[LabRat]

Team GLR (Greenville Lab Rats) returned to Modoc for the 2008 Western Carolina where we had a pretty good day over all. As usual the team was me and Jim Kelleher representing for Greenville.

Steve Marrone put on another wonderful adventure race...if you're not racing WCAR and/or SwampFox you are missing out on some of the best run, organized and challenging 12 hour AR's in the SouthEast.

The race started on Saturday at 7:00 am after dropping bikes at a park on the water for the boat/bike transition later that morning. Steve had us do a mini-O with 3 CP's to get our gear for the boat. We made two mistakes during this section. First I had us go the wrong way out of the start area. The most frustrating part of that was it was a pure lemming instinct ... following everyone else when I knew it was wrong. We quickly recovered after a few hundred feet and started our second mistake. Looking at the maps I recognized a checkpoint as last years boat launch...thinking that "he wouldn't launch from there again!" we went there to find...yep you guessed it...boats. We quickly turned around and ran to get the PFD at the furtherest point then the paddles at the next. We still got in the water maybe 11 or 12 overall.

We paddled to CP3 grabbed it quickly and headed to the open water. And yikes it was pretty rough (at least in my experience). With choppy waves, bass boats (there was an ESPN BassMaster tournament on the lake that day), and a beat-up (but very nice) rental boat we pulled to the left, as usual, and battled the waves. We may have passed one or two canoes on the trip to CP4.

The approach/attack on CP4 bought us great time. We knew from the last year the island was an atoll that had an easy 50ft portage to get from the approach side to the sheltered cove on the other where the CP was located. I think we surprised the volunteer (Gilligan) when we came up behind him from the woods carrying our canoe.

Here we received the "Canoe Trek" coordinates that would be our real strategic play. Steve is really good at making races interesting and this year was no exception...the canoe trek was four CP's (5,6,7, for which you could only get the coordinates from Gilligan at CP4. So if you skipped it for some reason you'd miss all the fun.

We quickly decided to take our chances on a land/water approach. The race director had noted that the rule regarding team participants staying together was not in effect for the canoe trek (following the trend at Blue Ridge AR last month). We beached the boat on a outcropping east of CP8, and I got out to go fetch them. Jim took the boat to meet me in the cove east of CP6. I ran to CP8 (easy, just off the beach), then CP7 (I got passed on the way to it, then found it first by going into the woods) coming right up on it perfect. Then i hi-tailed it back to CP5 through the woods, then to CP6. I took a bushwhack shortcut from CP6 to the cove where Jim should be waiting. Upon my arrival I can't find him!! After 5 or so minutes of looking we saw each other and he rowed the canoe over so we could fight the nasty waves over to CP2.

As we approached 2, we see Team CheckPoint Zero on shore still, we arrive on the shore shortly after they launch. We realized that we were actually really well placed in the paddle. If you know Jim and me, this was huge! We usually try to strategy out of paddling if we can b/c we aren't good at it.

We rowed across for CP1 and to the Bike TA. Picking up our bikes, we count boats...5 on the shore. Wow! We came out 6th...first of the male 2 person teams! We were in it this time.

The bike to 14 was easy, although the hidden CP caused a little head scratching. Mostly we just cursed the stinging nettles...wish i had worn my gaiters after all.

I screwed up coming out of 14 and took us to 16...when we meant to go to 9. It turns out that it probably wasn't as huge a mistake as i thought it was at the time, but i learned that i have to always mark my planned route on the map. And, yes Jim...i'm getting a bigger map case. We got 16 - easy in the little stream, then 19 was dead on (get it, it was at a cemetery). We then picked up 18 and rode like devils to 9 where we lost a lot of time on this easy CP.

