[LabRat]

So, in the first place - very fun race, very hard race. I would rate this, arguably, the physically hardest races i've done yet (over 17 of 'em in two years of racing).

David Montgomery and I raced as an unofficial 2 Male team, we never did find a third.

Some highlights from our race:
- Red Devil. The canoe portion up the Tallulah River side of Tugaloo Lake was fast. We were in Team GLR's "brand new" red 2003 Dagger Reflection 17' canoe. Man i like that boat. It was fast. We arent' the most experienced paddlers, but we felt good in it and passed a number of teams that beat us on the prologue.

- So So idea. After leaving CP1 I thought we could gain some time if beached the canoe on the Tallulah River side of the point where the Optional CP OP1 was located. We landed about two small coves west of the point. Turns out it was a mediocre idea at best. The climb up was still very steep and Frank from ZipIt caught us up on the ridge and we hiked to the CP, right where it was supposed to be on the map.

- Missing CP. I knew where CP2 was supposed to be, but it seems that someone decided it shouldn't be there. After we (and by we i mean most all of the teams) traversed the area in search of it to no avail, we all bailed on it and it was a mad dash to the put-out and portgage to CP3/TA2. On the paddle the new red-devil Reflection canoe performed well above the capacity of its occupants (ie. we went very fast and it was all b/c of the boat).

- Good TA. We came into TA2 very early (7th or 8th we were told) and got some food, changed socks and shoes and headed out quickly.

- Good Guys. On the bike to CP4 we ran up on the CheckPoint Zero/Newbie teams and rode along with them on and off all the way. I wanted to say how much I liked the idea of pairing relative new-comers with an experienced team leader like they did. I think that this and other of the same types of exposure for more interested folks will make the sport more popular, better known and stronger over time. Plus it gives the team leaders a good race to just have fun with. I think some of the 4lph4 1337 teams did something similar. Good job guys!

- Cool Drink. At CP5 there were volunteers with cold water. THANKs! that was a nice suprise.

- Fast and Fun. The ATV trails going to CP7 were a lot of fun and i can't wait to go back some weekend and ride them when we can have more fun.

- Georgia Tech. Getting to CP7 was easy and fun, getting away from it was challenging and frustrating. We had come up on Snickers Marathon (i think) on the
way to the checkpoint and were headed out with them. We were behind them when i saw some jumping and slapping going on. It seems they had distrubed a yellow jacket nest and were getting attacked. We got the brunt of it as we followed behind with four stings on me and five on Dave (one on his head!).

- The hostage bike. Immediately after getting out of the area with the nest, Dave's bike got caught on a vine and he roused up another nest. This time over 50 of the Georgia Tech mascots came out to play. They covered his bike and we had to wait for 15 minutes before we could get it out of there! By this time 4 or 5 teams passed us on the way up the steep, gravel sluice that was the toughest bike whack i've ever heard of.

- The case of the missing highway. We wasted about 1.5 hours at CP8. We rode those hills at least three different times. both ways. I heard alot of comments about this CP but here is my armchair hindsight that i really should have thought about at the time. 1. the railroad tracks were too close to where we thought we were on the map. The map clearly shows their closest point as being where we actually were. 2. the distance was wrong. Had i been paying better attention i should have realized that the distance was too short from CP7 to where we kept looking for the CP. 3. I didn't comprehend it or make the connection but I was told that Zach mentioned a new highway at the race briefing. The debate about outside maps notwithstanding, this is something that i see as part of the reason that i do adventure races instead of tri's...the creativity of the course, the designers and the need for racers to actually use their wits and brains to find their way instead of a set, easy course..

- Once we finally crossed the road CP8 was an easy find and we quickly realized that we had no time for the Optional bike CPs so we headed to the TA at CP9.

- Ride Up/Rappell down. We chose to take the bikes to the top of Currahee Mtn. Friday night we thought about hiking up and bush-whacking down to the optional trek OT1, but decided against it when we arrived. Perhaps just a little shaken from CP8 still. I look forward to hearing how Enduraventure faired on that route. The rappell was uneventful and fun. The climb back up was cool to me for some reason.

- We did get the OT1 on foot and found the trail down to CP12 by accident. Saving us the splash route thru the creek that we had thought we had to do. We felt bad for teams we saw in the water from our dry land vantage point.

