Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Odyssey Wild Wonderful Race Report 2014


Saturday May 17
Event: Odyssey Wild, Wonderful 24 Hour AR
Writer: Bryan Mayer & Kristin Eddy 

The team had a strong race. We moved fast and in the right direction almost the entire time. Urgency suffered a bit since GOALS was no longer elite and Odyssey had to go unofficial early on in the race (Mark punctured his calf with a stick). Probably would have been better if GOALS hadn't told us. We still moved fast but stopped for pictures and maintenance a little more than usual. We had a great time though and saw some great scenery. 

Brian: We executed everything well and worked well as a team. I made one wrong choice in route decision but lost minimal time. Also had trouble finding one tough CP in the dark and misplotted another. We triple checked the one that I thought was misplotted and still didn’t realize my mistake. Luckily it was the closest point to the TA/finish so we were able to re-attack at the end without wasting too much time. If this had been in the middle of the course we would have been in more trouble. 

Kristin: Next time I will ask you if you are 110% sure (not just 100% : ) makes me laugh just thinking about it.

Brian: Ronny put together a great MTBO on the new Fayetteville MTB singletrack trails (Arrowhead) and we had a pretty epic trek back to ACE HQ from there. Lots of tough Nav. 

Kristin: The arrowhead trails/mtb section was one of my favorite parts of the race - always sweet to have great singletrack rolled into the race WITH challenging nav (which, by the way, you'd never know was challenging the way that Brian navs it: fast paced & nailed each point)

RECAP: Black (Brian) Blue (Kristin) 

8 AM
Paddle was cancelled. River peaked at over 16ft exactly at race start. This was the 22nd highest peak recorded. 0 is standard and 4-6ft is normal for this time of year. The rafting would have been EPIC. The river looked insane. Like a beast. I surely would have peed my pants if we had rafted it (though would have been fun i'm sure) SICK!!!!

Road Running 5:00 0.34 mi
LeMans start to bikes. We literally had to tell Dan to slow down (by the way, I said this to him more than once during the race!!! : ) He was a human rocket...for the entire race!!!
When I got to my bike I found that someone decided to lay it down in some nice poison ivy. Thank you.
Mountain Biking 40:00 4.58 mi +960ft
Climb to Fayetteville from “takeout”

9 AM
Road Running 40:00 4.6 mi
Run through Fayetteville to gather some CPs the lovely rhodo that blooms in the neighborhood between the park & town was in glorious full bloom...it is tri-color and almost as big as the house that it shades - remembered it from previous races, love that beauty.

10 AM
Mountain Biking 1:50:00 11.63 mi
MTBO on Arrowhead trails. Really well designed course section. Adding topo lines to the trail map and making the lines less than a 1/2 in thick iwould make this a professional MTBO. Yes, Ronny did a great job with this - FUN!!!

12 PM
Orienteering 9:00:00 24.2 mi
Long Orienteering section. Started with some points we had to plot around Fayetteville area. Had some amazing views and awesome scenery on this section. Did some of it with GOALS.racing alongside goals & the sweet spots of the controls were definite race highlights - overlooks, waterfalls, cool rock formations - really gorgeous.

On the first half (14-19t) I had to make a few minor recoveries (1-2 min) to each of the points. But no real problems. Still good navigation. (GREAT nav)

The second half was on ACE property. Struggled deciding when to get CP 22. Got it after 20 because I thought it would allow for more trail travel but I think in retrospect it would have been better after 24 (i tried to tell brian this, but he wouldn't listen, can you believe that?). Distance looked just as far but with the way we ended up leaving 24, 22 wouldn't have really been out of the way and would have been on trails. It was a tough call for me though so I don't feel too bad.

On our way to the last few points before we went to TA I started having trouble with the trail map. The labels are aligned E-W. I kept reading it as if they were N-S though so we were going the right way because I was following terrain but every time I looked at the compass I couldn't understand what was wrong. Befuddled me for two points until I realized the cause. Other than the 1 route choice only one 5 min error on the second half. Misread the map right before the attack to 24.

The pace was fast for this entire trek (yes it was...brian & dan kept steady gunnin', even with no sense of pressure...always nice to push simply to do our best - which i think we did!). Running whenever we could. Finished just after civil twilight.

9 PM
MTBO 2:40:00 12.25 mi +1300ft
Gathering the last points around the TA on bike instead of foot. Moved slow on these because it was dark, the trails are slow and everywhere, and we were starting to get tired.
Translated CP30 to the trail map incorrectly onto a parallel spur (the spur had a matching road with a unique shape, trail, and reentrant). When it wasn't there we thought Ronny had misplotted because the clue was off. We double and triple checked and then moved on. Next two points were clean and the trails to them were all good.
27 was difficult. Everyone had trouble with it. The planned attack was through private property. Had to back out and attack from farther away. On my way realized I mistranslated this point as well (just 1 reentrant off) but caught it in time. Had trouble finding the small (actually big but shallow) reentrant in the dark. Spent time looking in an wrong reentract full of briars before we reattacked from the top/private property. Still had to go all the way back to the bikes though. (low point of the race for many folks...lots of stories afterwards about this one!)

Had trouble finding an ACE trail on the way to the last point but got it and then rolled back to TA. When we got back we asked about CP30. Teams had apparently collected it so I checked one more time and noticed my translation error. The road is really what messed me up. Luckily it was only a mile or so away (but 400ft climb) so it was fairly easily attainable.
Orienteering race 1:30:00 2.3 mi
Trekking during MTBO

You are invited to view K mama's photo album: Team American Adventure Sports at Odyssey's Wild Wonderful

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