I was starting to bonk a little and kept looking for CP10 terrain features here at 9, I even had Jim convinced we were looking for 10. Once we finally got some food in me and realized the mistake Jim took us right to it and then we headed toward 10. CP10 was our next real strategic move. We took the bikes with us to the CP, while everyone else we saw had left bikes at the river crossing and proceeded on foot. We weren't quite sure which side it was on since my plot had it in the dead center of the river, so we approached on the western side thru the recently burned forest (easier to push the bikes in). I told Jim we needed to cross the river and get on the other side and there was the CP above us. Perfect again. We rode/pushed almost a K to the road to the east and came out about 40 yards to the South of the road to 16. Another dead on CP (yeah, another cemetery - what's up with that Steve??).

We rode what looked like it should have been the same road from 16 to 13 but never found it. Bummer. It was getting late at this point and we wanted to get to the Trek portion so we dropped 11 and 17...thinking we could come down from the main road onto 18. We finally found the trail after deciding to go back to the road instead. At this point i'd been out of water for at least an hour and Jim's bladder just ran out so we took the safer route to a known good water source (Trek TA where our water was staged).

We had less than 2 hours until cut-off so we headed out to pick up two Trek CP's 21 and 26. We found 21 very quickly (wished we'd know that road connected with the trail though...we drew a lot of blood on the CP in the brambles). We shot a bearing to 26 and bushwhacked down to it, but never found it. We knew we were late and had to run back to the bikes, transition back to them and beat a fast path to the finish with less than an hour left.

We used our newly found knowledge of the road connecting to the trail that 21 was on to short cut back. My original plan to take the single track probably would have taken us to take way too long and the planned river crossing after 15 was iffy at best anyway. We got to the black top as fast as we could, outran the dogs and missed the right onto "Mims School Road" which, of course has a sign that actually reads "Washington School road" because that just makes sense...?? We met up with quite a few other teams looking for the Mims road (the only one we were allowed to have access to the highway separating us from the finish line) and climbed down into the railroad right-of-way and up the other (steeper) bank for a short burst into the finish. Jim had fun catching all the younger guys and passing them his long grey/white hair flowing behind him on the fast bike in...i was trailing behind shaking off cramps in my right leg...barely keeping up.

When we arrived we found ourselves 7 minutes after 6 pm. We picked up 16 CP's and got deducted one for our tardiness. With our 11 hour 6 minute race time and 15 CP's we came in third in our division of Male 2 person teams. - we were very happy!

Overall a fun, challenging race that we really enjoyed and, with a placing finish, we remain super excited about WCAR and Kando Adventures!

-jeff
_________________
I'm not really lost...I'm just sightseeing.
jeff papenfus
Team GLR

[Michael Darr]

Do you know who or how many CPs got first and second in the 2 person male?

We had to leave early and haven't seen any results. We (Gung Ho) got 18 CPs in 2 person male. I'll share our strategy when I get the recap written if you want it.

Michael Darr

[LabRat]

[jforest1]

Chris/Tim/Claire,

Interested in what strategy you guys took.

--josh
_________________
Get Nuked! Atomic AR by Fuji

http://www.TeamROCGear.com

"In adventure racing, there is no victory for one--the finish line can only be a triumph of many."

[Michael Darr]

Here is our team's recap (Gung Ho). Enjoyed the race and encourage others to race Kando races.



Gung Ho returned to Hamilton Branch State Park on the South Carolina side of Clarks Hill Lake for a chance to redeem a DNF from last year. The Western Carolina race moved to the Save the World race date in early May due to its cancellation and the weather was much nicer than the 105 degrees that knocked me out of last year’s race after 8 hours. Unfortunately our third amigo, Matt, couldn’t join us so Mitch and I went as a two man team.

Arriving the night before for the briefing and map handout, we were able to plot 16 of 26 CPs. 4 CPs would be handed out at one of the four known canoe CPs for a total of 8 canoe CPs and at a transition area there would be 6 CPs that could only be achieved via trekking.

Looking at the map and the CPs, it appeared there were two potential strategies after the canoe portion. One was clockwise that would be a lot more biking to get 8 CPs before getting to the 6 trekking CPs and the other would be 4 CPs and then the trekking. We decided to go for the counterclockwise route.

We had to leave our bikes in Parksville prior to the race start. We would finish the canoe section here and transition to bikes.

