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Start Time 4am
Prologue
Everyone started the race at the Gate TA for a prologue to break up the teams a bit. It consisted of one member from each team (Coolrunnings for us) on a bike loop (sprinting) of about 1.5 miles. It was freezing cold, somewhere in the low 40s and Matt left his full gloves back at the S/F so he had to race back to get them, otherwise is fingers might have frozen solid. For the first leg we had to pack everything we needed on our backs for the first bike leg, first trek, and paddle. The most difficult part of all of this packing was getting our paddles secured to our packs. Matt made it back to the Gate TA just as Brian was finishing the 1.5 mile bike sprint and then we were off as a team.
Bike Leg 1
We only had to pick up 2 CPs before dropping our bikes off at the Bike TA, so it was a relatively short leg. We got to CP1 without a problem and I thought CP 2 was at the Ranger House, (I was not the navigator and should have consulted the map and Matt, navigation error number 1) so we hammered the pedals all the way to the Ranger House before realizing we blew CP2 by almost a mile. We then had to double back to get CP2 which probably cost us 15 minutes. We eventually made it to the Bike TA, dropped our bikes and were off to Trek #1.
Trek 1
CP3 was listed on our main map as next to a big body of water and we saw a bunch of other teams bushwhacking around the water so we decided to join them. Eventually we consulted our orienteering map and saw that there were a couple bodies of water and we were not even close to where CP3 was actually located. After that error we continued on to find the remaining trek CPs. I think it was a little over 4 miles on this first trek. One highlight was treking down an old railroad grade in the dark, which was pretty overgrown and littered with downed trees and exposed roots. All those obstacles slowed us down considerably and almost cost us our ankles.
We finally made it to the Paddle TA around 6:40am... it was still blistering cold.
Paddle
It was still dark and extremely foggy on the water so we had to shut our lights off. We tried to take it slow to avoid rolling our canoe (which was short and drew a ton of water so it was pretty tough to get it up to any real speed). And then it happened, 10 minutes into the paddle we hit a log and rolled our damn canoe launching us all into the freezing cold water. Brian was so shocked by the cold that he tried to jump back into the canoe that was completely submerged. We finally got him out, righted the canoe and began freezing. After another 10 minutes of paddling, we plowed into another submerged log, rolled the damn canoe again and got passed by a team.
At that point the sun was coming up and we were finally able to see, fortunately we made through the rest of the paddle without rolling the canoe again. On the downside we were completely frozen and lost feeling in our fingers and toes. The paddle was going fine, averaging roughly 4 miles an hour, until we blew by the CP that was off the river and back on the railroad grade. We thought that we were just on the wrong finger of the water and ended up portaging our canoe to a different finger which was landlocked. This forced us to backtrack quite a bit. Navigation error number 2. 3 teams passed us as we were paddling back to find the CP.
The next CP was number 12 located on the little Wekiva. We paddled past the spot where we were supposed to get out of our canoes, drag them over a log and find the CP. This worked out well though because we happened upon CP13 which many teams were trying to get on foot, which we think took longer because they had to do a bit of bushwhacking to get to it. We headed back toward CP 12, picked it up and passed about 4-5 teams which were off looking for 13. Bonus!
The rest of the CPs on the paddle were pretty easy and led us back the S/F. Some of the paddle CPs required us to do a bit of treking on the banks of the river which had us thigh high in some of worst smelling decomposing muck on the planet. There was particularly memorable pit that Matt got his leg stuck and when we finally got him back into the canoe his leg was covered in what looked and smelled like elephant diarrhea, that stuff was an olfactory pain for the rest of the paddle.
After the paddle we each had to do a rock climbing wall and take a team picture before starting out on Trek 2. At that point the sun was finally starting to thaw us out of the early stages of hypothermia. Before starting the next leg of the race we quickly stopped by our camp to change into dry shoes, chug down electrolytes and slam some calories.
Trek 2
The CPs were pretty easy to find, especially because we could see the mowed down grass where the teams before us had bushwhacked to the CPs. The only one we had difficulty with was CP19 (I think) which was located off the trail through some thick bushes. CP20 was also pretty rough because we had to slog though ankle deep mud and swamp water to the end of a peninsula.
For the middle of the trek we were running along with Team Flight who would have placed second had they not been penalized.
Bike 2
I think we made it to second bike leg around noon and thought we had plenty of time to knock out the rest of the race. It was all going well until we got completely lost looking for CP27. We must have ridden an extra 45 minutes looking for that damn CP until we stumbled upon team Fl Xtreme, who knew exactly how to get there. If it wasn't for those guys we never would have completed the course.
It was 2:50pm by the time we picked up CP28 and we didn't know if we were going to be able to have time to get CP29 on our way back to the S/F because it was 3.5 miles out of the way. We had been riding in really sandy conditions which is gruelling. We were also beat as hell and thought about skipping it. We took a look at the path that had CP29 and it looked pretty compact so we hammered the pedals out to CP29 hoping we could complete the course in time. After picking up that CP my legs were beginning to fail and we got a chance to test our freshly fabricated tow system when I attached my bike to Coolrunning's bike for the ride back to the gate TA.
After that it was smooth sailing on our way back to the S/F.
We ended up completing the course in 11 hours and 45 minutes.
When we got back to the S/F Bart, Leah and Kelly had hot pizza and cold beer waiting for us which was the greatest thing we had seen all day.
End Time 3:45pm
All in all it was a great race and our longest to date. I figure we lost a solid 1.5 hours due to navigation errors. Hopefully it won't happen again, but I doubt it.
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