Adventure Racing family fun
The Trakkers Adventure Racing team sent two team to the Odyssey July 24 race. Our 24 hour team finished second in the One Day Race and our sprint team finished 1st in their race. It was a great family friendly activity for both teams. Michael, Greg, Timm, and Veronica raced in the sprint race. The race consisted of a two mile mountain climb prolog run followed by a quick transition to an eight mile run\trek to find two checkpoints. After the trekking section we ran to the river for a three mile paddle. The river was really low so we had to drag our canoes over the rocks at least 10 times. Once we exited the water we were still in the top two teams. We jumped on our bikes and pulled ahead of everyone. We hit the first checkpoint and then head back down the mountain for a river crossing. However the map had a road crossing the river that was torn down 20 years ago and we were now on private property. The owner tracked us down on an ATV and let it be known we were on private property. We let them see our maps and let them know about the race and asked their advice about routes and they decided not to shoot us and let us mover along to the next checkpoint. We got to a rail to trail path and arrived at checkpoint 9 and moved along to CP 10 and 11. We had pulled ahead of all the other teams by several miles at this time and now soundly in first place and getting ready to start the orienteering course and finish the race. However after discussing the course with some of the race staff we were informed that we had to take a required jeep trail to CP11 at the top of the mountain. I didn’t want the team to get disqualified because we wanted the points to keep our first place USARA ranking. We were informed that we had to redo out path to CP11 via the jeep road to the top of the mountain and re-punch the checkpoint. Now we were in serious trouble of not making the race cut off time of 6:00PM and not getting any national points. We took off on the bikes for the 10 mile trip and made it back to the finish line with 20 minutes to spare. Greg plotted the orienteering course and we took off to get at least one point. We saw several other teams on the course looking for the same point. Greg was able to keep us on track and find the point. We dashed back to the finish line before the cut off time and were the only team to complete the course with all the required points. Most team faltered in the 100 degree weather and was not able to make all the mandatory checkpoints. It turned out to be a great day and we won the race with an extra 10 miles of mountain biking. Timm, Veronica, and Greg are awesome athletes who battled the heat and terrain to pull off a great race and victory.
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