The race was to start at 7am with a cutoff time at 6pm. At 7:15am we were given 3 separate UTM coordinates on a whiteboard and told to go to these to get our PFD at one, paddles at another, and canoe at a third. We needed to go to the canoe last, but didn’t know which one had the canoe so after plotting them we chose to go to the closest one first, which turned out to be the canoes. Bummer! In retrospect this ended up beneficial as we were able to drop our full packs and do the 4 mile loop run to get the other items without that extra weight. Yes, 4 miles! So we didn’t get in the canoe until 8am and were about the 8th boat out.

It was a half mile to CP 3 and an easy find and then a 2 mile paddle in whitecap waters to CP 4. At this CP, we got 4 new CP coordinates and plotted them on the beach. 3 of the points were pretty straightforward but CP 7 would require a 1.5 mile round trip trek to get it. We canoed ½ mile to CP8 then ½ mile to CP5 and then 1 mile to CP6. These CPs were a little ways off the water but found quickly. We debated going for CP7 or not. Was it a red herring? We figured that to win we would need to get all the points so we went for it. Big mistake! CP7 was at the point in an inlet but there were several inlets and we went to the wrong one. My weakness as a navigator is that I never use a compass. This works fine for obvious landmarks but when traveling for significant distance over similar land features, it just doesn’t cut it. Once we were at the first inlet we realized where we needed to go but then overshot it, realized it and backtracked to get it. We probably wasted 15 minutes getting to it. On the way back we were doing fine and came down to an inlet but after crossing over realized this was the wrong inlet. After meeting another team, we got our bearings and got back on track toward our canoe. All in all I led us in the wrong direction at least twice that cost us 30 minutes and an extra 1.5 miles of bushwhacking. “Must use compass” I kept repeating to myself.

We canoed 3/4 mile to CP 2 and had about a ¾ mile round trip trek to get it that went much smoother. We decided to skip CP1 because of the debacle at CP7 and it would be an additional 1.5 miles of canoeing and directly into a 15 mph headwind for half the paddle. We finished the 1 mile to the transition area to be finally rid of the canoe. We appeared to be about the 15th canoe there. After some shoe changes and food, we left on the bikes at 11:30am.

We rode 4.5 miles to CP14 which was down a forest service road and along the mountain bike trail. We searched for 5 minutes and couldn’t find it before I spotted it down in a ravine, hidden from normal sight. We rode out and took the forest service roads to CP15 which was an easy find 2 miles from 14. We decided to back track using forest service roads instead of the trail for speed over miles. We got CP16 fine in a creek bed and rode on to get CP19 at a cemetery and then rode down Key Bridge road to the trek transition area. Everything was going smoothly and we arrived at the trek at 1:15pm with only about 4 sets of bikes there, meaning our strategy was in the minority. At this point we didn’t know if this was good or bad.

We got the 6 points and plotted them while we ate some food. We decided to get 5 of the 6 points since they were circular in nature and CP22 was way out of the way. We walked and ate the 1.5 miles to CP23. Feeling good we jogged the 1.5 miles to CP24 down a forest service road meeting one team going the other way. This was the first team we had seen in a long time. We found 24 just fine and bushwhacked 1/3 of a mile to CP25. This was a zip line across Stephens creek and there was no line. This is one of the cool aspects of Kando races. A zip line in the middle of nowhere! We enjoyed the 100 yard ride a lot and learned we were only the fourth group through. We walked and jogged down the trail to a break off point in a ravine and took it to find CP26 in the middle of the burnt forest. We bushwhacked from there to CP21, partially taking a forest service road. From CP21 we followed the old road down to the trail again and back to the bikes. We got back at 3:15pm after about a 6.5 mile trek in total. With less than 3 hours to go, 16 points in the bag, and a 1 hour bike back to the finish we had 2 hours to get several more points.

