On October 14, wife and I did the Fall Foliage Adventure Race. This group (Broad Run Off Road) puts on two a year and offers a "no bike" option, which is nice. Most adventure races have at least three elements: foot, water, bike. Bikes are kinda expensive so it is nice to be able to try one of these out w/o having to commit to two mountain bikes. (The organizers provide the kayaks/canoes.) It was a blast. Usually these races have stages that you progress through, e.g. stage one Trek to the boats for stage two, then get out of the boats for stage three, trek again. But as our area didn't get enough rain and the lake wasn't full enough, the organizer decided to make ours a "choose your own adventure" type race. 18 checkpoints (CP), get them in any order. The only rule being if the CP is blue, you have to get that from a boat.
There were 49 teams, from solo to a team of four (and lots of families with kids which was great to see). To prevent all 49 teams (100-odd people) from hitting the trails or boats at the same time, the organizers devise a puzzle to delay the start. Last year they gave every team a Lego set (number of pieces based on size of team, I believe) and you had to build it then turn it in before you could start. This year, each team got a lock with their team number on a tag and you had to use a hint sheet to figure out the lock's combo, then go turn both the lock and the tag in before you could start. Wife and I solved ours in less than a minute! We chose to Trek first.
We knocked the first five CPs out in about an hour and had to make a choice: continue around the lake? (We were only about a quarter around.) Run back and get a boat? We decided to go back and get a boat. We ran back, got the canoe in the water, and to the other side of the lake (it's about 3km long) in less than an hour. But we were horrible canoers. We couldn't go straight. Then we spent over 50 minutes finding a "land" CP from the shore, not getting lost but way off course (thus the 50 minutes), which got us just past 3 hours.
Time limit 4:30, and we didn't want to be late; 1 point lost for being late, then another point lost for every 5 min till you're 30 min late which means DQ. And each CP was only worth 1 point, so you really had to decide if that last CP you were going for was really worth losing its worth by showing up late.
We got a couple more CPs off the water and were about to start for another one when we realized we only had a half hour left and were about a kilometer from the boat launch, so we headed back, turned in the boat and ran to the finish.
Clocked in at 4:08.11. Somehow we only got credit for 10 CPs even though we went to 11. (The one we didn't get credit for, CP4, did only faintly beep so I think maybe the battery was dying.) Ended up covering 13.5km and a shit-ton of steps! And soaking wet as it rained the entire time.
Unsure if we'll do the one in Spring, but maybe? Oh, and before you ask, dear reader(s), No, swimming was not allowed. (It looked so nice, too, and close.)
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