me. The distance doesn't intimidate me. The time doesn't intimidate me. Put them together and call me intimidated. Let's not even mention the fact that we'll be paddling the slowest watercraft known to man, the Sevylor inflatable K-79. Consider the following:

A month ago, I got on my MTB and did a 9-Gap, 200-mile Brevet (that's french for way too long organized road ride) in North Georgia that included a climb to the top of Brasstown Bald, the highest point in the state. That took me 11 hours to complete and that was only 26,000+ feet of climbing. Granted I was out of shape and I kept a pretty easy pace, but it was all on paved road and all on a bike. There was no nav, singletrack riding, running or paddling, all of which traditionally have a slower pace than road riding.

A few weeks ago, we competed and won the Overmountain Extreme adventure race. It featured 13,000 feet of elevation gain over 95 miles. We won by a significant margin over our competition, which included the 2002 USARA National Champions, and it took us nearly 19 hours. We've been faster in past races, but we nav'ed clean and were efficient throughout.

So what's that tell me? Either we're ALL really slow here in the SE and need to examine our egos, the RD got his math wrong, he doesn't want anyone to finish (first place gets to race free in '07... sorta, not really), or this race course is going to be utterly relentless. But we have no plans to relent. Prior to receiving this email, we'd been more focussed on how we'd stack up against the teams in attendance. Now, the only thing I'm focused on is how we'll stack up against the course.

As the RD told me:

"It's the Championships, its supposed to be a challenge... :)"

Good point, I guess.

Win in Augusta. Sights set on national championship

It wasn't clean or pretty, but Lisa, Allen and Bryan added a final overall win of their 2006 regular season at the Savannah River/Augusta Canal Adventure Race. Put on by Kando Adventures, the 8 hr. race featured a rappel and traverse along with approximately 25 miles of terrain along the canal and greenway. Despite breaking away during the initial 2-mile run, it was a tight victory as the team see-sawed back and forth with a handful of teams that benefitted from local knowledge and shortcuts aplenty. Enduraventure trailed two 2-person teams until the last 3 miles of the race, but buckled down, nailed the final orienteering point and arrived to the canal zip-line in first place by 5 minutes. The second place elite team, Fukarwi finished approx 1 hour later.

Now we head into overtime, where the only official business left on the 2006 schedule is the 30-hr USARA National Championship Race in Santa Barbara, Nov 3 & 4. The race will serve as the culmination of our racing season and they seem to be peaking at just the right time. We'll be competing against the world's most dominant adventure racing team, Nike Powerblast and are looking forward to the chance to see how we stack up. These guys have won pretty much EVERYTHING they've ever done, whether adventure racing, MTB, kayaking, etc, so we know that a lot of things will have to go our way in order to be competitive with them. Top amatuer teams Silly Rabbit's, EMS, MOAT, and several more regionally dominating teams will be there with the same thoughts. But it is adventure racing, so anyone can win given the right set of circumstances. Between now and then, we're going to be training our absolute asses off to give ourselves the best possible shot at racing to our potential.

Masters Swim

Last March I nearly caused my teammates to freeze to death on our gloriously stupid swim across Lake Allatoona in the Goldrush AR. Since then (well, once it warmed up) I decided that I needed to work on my swimming technique so I started going to our neighborhood pool over the summer, got some pointers from swimmer friends, and evenutally worked up the endurance to swim a half mile (in the pool). The problem is I'm still not really fast, and I still have plenty of technique issues that need to be tweaked. I went to my first Masters Swim session at the crack of dawn this morning, which focuses on speed, endurance, and stroke technique. I found it to be quite beneficial but my upper body is completely worked. I hope the paddle isn't too long in this weekend's upcoming SRACAR, or I'll be hurtin'. Goble, can you paddle for me?

Aaahhh..rejuvenation!

So I rearranged my work schedule this week so that I could get some much needed therapy. My version of therapy is rocks, roots, breathtaking vistas, and cool lakes so I spent the day riding up at Pine Log. My technical riding has suffered since my switch to AR and I definitely got my techy fix today. Kim and I rode a bunch of trails and checked out the awesome overlook at the top of Pine Log Mtn. It was a clear day and we could see for miles. After that, we rode along the rocky ridge until the trail ended about a mile later. Still having nightmares of my last bikewhack at Pine Log, I thought it smarter to just backtrack so we went down the usual ridiculously steep downhill and hooked back up with the main trail. I had the pleasure of an ill-fated yellow jacket stinging me in the inner thigh, but I'm pretty sure he's good and dead now. After about 3 hours in Pine Log we decided to ride down to Lake Allatoona. We rode out on one of the peninsulas near Macedonia Cemetery where I then proceeded to take a refreshing swim in the lake. Its pretty tough to swim in bike shoes, so hopefully we won't ever have to do that in a race. It was truly a perfect way to spend the day, and just what I needed to lift my spirits and get me through the next two days at the office.