- CP13 hung us up for a few minutes because we didn't go far enough. We hooked up with Go Magazine and remnents of ZipIt to push further and find the 'trail marked as a road' that took us down the the creek where the gypsys were partying. Once there the CP was an easy pick and off we went to get easy 14, 15, OT4 and down to Nancy Town Lake.

- We took a short cut to come out on the south side of Nancy, crossed the bridge and took a left onto a trail around Lake Russell. We turned around and came out to the road pretty quickly as the trail got very tight, very quickly and reasoned safer was better at this point.

- It felt like it took forever to jog from Nancy Town Lake to the campsite finish line, we had a decent pace going but didn't get anywhere fast. It seemed that the hill up would never end.

We finished in 14:10 with all the Mandatory CP's and three Optionals (OC1, OT1, OT4). We were unofficial, but i look forward to seeing the results to know how we compared to others.

I'm ready to go ride this afternoon, but my wife said I have to rest. So here I am.
_________________
I'm not really lost...I'm just sightseeing.
jeff papenfus
Team GLR

[Coker]

Great review Jeff.I totally agree with your thoughts on the outside map thing.It was fun playing the leap frog game with you guy's.
I had great fun racing with John Wellens,what a nice guy and smart racer.We were an unofficial two person team as well.
I'll let John write our race review if he wants,he's a little more long winded than me.

[Lisa R]

Paul ran the prologue, and returned in the top 5-6. We portaged to the lake and took off for CP1. After that we padded across the channel and dropped Bo off on the shore southwest of OC1. He went up while we paddled around to the other side to meet him. We picked him up and then paddled to OC2, OC3, and back. Portage again, this time just carrying the canoe. We headed down to CP2 and find that some teams had already been there 15-30 minutes...hmm... not a good sign. After wasting 20-25 minutes seaching ourselves, we bailed along with just about everyone else. Next it was a quick paddle to the boat ramp, another short portage, and a quick TA to bikes.

The bike section was fairly tricky, due to new development and there being several roads/trails that we needed to use that weren't on the map. After figuring out that we needed to take the gated road heading north near WP1, we started moving pretty well, and although some of the trails weren't on the map, there was typically only one way you could go. We picked up CP4, 5, 6, and 7 pretty easily, although there was some confusion near CP6 since it appeared we needed make a turn to hit the CP road, but in fact the main road just went right by it. The trestle was very cool and very large! No yellowjackets there for us thankfully. The hike-a-bike was tough, but not as bad as some of the pushes in the TransRockies so I was well broken in. CP8 caused us some trouble and we probably spent close to an hour looking in the wrong place, thrown off by the new highway. We watched another team just blow through the highway, but just figured they might not know where they were going...ha! Snickers Marathon rode up after we had been searching for a while and we ended up riding together to CP8 and the two optional bike points. The optional points were tough in the direction we attacked from - in retrospect, we should have gone to OB2 first, then OB1 and I think we would have saved some time. The tunnel was pretty interesting though at OB1. We rode into CP9 with Snickers right behind us.

We went our separate ways on the rappel, as Snickers chose to ride bikes up and we chose to hoof it and then just bushwhack from the bottom of the rappel. We were a bit annoyed at the rappel when we found out that someone had to go back up to the top and check out, as it cost some time. We contoured to the northwest and then headed west down to the yellow blazed trail. We followed the trail and then hit OT1. As we were coming out from OT1, we saw Snickers going in, so the bushwhack definitely saved some time. Since we had a small jump on Snickers, we wanted to get to CP12 at the cave and get out of sight. We then opted to go for OT2, taking the long way around on the roads as we were running pretty well, and we'd have only a short bushwhack...ha!

The "trail" shown on the map started out pretty good - but eventually became just a faint path with slightly fewer vines to duck under and trees to climb over. We whacked down to the drainage and climbed over more crap on our way down to the point. I was starting to get worried, as it seemed like we were getting too low, but there it finally was. It would have been tough to come out of that one empty handed! On the way out, it was tough to pick up the faint trail, so we spent a while getting tangled up in vines and deadfall before getting back on the trail. I feel for the person who had to put that bag out...yuck.

