Wanted to start by saying thanks to Cindy and all the volunteers for putting on a wonderful race yesterday.
Next thank you goes to the rest of team "Absolute Beginners" Heather, Michelle, and Jim.
This was my first Winter Wuhoo, and as Im sure you all know by now, my first winter race, so first time out on XC ski's and show shoes.
The race went very well. We hadn’t trained over any of the terrain, so had to use good old navigation skills, rather than relying on any local knowledge.
The initial orienteering exercise was a nice way to start, and as none of us had any orienteering skills, we made a reasonably bad routing choice, but managed to find all the CPs without any trouble. The biggest challenge was figuring out who was going to get wet getting to the control on an island surrounded by streams :).
We completed the orienteering in about 30 minutes, and then onto the skis for a nice 5+ mile ski down to the transition area. This took us about 90 minutes, and we where passed by 2-3 other faster teams on this leg.
Next to Snow shoes, and a quick run (ok, it was a slow slog) up the hill to the next CP, followed by some downhill, and a quick river crossing where we all got at least one foot wet, followed by a short steep ascent to the next CP, and then a nice downhill trot on the trail to the final CP in this area.
During this section of the race, we where in close contention with about 3-4 other teams, and all arrived back at the TA around the same time, but they all managed to beat us out onto the ski's for the long haul back to the start.
We set a good steady pace on the way back, and didn’t get passed by any more teams before arriving at CP5 for a Memory Test, which we managed to pass first time, and finally onto the finish :) Where we where met by the race photographer, and the local press, so now we are all looking forward to reading about our exploits in the news.
Our finish time was around 5:50 compared to the winning time of around 4:20? The winners skate skied. Their time was 90 minutes faster than ours, which I suspect they made mostly on the ski leg, especially as they passed us on the ski leg out about 15 minutes into the leg. That meant they skied twice as fast as us, which I can totally believe given how quickly they came past us and disappeared into the distance.
The general consensus from the officials was that we finished about halfway through the field, which was pretty good from a team of beginners on their first winter adventure race.
Now I'm looking forward to next years race, and looking around for some XC ski racing to get thoroughly beaten at :)
Lessons learned -
Thanks again, and see U out there soon :)