Lisa to be Featured in October issue of North Georgia Outdoors and Fitness

Be sure to pick up the October issue of North Georgia Outdoors and Fitness. Yours truly will be gracing the cover and be featured in the local athlete spotlight. Its not Sports Illustrated, but you have to start somewhere : )

Allatoona Orienteering Training

So Chris and I did some orienteering practice today at the Allatoona WMA. We had a good time running around in the woods and coasteering along the shores of Lake Allatoona. Lots of climbing over rocks and some really cool whacks. We saw some guys that got their Jeep Cherokee stuck in the lake...yes, I said IN the lake. Sigh... My only complaint about our little jaunt is that I got some nasty little chiggers in my socks and they ITCH! Oh, and the spiders. Tomorrow I'm going riding...

Overmountain Extreme Race Recap

So, to get things kicked off, I guess we'll post our most recent race. The Overmountain Extreme AR was a 30-hr race based out of Morganton, NC. After a bit of a mid-summer lull away from racing, Lisa, James and Bryan were ready to get back into things and took on the course.

The official splits and finishing times haven't come in yet, but the team crossed the finish in first place approx 3.5 hrs before the next competitors, Rock Creek Outfitters, then all male Checpoint Zero and Might Dog soloist Chip Whitworth), followed by then Black Dome (formerly Litespeed).

