TEAM LOST IN TRANSITION FMIJ

July 22, 2005

We started off with a slight jog on the first section, although with the jumbles of people we eventually just maintained a quick hike. As with most teams at the start around the 3km mark we too followed the trail to the right instead of following the cutline that had been grown over. We did some back tracking and eventually found the cutline. We were actually quite proud of ourselves to find it, only to find that there were about 10 sets of headlamps behind us who had found it also, or did they just follow our excellent navigation? Perhaps they followed our little red glow sticks through the forest? Who knows :-)

Anyways, we continued on towards CP1. As we hit the first swampy section, Team Spirit passed us, for the first time to my knowledge, I had been on a team that was ahead of Team Spirit - Yes! Although this was short lived as they must have had skis or snowshoes on the way they literally ran throught the marsh!

After seeing the second section of swamp land on the map we were one of the few teams that decided to try and bypass the marsh by contouring around it at approx 1480-1500m. This worked for the most part, although it was still a little boggy, though not up to the armpits boggy. We actually saw a lot of headlamps looking at us as we walked by them as they were mucking around in the swamp, it felt good actually to be passing teams and we were thinking to ourselves, man they must be wet...

We hit the road and then backtracked to CP1 about 500m or so to find ourselves in 10th place.

We followed the road until it made a large turn to the EAST and that's when we headed up to the saddle between the first two peaks. The weather was changing and we never noticed that our altimeter's were actually dropping. We figured this out later, but still never adjusted them (foreshadowing).

Anyways, we hit the saddle and started heading down but we were confused because we had never hit the proper altitude and shouldn't be going down yet. This confused us, and instead we took a sharp turn towards the South and ran into the cutline that lead us towards CP2. We follwed the cutline to the saddle and then trekked on up to CP2. There we ran into Gary Eggen's team (SP?) Team Aged Perfection and found out that they had left CP1 in 13th place so we had lost some positions. The trek on down from CP2 and towards TA1 was relatively easy and we stayed right behind Gary's team.

We got into TA1 in 12th place, so we felt good about that, since we thought we had lost time. We transitioned quick and were out of the TA in 11th place I believe. We trekked the long and boring and muddy road to CP3. If Brian had made us portage our boats that 8km I think there would have been hell to pay, however just the walk along the mud with all our gear was enough. We hit the paddle and started off fairly slow. The first 5km or so sucked, as we got out of our boats a fair bit. Then we got into a good rhythm and were able to pass 2 teams. One team seemed to let us by while another team (Tracy Taylor's team) was so gracious as to get hung up on a large rock as we flew by them along the proper path. It felt great passing teams on the water, because I've never done that before! Our team was in great sync on the water and after the first 5km or so, we maybe only got out of our boat 5 times. Alot of the credit for that goes to Michael and Kelly who did a great job of reading the water and current. We arrived at CP4 in 9th and held our advantage until TA2. At TA2 we were slow, I'm not sure why, but we just were slow. We still managed to get out of there in 9th place but just barely. We hopped on the ropes and started the bikewhack. After about 250m or so we got to an area where we saw the cutline we were going to have to bike. A very quick decision by the team basically said, "screw this" and we turned around crossed the creek we had just tyro'd across and headed up the road.

A dumb nav error on our part had us travel around 8km out of the way on the road and when all was said and done we took 5+ hours to get to CP6, similar to most other teams who did the bikewhack. We were amazed though that we were still indeed in 9th place.

The rest of the bike was typical gravel road and we arrived at the CP7 and TA3 in 9th place and it was about midnight when we arrived at the TA. At the TA I was absolutely shiverring and needed to get warm quick. We all ate and decided a small 1hr nap would be good before we headed out. We had our nap and when we woke the pelting of rain was ridiculous and we sat around and talked as a team. After the first trek and essentially being wet the entire time and recognizing that we were out of most of our wet clothes we made the team decision to stop at TA3. We were worried about hypothermia, and previously injured ankles and as a group decided to stop.

The next day we woke up and did the Out There Challenge. We nailed it in under 20 seconds, but we forogt to hook one of the hooks, and didn't notice until the 27 second mark!! We could have had those tents! Argh!

The next day we found out that only Outdoor Pursuit finished - kudos to them - and the ranking would be based on arrival time into TA3, so our finishing place was 9th.

For a team that had never met before the race, let alone train together we though this was a great success. Our primary goal was to stay safe/healthy and have fun which was achieved. Our second goal was to come top 10 and we did and we felt great about that.