Ok, so I’m a slacker. Not much to report from the last week (lots for the last weekends though). So this is the first post of weekendy-goodness on the Mock Race at Lake Morena Oct 15th.
I got to the site late Friday and camped out next to more racers: Barrie, Steve, Jake, Angie, and some new faces. Good chat around the campfire, and we checked out the course for the next day. Looked to be some challenging bike sections, but like nav wouldn’t be too bad. Oh, wouldn’t be too bad after we learned that one CP was off by 1k. We didn’t have to climb up to the highest tree and touch it — at a point in the middle of the lake! We had to do so at a point with a nice big hill.
The next morning I met the prospective Primal Quest teammates: Clint, Zach, and Dave. They were all pretty easy going, and we got our transition set up. It was a nice casual format of “start when you want, but check out and we’ll compare total times on sections later”. So we headed out at 10:07 — a quick jog of the park area to grab 3 CPs, and then off on our bikes.
Wow talk about some sand! Oh, and some bikers (not with the mock race) coming down one section asked why we were going up it, as it is known as an awesome descent (which often means not so great for climbing up)… especially since we were about the 11th group they’d seen heading up that day. Grabbed a few more CPs, and hit a fun downhill section. Some technical bits, an a few bigger drops that I conquered! We then took some blazing fast road back to the TA, where we dropped the bikes and headed out for a windy paddle!
2 of the kayak CPs involved getting out and hiking up to a CP, and one was a bouy. I paddled in my double kayak with Dave, which was good since he was the quietest and it gave me a chance to get a better feeling for him as a teammate. Oddly enough, just about all the real bushwacking in this race was on the kayak section!
Damp and fairly cold with all the winds, we made it back to TA again, pulled on trekking shoes, and were off on the final leg: about 5 miles of hiking, but with a nice climb required (as there was no going back the way we came, and then around the mountain). Some very nice trails though, and I finally got to see part of Pacific Coast Trail! So that was cool.
We finished in 6 hrs, 48 minutes. Not the fastest time, but we were happy with it. We also learned what we need to work on: a big one will be ways to make the team faster, instead of waiting on the slower person for a section. Another will be nutrition strategies. But we found that we had fun, which is the important part. So although I still have some doubts just about the amount of experience we have for a race of this length… it looks like I’m going to PQ with ’em! Should be an experience 😉