Courese overview map here:
http://www.firewater50.com/omear/OME-II-map.jpg

Lisa's original report was posted to TrailBlazers' Message board, but I'm reposting it here:
First off, hats off to Michele and Chris for putting together a spectacular course. The scenery, course layout, and mix of disciplines were first rate. The weather was also PERFECT, so I couldn't have thought of a better way to spend my weekend. The start was at the Grandfather Mountain visitor center, however, this wasn't the "official" race start. Due to safety concerns of the Grandfather Mountain management, we couldn't be timed on this leg of the race, so our actual start time began when we reached Serenity Farm on the other side of the mountain. This meant that we could take our time, enjoy the trail and the scenery, with our only concern being losing daylight. I think I can speak for everyone when I say that this was a FABULOUS way to start the race. Low stress, easy warmup, and an awesome trail with cables, ladders and amazing views. We took our time and were probably one of the last teams to leave the parking lot, and ended up being the seventh team to leave Serenity Farm. Black Dome (aka LiteSpeed) had left before us, which was what we were hoping, so if we caught them, we'd actually be ahead of them in race time. We hoped the same would be true of Rock Creek, but we found them doing mapwork along the trail a few hundred feet from the TA. We left Serenity Farm on our bikes just a few minutes ahead of them, headed for the Wilson Creek trail. The ride was fast and fun, with a lot of downhill. We overshot the turnoff to Wilson Creek by maybe 1/3 of a mile due to me enjoying the descent too much and not paying attention to the map. We backtracked and picked up the trail and immediately ended up in traffic as several teams were scurrying around looking for CP 4. We went straight to the correct hilltop and James spotted the CP immediately, although with Black Dome and Rock Creek in the vicinity, we waited until they were out of sight to go pick up the point. We made our way up a steep pitch on the Wilson Creek trail, then it was down, down, down (did I mention Waa hooo!!!) towards our next TA near Mortimer. Black Dome caught us on the ride down and we rolled into the TA together. With a quick change of shoes and some food we were off onto what appeared to be a 12-15 mile trek in the same general area as last years trek. Black Dome quickly passed us as we all got caught up in a train of 20 something slow moving boy scouts. We lost sight of them, but figured it was for the best as we like to work alone. We then ran into Chris Brown who was advising all teams to attack CP 10 from the creek level. We did this but in my opinion, could have saved a lot of time just staying on the trail and dropping in from above. After hitting CP 10, we backtracked to the Mountains to Sea trail and, remembering the access trail from last year, decided to attack CP 9 from above. We picked up CP 9 and then continued along a trail to FS 58 where we picked up CP 8. From CP 8, we bushwhacked down to North Harper Creek and picked up a trail for a short while. We headed west a bit and then started an uphill whack towards Lost Cove Cliffs. It was a bit steep, thick and overgrown in places but it got the job done and we hit the trail just west of CP 7. We picked up the CP and climbed out on the rocks for an INCREDIBLE 360 degree view. After taking in the scenery it was back to work as we headed down the trail towards CP 6. We ran into Black Dome coming up FS 464 as we were on our way down. We wondered why they were coming from that direction, but figured we had a bit of a jump on them. After a LONG downhill run on FS 464 we picked up CP 6 and then headed back towards the TA on the Yellow Buck trail. Our legs were taking a pounding from all the downhills but we knew we had to keep the pace high if we wanted to stay ahead of our chasers. The final push over Yellow Buck Mountain and the descent down the other side was pretty painful but it also meant we were about to get off our feet. Back at the TA, it was another quick change of shoes and some pizza to go and we were off on a long biking leg. Having to pay the trail toll at some point, we were faced with several long climbs on this section. We made our way to CP 12, which was pretty well occluded by the vegetation. We then decided to head down to the Mountains to Sea trail to save some distance getting over to Table Rock. We had some difficulty picking up the trail, as the maps weren't completely accurate where the trail junction was. We went down to a waterfall but didn't see the blazes so we headed back towards the camping area to see if we had just missed the trail. We got some sketchy trail intel from an old guy, but it turned out to be correct and we headed back to the waterfall where we then spotted the white blazes on the trees and made our crossing. We dragged our bikes up the rocks to the top of this little waterfall and crossed the river. With dusk approaching, we though about how tough that crossing would have been in the dark. Once on the MTS trail we began what can only be described as pure evil. A nice hike-a-bike up a 20-30 degree incline for close to 3/4 mile. As we stauntered our way up at about .0001 mph, we wondered whether the longer route to Table Rock may have been the better choice (after talking to Chris and other teams afterwards, it turned out the MTS trail was the way to go but it still really sucked). Dripping with sweat and our upper bodies worked before even touching a paddle, we finally arrived at CP 13. Oh sweet road, how I love thee! We get a nice gradual gravel road climb and then we hit the steep paved stretch up to Table Rock. This was pretty evil too, but after riding up Brasstown Bald last weekend, we were all able to make it to the top without shedding tears, talking to God, etc. We do a quick shoe change and up we go to what I'm thinking is the final challenge to the race (its all downhill after that, right?). We crest Table Rock Mountain and head back down, hop on our bikes and fly back down the paved road (Waa hoo again!). We didn't see any other teams on the out and back, so we were feeling good and knew we just needed to keep it steady and not do anything stupid..like crashing on a pile of logs obscured by weeds on an overgrown roadbed... Ok, that didn't happen but it was going through my head as we had to chase Goble down the weedy overgrown road to FS 118. Once on FS 118, the road conditions improved a bit and it was a long, winding ride back to Fish Hatchery Rd. We kept the momentum up and moved well on this section. We managed not to get swallowed up by any of the abrupt 10' deep washouts on the road and hit the TA before midnight. Once at the TA at Lake James, we were greeted by a bag of greasy, cheesy, yummy burgers from Hardees. Did I mention Chris ROCKS! We quickly ingest 700 calories each and hop into our canoe for a calm evening paddle on Lake James. We tossed around the idea of portaging the large penisula, but figured we had a decent cushion, so we opted to park our butts in the canoe and just paddle around. We again felt good as we didn't see any other teams out on the lake while we were out there. We picked up the four lake CP's and portaged our boat to the final TA where Chris and our bikes were waiting for us. We had to load the boat and gear on the truck before we could leave the TA, but we were soon off on the final short bike section that would take us back into Morganton. Needless to say, this went a lot faster than the bony river paddle we were hit with last year. There were a couple of climbs on our way back in, but it was a pretty quick ride and the thought of a victory made us move just bit faster. It was probably a good thing that the Taco Bell and Wendy's were closed, or we may have had to make a pit stop. We arrived at the finish at 3:30 a.m., greeted by Chris and Michele and some delicious burgers and hotdogs. We refueled, then took a short nap until the early morning when other teams started coming in. We sat around and ate some more and exchanged war stories with our fellow competitors. Everyone seemed to be in good spirts, although based on the way everyone was hobbling around, we were all pretty beat up physically. What was really cool about this race was that there were several teams that obtained all the points before the cutoff. It packed enough punch to thoroughly challenge the fastest teams, but it was also doable for a lot of the mid-pack teams as well. Everyone who came in seemed to display a large sense of accomplishment. It was tough but I'd sign up again in a heartbeat. (just not today, as I'm having difficulty going up and down the stairs) Thanks again to Chris and Michele for their efforts in putting on this event. I'd highly recommend this one to everyone next year. The area is beautiful and Chris puts together great courses.

