Spring Bloom

 Today, Sonja and I participated in Broad Run Off Road's Spring Bloom adventure race. We did the no-bike option as we have plenty of hobbies already. We don't need another one. We have thought how funny it would be to sign up but show up with our fixie bikes. But then we saw some of the bike trails today.

I'll tell you the end up front: we got 15 points (1 point per control) and placed 13th out of 29 two-person teams and 25th out of 49 total for the no-bike option. We're getting better!

The race was 5 hours long. All of us no-bikers had to start with the paddle. If you, dear reader(s), remember my report from BROR's Fall Foliage, Sonja and I suck at paddling. But not today. We actually did pretty well!

My iPhone stopped tracking us as soon as we got in the water, so I had to use Google Maps at home to see how far we paddled. We got controls P1-3 on the map (below). Ended up canoeing 5km! 

Once we got back to the paddle S/F, we dumped the canoe and ran to the picnic area where we changed into rain jackets (because yes, rain again) and began the trekking leg. We entered trekking 1:25 into the race. 

Everything to the east of the railroad tracks (going up the fold in the pic above) we got, in order, T1-5. We did all that in only 46 minutes, which is great for us. We got our first "bike" checkpoint (B1) at 2:23 race time. (Us no-bikers were allowed to get B controls; those doing the full adventure race could only get controls when they were on the proper leg.) T6 took a minute; the hint was firewood, but there was a Boy Scout troop in that area. I assumed they wouldn't want us to walk through their camp, but sure enough, the control was in it. We almost missed it but one young man said "Did you get that one?" and pointed to their camp. Thanks, Scout!

Then we were on the other side of the tracks at around 2:30. So half done. T7 was easy, but T12 was harder. We were on the road going for T11 when I told my wife about the marshy T12. That one, unfortunately, took us 22+ minutes. Not because we couldn't find it. We saw it clearly, but the whip vines and the fact that we were on the wrong side resulted in us taking more time than we hoped. We then hopped back on the road and headed to T10. After T10 we went back to the trail. Initial plan was to turn left, hit B5, then T9, B2, maybe T8, B3, T7 then back to Finish. 

But we decided to turn right. Sonja wanted to go for a "far one." And we did. But T10 to B6 took us 21 minutes, and we had to cross about 200m of muddy and slippery wooden 2x4's. I really thought it would have taken us longer. But from T10 to B6 to B5 was a total of 41 minutes. I wonder if we could have gotten T9 and B3 in that time (2 points rather than 1)? Oh well. It was still fun. 

We still got B5 and then headed to S/F. We clocked in at 4:42.35, so didn't lose any points for being late!