OMCAR Race Report
This being our first “real adventure race(AR)” other than the Coosa river challenge which was really just a taste of AR, but way fun, we were all quite trepidatious and didn’t know exactly what to expect. Well I think I could speak for the team and say we were not disappointed.
The race start was very chaotic…No matter how much we pre-planned and thought we were ready they intentionally threw us curveballs! Be prepared to roll with it. 😉 We checked in and got our 4 maps and race instructions and immediately went to work on planning what we were going to do. However, we still did not know if we were biking first or running. At 9am we listened to the race meeting. At 10am we drew popsicle sticks to see if our team would bike or run first and Gabe had to run to the boat launch with a PFD and a paddle where unbeknownst to us or him he had to paddle with 2 others from different teams and find a couple of checkpoints then run back to us to start on our bike.
We started out with about an 18 mile bike ride on quite a few trails with 9 checkpoints (CP’s) throughout. Unfortunately Carol took a spill going down Thunder and landed hard on her hip (found out later she broke her pelvis on the wing) but she was able to walk her bike out but had to be picked up and couldn’t finish the race. An amazingly tough lady who ended up staying the entire day and the next to help and cheer us on. We were allowed to finish the race and cleared the bike course.
On to the boat there was an unexpected back up due to a lack of boats and holes in the ones that were there. They stopped the clock while we waited, and it ended up being only 17 minutes. We shoved James in a leaky canoe down a rope line to a CP and then he pulled himself back. Then I took off on a sinking paddleboard that I had to surf paddle about 400 meters there and back to a CP.
Next up was the run where there were 5 CP’s and 2 Way Points (WP)-which gave us the location of 2 of the CP’s. We decided to skip one of the WP and CP after hearing Craig’s (the race director) father tell us the night before if we knew what was in store for us we would pack up and leave-HA! We learned that you don’t have to nor want to clear the entire course-only the elite teams try to do that and even then they have to make strategic choices as you only earn points for each CP; no points for the WP’s. You don’t earn a time bonus for finishing faster than the time allotment but will be penalized for going over. Since I knew that Peavine falls would be a bitch of a hike and quite a way out there even in daylight we definitely didn’t want to tackle it during nighttime, and we made the right call! We got 4 CP’s here.
We were supposed to do Boat 2, but it was closed by the time we got back.
Now we gave them our 2 buckets for them to bring to the 2nd transition area (TA) and we headed out on bike to go collect 7 CP’s and get to the TA. We met Craig a few times out on the road who gave us some excellent tips and at one of the CP’s I stayed with the bikes as James & Gabe went galloping away to go retrieve it. I may or may not have studied the inside of my eyelids a moment… We had an amazing little moment out there when the lights behind me created GIANT shadows that we took full advantage of! Hopefully the pic comes through.
Now that we’re on the other side of the park at Lunker Lake we needed to go find 6 CP’s in pitch black all around the lake with 5 of them being completely off the trail. We struggled a bit with this section but were able to find all of them and really thought it was cool that one of them was literally inside the old CCC Culvert. Back at the TA we had some wonderful cups of ramen soup, which we ate so quickly we barely waited for the noodles to soften up.
We were advised to not do boat 3 since it was only to get UTM coordinates for 3 CP’s on the next run. Since we skipped this, we had to skip run 3. This was designed only for the elite teams as the race director has to create a course challenging enough for them but doable for us mere mortals. None of the non-elite teams did it.
Back on a 3 person canoe to find 4 CP’s and 2 WP’s that we needed to find in order, with us zigzagging across the lake. Gabe & I paddled with kayak paddles and James sat in the middle navigating and complaining of a few drops of water from our paddles getting on him. At one point he decided to lay back and take a siesta… We missed one but were able to find it and made some really good time on this section. Luckily, the canoe has a built-in keel (lol) and Gabe, and I are strong paddlers so we created a nice bow wave the entire time.
We had another choice at this point: to either do bike 3 to try and find 6 CP’s, or head back on the road to the main TA. Gabe had had enough of the bike because of a sore ass and some GI issues, so off to the road we went.
Now at the main TA we sat around a little bit and recouped ourselves to go knock out the last run section for the 6 remaining CP’s. Now when I say run, I mean hike, although I do believe both James & Gabe could have run the entire race. So sorry guys that I held us up in the run sections!
And boom just like that we were done in 22 hours and 17 minutes. We managed to locate 41 out of 62 checkpoints-we got everyone that we actively went after and placed 6th out of 13 in our division and 15th of 38th OA.
My longest continual movement to date! We did a little fun sprint in to our group be sure to check out the video on FB - it was so great to see Helen, Val & Carol at the end!