Back on the road, it was 9:15 before we got back to the singletrack that led to CP13. We saw Snickers running towards us on the road, so we figured we were up one optional point. We booked it down the singletrack, picked up CP13, then kept on truckin' on a bunch of monotonous FS roads to CP14 and 15. It was 10:20 when we were back on the road after CP15, so we decided we had plenty of time to pick up OT4 and then head to the finish. The pavement coming into the campground didn't seem like it was ever going to end, but eventually it did, and we jogged into the finish at 11:25. In general, the trek went really well for us because the mapping of the area was pretty good and we transferred the Frady Branch trails onto it from the other map we were given. We never got the memo about the cutoff time being extended to 12:30 am, but I don't think we would have gone for OT3 even if we knew, as we were already one optional point up on our nearest chasers, and it would have made things especially tight.

[sdreiske]

I had fun volunteering. I managed to snap a few pics (some kind of blurry) http://gs55.photobucket.com/groups/g159/8AWGXIZWOH

To the racers: You are all amazing athletes and very inspiring
To the crew: It was nice to have met all of you.

See you at future events.
_________________
Sonya D

[Karin]

I did the race with a friend of mine, Mandy-Carter Lowe from Columbia TN who is returning to AR this year, and Micheal Wechter of GA (a racer that Mandy and I met for the first time the morning of the race). We did the opting in/opting out version of the race. Wasn't entirely sure how that was supposed to work until the morning of the race, when we learned that each team-member had to sit out one section of the race.

After some discussion, we decided on the following:

a) We all do the first paddle section
b) Mandy and I do the second paddle section, while Micheal sat out
c) Mandy and Micheal do the bike section, while I sat out
d) I and Micheal do the trek section, while Mandy sat out

We had all read the rules re: mandatory vs optional points (and their weight in final standings), and decided to focus entirely on the mandatory points until close to the end, and then make a determination about picking up possible optionals towards the end, dependant on time left before cutoff.

Picked up the first CP on the lake without incident, and then on the way back waffled for a few minutes about at least a couple of optionals on the water. They looked pretty easy to find on the map (boy - it's hard to blow CP's off early in a race), but it all came down to a decision re: time management, and we bottom-lined it, and decided to keep our "eyes on the prize" and focus on the mandatories. Once we had decided (for the second, and finally last time) we were much more focused as a team.

Dropped Micheal off at the start(after using a homemade set of portage wheels that were HUGE but held up well) and continued on for the next paddle section.

Got to the area of CP2 with a few other teams, and I went in to pick up the CP while Mandy stayed with the boat. With a few other people from teams, I climbed the hill, we worked our way down to the creek, and walked up through the inlet much further than all of us felt that we needed to. Everyone was asking each other "do you have the map?" and of course none of us did - we all just had the passports with us.

After searching way too far in, people started to head back to their boats - a couple walking directly back in the creek, a couple walking up the hill on one bank, and a couple of us walking up the hill on the other side. All of us fanning out and nobody finding it.

I got back to Mandy, and we speculated that we hadn't come far enough. Started to pull out of the inlet when we saw a slew of other canoes headed our way. Damn! If we were in the wrong place, there were a ton of other teams making the same mistake. Or maybe we all just missed it the first time. More waffling........

As other teams pulled in, including teams that I knew had good navers, we decided to wait for a few minutes - if ONE team came back with a found CP we'd head in again. Team members disappeared, and after waiting 15 minutes for SOMEBODY to come back (where'd these guys GO??) Mandy and I decided to bail on the CP. We were in the right place. The CP wasn't there.

As we were pulling in to the takeout we ran into Greg heading out in a motorized boat - heading out to let folks know that CP2 was gone. Mandy and I just looked at each other and gave each other a "no sh*t" shrug.

Portaged back, and Mandy and Micheal got geared up for the bike, while I did the loading boats, getting gas and ice, and heading to the next TA-thing.

A few hours later teams started coming in, and I started to catch wind of the new-development-not-on-the-map issue. But happily my team showed up earlier than I expected, having gotten all of the mandatory CP's.

Both racers wanted to hold off until after the rappell to eat, so we all got geared up and headed up the road for the rappell. Checked in, and as we were walking to the rappell site we ran into Greg (who was EVERYWHERE on the course for the entire race) who said that the rap was now an "optional" CP, because the rappell site was so backed up.

When we got to the site, saw the large number of people waiting to go down, and found out that the wait would be more than half an hour we decided that we "might" bail on it. All of us have done many rappells, and all of us decided that we could live without it, if it was indeed optional.

