I'M WITH STUPID RTN NELSON

August 22, 2005

I was privileged to join Team I'm With Stupid this year along side Lannie Thielen Isablelle Julien and first time race Brad Robert. Our super support crew was my girlfriend Tanya and Isabelle's friend Katrina.

Our race started in Lethbridge at 7AM Friday morning when while Lannie was going to pick up Brad he encounted a 3inch bolt with his back right tire. Long story short, we went to Midas, got the tire repaired, yady yada yada, were back on the road at 8:45 instead of 7 as planned.

insert driving here

We got to Nelson and the parking lot around 3:30. We quickly unpacked and breezed through registration. All except for the polysporin natzi MA. So how many other teams were nabbed for expired polysporin, she had quite a baggy full of the stuff!!! Now I'm not saying MA isn't a great lady - she is and her and I go a fair ways back, she's awesome! But really isn't polysporin just polysporin, and really who uses polysporin during a race anyways!!! I think secretly Geoff and MA have stocks in the polysporin business OR MA has a secret addiction to outdated polysporin bottles and Geoff is her front for her to get her fix...

Anyways, I digress, MA is a fantastic lady and probably one of the best volunteers out there. Actually on sleepmonsters.ca Chris Koch did a great interview of her if you care to check it out...

Anyways back to the race...

Check in done...

Pre-race meeting, maps, food, travel to Kaslo, get ready, meeting, maps, last minute stuff, BANG - we're off!

We were a fairly strong mbiking team and quickly headed to the front of the pack. We knew we were supposed to go ~5km before turning onto the K&S Wagon Road. Around the 5km point we were right behind Lawerence Foster's team and they continued to plug away. Teams started dropping from the lead pack, but we were with LAWERENCE FOSTER'S TEAM, truly he wouldn't make a mistake as simple as missing a turn off. We continued and at the 6.8km mark we saw a marked trail that said K&S Wagon road up here and got on it. We were thinking sweet 2nd place and everyone else turned back there!! Very shortly after climbing this hill we were grreeted by a truck honking its horn at us and eventually telling us we were on the wrong road and had to go back and take the "right" road up. This was disheartening as we went from 2nd place to 2nd last place in the matter of 3 seconds. but hey, at least we were now ahead of LAWERENCE FOSTER'S TEAM. Alright so now the only person on my list of people that I'll follow in an adventure race is Ian Adamson and don't tell me you wouldn't!!

Anyways, back on the "right" road we went and up the hill we went. We slowly passed a couple of teams, especially the team (no need to be identified) that was seperated into one person at the back, two in the middle and one in the front, probably a good 2-3km apart. Yes 3rd last!

After a minor nav error on the trails we eventually haeded down to the TA and quickly transitioned to trekking gear. We started along the trail and at the junction we went straight instead of up to the switchbacks and encountered bushwhacking 1-2km before we thought we'd have to. Eventually we made it to the creek and we bushwhacked, bushwhacked and bushwhacked all the way to the saddle. We reached the saddle and saw the peak we had to climb. It was a good one and we started on the rock pile below the cliff below the rock pile below the summit. We continued along until we saw a section where some footprints had gone up the cliff and into the upper rock pile. We had initially planned to go around to the saddle and then up the southside but we saw footprints and figured this way must be ok. We headed up and up along the upper rock pile.

This is where the scariest thing happened. I'll spare most of the details, but we started the third of three rockfalls that happened on the day and from stories I heard we started the biggest one. The AR gods we watching us on this day as we were amazingly able to stay safe and alive and all the people below us were able to admit the same. Truly our team was rocked and shaken up and even days after the event still had me shaken. That being said, thank goodness everyone remained ok because very tragic things could have happened.

Shaken, we very slowly ascended the final 150m up to the summit and then down to CP2. We found out at CP2 we had moved up to 16th place. We hammered fromm CP2 to CP3 and moved up 3 spots to 13th.

The ride from CP3 was a long arduous ride up to Idaho Peak. It was a long one but we made it. We made it only to find the best downhill mountain bike riding ever in an adventure race on the other side. We walked the first few switchbacks, we're not crazy, but then hammered down the rest. Once we hit the fire road at the bottom we went even faster only to suffer two flat tires (both because of a valve failure of two different presta-valve tubes) which cost us 30 minutes.

Regardless we came into CP5 refreshed and happy. At the TA we were treated a fantastic meal of spaghetti, garlic bread etc. and after about 45 minutes we were on the water around dusk. We had acknowledged we wouldn't make the advanced course cutoff but we still pushed hard on the canoes, despite the Canadian Tire special we were paddling in.

Along the way we kept ourselves awake by singing "the song that never ends" and "down by the bay" as well as playing games etc. Finally we made it to the river which was covered in a fine mist and as the moon came up was covered in shadowed silhouettes of all the weeds in the river. Very eerie! Because of the low visibility we managed to go over at least two logs and hit one rock but no casualties. The scariest part was probably the ridiculous amount of beavers who greeted us with thunderring claps of their tails against the water as we went by.

Eventually though we made it to the canoe drop off and headed to the tyro. The tyro was uneventful, except it was really cool to see your shadow on the cliff wall as you went across. Magazine worthy - you betcha!

We came into the TA kinda unorganized but Brad kept us all together. After a TA that was too long we got on our bikes and eventually on the right road. I had the sleepmonsters attacking me on this leg the most as I saw on several occasions people running in and out of the bush and I don't know how many rabbits I saw. However, my team did a great job of getting me through this section. Just before hitting CP7 Isabelle said, "this would be the perfect place to see a moose", and I swear not even 15 seconds later we passed right by a moose - sweet!

We advanced on to CP7 and 8 and at the TA we transitioned quick as I warmed up in the truck. We were on the water and hammered to the finish in 32 hours and 33 minutes in 12th or 13th (time credits still being calculated...)

This was the first time ever any of our team had finished a RTN 36 hour race - yes!

After thoughts:

The navigation on the course was quite easy and decisions were not necessarily available since there were more instructions that usual citing specific roads to take etc. This is probably why so many teams finished this race, but if it had gotten wet out there it could have been a different story.

I didn't like that there were no safety boats out on the lake and river, especially at night.

I thought the tyro was needless. I think putting in a ropes sections for the sake of a ropes section isn't necessary. If there's a large river crossing then put in a tyro, if there's a large cliff to descend then have a rappel, but don't just add one for the sake of having one...

I thought this was an amazing course, the views were fantastic and the terrain was super exciting. This is why I race RTN races, there is no competition when it comes to course design.

The rock falls were very scarey but Geoff already addressed this after the race, thank god no one was hurt!

Finally, I had absolutely awesome teammates!! Brad, Lannie and Isabelle all at one time or another carried my weight through the course as I was having food problems and without a fantastic team dynamic like we had it could have been a different story. These three were the best teammates you could have and Brad was a machine considering he'd never done anything more than S2S before.