Atlantic Coast Conquest

Last weekend Mims the Word was back in action at the ACC in St. Augustine, FL. I had been looking forward to this race for a while and really loved the fact that it was just 30 minutes from home. We went to a brief pre-race meeting Friday night and got our maps. Everything looked pretty straight forward with the only real strategy being in the paddle section dealing with tides. It was good to catch up with Katherine, who was racing with Relentless. They are really cool group of people. Order of disciplines was as follows: Bike or Run (you could start with either), Paddle, Run, Paddle, Bike, Run, Bike. You could get the CP's in any order in each section.
Trek 1:

We chose to start with the run. This was a pretty simple section with 6 CP's approx. 6 miles in length. Aside from one small mistake we hit everything quickly. Highlight of this section was seeing a hog with three legs while running with Eco-choice. We were told we were the first team back from the run.

Bike 1:

The first bike section was mostly on roads in a newly developed area. Apart from turning off too early on a fire break we made it through this section with no issues. (Only thing that slowed us down was Dave checking out a GTO that drove by) We made it back to the TA and headed out on the water right behind Punch Junkies with a couple teams right behind us.

Paddle Out:

The paddle section was an out and back in the inter coastal and consisted of 7 CP's with a trek section at Stokes Landing in the middle. We decided the night before to hit 4 CP's on the way to Stokes and 3 Cp's on the way back that were up creeks in order to make the best use of the tides. Most of the navigation was very easy for this section. The toughest thing about this paddle was the wind and dealing with wake from the many large boats that were out there. On the way down, the boat consistently pulled left and on the way back it pulled right. I felt like I was doing nothing but corrective strokes the entire time. This was both physically and mentally exhausting. We spent this whole section chasing Punch Junkies but were able to work with them for most of the CP's.

Trek 2- Stokes Landing:

The second trek came as a welcome break from paddling. We didn't waste anytime and took off along the eastern shore of the park and quickly found the first CP. The next two CP's were easy enough and then came the first hurdle we would face with nav on this race. What appeared to be any easy CP located at the end of a firebreak off a due south trail gave us and many other teams trouble. What was on the map and what was actually there just didn't match up. We spent about 45 minutes on this point working with Punch Junkies and finally found it by trial and error. We hoofed it back to boat and took off on the long paddle home.

Paddle Back:

No real issues on the last paddle. The wind died down and the paddling became easier. The CP's up the creeks were accessible with the tide in. It was still slow going. We began the paddle out at 10:50 AM and did not arrive back to the TA until 7:30ish. That's a long time sitting on an aluminum seat. We came in about 20 minutes after Punch Junkies and right on the heels of Eco-choice. Shake-a-leg Miami had absolutely smoked the paddle and were way out ahead of all of us.

Bike 2:

After eating some "real food" we made a quick transition to the bike hoping not to let Punch Junkies get too far out. We left the TA with Eco-choice and caught up to Punch Junkies at the first bike CP. We stumbled upon this CP earlier during the first trek so I was able to take us right to it. For the next three hours we continued to knock off CP's bumping into Punch Junkies and Eco-choice on and off as we went. And then there was CP 30....the one that got away. We chose to attack this CP from a trail coming up from the south after getting CP 31. When we arrived to what we thought was Stokes Landing we saw about three team's worth of headlamps bouncing towards the shoreline. We dropped our bikes and soon caught up and joined in the search. After over an hour and a half of searching and seemingly exhausting all our options we, along with all the other teams with us, decided to bail on the point. This is where the wheels came off for us. We were demoralized from having to skip a point and being caught be several teams that we had a good lead on. This navigation seemed to get trickier at this point and we were getting tired. I felt like we basically fumbled around in the woods for 5 hours until the sun came up. We worked with Nature Calls for a couple CP's which was nice and kept us focused for while. They were as frustrated as we were with the maps at that point so working together seemed to help a little. Their were so many trails that were not on the map it was ridiculous. Staying oriented was a real challenge. We picked up momentum as the sun came up made it to the the last trek about 8 AM and found out that only three other teams had found CP 30. After briefly discussing gong back to get it we decided we didn't have enough time.

Trek 3:

The last trek was a very straightforward loop around 8-9 miles. We pushed hard for the first three miles or so and then settled into a solid pace for the rest of it. It took us 2:20:00. I remember yawning constantly the whole time and fighting the urge to close my eyes. We passed the time by talking about what we were going to eat after the race- my favorite part of adventure racing.

Bike 3:

The last bike leg was just a due north dirt road ride to the finish. A short ride that seemed to last forever...

Although we were frustrated with our results we had an awesome time. Dave and Katie are great teammates. The course was laid out nicely. We switched disciplines often enough and most of the CP's seemed to be plotted correctly. Guana WMA is a beautiful area and was a great place for a race. Congratulations to Shake-a-leg Miami on the win. The really owned this race. Can't wait for the next one...