The only question in our minds was what exactly that meant. We had read prior to the race that if two teams had exactly the same number of points, but one had done the rappell and one had not, the team who did the rap would rank higher.

We clarified this before we left the area, and were told "it's an optional point just like every other on the course now". OK - we weren't sitting around for over 30 minutes to do it. We felt that we needed to move on.

Got back to the TA, and Micheal and I set out on the trek. I was concerned about being cold and not zoned in, after sitting out an entire section, but it turned out OK. Speed lacers on one of my Salomons broke almost immediately (never had that happen before) so ghetto-rigged it to hold it together.

The trails were confusing (and there were times we really felt like we were walking in circles). CP12 was a tough one to find, and we only found it with some help from another team. By the time we were actively searching for 13 there were teams travelling in all directions (looking as turned around as we were). We finally hit a numbered road, so could definatively (for the first time in a while) identify exactly where we were. With this new information we backtracked just a bit, and with the help of a newbie team from Tullahoma TN (my hometown) we picked it up, and moved on.

The rest of the trek was pretty straightforward (lots of open FS roads). Only major decision by the time we had picked up 14 then finally 15 was (with 90 minutes left till cutoff) whether or not we head straight to the house or try for the last optional point. We were leaning heavily on the just going home option until we ran into Greg again, who put it out to a number of teams that this o point was doable. What the hell. We decided to give it a shot (after me good-naturdly joking with Greg that I would kick his....if we missed cutoff).

Got it no problem, and ran most of the way home, coming in a couple of minutes after midnight.

Not without a couple of minor glitches, but a GREAT race.

Post-race: For me personally, I'm not a big fan of the team-member opt in/opt out option. I just don't like sitting still when there's a race going on.

But I ran into a fellow opter and this was his first race. He did the same legs that I did (paddle/trek), and after the paddle he was pretty wiped out, and glad to be resting for a while. Like he said, it gave him a taste of adventure racing, without the pressure of having to do an entire 14 hour race. So, I am very glad that MRAR had this option. It's good for racing overall, I think.

Thanks to my awesome team-mates Mandy and Mike. I really enjoyed racing with you guys, and at the end of the day, being with good people out in the woods is a good day by anybody's standards.

Great to meet the Tullahoma racers and great to meet a few racers out on the course, all of whom I have only met through emails and PM's to this point.

Finally, thanks to Greg, Zach, and all the race officials and volunteers, for all of your hard work on the day. There wouldn't be great AR's like this, close to home, if it wasn't for all of you. I appreciate all of your dedication and hard work.

[jlayer3]

Overall I thought it was a great race. CP2 was a bummer, but can't blame the race for that. The race was well organized. At the prerace meeting, we got a little intimidated by Zach saying it took him 11 hours just to get the mandatory CPs. In hindsight, we had plenty of time to get a couple more optionals then we did. We made a few mistakes, but all in all I thought we did all right.
Canoe:
The portage wheels worked well for the most part. Picked up CP1, dropped off Joe accoss the inlet and met him on the other side after he got OC1. Picked up OC2 and headed back to the ramp. In retrospect we should have picked up OC3 as well.We joined the crowd at CP2, but quickly realized that with that many eyes looking for the CP and no one finding it, it must be misplaced or missing. We headed out from there as the fourth team. We passed a couple of teams and were the second team into TA2/CP3.
Bike:
We were the first team out of TA2 and reached WP1 with no incidents. Initially I had thought we were going to have to do some crazy bikewack to CP4, but Zach had veto'd that at the prerace mtg. so we knew there must be a ridable route to CP4 not marked on the map. As we crossed the creek leading up to CP4 we saw the gated road and took it all the way to the CP. We rode around the pond(not on the map) picked up the CP and saw the road heading in the right direction so we took it on faith that it would get us out of there. Getting to CP5 and CP6 required a little guesswork seeing as how some of the roads were not on any of the maps we had. The ORV trails down to CP7 were a blast. We got hung up for a few minutes figuring out that we had to go through the gate at the end of the trails, but eventually we figured it out and got to CP7. The bikewack was uneventful but that climb up the hillside was brutal. Our ride to CP8 was pretty straightfoward. We had seen 365 on the ORV map but not the topo so we knew it was there, plus Zach had reinforced it at the prerace. We debated getting OB2, but decided we were in better treking shape then biking shape so we skipped it. This was our second mistake since it would have been way easier then the some of the trekking optionals. Thus we were the first team into TA3/CP9.

