November 8, 2008
37 racers came out for the Black Mountain Race on a magical weather day. Most were new to AR and all seemed to have fun and promised they will be back, so we considered it a very successful time. There were 2 courses, Recreational and a Challenge.
The recreational course started with a 20 Km bike around the Santa Luz loop on the north-west side of Black Mountain Open Space Park. They then transitioned to a 10 Km run looping the mountain summit.
Those doing the Challenge had the same information until the race started when they were directed to run to a hill 600 meters away at a bearing of 235 degrees. At that location they got additional information telling them they were to plot 2 additional bike checkpoints (X1, X2) which they had to go to before doing the recreational course, and they were to finish with 1 additional trek checkpoint (Y1). The idea for the Challenge was to introduce a little confusion at the start, to allow the Recreational racers to get ahead. We anticipated the Challenge racers would then catch them about the finish line.
Little did we know what confusion would be created. As the Challengers grabbed the first handout some teams moved beyond the TA to read the instructions and others sensed this was the direction to run so started heading away from the hill they had to locate. But cooler heads prevailed and a quick look at the compass had them going in the generally correct direction. But in their haste some teams never factored in magnetic declination, so they ran to the wrong hill and most then had to bushwhack 200 meters to the appropriate summit.
About 15 minutes after the start the first Challenge teams were back to start on the bike section, all scratched up from the cross country to the summit.
The race started at 3 PM and the intent was that the 20 Km bike would be completed in daylight with the hike being in the dark. For most teams this is how it worked out, but some of the latter teams completed the bike in the dark, or lit by the flames of the hot air balloons which were landing in the fields around them.
As the sun was setting and the sky turning red, the lead Recreational teams dropped their bikes, changes shoes, grabbed lights, and headed out on the run section. The lead Challenge racers were not far behind, having passed some of the Recreational racers.
We anticipated a finish time of around 3 hours and the first teams to finish were just over 3½ hours. New racers (already emailing asking about the next race), Hani Moukabaa and Brian Thompson finished slightly ahead of veteran racer Rick Eastman of Sierra Adventure Sport. Third place was Sean and Donna McLoughlin, running as Mac Attack. They had missed a checkpoint but asked that we leave the markers and they would re-visit the run course to pick them up as they learned where they made their mistake.
The Challenge racers arrived next with Victor Escobar slightly ahead of Jake and Angie Bencke and Scott. Victor had done a bit of cross-country to the last run checkpoint to get ahead of the trio.
After these first teams arrived many of the other teams came in within the hour. But the race was far form over for a couple of teams who kept to the Adventure Racing spirit of completing the course, no matter how long it took. Yvonne Harrison, Laura Allen, Maryann and Tim Schow even named their team Finish or Die Trying. And they did finish.
Before the race we had a navigation class to teach people about UTM’s and how to plot them. A huge thanks to Rick Eastman who came to race but was pressed into action as the Navigation Yoda.
Our next event will be the Equinox 24 Hour Race. It will be held February 7 and 8, 2009. It has turned into a huge course on a variety of trails in San Diego County. While there are no huge mountains of many thousand feet high, there are enough ups and downs to give a total elevation gain of 16,000 feet. We have designed the course so that there are multiple options for short-coursing teams and we sill have cut-off schedules at many of the transitions with options for full-course, long-course, short-course and skip the next section but keep going. For more information please look at the Equinox Web site, events page (http://www.baAdventures.com/events.html).
For 2009; we also plan on more short races (3-4 hours) and Jake and Steve are putting on a mid-length race (6-8 hours).
