It?s Monday morning at 9 AM, and as I start to write this I am suffering. My legs are so stiff that it really hurts to walk downstairs and my back and shoulders are stiff and sore, but I?m happy and content knowing that we did a good job completing another Adventure Race on Saturday.
Team Its Just a Flesh Wound which consisted of Darren West, Yumay Chang, Michelle Shutleworth, and Steve Wort (thats Me) decided to head up to sunny Vancouver BC for the Shore to Shore race which ran from Cypress Mountain down to Ambleside Beach, and across the bay to Jericho Beach.
It was supposed to be a nice easy race. As most of us hadn?t been training hard due to busy work schedules, this race looked like an easy way to get in another race before the end of the season. We would soon find out that although the race might lack the level of navigation we had come to expect from a Trioba race, that it would make up for it in some pretty nasty terrain for a short 4-6 hour race.
The start horn sounded at 08:00 on Saturday morning, and saw a packed field of racers dashing thru the parking lot of Cypress Mountain Ski area and of up a trail to bag the next of many CPs before the finish line.
Strangely the first CP was the start line. Each team had to check in before the start of the race, and got the first of many words to be entered into the race passport.
Through the parking lot, and a quick right over the road, and we were off road and climbing a steep fire road under the heat of the early morning sun. There was no shade to cool us from the relentless heat. This was a particularly harsh way to start the race, and I was soon struggling to get my first wind. As the flat of the parking lot turned into the steepness of the fire road, the pace immediately slowed to a walk, and a slow walk at that. We soon climbed the few hundred feet to reach the point where the route headed into the shelter of the trees, and left the steep fire road behind for a much nicer shaded trail.
This trail led us up and down, not to much up, not to much down, just kind of nice, except for a rolled ankle causing sharp pain, and a worry that the race would end so soon. I walked it off, and thankfully it eased, and allowed us to resume our jog downhill, slog uphill pace. CP2 came up quickly, as did the leading racers, making their way back down the out and back portion of this first hike.
Onwards to CP3 we pressed, the trail continuing thru some great forest, which lots of small lakes appearing thru the tree's, and soon we came out of the forest to an absolutely amazing view. Mount Baker to the left, the city of Vancouver laid out at our feet, Vancouver island in the distance, the clear blue sky, early morning clouds, and sparkling sea finishing the picture.
Back down the trail we headed. OUCH, I landed hard, and tweaked my other ankle. This was the price I was paying for spending to much time on my bike, and not enough running and hiking. There was a lot of pain every step was sending shooting pains thru my ankle. At least this made the pain in the other ankle disappear. We kept going, sucking down water to keep hydrated and starting to sip food and energy drinks as we had now done our first hour.
Now we were mostly downhill, heading for CP4, and the Bike TA. Its so much nicer going downhill, unless your ankle really hurts at every step, but it was starting to ease, thank goodness. The trail was familiar now as we retraced our steps towards CP2. The familiarity made it seem shorter, and it was definitely more downhill, which always helps. Soon we were back to CP2, were we branched left for the downhill loop, and before long we found the top of that fire road, and jogged downhill back to the parking lot to find our bikes.
As we ran into the TA, we saw a few teams heading out. Looking back we could see other teams still behind u. It was good to know we had other teams all around us, definitely a few we could work at picking of on the bike section.
Claire our support crew for the race was there to greet us with news about the other teams, and words of encouragement. At last I was going to be off my feet for a while with a 16Km bike section ahead of us.
We had a quick Transition, and were soon on our bikes heading out of the TA. It looked like we even picked up a few places during the TA as other teams were slower, and it was good to see other teams still coming in from the run as we peddled past them to the start of the downhill fun.
Before continuing, I need to quickly take you back to the check in yesterday evening. We were one of the first teams to arrive, and quickly filled in the necessary paperwork. All the while checking out the other folks around us and sizing up our competition. It was very interesting to see that most of the bikes were big downhill bikes, with only a few other riders on hard tail cross country bikes. I was thinking that we would have the advantage when it came to any climbs with our lighter XC bikes.
Now back to the bike leg, which soon turned steeply downhill, and saw us slow to a crawl as we negotiated the steep rocky road downhill. We saw quite a few riders fall around us, but we escaped relatively unscathed with a few slow roll overs, but none of the high speed endo's we saw others suffer from.
After that downhill, the trail turned uphill, and our XC bikes were in their element. Even when the trail was to steep to ride, pushing our 20 something bikes uphill was much easier than pushing one of those 30-40 Lb downhill beasts. Unfortunately the uphill ended way too quickly, but at least we were on a relatively flat trail as we traversed around the mountain to the next CP.
