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September 20, 2006

baarbd Ramp Up

Another great event report by Aja.

Another run in the park... Not!

Event photos by Galen: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dolface/sets/72157594288793832/

Saturday morning Adam Armijo and I woke up at the crack of dawn to hook up with the BAARBD’s for their Rev It Clinic, hosted by Rich Brazeau, held out in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I was under the impression that Adam and I were going to practice how to become better orienteer’s in case anything ever happened to Doti. Once at the park entrance we were greeted by fellow Dirty Avocado Will Gilmore, and Mark Manning from Team AR Nav Supply, for a quick clinic on how to use maps, compasses, and other useful navigation tips. Once we were briefed, we set out the get our gear together before Rich arrived with the maps.

9 am hit and still no Rich. Apparently he had been at a bachelor party the night before (Shhh!!) causing him not to arrive home till 4 am, the same time Armijo and I got up to head to the clinic. Around 9:30 he finally arrived, passed out maps, and gave us a course briefing. At that point it became quiet apparent that we weren’t just going for a run in the park. We were going to do a mock mini Primal Quest.

10 am hit and Jen Klafin was yelling out the count down. Adam had the maps, apparently plotted with coordinates, and stated that he was prepared for battle. 25 eager adventure racers took off in two different directions. Will, Jen, and a large number of racers headed off in one direction. All the others, including AR Nav Supply, went the other way. Adam and I just stood there. I yelled to Adam “Which way nav?” He looked at me blankly and said, “I don’t know lets follow these guys.” It was at that point I knew we were in trouble, and it hit me how lucky we are to have Doti as a teammate. We headed out down a dirt road following both AR Nav Supply and Sharon, both trustworthy groups to follow. Right?

We lost both groups in less than a mile for much a needed bathroom brake. At that point we began practicing our nav skills, teaching ourselves to be more realistic. About 45 minutes into the course, we arrived at a ridge that we thought to be close to where we needed to be. From that location, racers could be seen running around like ants in an ant farm, coming and going from all different directions. Some crazy fast AR guy came by, having already been at CP1, and gave us a pointer for which direction to head.

As we headed down the ridge per crazy guys suggestions, we ran into Will, Jen, and a few other racers who seemed to know what they were doing, all of which had been to CP1. We apparently added an extra two miles to what should have only been .5. Oh well, we had a few extra pounds to work off anyway. As we headed to CP1, nearly 6 groups passed by us heading in the direction we had just come from. They all gave us very funny looks, sort of like, Uh-oh you guys messed up, huh?

We pounded the down the hill hoping for some short cut that could possibly be taken to get us to CP1 just a bit faster. While bush wacking through a steep section, Adam and I found a fence that we thought we could go up and around to get to the trail head faster. It was a great idea if it actually got us to the trail head. Adam scampered up and around the fence with me and my slippery shoes following closely behind. My last step before sliding past the fence landed directly in a pile of loose rock causing me to loose my footing and slam straight into the side of the hill. Unable to see anything but stars, I decided it was smart to stay sitting for a few minutes. It was then I realized my running shoes were not going to cut it anymore. Battered, bruised, and bloody, we resumed our mission; after all we had not even made it to CP1 yet.

A few minutes later we found ourselves alone on the ridge were CP1 should have been spotted from. From atop the ridge we found that all other teams had left the valley and were well on their way to CP2, leaving us to look for some random human made object that was the ruminants of an old water tower. What a joke that was. After 15 minutes of searching we decided that it had to be this rusty old pipe sticking out of the ground.

Nearly two hours into the race, three miles deep, Adam and I had only reached CP1, but we had smiles on our faces and good feelings about the remainder of the race. We jogged back up the ridge we had just come down to start our journey towards CP2, which was positioned some 2 or so miles away. At about the 1 mile marker we stopped to asses the course markers. It was them we found that we had missed our trail and had been heading in the wrong direction. Oops! We were looking at the map upside down.

Finally on the right track, we flew through CP2-4. From CP4 there was a long rolling trek that clung closely to the mountains base line. Together we switched lead positions as we charged the four or so miles back to the cars, where CP5 awaited our signature. We were told in the beginning of the race that if we did not reach CP5 by 2 pm we should re-park our cars outside of the park in order to prevent our cars from being locked in by the parks sunset deadline. Apparently, Rich was expecting the bike course to take more than 6 hours. YIPPEE! Since it was 2:30 Adam and I decided to re-park the car.

We assessed the bike map and decided that we had a pretty big climb ahead of us in order to get to CP6. Pretty big did not accurately describe the climb up to Black Mountain Communication Tower. The map made it look like a doable road climb. This was not the case. An hour and 15 minutes later, we finally reached the top after playing dodge ball will oncoming Mercedes, Jags and BMR’s. It was decided at that point that we would ride down to CP7, turn back around and call it a day.

We dropped 800 feet from the 2600 we stood at for CP6. We wound down a fun little single track with small woops and banked walls that lead us to CP7 and threw high fives. It was then that Adam and I knew we were heading back to the city for beers. An incomplete Rev It Up event took us 7 hours to complete 11 running miles, and about 12 bike miles, can you say SLOW? For me, for Adam, we had a great time; we worked on our skills, and lived to tell a story about it. Who cares if we were the slowest out of the bunch?

Posted by aarmijo at September 20, 2006 09:12 PM

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