We have put together a team with the goal of winning the Overall Big Blue series.  But we also had our eye on winning the overall.   Now back to the beginning – Marks report: 

Friday night Adrian drops his kayak off at my house.  I get it all loaded.  I arrive at Del Valle, pay $6 to enter the park, $2 to launch a roof top boat, and $3 to have it inspected.  I pull up to the boat inspection and an inspector starts looking over the boat.   Cockpit is good, front cargo bulkhead good, rear cargo bulkhead has about 3 ounces of rain water.  The boat has been in Adrian’s yard since November and is full of leaves and spider webs.  The inspector gives me the news, my boat is banned and not allowed on the lake.  Hani was right in front of me and both of the boats he brought also failed the inspection.  I drove to the parking area and called Mike who has not arrived yet.  I have Mike meet up with me and Angel in the parking area and we dried out the boat with towels from my truck.  In a pinch the center cargo hatch can serve as a seat and that is our current plan.  We are confident as Mike drives to get the boat inspected.  Mike returns and the news was bad, both of our boats were banned.  This happened to several of the teams that were there.  Todd said he told everyone about the inspection in the race update but we failed to see it.  We had to rent a boat from Sunrise right there at Del Valle.  We opted for a Cobra Triple, the fastest three person option in the fleet of cargo barges.

30 minutes before we the start we get maps.  A close look reveals that most of the trails in the park are not on the Nat Geo Topo! maps…hmmm?  While we are plotting the optional CPs the pre race meeting began.  The course was designed by Mark Manning.  The idea was that the race is a Rogaine with an 8 hour cut off.  I asked we had to carry the rain jacket and fleece and Todd waived both items.  He also stated that if we had an emergency to call 911 on our cell phone.  I pointed out that cell phones are banned.  He told everyone that they would be required gear for future events.  The kayak leg was first and we could do the trek and bike legs in whatever order we wanted.  We decided on kayak, trek, bike since we are all strong cyclists and would likely trek faster early and when it was cooler.

We put on our PFDs before the start.  When the race started we sprinted to the barge, shoved it off, and were out on the lake with a couple hundred yard lead on the rest of the field.  We paddle right to CP1 but missed it.  Since it was almost in-line with our return route we opted to continue and get it on the way back.  On the way to CP 2 Phil L and his teammate passed us in their slick tandem that was not banned.  We got all three kayak CPs and were only passed by three or four boats; couple solos and Phil’s 2M team.  We made a quick transition and were off onto the trek in no time. 

The trek had 6 CPs and we opted to do them in reverse order.  The lack of trails on the map made getting our first CP a bit tricky but after we got the second CP of the trek we passed through a gate with the park trail maps in it.  I grabbed one on the way by.  There was a long section between CP2 and CP1 with no marked trails on the map and obvious fire roads on the planet.  Eventually we figured out where we were on the Park Trail Map and quickly finished sweeping the trek CPs.

When we got to the TA I worked on transferring all the bike CPs to the park map. Phil and teammate were there and left the TA right behind us.  We took off on the bikes up a very steep trail called Squirrel Gulch.  As we started up, Angel shifted into her granny gear and her chain came off and wedged tightly between her spoke and large cog.  By the time we fixed it Phil and partner had about a five minute lead.  We reduced it to a couple of minutes over the bike leg.  I have no idea how anyone who did not get a Del Valle park map could do the bike leg.  None of the bike CPs were on trails shown on the course map. The last bike CP was an out and back to the other side of the lake.  I had suggested swimming for it but in the end we chose to ride.  On the way to the CP we passed a solo racer who was returning.  We had not been aware of him being ahead of us.  We got to the CP and realized that we had not seen Team Phil.  It turn out that they swam across the lake for the CP and finished ahead of us in time, but they’d missed a CP on the trek and we’d swept the course so we’d beaten them.  I think we finished in around 6:45, 20 mins behind the solo.

I had told the person covering my shift that I’d be back around 4pm and it was about 3:45 so I had to rush off and didn’t get to hang around.

We handled the barge, the nav and Mike’s suffering in the heat well.   Overall we had a good race and represented the DAs well.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 6:52 pm and is filed under Team. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. [Permalink]