This CP marked the start of the bike whack section, which was actually a nice relief as we were pushing up an incline thru some nice vegetation up and old stream bed. At one point the path turned to nice thick sticky mud, and everyone ended up with a generous coating of the thick sticky mud. Soon we reached the top of the bike whack, and found the trail that took us to a road crossing, and then some more fire road, climbing a few hundred feet up to the start of another trail.
What a trail this turned out to be. This is where those Downhill bikes came into their own. The trail was mostly steep rock gardens with what seemed to be a series of never ending drop offs each no smaller than 2-3 feet.
Darren was riding his Cannondale Prophet in full downhill mode, and rode these with ease. the three of us on XC bikes suffered terribly on this section of the bike leg. We were reduced to a crawl as we manhandled the bikes down each of these steps. This section seemed to last forever, and it was around here that we started to run out of water.
Although we had been in shade for most of the race, it was still a very hot day, and I had gone thru 2 liters of water in about 3 hours. We still had another hour to go before the next TA where we could pick up water.
The next CP finally arrived, and the trail turned from never ending rock steps into softer forest floor with a nice scattering of roots and branches, but was generally pretty ride able. A little uphill, more traversing, some downhill, and before long we came out of the forest to the top of a short downhill road section. This required us to actually navigate thru 3-4 road junctions as the course wasn?t marked thru this section. I suspect this is where we overtook a lot of teams, as somehow when we arrived at the bike TA, the checkpoint staff told us we were in the middle of the field?
First the good news we had moved up the field. Now the bad news, they had just run out of water! OH NO. Two of us had been out of water for an hour, and had been sharing the little we had left between us. I was now feeling the effects of not drinking enough, and the thought of another 10Km run without water wasn?t very appealing. Fortunately some of the spectators there offered us their water, which we took with much gratitude.
After a short Transition into our running shoes, we quickly headed out of the TA at a slow shuffle down the trail. We left behind our bikes, and bike gear which Claire was going to pick up for us. Thanks again Claire for helping us out so much through the day.
Darren was navigating for us, which up till now had consisted of keeping an eye open for the next pink ribbon marking the trail, but now we had to find out way thru a maze of trails to the next CP. Darren was all over this, and lead us straight to the next CP. Along the way we passed a couple of teams, and got passed by a few others, only to see them again a little further down the trail as they came back from a wrong turn.
CP10 soon came up, and we headed into the next stage which was a short orienteering section with 5 CPs spread down a short section of river bed. The map wasn?t that good, but with the help of the CP clues, we easily found each CP, and punched our passport. During this section we had to negotiate the river bed and crossed the river several times, which was a welcome opportunity to soak our steaming dirty feet in clear fresh ice cold river water. What a relief that was, although the river bed consisted of moss covered rocks which made the small pleasure of soaking our feet a little risky.
During this section we could see a lot of other teams just in front of us, which was a nice sight. Lots of targets to aim for during the kayak leg which was coming up next.
We quickly had our card punched with all 5 CP's, and ran and walked our way down to the beach, and found the next CP, and the transition to kayaks.
We learnt that the wind had sprung up across the bay, sop the kayak course had been changed, and rather than ending at Jericho Beach park, we would paddle along the shore to Sandy bay, before turning around and finishing at Ambleside Beach Park, which was where we were now. This actually made the kayak a little longer, which suited me, as I had been looking forward to the paddle all thru the race.
Claire was there again to cheer us in, and help us with knowledge about what the other teams were doing. We topped up our already depleted water supplies while we showed the CP staff our mandatory gear, whistles this time. This transition was a bit slower. I was feeling pretty exhausted, and had slowed down a lot during the last leg. We put on our PFD's more sunscreen, and carried our kayaks down to the beach.
Originally we had a double kayak (Yumay's) and two singles (rented for Michelle and I) for the four of us, but as we changed our gear, the announcer was asking for any team with a single who wanted to swap for a double to come forward. Michelle and I jumped at this offer. We would now be paddling in two doubles, which would make keeping everyone together a lot easier.
There was a slight shore break of a couple of inches, nothing serious enough to break gear, but enough to embarrass a few attempts to get afloat by dumping boats, people, paddles, and gear up and down the beach. We didn?t suffer the same fate, and the four of us were soon afloat, and enjoying the comfort of sitting down and not using our legs for the first time today.
There were three CPs for us to get here. The first two pretty close to the start. The CPs consisted of large signs hanging from the end of short piers, so we only had to paddle a little closer to the shore to see the word at the CP, rather than having to come ashore each time. The first CP came up soon, and after rounding a small headland we came across the second CP.
