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Navigation is the key to adventure racing! Proven time and again.
Halliburton, June 2001. 8 Hour adventure race starts early Saturday morning.
114 Teams take to the starting line. Looking at the map I see we are about to do a hiking section first. The gun goes off and everyone starts running up a dirt-logging road. Some teams immediately break off and go into the forest. Compass in hand, they believe that heading directly at CP 1 is the best method. I think that bush wacking is a slow method of navigation so I keep my team heading up the road.
Coming to a stream, I see on the topo map that it eventually leads directly into a lake, which is where CP 1 is location. I take my team into the woods and start to follow the stream. Coming out to the edge of the lake, another team is just in front of us. We follow the edge of the lake around, beating the other team over a beaver damn to arrive first at CP1. Only a handful of teams have arrived there so far.
Now we are heading to CP 2. Following a heading on our compass, we head towards a trail that is suppose to lead us directly to CP2. I can hear other teams around us, some looking for this trail, others still heading for CP1. Hearing a yell, I look up and see a team running on a trail towards CP2. Immediately we are off and running behind them. Arriving at CP2 I see several roads that we can take. I make my calculations on how to get to CP 3, get my team and bike equipment together, and head off. Great guess! I see the trail marker. Several other teams have taken the other roads from CP2. We will not see them again until later that evening.
The bike ride is a hard go. Several trails turn off the main trail, they turn into logging roads and back into trails again. I see one team with a broken chain. That can happen.
We come into a swamp. It is now a hike a bike. Up to our knees in mud, we struggle to get across. Another team comes up behind us. It’s an ECO team. I know them; they have all done the Eco Challenge last year. They ask how many teams ahead of us. I say at least 6. I did not know we were in the lead. Their pace is too fast. We lose sight of them. Once again the trail take another nasty turn. We head directly up this steep hill. Here comes the Eco team again. They had taken the wrong turn.
We are tied going into CP5. First and second place. But since they were an all guy team, that put us first place Co-ed.
The canoe ride starts and the race doesn’t get easier. Down a windy river with many obstacles. First place is a lot of pressure. I break! I make a wrong call that looses us about 15 minutes of our lead. Now on open water, we have been racing for 6 ½ hrs. Paddle the lake and we win. Two other teams are now on our heals. The 15 min loss is now haunting us. All three teams make it to a portage together. Three teams all co-ed, put their canoes in on the other side and start the last leg of this race.
For the next 30 mins it is an all out sprint. The other two teams are just too fast. They break away but keep about 100 yrs apart. We are now 200 meters behind and loosing ground. I see a fifth team coming up behind us fast.
I can see by the way they are paddling that they are good. I drive my team on. We just have to land and run the 1km to the finish line. We beach the canoe, I get my teammates to grab their paddles and start up this hill that faces us.
I hear the other canoe land. I turn and look. Team Screaming Fury. Last years overall adventure champions.
Even though we are trying, the other team runs by us, up the hill and towards the finish line.
One of the closest races in event history, 5 teams manage to finish within 5 minutes of each other. We end up 3rd place co-ed and 5th place overall out of 114 teams. Not bad for rookies. We learned that going the right direction was much more efficient then being fast and going in the wrong direction.
Teamwork is great. Without it, a team breaks down and the going gets slower. At the end of the day, we learn that this is fun and we can always get better. Training again the next day.
Peter Judd
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