After some more food and drink, we began the 2 mile bike climb up Key bridge road and turned off it down an old road to CP18 near the gas pipeline. We continued down to the wine creek trail to try and get CP20 and CP17. We met several teams looking for CP20 which wasn’t a good sign. We too looked for it but after 20 minutes decided we needed to abandon the search. We found our way back to CP18 and Key bridge road wasting about 45 minutes with no CP gained. We hate that! We biked to CP13 and found it fine. It was 4:45pm and we had 10 miles to bike and CP9 and others were too far away to go for and get back by 6pm. We decided to head back and hope that 18 CPs in a faster time will beat others with 18 CPs. We arrived at the finish line at 5:25pm, first to cross it. Being first doesn’t really mean anything in this race. However, at 6pm only 4 other teams had finished out of the 33 starters, 11 in our 2 man division.


In total for the 10.25 hours we raced, we canoed about 6.5 miles with about 4 miles of trekking in the middle of that getting points, biked about 28 miles and trekked 6.5 miles. Oh yeah, and ran 4 miles to start the day.

It was a good course and a great race.

[Dale Long]

The results are here: http://kandoadventures.com/advforum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=305&posts=1
_________________
Make things happen.....

[jforest1]

Can Steve or race staff chime in on the penalties for missing cutoff and if they are included in the results?

Also, what is the difference between green/white boxes on finish time?

--josh
_________________
Get Nuked! Atomic AR by Fuji

http://www.TeamROCGear.com

"In adventure racing, there is no victory for one--the finish line can only be a triumph of many."

[stephbriggs]

I've calculated ranks for all the teams after each check-in and trek times for the teams that completed that leg (there were only 9 I think).
If you want the spreadsheet email me at stephbriggs youknowwhattodohere gmail ditto com
--Steph

[Dale Long]

I asked Steve on Kando website to respond about time penalties and the box shading.
_________________
Make things happen.....

[Steve Morrone]

Michael (Gilligan) responded to the question about the shaded area in the totals so here is his response from our KanDo website;

The green shaded boxes are the adjusted final times. The times were adjusted based on how long the team had to wait in the queue at the zip line which was checkpoint 25. So, if you look at how many minutes passed between their CP 25 In time and their CP 25 out time then that amount of time was subtracted from their actual finishing time. In reverse you can add that amount of time to see what time they actually crossed the finish line.

The cutoff time was set at 6:00 PM, and the penalties were 1 checkpoint for every 15 minutes late. So, 6:01 to 6:15 lost 1 checkpoint, 6:16 to 6:30 lost 2 checkpoints and so on. Thus, if they came in after 6:00 then you can add checkpoints back to their total, 1 for each 15 minute period, to find out how many checkpoints they actually navigated to.

I hope that helps clear things up for everyone.

I hope that everyone had a great time. We all worked pretty hard on this one and are always glad to hear feedback.

How about those cemetaries???
_________________
"There's No Such Thing As Can't!"

[Chris]

Thanks to Steve, Beth, and their volunteers for putting on another great race. I have always enjoyed Kando races and think they don't get the credit they deserve nor the attendance they should. The race is only a couple of hours from Atlanta so I would think they would get more traffic. I guess since it isn't the mountains, that hurts them. In any event, here is the route that we took in case you are interested.

My only negatives for the race are extremely small and are only meant to improve the race...
1. STEVE, for godsakes, put in the UTM coordinates for the Start/Finish. I guess this is a pet peeve of mine.
2. At the beginning of the race, I think it would have been good to let the racers know which coordinates were for what piece of gear, this way it eliminated the luck factor.


Here is the route we took....Sorry for the length.

At the start of the race, we plotted the 3 points and immediately started to the farther points but then figured we were hosed if we didn't know what was at the closest. I had figured it was the boat site since it was the prior year and it turned out to be. We made our way to the farthest point to limit the amount of time we had to carry stuff. On our way to the 1st point, we made a bad choice to jump in the water and were passed by about 3 teams and went too far to the east. One of my biggest weaknesses is getting from the Start to the 1st CP. I guess it is nerves or something but once I get to that 1st one, I am good. Anyways, that cost us about 10 minutes and we ended up being about 15 minutes behind CP0.