Now we could see all the other teams stretched out in front and behind us. Quite a few teams were returning from the kayak leg, and would soon be finishing, while we had just started what was going to turn into a two hour paddle.
Just after the second kayak CP, one of the rescue boats came up to us, and a group of other kayakers we were about to pass. They gave us the general direction of the next CP, as it wasn?t on the maps we had. Continue along the shore till you see the next rescue boat, then ask them the way to the turn around. Plus we got the news that we were only 1/3 of the way there. This was to much for one of the teams we had been about to pass, and they turned around and paddled back to the beach?
We were still feeling strong, and were steadily passing other teams until we could no longer see boats in front of us, just a long stretch of shoreline with a headland in the distance. Just before that headland was the rescue boat, our CP, and the turnaround for the kayak leg. The paddle out to the turnaround was long, and turned into quite a slog, especially as we were paddling against the incoming tide.
Hydrating and eating where a challenge in the kayak, and we had probably been moving for 30 minutes or more when I started to feel low on energy again. I realized I hadn?t been drinking, or eating. A quick drink, and some food soon had my energy levels back up. When I checked on everyone else, they had also forgotten. After that I tried to drink and eat more frequently, but paddling made that difficult.
We made slow steady progress, and as we approached the turn around saw more boats in front of us. Quite a few had already hit the CP, and were on their way back, but one was still going our way, and was an opportunity to overtake another team.
We got the CP, and turned around, and started the long paddle back to the finish. At least now we were with the current, but energy levels were low, and the stroke rate slowed to a leisurely Sunday afternoon on Green Lake pace. Eating and drinking hadn?t kept up with the rate at which we had been expending energy, and on the way back I think everyone started to suffer the effects. However we were still making forward progress, and although the finish stayed painfully far away for what seemed like forever, it was finally getting closer. Before too long we were back at the beach.
A little careful timing prevented any nasty unpacking of bodies and gear in the surf zone, and then we tried standing up to find that our legs no longer wanted to work. We still had to get up the beach to the finish. My legs felt like they belonged to someone else. They just didn?t want to move, and the deep soft sand only made matters worse, but we all managed to drag ourselves up the beach, to finish in a time of 8:15 (unconfirmed)
I had started the race with some concerns that it was going to be too easy, but soon came to respect the terrain. I suffered more here than I had in any of the other races I had done this year (Winteroba, Trioba sprint, and the first two BEASTs) and several from last year.
Although the navigation hadn?t been challenging, the course, and the heat had really taken its toll, and driven home my lack of preparation.
My personal Heart Rate stats for the race were
| Average HR | 130 |
| Max HR | 180 (at 43, my MHR at 220-43 = 177) |
| Total Calories | 6858 |
| Total Exercise Time | 8:13.29 |
Thanks to Darren, Yumay, and Michelle for being such awesome team mates.
Thanks to Claire for being such a great support crew for the race
Thanks to Darren and Claire for putting us up Friday night, and driving us around to the various places we had to drop and pick up gear.
Thanks to all the Volunteers who did such a great job on the day, and thanks to the S2S organizers for putting on such a great race.
After the race, I thought about how this race compared to a Trioba. That?s quite a hard question to answer. The races are very different in nature, mostly due to the obvious differences. The Shore 2 shore race has quite a long kayak leg which ends up shortening the bike and hike legs. Also the lack of navigation reduces the need for alternate route selection which in turn increases the speed of each section, and reduces the opportunity for smarter slower teams to beat the fast guys.
The Hike sections may have been longer at S2S, but they were easier than I would expect to come across in a Trioba race, without the tremendous elevation gain, and truly heinous bush whacking that you expect to find at Trioba races.
The bike section was very different from either of the Trioba races this year (Sprint at St Edwards, and 12 hr at Snoqualmie). With the Trioba races in general the bike route is a lot more ride able, with a clear uphill fire road section, then some sweet single track downhill. The Shore 2 Shore bike leg had much more technical downhill which really suited those North Shore Downhill bikes, a very different type of bike than those that dominate at Trioba races.
If you want a short sharp shock without the navigation needed from a Trioba and want to race in an absolutely beautiful environment, then you should be considering next years Shore 2 Shore race in your race calendar. If you do consider this race next year, bring your downhill bike, rather than your light weight XC bike. Even those with Full Suspension XC bikes, that wont save you when facing endless rock steps with 2-3 foot drops at least that what they seemed like to me, they may only have been 18-24 inches? Your going to want at least 4inches of suspension travel to be comfortable riding these trails.