TRAINING LEAD-UP
Sunday, Nov 7:
Co-hosted a Chad1000X workout with Cabarrus Ruck Club at Mountain Island Fitness, to raise awareness and funds to fight veteran suicide.
Shannon and I both went for the 500X, since we had Rucking World Championships coming up and didn't want to burn out our quads. I used a 20# plate and a 10-inch step. I did reps of other exercises in lieu of the other 500 steps... 4x90s OH hold with the 20# ruck, 4x10 front raises with a 10# plate, 25 calf raises with 20#, 4x25 V-leg extensions, 10x22 10-in incline pushups half slick and half with 20#.
That night, I did 3.5 miles easy with a 30# ruck in Ballistic trainers.
Tuesday, Nov 9:
I did the PATHFINDER Compete PT challenge (first set) with 48 pushups in 2 min, 82 situps in 2 min, 16 push presses with a 60#SB and 30#R, 11 squat cleans with a 60#SB, 85s of dead hang with a 30#R, and a 2 mile run in 14:35 in the Adidas Boost Adios, early in the morning.
In the evening, I did the HDT coalition November workout, including 1 mile of rucking in 16:29, 2x15 min AMRAPs focused on legs then arms, and then a little sprint drill, wearing MACV1s.
Friday, Nov 12:
The USNWC had a free clinic on maps, where we learned how to plot points. We already knew how to do this, but it was good to get a preview of the map that we'd be using the next day. It was huge.
Saturday, Nov 13:
LONG CREEK ADVENTURE RACE
Shannon, Alicia, and I signed up for the 72 hour Sea to Sea Adventure Race, without ever having done an Adventure Race before, so we decided that it would be quite beneficial to at least find one adventure race to do prior to the Sea to Sea to learn more about this style of event and gain experience.
The Long Creek Adventure Race hosted at the USNWC ended up being a great introductory event for us. We went for the 4-hour version instead of the 8-hour version, largely because we didn't want to burn ourselves out before RWC. It still gave us a taste of the paddling, trekking, and biking disciplines, route planning, strategy, gear considerations, and navigation, though.
It turns out that we were allowed to leave gear at the pavilion where the event started and finished. That meant that we didn't practice using our large packs (which were overkill for a race of this duration anyways), but we decided to take advantage of the freedom to do so and make it easier for ourselves.
We plotted our points and double-checked our plots. It turns out that the race would start with a mandatory run (no biking allowed) to the first waypoint, after which we could do whatever we wanted before crossing the finish line some time before the 4 hour time cap. When we found out about that mandatory requirement, that changed our route plan, but that was fine. It's interesting how one little twist can change your plans, though.
From there, people started making different decisions about where to go next. We chose to venture into the trail system for a control point not too far away. The trail forks in multiple places. Fortunately, we picked the correct fork to start, and used direction and distance to validate that we were where we thought we were on the map.
From there, we tried to rely on the map's rendering of the turns of the trail, and tried to use a seeming 90 degree left turn as a landmark for where we should turn off trail to look for the control point. That strategy ended up not working out well. Trails drawn onto maps aren't super accurate and are often not complete (as new trails are added to the physical world). We considered trying to follow the contour lines, because the control point was supposed to follow the same contour that we were on, but we didn't see where this was happening in the physical world. The contours looked different. There were some extra trails in the physical world. We followed one for a while until it seemed like we had gone too far. We followed a different one. We went off-trail in the expected direction, trying to look. No luck. There were several other teams there, too, and no luck for them, either.
We spent more time than we normally would've wanted to, trying to find this point, probably because this was the first ever point we had really tried to find in our first ever AR, and we didn't want to start off with a did-not-find. We had given up and had started going back, when we came across other teams who had found where it was, so we followed them and found it, far off from where we had been looking. After the event, we had realized that using the topography of a nearby peak (which I had tried to do when we were in the middle of bushes, but far away from the actual peak on the map), would've been the most reliable landmark for knowing where to turn off trail. Lesson learned. It sucked up way too much time, but we had found our second point, and had learned a good lesson.
After getting this point, our next priority was to hit the kayaking portion, because it's not often that you get a chance to practice that discipline, especially when it comes to navigating and finding locations by boat. Biking and hiking, you get more opportunities to do. We also didn't want to run into a situation where there would be a backlog for getting into the boats, or mismanage our time on boat, since that's where we felt like time management would be list predictable, with currents and our overall newness to paddling.
I had kayaked in the area before at TuckFest 2018, so I at least knew about the island around the corner of which our first waypoint could be found.
That one was pretty straightforward, but the next one was not. It looked like the next one was at the tip of an island that you could get to from either the inland side or the main waterway side. We went along the inland side but got landlocked. Who knows if the water levels had changed over time since the time that the map was created, or if something else happened.
Rather than backtrack, we got creative and portaged to the other side of the land. My foot slipped while I tried to lift the boat onto land, and my feet got wet, but at least I got it over with, so I didn't mind being the designated wader after that.
When we did our portage, we discovered that we seemed to be in a park area, and there were other kayaks docked there. We had just gotten there a different way. We realized that we were more upstream than expected, and that we were likely not far away from the furthest control point. It was different from the one we had been shooting for, but since we were there, we might as well go for it, and we decided that it might be faster if we tackle the remaining distance by foot, since we were already on land. We noted the manmade rectangular features on the map, and made our way to what turned out to be a bridge that you could get under either by foot or by boat. That's where we found the point.
