Adventure racing consists of athletic disciplines along with route finding and strategies of how to get from point to point. The Below the Boarder team from Fargo was Matt Wenzel, Matt Engen and myself. All of us are new to this type of event so other then what was learned from the Bensons and the web page we were all rookies.
We arrived to the Benson home on Friday afternoon. Their home on West Hawk Lake. MB is accessible only by boat – very cool. They have a carpentry business which is apparent by the handy work that is situated throughout their lovely home. Hard to explain how beautiful it is.
Trail network literally right out the back door of the Benson house - Sons, Scott and Chris Benson have mastered this stuff - crazy.
Setting up the canoes the night before - Bill borrowed from the local school district (thanks Bill).
Pre-race. Matt Engen on the left, Matt Wenzel middle and me on the right.This area of the world has lots of exposed bed rock, swamps, trees and very rugged terrain. Our first event was biking on what I think you could call a trail. We were rambling over beaver damns and rocks all the way to the village of Falcon Lake.
At Falcon Lake we had an orienteering deal that had us biking all over the little town stamping our “passports” before we moved onto the next check point. The photo above is showing a checkpoint location. There is a special punch hanging from the marker that identifies that you were there.From there we biked back towards the start where we transitioned to our trekking shoes to bushwhack our way to the canoes. We are an hour and a half into it, the weather was perfect, the day was good.
After my canoe experience with the Chippewa Tri, I was not looking forward to this leg. The best part of the canoe is how pretty the lake was; calm deep water with rocky shores. Luckily the canoe leg was short, but of the three portages, two were tough as hell. We had to lug the canoe up and over a rocky ridge, down to another lake. Matt Engen and I did the paddling while Matt W. sat in the middle on the floor of the boat doing what he could to paddle from that position. Matt E. and I hauled the canoe and both agree that was the toughest part of the day.
From the canoe we again trekked to check points out in the middle of the bush. We did not have to use our compasses for the first check point as there was plenty of traffic that we were racing with that knew the way. From that check point we had to bush whack for over an hour to the next point. The point was a communication tower that we were able to get a visual of once in awhile which helped. We set our bearing and plowed through the woods. Finally we got checked in and could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Back on the bikes we followed the map out to a couple more check points and finished on a really sweet section of single track that looped up and around the Falcon Hill Ski Area. We lost some places in the canoe portion, but made them back on the bike. We passed 4 teams in the single track alone and knew we were in the top 20 teams to finish (out of 75). At the last check point, we were given another orienteering map that required four stamps – then we were done! There were adventure racers all over the place trying to finish up. We rolled over the finish line in 6 hours, 6 minutes!
Wow what a day that was!
Post race, not looking too bad. At least we still had smiles on our faces.
Overall, what an excellent event! In spite of a few minor difficulties with some pre-race food, all went off without a hitch. Matt E. was a major asset in route finding and analyzing the next plan of attack. Matt E. also plowed through the bush like a swamp donkey (moose). Matt W. never complained and pulled us on the bike the whole day. More then once I heard him say “keep up Dad”. Team Below the Boarder was matched perfectly. We stayed within the mandatory 100ft of each other all day and kept an eye out for trouble throughout making sure we ate and were hydrated.
Post race was spent cleaning up and hanging around for the awards. We were the only team from the States and it seemed like everyone knew that. Maybe is was our American currency that we were using to purchase beers, maybe the word just got around. What ever, the Canadians were great people.
The whole team was awarded a sweeeeeet Mountain Hardware jacket after a random team drawing, that was the icing on the cake. Swag is always fun to win at race events and this was a great prize.
After falling a couple times and getting dropped by the whole damn group I decided that if I wanted to ride that type of trail I need at least a front suspension. Matt E. and Bill both had softails and ripped the course. Matt W. has front suspension and was right up front. Me....it took the other three about 12 pedal strokes to get a gap and that was depressing for me to not be able to keep up. Whatever, I really had a good time rolling on the Benson trail network.
Matt and I on top of a huge rock. Traction was unlimited. The Benson's were excellent hosts and made all of us feel right at home. Kriston and Linda are top notch Mom's that know how to take care of a bunch of stinky racers. Matt Engen had to get back to Fargo and work but was a good sport to let us hang around to ride in the morning. I am sure that he had a good time even though he was immersed with the Wenzel clan for the weekend.
Time to heal. My legs are all cut up and I have two swollen elbows from crashing on granite. Hope you made it through this long report, I could have gone on forever - Cheers!
No comments:
Post a Comment