Tree Huggers Race report- ESAR Caledon 05

Tree Huggers from Mars Race Report Click here

Tree Huggers from Venus Race Report- from Barb.

Teams in this race were from Police, Fire, Paramedic, Hospitals and 15 civilian teams, including us.

My open female team, the Tree Huggers from Venus, included Lucy Hingorani and Jan Hannah, who had never raced before. Thanks to Appalachian Extreme, I was wearing an arm splint and apparently I sprained my ankle in a strange place last weekend (which I didn't find out until after ESAR - my chiropractor Nigel raced with Richard and noticed it as we were sitting together). So... let's just say that we went out there with every intention of being a fun team.

It was fun to race close to home. We started out in Forks of the Credit with a nav section, then mountain biking mostly on trails, then canoeing on the Credit River, then back to trail running and nav on the Bruce Trail and in Terra Cotta CA, then to the finish line biking on roads. There were a few special tasks, e.g. climbing across a rope bridge, carrying a stack of stretchers, climbing a 3 meter wall, and carrying a team member on a stretcher across the finish line.

At the first CP, I thought I heard the volunteer say we were 55th, which seemed OK for a fun-oriented female team in a field of 79 teams. But I must have heard wrong, because we were 13th at the next CP! I've got to hand it to Lucy and Jan. As new racers, they did a lot of running during the day and were lightning fast in TAs. Because of my arm injury, they had to contribute more, e.g. taking the canoe at the portage and carrying me in the stretcher over the finish line. They kept the mood light all day and never complained, even when I was leading them through nasty, rotten fallen trees in a foot-sucking marsh. They especially never complained as we were climbing the escarpment to Devil's Pulpit right behind two teams of young policemen dressed in shorts (who eventually asked us to lead the way). ;-)

End result - we were 1st of 11 female teams in the race - yahoo! Unfortunately, because we were civilians, we didn't qualify for the female category, so the female team of emergency services personnel who finished half an hour behind us got all the great prizes. We were 4th of the 15 civilian teams though, which was still good for a medal and a gift certificate at Running Free. We were somewhere around 12th-15th of 79 teams overall, which I wouldn't have believed possible if someone had suggested it beforehand.

So hats off to Luscious and Gorgeous for kicking some butt in their first adventure race! :-)

Tree Huggers from Mars Report- from Richard

I had originally planned to race with Nigel and Neil Morris, THFV Jan's significant other, who has also never done an AR but knows the area really well. Neil even came to 6AM paddling class with us. Unfortunately he blew out his knee 2 weeks before the race, and I had to recruit fast. I thought of Wayne Cassidy from Team Hunger, as we've often finished the winter orienteering races fairly close together and he seemed like a super-nice guy. I was thrilled when he agreed, and we ended up practicing paddling at dusk in a little lake just after registration.

The first part of the race was the only bit with some orienteering, and we all spent the whole bus ride trying to find a good attack point for the mysterious audio CP (Checkpoint). We started the run and moved up to just behind Storm The Trent, who won last year. I know this area a bit so I navigated the first bit though the straightforward CPA until the thick bushwhack to the audio CP B (Loud music playing in the middle of very thick forest), where Nigel held us on the bearing. We hit it well, whacked back to the trail through the swamp and waded the river, and then Wayne led us back up the escarpment by a direct but steep route to CPC, where we found we were in the lead. Wayne's a gazelle! We ran across the valley and up the Devil's Pulpit (well, walked and climbed up it with the help of ropes) to the bikes, a quick TA (Transiton Area) and off down the trails.

Nigel's a strong biker, so he led the way and navigated. I was glad to see I could keep up on the recumbent, even though the trail was moderately technical. Basically rocky trail with some log-overs, but no bad mud. In our enthusiasm we overshot a couple of turns a bit, (OK, one was my fault). It's an odd experience leading the race- the marshalls weren't expecting us yet and we surprised some.

At the next CP we had to carry a pile of 10 backboards, then rode to the paddle. As we were readly to launch, team FUBAR came in to the TA, so we had to hustle. We went with a kayak paddle for Nigel the moose and 2 canoe paddles, with me in the stern, a configuration that worked really well in the shallow water and mild Class 1 rapids. In some places it was more shoving off the bottom than paddling. Beautiful paddle, with lots of great birds. FUBAR was right behind us.

On the next run through Terra Cotta we navigated smoothly. Nigel's old rib injury had him gasping for air in serious pain but with some good teamwork and our enthusiastic gazelle we kept the lead, over a rope bridge (One rope underfoot and one to hold on to) and through some absolutely beautiful trails to the bikes again. At the TA the volunteers were a little unsure, and told us this wasn't the rail trail so we headed downhill looking for it. When we hit the road we knew we missed it, so we took the next hill back up to the rail trail. Like we needed extra climbing! Still, it was a group boo-boo.

Back on the bikes we did the big climb up the escarpment (the Recumbent bike kept up fine) and rode a fast echelon to the finish. Nigel was back in form, especially when he saw the second place team behind us, so we all shared the work. I had some cramps I had to work through, but we hammered to the end, where we had a wall climb, then a stretcher carry, where they carried me across the finish on a backboard.

We were first overall, and Storm was 3 minutes behind us. Our first win! The icing on the cake was that Tree Huggers from Venus were first female too!

When people asked how the bike worked on the technical stuff, I was finally able to say "OK I guess- we won!"

I really loved racing with these guys! We hammered and still had a lot of fun.

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