We ran back to the boat and headed down the river again. We found the control point that we had been looking for originally. After finding it, we decided on a codeword we'd use to signal each other if we spotted a point, as to not tip off other teams.
There was one other water-based point, but it was really far away, and seemed to require navigation through marshes with creek branches that could become a maze, and potentially low water level areas that would be tough to paddle through. We decided to skip it, return the kayak, and run back to the start, to pick up our bikes.
We biked down the parkway and left onto Belmeade Drive. We had the map wheel to estimate distances on the map, and watched our travel distance on our bike computers. We stopped at the creek, on the side that we had plotted the point on. I spotted the flag on the opposite side of the creek, though, so we backtracked back to the other end of the bridge, and SB made her way down to get the point while I watched the bikes. I was pretty sure that I had plotted it accurately, so I'm guessing the water might've moved? That was another good experience to have. Water can move (as we learned with that "island" that wasn't an island anymore, too).
We continued down Belmeade, trying to be safe and staying far to the right to avoid cars. I was looking for a road on the right that was the pre-stop for our next point. There wasn't actually a road! Fortunately, I spotted the flag hanging off a tree in someone's yard, so I rode in, and we got the checkpoint.
We still had plenty of time, so we decided to go for the far bike point, which we hadn't originally planned to do. We tried to use side roads of neighborhoods where possible, to avoid the most heavily trafficked roads. At times, we had no choice but to be on the busier roads, though. We rode down to what ended up being a mini cemetery, and found the point. Quite interesting!
On the way back, it looked like there was a shortcut option that would've required a bit of bushwhacking but would've saved us distance. We tried it, but ran into a private road that prohibited outsiders. We ended up having to backtrack, but that's the nature of route choice and strategy. Sometimes, you have to take risks. Sometimes, it works out in your favor, and you save time. Other times, you end up wasting time when it doesn't work and you have to backtrack and complete your originally planned route. I think some experienced AR people have rules of thumb to help you make these decisions with some kind of consistent rule, so that there's less time used up on debate or second-guessing... like needing a 4:1 savings, or something. It was a good thing to consider, try, and experience, though.
We got back with about 30 minutes to spare. We got 8/9 checkpoints, which we were happy about. There were only two in the all-female 2-man division for the 4-hour race, but we did get first in our division! There was another newbie team there, too. It's fun to see all kinds of people come out for this fun and whacky event format.
In all, we covered about 4 miles of running/walking, 2 miles of paddling, and 11 miles of biking.
It was a great first AR experience, and even in such a short event, we learned some great lessons.
- Water moves, so don't be surprised if water is in a different place than where it's drawn on the map
- Trails are not drawn accurately, and may not be complete
- Topo is more reliable than anything else
- Portaging is a nice tool in the toolbox during paddling
- Use of the codeword for spotting CPs
- Biking safety
- Risk vs reward in route gambles
GUN RUN NIGHT OPS
As if that wasn't enough fun, we had another event scheduled that day, in Old Fort, NC, near Asheville.
We checked in for the safety brief, but we were scheduled to be the last runners to step off, so we had time to kill before it was our turn. Just like at USNWC, it was the prettiest time of year, with the leaves as colorful as they come.
We started with a rope climb, with full kit, in the dark, and then we ran to stage 1. There, we had our choice of rifle or pistol, and we had to go through an outdoor shoot house of sorts (a series of tunnels and more open areas), to hit the 6x bad guys with 2 hits each, while not shooting 2x good guys. I went slowly, to make sure I was positively IDing the good vs the bad guys. If you fail to shoot any of the bad guys enough time or shoot a good guy, you DNF the stage. I passed this one, and there was a 68% pass rate.
We ran down the trails, following led lights that marked the path. At one point, near a series of buildings, it wasn't super clear where to go, but fortunately, I figured it out.
At the second stage, there were rifle shots downrange, with some shoots and some no-shoots, and you had to distinguish between the two. I passed, and there was a 68% pass rate again.
At the third stage, we weren't allowed to use lights, so my night sights on my pistol came in handy, and there was enough ambient light and stage-provided light to see and hit the rifle targets. I passed, and there was a 78% pass rate.
The fourth stage was a long distance shooting stage. There was a lot of far shooting to do in a short amount of time, and I timed out. Smoke obscuring the view was an unexpected factor. Afterwards, someone gave a tip that stepping to the side of the smoke would help you get away from it. This one had a 47% pass rate.
We had a nice run in the woods after this, to get back towards the start area. I remember how I felt running through the woods with the gun and a headlamp, and it was exhilarating. There was one part of the trail where maybe the marking lights had gone missing, because it was't super clear where to go. I tried to look for blazed path through the downed leaves. I eventually found it, and carried on.
The fifth stage was also hard, with lots of pistol shooting to do in a short amount of time. It wasn't too far, but my pistol shooting wasn't great at the time, so I missed more than I should. There was a 42% pass rate on this one.
We had one last rope climb after this, before we ran into the finish.
I had so much fun with this. I can see why people really love the Night version of GunRuns. It's definitely a unique experience, running through the woods with a gun at night, and encountering different kinds of shooting stages in that environment. It feels different. The weather is chilly, too. Overall, I finished 44th out of 59th. After we finished, we were so glad we got to do this. It was such a cool experience.
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