In the canoe, we went South to CP3 and then NW around the peninsula to CP4. With the wind and waves, it would have been faster to portage at the small break on the peninsula as Team Contours did. They picked up a couple of minutes on us doing this. At CP4 we plotted our points and then went north to CP8 where I left the rest of the team and picked up CP8. Took a bearing directly to CP5. From CP5, went North around the inlet to CP7 and then to CP6 via the hill east of CP5 and shot a bearing from there to CP6. I met Tim and Claire on the east side of the peninsula where we went to CP2 and then CP1. We actually lost about 10 minutes here as well because Tim and Claire went to the next peninsula east of where we were planning on meeting. That's what happens when you don't have multiple maps though. Went to the TA from there.

We were 2nd off the water only about 3 minutes behind a 3 male team and jumped in front of them during our transition. From the TA we went straight to CP14 and then CP15. Then we backtracked via the FS roads and went to CP16 and then to the Trek TA. We stayed on L296-1 instead of taking 618 South to the single track which was much quicker. We were 1st into the trek TA at that point.

On the trek. We went to CP22 first and then backtracked and headed South to CP23. From CP23 we went to CP25 but ended up getting confused in all the small spurs/reentrents. On our SLOW way to CP25, CP0 caught up to us and we ended up going together for the most part to CP25. After the ropes, we shot a bearing to CP24, and then headed NW to CP26 and then CP21 and back to the TA. We were only 5-8 minutes behind CP0 at that point but that is where our wheels fell off.

We rode North to CP19 and passed it. We were looking for the church that shows on the map but wasn't there and went right by the cemetary. After running into Key Road, we realized we had screwed up. After going back to 19, we came back to the intersection, dropped our bikes and did an out and back to CP18. Went North on Key Road and did an out and back to CP13. From CP13 we went to FS689 and followed it all the way to the end and tried to go to CP20. Our hope was that the road would continue all the way to CP20. This is where we completely lost the race. We didn't keep up with on distance on the road so I wasn't sure if we were on the black road or the little purple road that came off the main. We found a new trail that had been cut and followed it a little bit but that was a bust and then we wondered around aimlessly to find the trail to try and oriente ourselves. Finally found the trail and let ourselves believe we knew where we were. We didn't. After about wasting a hour or so on this one, we bailed. Now with our confidence failing, we followed the trail to where the trail crosses the main creek. We had intended to bike whack to CP17 and then jump back on the road that shows and ride out. However, with our confidence all messed up we decided to ride around on roads and come back to CP17. This didn't work though because the roads that went west off of FS620 weren't there or weren't well developed as they look on the map. Lost another 30 minutes here and then bailed. Biked to CP11 and then to CP12 via FS688. Out of time and energy we headed back to the finish line via FS688B which was total crap. Not a road at all. Road right by CP9 but didn't stop because of time. Finally we realized we weren't going to make the time cutoff and shut down. We had all thought we were DQed for going over time. Came in 33 minutes late only to find out that we only lost 3 CPs and got 2nd.

Overall, I can't complain. We had a good race up until the 2nd bike section where the wheels fell off. In the end, CP0 was a little faster and they raced well...but its hard to wonder what might have happened had we not gotten lost. I know we could have cleaned the course that was for sure. I think our route was a good one just not executed as well.

[stephbriggs]