Bryan followed up with his own comments:
Michele and Chris B, As everyone has already stated, I can't salute you guys enough for having designed one of the most well-balanced course as I've ever been on. I thought last year's course was really nice, but this one took it to another level. You really, really spoiled us early with the untimed hike (I'm really glad it ended up being that way) over the Grandfather Mountain range with several amazing views and the subsequent descent/singletrack. I was kicking myself the whole race for not having packed a camera but I can't say you didn't tell us to bring one ahead of time. I found that "The Wall" was much more fun descending than ascending. I knew we'd be forced to pay the piper at some point and we certainly did later. But it was well worth it. Those views were absolutely amazing. Apologies to Black Dome for a small bit of deception and bad acting around CP 4, but we are a bit calloused for ending up on the short side of information sharing in our last few races. Good on ya' for figuring it out so promptly.
The trek took quite a bit out of me physically, but it sounds like our clockwise route decision/guess and whacking ended up playing to our favor. By the time we got back to the bikes, our knees were destroyed and personally, I had been reduced to a puddle of goo. James bailed me out on my sub-par performance on the subsequent bike ride, but that's what he's there for, right? Holy-shitballs... I was not thrilled with the hike-a-bike up especially knowing that we still had to climb up to Table Rock ahead Every step was a struggle. As a matter of fact, I can't really recall too much between there and the base of the climb up to Table Rock. Thank god it was paved otherwise I'd just have been spinning in place, I think. I was re-fried. At the bike drop, I remember telling Chris B which finger I was planning to apply my CP fingernail polish to. The hike to the top was pretty enjoyable. Wish we could have seen it in daylight. I know, I'm greedy.
The run & ride back down was significantly more fun than it had been the other direction. Coming down the overgrown road was a bit stressful at first but after a while I got kinda tired of the stress, wanted to get done with racing, I was tired of breaking spider webs, and my fingers hurt so just let go of the breaks. I figured that if I didn't see an obstacle and hit something, the ground would break my fall all the same whether at 5 or 15 mph. Glad we didn't have to find out. I'll put it on the record that I had pity for those without HID's on that whole descent. I agree with Jay that FS118 went on forever and ever, but it wasn't so bad bc at worst there were short, rolling hills and mostly descents. We cruised into the paddle TA looking forward to giving our legs a break... maybe too much.
Chris Randall met us there and provided us with glorious sustenance in the form of Hardees burgers. I think I had a mushroom swiss burger, but I don't remember tasting it. Chris R. helped get our updated maps together and we set off on the lake. We saw the portage option but played things safe and simply got the points in order instead. After hearing some of the other team's war stories, I'm kinda glad we skipped the optional portage. We bagged the points without much trouble and headed towards a bonfire on the shore, where the portage trail was. We warned the campers about all of the activity that was gonna be coming through there all night, but it sounds like they stayed put. Once we got the boat up and over the road, it was nothing but fun through the kudzu. The final cruise through downtown Morganton was pretty enjoyable as far as road rides at the end of races go.
Can you ask for more than hot dogs & hamburgers and a place to hang after a race? I can hear Neal saying "Guiness", but he's just greedy too. Congrats to everyone who raced, finished and everything in between. Thanks to Chris Randall, James, Lisa and all the volunteers along the course. It was a gem of a race and those that missed out really, really missed out. Make space for it in 2007.


Many more reports and comments regarding the race can be found on the TrailBlazers website:
http://www.trailblazerar.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2445

Welcome to the team's new blog

Apparently everyone's got one and we don't like getting left behind, so here we are with our own new & shiny team blog. We're used to starting a little behind and moving up towards the top of the ranks, so hopefully we'll be able to put something together that will hold your interest over the long haul. And if we don't, oh well, at least it's not reflective of our actual racing.
So instead of clinging to our hopes that every major media outlet would start taking notice of our accomplishments and report upon it, we've decided to do our best to become our own outlet.

Hello World!