The cabin was pretty much like I expected with a few exceptions like no hot water, and two windows that would not close at all. The open windows meant dust and debris was blown inside and so we spent a while wiping down the mattresses and tables and cleaning up some bugs that were dead on the floor. Not the greatest welcome but it would have been much better in the light (and warmth) of day. We reorganized some furniture (read mattresses) and soon Jordan was tucked in snuggly next to Mom and Jennifer was wrapped up tight on the bunk above us. We used the Rubbermaid totes with our gear in it to make the pullout for the bottom bunk with the mattress on top. It worked great for Jordan. Darrick was along for the ride and to stay with the kids while I was out racing so he had the nice room with windows and space heater all to himself. : ) I slept pretty well but just not long enough. My mind was already working on logistics and plans for the race and the rest of the weekend.
Saturday morning at 7:00 am I walked one cabin over to the Race HQ where I registered with the race officials and got my race bib. The official race briefing was scheduled for 8:30 am and so I had about an hour to get my gear situated before the other two members of Team Farside arrived from their hotel in Whitehall. Rich Zak and Steve Perez and I made up Team Farside for the Breakout 24 Adventure Race (AR). We have only raced together once before at the Thunder Rolls 2006. That was a 36 hour race and we did very well on the course. See my blog entry for September 2006.
Race briefing was short and sweet with the most interesting part the fact that the race was comprised of 3 Stages: JJ Stage, Muskegon Stage, and Owasippe Stage. All three were optional and all control points (CP’s) were optional. In other words, you could do as little or as much as you wanted and if you skipped an entire stage there was no penalty. The only drawback was once you turned in your passport for a stage you could not go back out to get any more of the CP’s for that stage. We had three stages, three maps, three people and about four hours to plan our race. We got busy plotting the UTM’s that were given and then marking the route we would take for each stage. (Note: Here is where I feel we made a fundamental error by not considering the total number of CP’s possible and the total number for each stage by difficulty.)
We discussed our plans, finished prepping for the first stage, and loaded up to start. We opted to do the JJ Stage first since it did not have reflective tape on the CP’s and so we didn’t want to be doing that stage in the dark. The Muskegon stage was the furthest away from HQ’s but it had a “dead zone” between 8pm-11pm where no one could be on Lake Muskegon. We thought that we should do it in the daylight also so put that last on our list. Owasippe was closest (actually a part of the camp we stayed at) and so we decided to do it at night. We divided up the three stages giving each stage 8 hours (we did not figure in TA time!) to find as many CP’s as we could.
1:00 pm Saturday: We are off on our bikes headed out to our first CP. We actually did really well on the first section finding CP’s 15-13 relatively easily howbeit with much physical exertion as we pedaled through fine Michigan sand up the gas pipeline. We missed three CP’s that we “knew” we should have found but other than that we did really well. One CP we skipped by choice after several teams we met along the way said no one had been able to find it after hours of searching. We were already pushing our 8 hour time limit. In all, we found 9 of the 13 points on the course but spent more than our 8 hours because of not giving enough time for the trek back to HQ after the last CP. Lots of sandy riding Saturday and we finally reached the HQ TA around 10:30pm. Well past our 9pm ETA. It started getting really cold on the ride back which prompted each of us to layer up for the next stage trekking and orienteering in Owasippe. It was totally dark when we hit the course and we thought we had a good plan by only attempting those that we would be able to do without getting wet. Three points were by paddle and portage and they were stretched out pretty far. We thought that the effort and pay off of just those three was not worth it for the risk of getting wet, chilled, and exhausted by the portage. 11pm at night after riding hard all day is not a good time to stop and take a break because I didn’t want to go out into the cold again and thankfully Rich was our motivator. We got trekking and in the dark it was not easy going but we managed to find several CP’s in the dark before dawn arrived and we were once again out of time. (NOTE: We should have been more flexible on the time issue. We only spent 5 hours on Owasippe stage and it had the potential to gain us all 15 CP’s) We decided that we would be more successful on the Muskegon stage because the light was arriving and the CP’s should be easier to find as the terrain was not so dense. Back to HQ to turn in our passport and get the new one for Muskegon. I remember thinking that tired is tired no matter if you are on foot or on a bike. Steve watched me fall asleep on the bike (two hour bike to the paddle put-in) at least twice as pedaled down the blacktop headed toward Lake Muskegon. We arrived at the paddle TA where we found out that our Kayak was still over on the other stage along with our gear (paddles, PFD’s, etc) so the volunteer at the TA called and told us we had about 30 minutes to wait and it would be taken off our time. I got a nap!! We arrived at the TA around 6:30am and it was 7:30am before we were on the water. I was in the kayak and Steve and Rich were in the canoe. Our gear bag never made it so we used the Boy Scout gear that was with the canoes. Off we went toward our first CP, USS Silversides. We had no problems through the channel from the canoe launch to the entrance to Lake Muskegon but as soon as we hit the main lake the waves and wind really picked up. The rules stated that we had to stay within 100 ft of the shoreline. But the wind kept blowing me out and I spent all of my energy keeping from drifting into the middle of the lake! I wished I was in the aluminum canoe!! The guys were getting further and further ahead of me and I was in the light weight easy paddle.
To Be Continued...