This race was awesome! My teammates and I (Coed 3-person) had a blast with our first race of this distance. Steve and the volunteers seem to put on great, organized races. I was amazed at how well the logistics of this were handled. Kudos.
We loved the plot UTMs to start the race, though it was hard to pay attention to the time that things started. We were kinda slow & careful since we didnt figure relative newbies could afford any silly mistakes, and so left the finish after most folks, but instead of heading towards the water like all the lemmings, we headed to the furthest point first, which seemed to pay off later. We felt like we got to the boat launch in the front of the pack, but then proceeded to get passed by probably 15 teams as we carefully picked out the landmark we wanted to head toward for CP 3. Afterwards hit CP 4, generally just falling behind since we are definitely rookie paddlers. After collecting 8, we dropped a runner off to get 5 & 7 while 2 of us paddled around and scouted out the location of CP6. It was almost disappointing to see how obvious and easy-to-find the CPs were (I'm not really complaining, but it was different than what I was expecting after doing the Kando SRACAR). Our teammate met us there and we busted a move to CP 2, and then CP 1 before heading to the TA. It was a huge victory for us to just paddle reasonably straight, so we were stoked to have cleared this part of the course. The last race we attempted with a paddle leg went much worse.
I'm not a great runner, so we decided to take the shorter, southern route to the trek TA and do the trek while we were relatively fresh. We, along with 2 nice dudes from Charleston, made a mistake of trying to bushwack from a trail down to CP 14 and wound up with a broken rear derailleur! We sat down and converted my teammates bike to a single-speed and worried that we might not be able to finish. However, our repair seemed to work so we headed to CP15 and then risked the singletrack over to the Trek TA. It seemed to work alright and had the benefit to getting to see the location of the zipline ahead of time. We transitioned and headed out on foot. Saw a huge black snake on the way to CP22, and glimpsed a 2-female team just ahead of us at Cp23. They continued down the trail though, while we doubled-back to get head towards CP 24. Then the trek got fun as we had to bushwack to the creek, scramble across the small drainage, and hike up tthe steep ridge leading to CP25, the zipline. The naviagion along the singletrack to CP26 was a breeze since we had seen it already, and we played it safe and stuck to the roads once we were on 618 to get CP21. We stayed with 296-1 and then the easy footpath to the singletrack and the Trek TA. Again, we were stoked to clear a portion of the course and optimistic about being able to get at least 4 or so bike CPs before needing to finish in a little over 2 hours.
We got 19 at the cemetery no problem, but then our next big mistake happened when we attempted to go after 18. We dropped our bikes and headed into the woods, not recognizing the pipeline cut on the map or paying attention to how far from the paved road the CP should be. We wasted close to an hour? looking for that CP, even though we knew that none of the CPs were far from trails or hidden in such thick brush. Finally we stumbled onto the powerline cut, we got our heads out of our a@@es, collected the obvious CP and returned via the gated road I had briefly thought "maybe we should check that out" earlier. I kicked myself for ignoring my instincts earlier on when we could have ridden down that road to the powerline cut in less than 5 minutes. Now, we were pretty much hosed, so had to turn and head into the finish. I was itching to make the quick out-and-back to 13, but we were thinking we might get a DNF for being late and didn't even really know when finish time was? 6 oclock? 6:11? we hadnt even bothered to ask at the zipline how much time we had taken there. turns out, we were 18 mins late, and would have had 11-12 minutes to collect another CP and still get docked just 2. next time, we will make sure we are clear on the finishing rules before leaving the start line Ran into some nice folks on the return ride and at least felt good for not being the only late ones.
Overall: loved the zipline (I think the check-in, check-out system worked really well and prevented the grouchiness associated with bottlenecks). Also liked the mystery of not knowing what the trek was like until you plotted the points. the two separate TAs is hard since you are forced to carry a bit more in your pack than you would otherwise, but I liked that you got to cover so much ground. Generally liked the canoe-trek portion, but we are lucky since all three of us can navigate well, though it was nerve-racking to not know what was going on with the other team members. the maps were great quality and detail! glad that some of my moolah went to the cancer society too. Thanks again for a great, well-organized, fun race!

[Jim K]

ZANFEL
_________________
"We do not stop playing because we grow old; We grow old because we stop playing"

[Steve Morrone]

Jim, did you get some from the table? If not or need some more send me an email with a good address for you and I'll send you some...

I left my knee in the poison Oak field at CP 9... -- --
_________________
"There's No Such Thing As Can't!"

[jforest1]

My full review here:

http://www.4lph41337.com/w/2008_Western_Carolina

Race map and photos to come.

--josh
_________________
Get Nuked! Atomic AR by Fuji

http://www.TeamROCGear.com

"In adventure racing, there is no victory for one--the finish line can only be a triumph of many."