I would be racing this race with the women folk of my family...Cathy, Dani (my 6 year old) and myself. The men folk of my family (Garrett my 11 year old who I will refer to as 'little Garrett' from now on to not confuse him with the older Garrett Lewis. Although it would make more sense to call the older Garrett 'little Garrett' if you know what I mean!) would be running support and hopefully not causing too much trouble volunteering.
We were transported to the race start at fisherman's park after Debbie gave a brief but thorough pre race meeting. Because we rented a boat from
rising phoenix adventures we got the deluxe ride in air conditioned vans. We happily chatted with the Luna Chix team on our way to the start.
race start (approx .5 mile) we ran carrying our paddles in a sort of train formation. We put Dani in the middle and worked at her pace which I have to tell you is considerably faster than her mommy's pace! slow down child! up some stairs to the top where we picked up an egg (uncooked) that had the name of one of our favorite adventure racing 'Texas' boys on it...Ross! now it was up to us to not let Ross down, or crack or splat or smush or...you get the idea, for the entire race.
Leg 1-paddle (approx 6 miles) this was probably the leg Cathy was worried about most I think she had visions of us losing Dani on the river. We borrowed a third sling seat for Dani and bought her a new Barbie PFD after she squawked too much in the one we borrowed from Curt (ok, granted she is not in the 30-50 pound range anymore). We had 3 checkpoints to pick up the last one being at the take out. Both river points were nicely placed on islands that were clearly visible on the topo. Little Garrett was waiting for us at the take out and we managed not to lose Dani!
Leg 2-bike to trek (approx 4-6 miles) after Little Garrett fed and watered us we were on our way. I was riding with Dani attached to my bike via a trail-a-bike. It looked like we would ride our bikes to pick up the first 2 cps where we would then drop our bikes and get the next 3 cps by foot. All cps in this leg would have to be gotten in order using an aerial map. The ride was along the road with views of the golf course and river. We had to walk up that ginormous hill that every race that has ever been in Tahitian village has a cp on top of! Then back down where cp 4 was along the road. Took a right down a pine needle path and dropped our bikes at cp 5. Off we went down a sandy creek bed to get cp 6. We found that skittles had amazing powers for all around speeding things up with my 6 year old! We bagged cp 6 at the bottom of some cliffs, turned around and hit 7, 8 , 9 respectively. Back on our bikes to TA!
Leg 3-surprise! Back at TA little Garrett was waiting for us where he informed us that we had a special test. We were instructed by Bobby Kitchen and Curt that we needed to fill up a lawn and leaf bag down by the river, carry it up a little hill and weigh it without breaking. Every 10 pounds of water gave us a 1 minute time credit. I think we squeaked out about 2 minutes give or take!
Leg 4-ride and tie (approx 1.5 miles) ok, at this point the temp had reached 1 million degrees, Fahrenheit, no, I'm not kidding! This leg had 1 cp on it and we elected to skip it knowing that we were not going to be able to get all the cps in the 6 hour cut off. Little Garrett was super concerned at this point that he was going to lose his entire family to the boiling pot called Tahitian village!
Leg 5-bike (approx4-6 miles) There were 5 cps in this leg to be obtained also with an aerial map. We had already been given the warning this was a very tough, hilly leg. Little Garrett, who seems to be enamored with the HoustonFitAr team he calls 'the Kiwis' told us it took those guys almost an hour to do leg 5 and they weren't hauling a little girl who rumor has it was not always peddling back there! So we decided to try to hit 3 cps and give ourselves to 2:15 to get back to TA so that we could finish the last leg in time. Off we went and being the excellent navigator that I am went right past the cp! Now in all fairness I was looking for a street called wannamucka pucka, no seriously if you have ever been to Tahitian village the streets all have these impossible to pronounce Hawaiian names. Anyway, wannamuckapucka was the street our street turned into I just didn't realize it. So because we were having so much fun we rode for awhile before we started seeing all these streets that didn't make sense kakapuckie, manalookie, wheretheheckarewekeke? I knew we needed to go over the railroad tracks which I distinctly remember passing ...hmmmm. So we turned around and went back. At this point we saw other teams that appeared to be just as confused as we were! We took a turn back down towards where we came from and saw that a dirt road went straight off the turn in the road that we hadn't seen before. Sure enough that road led to the RR tracks and the cp! I knew where I was now! So off we went on wannamuckapucka for a bit, then turned on mookahookawookie to hit the next cp. This one was on top of a hill (go figure) of sand. We hunted just a bit on some of the neighboring hills but found it pretty quick. Then we took off, up another hilly road to bag the last cp we were going for. This cp was on, you guessed it, a hill. After bumbling up the wrong hill first (Cathy was saying it didn't look right.) we went up the right hill next, hit the cp and went back to TA. We arrived about 20 minutes faster than we estimated and had plenty of time to finish the last leg.
Leg 6-trek (approx 1.5 miles) Little Garrett was waiting for us with cold Gatorade and special treat bags he had made for us with cookies, Fritos, gum and jerky in them! That is what I call amazing support!! The last leg had 3 cps on it and Little Garrett came with us after asking Debbie if it would be cool to do so. Off we went as a family unit, happy to be almost done, happy that we hadn't lost either of our kids, happy that we would soon be swimming in the river! All 3 cps were off of a very nice, shady walking path and easily bagged with the topo map. We saw lots of teams who weirdly enough started running every time they saw us. We ran in with another team, turned in an unbroken Ross who Dani did an excellent job caring for and then jumped in the river for a cool down! We had a great day on a very fun course that Mike and Deb designed. This was the real deal AR! Thanks to all the volunteers, especially Curt who says he was nice to my boy! Thanks to all the sponsors especially
Sweet Leaf Tea and
Luna bar who donated a cool bucket hat I won and immediately gave to Little Garrett, who totally earned it. Thanks especially to Dani and Cathy who put up with my obsessiveness with adventure racing!
