Genine and I arrived in Warren a few days before the event. I have been dealing with shingles for about 2 weeks. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to race on Saturday. I did hike around on Thursday and I felt pretty good. I kept thinking about recovering for Timberman 70.3 tho’. Would running for 90+ minutes set me back in my recovery? I really wanted to participate with this team. Everyone had been training consistently and was ready to go.
I think what made my decision to race was this. My Timberman race is already going to be much less than it should have been because of the shingles. I might end up only doing the swim leg at Timberman. The tango has suddenly become my A race for the year. I haven’t had a really good orienteering split yet. This was my best chance to post a good time, as I was only doing the one event.
13.1: We all arrived at the Y in the morning to see Jim start the day off with the 13.1 mile run. It had been raining and there is more rain on the way. Jim had sent a note earlier in the week that his hip flexor had been giving him trouble. He had been hoping to break his previous time of 1:32:00 but now he was telling us he would take what he would get, but he was hopeful.
The rest of us drove up to the dam to wait for him. At the 9 mile mark he was the 9th runner to pass. I wasn’t sure what divisions the other people were in, but he was on pace and looking strong. We then headed to the beach.
Jim arrived at the beach in 1:32:xx tying his run from last year. We were off to a good start. (Turned out to be 4th of 42 in our division)
Bike 20 miles: Craig started his ride and we all knew he had work to do. It had been raining and more was on the way. Craig wanted some revenge on this course and got a really rough day of weather to try and make it happen in. The rest of us traveled over to the boat launch to wait for Craig and to get Genine and Michelle ready for the swim. It really started to rain hard towards the end of Craig’s ride. Craig rolled in with a time of 1:34:xx. He wasn’t happy with it but I had a feeling he wouldn’t be the only one unhappy with their ride today. (Turned out to be 29th of 42 in our division. I’d be curious how many of those ahead of him were on cyclocross bikes. The percentage of Cyclocross vs Mountain bikes has gone way up in the last couple years)
Swim 2.5 miles: The first trick for Genine, was to not fall on the slippery stairs leading down to the docks as it was pouring down rain. Michelle was already in the kayak. She said the rain was rolling off her visor like a waterfall. The rest of us head back to the beach, I had a feeling that Genine might go under the hour mark for this swim and I wanted to jog around a bit before having to run up the hill.
Genine finished the swim in 1:04:xx. One minute slower than my best time, but 5 minutes faster than my time last year. (16 people were faster and one person tied her time in our division of 42)
Orienteering 7 miles 5 points: Genine tags us and they hand us the map. We had seen many people run out towards the road to start their run. Now I know why. The first point was on the other side of Rt 59. After seeing where the other points were, we decided not to go in order. So we went into the woods instead of onto the road.
As we were running up the hillside, we passed a group of 20-30 kids with supervision. Many of them cheered us on as we ran by which was cool. It’s not often you get spectators during the orienteering! I was just glad that they weren’t on the narrow stairway when we were trying to go up! (There is only room for one).
As we were heading towards our 2nd point, there was a team directly behind us. I was hoping to put some distance between us as I didn’t want to lead them to the next point. We reached the open field and I was hoping to make it into the trees on the far side before they got to the clearing. Unfortunately that field had some rather large holes in it. I saw the first two and had warned Jerry about them. I didn’t see the third one tho’! I fell over hard but managed to land on my right shoulder. Thankfully there wasn’t a rock where my head hit, or else I probably would have been knocked out cold. Instead I hopped back up, Jerry picked up the bottles that fell out of my fuel belt and kept going. When I looked back, we didn’t get to the woods before the other team could see where we entered. Ah well…
We got to our 2nd point and then we were off to the races. We were now trail running to find the next couple points. I’m guessing we ran 2 miles or so along the trails. I felt pretty good about this section seeing how we were either leading or keeping up with a couple of kids that were obvious runners from college or High School. Unfortunately that changed when they got onto the pavement, they dropped us quickly. After we found the last point all that was left to do was run down 59 back to the beach. Running downhill is never fun for me. I had trail shoes one that were feeling like 5 pound weights on each foot and then my left calf started to cramp. (why didn’t I take salt tabs before the run?). Jerry wanted to catch the group ahead of us, I did too but I had to shorten my stride because of the impending cramp. We were still making decent time tho’. By the time we reached transition. Jerry tagged Todd before the other team. Todd had to wait a couple more seconds for me to tag up. We finished in 1:18:xx. (This turned out to be 2nd of 42 in our division, 5th overall) Obviously, I’m more than satisfied with this result. I’m so glad I raced today, despite dealing with shingles.
4.5 mile run: Todd has been ready to run this for at least a month. We have all been waiting to see all his hard work pay off. There were people out on the road ahead of him and he was on a mission. I hopped into the car and pulled out the camera. I turned on the hazard lights a few times as I slowed to snap some pictures along the way. I was fortunate enough to catch up to him just as he was passing 2 people and another one was just ahead. He was definitely having fun.
I got to the next transition and waited with the rest of the team. Todd came blazing down the trail and finished the run in 31:xx. (4 people beat him, 3 people tied him of 42 in our division) About a 6:53 pace. Awesome.
Canoe 8.5 miles: Craig and Jerry got into the canoe 6 hours into our race. I know some of us had been hoping to break 7 hours. The longer orienteering leg this year kind of stole that possibility for us I think. They had people out on the river to catch tho. Every minute still counted and they were digging.
They finished in 1:18:xx (This is the 7th fastest canoe split in our division of 42) Which put our team at the finish line 6th in the open relay division 8th place overall.
I have to say I’m really proud to have been part of this team. Not many people will know our story of the Class of 88 and how well we did last weekend, but I will never forget it.
Full Results can be found here
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