Trek:
We chose to ride/walk our bikes up to the rappel which was uneventful but definitely a blast. If there is enough room though I would suggest setting up three lanes so all team members could go at once. We cruised backed to TA3 and trekked out the back to get OT1 then we found the creek trail and headed down to CP12. We choose to attack OT2 from Leatherwood creek. We walked down the creek (beautiful BTW) and took a faint trail to the reentrant up to OT2. We climbed up and picked up OT2, then headed straight up to the ridge top to pick up the trail marked on the map. Unfortunately the trail wasn't there anymore and it looked like the area had been logged or hit by a tornado recently becuase the trail was gone and the bushwacking was a real pain. We came out on the road and picked up CP13. We put on our headlamps and started up the trail (forget the name) to get OT3, but after about 45 minutes realized it would be really hard to get since the map and trail didn't agree and there was no real way to gauge our attack point. Zach later told us that there was a trail over to OT3, but we had no way of knowing that at the time. All told we spent about 1.5 hours on that unfruitful task (our third mistake). On the way to CP14 we finally saw other teams since right before CP8. After a couple of false starts we got CP14 then CP15 and OT4. The hike from OT4 to the finish seemed to go on for ever and I was cursing the Greg for teasing us with a finish at the beach then making us go all the way to the campground.

We came in around 11:15 I think. Hindsight being 20/20 we could have gotten OC3 and OB2 pretty easily, but you live and learn.

Thanks to Zach, Greg and everyone else who help put on a great race.

Josh

[JohnF]

Wow so many people to thank and give props too. First, want to thank Peter and the entire Check Point Zero team. These guys are all class acts on and off the race course. Having been given the privilege of racing along side these guys I have a much better understanding of what it takes to get out of the middle of the pack and into top finishes. Most of us already knew that Peter, Paul, and Jon are great racers but I now know they are all great guys as well. Thanks for opening the Check Point Zero race playbook to us all and giving just the right amount of support to each individual. Also I don’t want to forget Alan also a member of this team that provided our support and kicked our butts out of the TA’s seemingly a minute or two after we arrived. It was nice to have such a helpful pro that knows what to do when you arrive.

As for the race I want to thank Greg, Zach, and all of the volunteers on the race course especially Hunter for his expertise on the rappel. Even though I had never done any rope work in the past he made me feel comfortable and shouted encouragement the entire way down. I must admit I did NOT look down. My eyes were transfixed on the wall in front of me.

I have just one other pat on the back that goes out to my teammate Christa. After suffering in more ways than one she showed a lot of heart and kept moving. I am not sure if I were in her shoes I would have finished after that fall on the bike. I hope your fingers are ok? OUCH!

I thought the course was well laid out and offered varying degrees of difficulty depending on how many options you went after. I would like to send some hate mail to the hutting lodge that allegedly stole CP2 and my Topo for not having that highway on the map. We must have wasted 2 hours in these locations. Although the time lost at 8 is our fault because as soon as we rode up on 8 I remembered the fact that the missing Highway was discussed in the meeting. I guess I did not take good enough mental notes. Next time I will try a pen. Mad props to Greg as I have never seen such an active race director/course designer. We must have run into him 5 or 6 times.

Our race started with me running the to the lake and then the short swim(thank god it was short). I must say the rope swing was sweet. I not sure where I placed coming back but I would guess in the top 10. We hit the water and moved well through the CP’s we were after (other than 2) and picked up two of the optional CP‘s. I was using a borrowed paddle as mine broke just minutes before the race. I guess this was the first of many little issues we would have. We came into the first TA in good shape although I have no idea what position we were in. It was hard to tell based on who had what CP’s. Alan did a good job at being ready and pushing us out of TA in a mater of minutes (about 4 times faster a TA than I am used to).

Within the first couple of minutes on the bike Peters chain broke (the first of two times during the race). Peter did good job at fixing the issue and we were off. I had the map and think we knocked off 4,5,6, and 7 rather smoothly. I did have a raised eyebrow at 6 as I was not expecting it to be on a paved road but the creek and Topo told us we were in the tight spot. I was enjoying the bridge at 7 until we started the bike whack up and out of that gorge. Man there was a lot of metal down there. Although I would not remember Gregs warning about the impending doom at CP 8 I was very aware that if a train came we needed to get the hell out of there. I will not go into what happened at 8 (as everyone knows) other than to say that Yellow Jackets are MEAN! As if the time wasted looking for the CP was not enough I picked up a half dozen stings (OUCH). From there it was just a short ride into TA. Alan was ready and we were out of TA before it really settled in that we were there.

We walked up the MTN to the rappel and what a view! We waited for less than 20 minutes for gear and our turn to go and like I said Hunter did a good job at making a rookie feel OK about going of the edge of a CLIFF! I must say that having done the rappel the climb back up that crack seemed more dangerous. We ran down the mountain and back to TA and got ready for the trek home.

The final trek was done without much trouble . We picked up two optional points on the way and were in a pack of at least 5 teams. I tried to stay at or near the front to get more night nav practice and coming out of the woods near the campground was a sign we were nearly done. I must say that road back to the finsih was much further than I remembered. We ran in at 12:00 on the nose.

[christichka]

I raced with John, so he's pretty much covered the summary...but I'll add a few things from a personal standpoint.

What John didn't say was the anything that could go wrong for us, as a team, did go wrong. His paddle broke minutes before the race and then his borrowed one came apart within the first five minutes. It seemed like little more than a glitch at the time but in hindsight, it might have been an omen...and one that should have told us that not only was absolutely everything going to go wrong, but we'd make it through each step of the way. And make it through we did!

For me personally, this race was mental. Right after Peter's chain issues, I had a few gear issues. There were abt 3-4 teams together at that point and no one noticed me fall back to put the chain back on or knock it in on a couple of occassions. As I struggled to catch back up, I pushed too hard, convinced myself I should have never tried to hang with a bunch of guys, and ultimately did myself in mentally. I yelled up ahead, but no one heard. I was done. For the next couple of hours, i kept thinking that there was no way i'd ever make it. My teammates get HUGE kudos for every push, pull, tow, bike push, etc.

Unfortunately, I think it took the crash to make me mad enough at myself to snap out of it. Whatever it was, I actually started feeling better at that point...(my only excuse for this is that the pain was the distraction that helped me get my mind in the right place).

When we reached the TA, it was obvious we needed to ditch the bikes. And, Peter was insistent - no more optionals, we just get to the end. We hiked up, rapelled, and ran all the way back down. That run told me, I'm still here. I think it told my team too. Optionals were back!

I learned a lot in this race - which was the point of the Checkpoint Challenge teams. Most of all, I learned not to push too hard before speaking up. Once done, it's way to hard to get that back (and it's then that you are more likely to get hurt).

Thanks to everyone...

[Bill Fletcher]

[Bill Fletcher]

Great job Greg, Zach, Hunter and everyone else. It was a fun and tough race. Congrats to Enduraventure on the win. It was fun to hang with you guys for the second half of the bike leg.

Thanks to Jono and Alex for the excellent support (and coming thru last minute).

I thought we moved along pretty well for most of the race. A few hiccups, but the nav definitely gets pretty tough when there are so many roads/trails that aren't on the map. We did move a little slow on the trek section. The trail signs didn't always seem to match up with what was on the map (even the supplemental map). We did a lot of stopping to re-evaluate our location. Did anyone else notice this or was it just me?

We ended up getting all the mandatory points, all of the boat and bike optionals, and two of the trek optionals. We skipped OT2 and OT3. We finished just before midnight so we wouldn't have had time to get either of them.

Bill
Snickers Marathon

[Hairy Racing]

Had a good time this weekend overall. Was a bit steamed about CP 2 especially since the need for redundant CP measures are discussed here so often. Didn't have a problem at the highway beacause we heard Zach but those maps were frustrating. Mainly because of pre-race assurances that outside maps wouldn't be of much benefit. Really? Cmon.

The train trestle was random, and cool.


Thanks for the good time.

[jforest1]

[LabRat]

the backs of my knees itch like crazy from those little yellow sons-a-guns. but the race was worth every sting!
_________________
I'm not really lost...I'm just sightseeing.
jeff papenfus
Team GLR

[JohnF]

Funny mine itch like crazy as well.

[pedalgrinder]