Tahoe Big Blue Adventure Race - CA - Sep 2004

[ARReports]

The Big Blue Adventures Tahoe Big Blue Adventure Race was held at North Lake Tahoe on September 11th, 2004. Jane Moohead wrote up a fantastic report from the Big Blue in the Yahoo! BAAR group:

...How can I describe this biking portion? Tough? Not good enough. Really Tough? Maybe. OMFG this is the toughest ride I've ever done? Definitely. As usual with the Big Blue series you are able to pick your course. We were going to ride from the TA through a back route to Northstar's Mountain Bike Park. The lowest elevation on the ride was around 6800 ft. and it went up to 8600. We rode up to a checkpoint (I think the entire mountain bike section was up- both ways) and remote TA. We had the choice of doing the orienteering portion first, or the rest of the mountain bike portion...

http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/baar/message/1219

[LOUISURFER]

A couple of us Southern Cal. guys hooked up for the Ocean Blue up in North Lake Tahoe this weekend. About a 9 hour drive from Orange County on a Friday. I arrived with enough time on Friday evening to register and check in the bike and kayak at 6:00 p.m. I was a bit concerned about the altitude adjustment, but was hoping that an evening would be good enough and promised myself not to go out too hard and pop my lungs early on.

We got up at about 5:00 a.m. to do some last minute adjustment and packing. The gear list was pretty light, with most of the weight coming from the water carried. It was very cold that morning with temps in the 50-60's but we knew that daytime temps would reach 80's. It was a mixed bag of dress code, with some people dressed like they were ready to go skiing at the start.

Anyways Starting gun at 7:30 a.m. Started off with about a 2-3 mile run to the kayak, it really spread everybody out (seemed like there were about 300 racers).

Begin Kayak: The kayak got off to a funny start as the leaders headed off towards last year's kayak checkpoint with everyone following. I think they figured it out and arched back in to the real boat checkpoint. The kayak was pretty much an up and back to the launch, with the 2-3 mile run back to the start / bike transition area. I think we finished bottom 2/3 at the end of the kayak, but made up a lot of time on the transition and run back. I saw a lot of people trying to wash the sand out of their socks and shoes...

Begin bike: The bike leg was about a 4-5 mile ride to get to the ski resort, where we would begin the orienteering and bike checkpoints portion of the race. There were a couple of ways to get to the ski resort, a). via 267 hwy round-about paved road OR b). via a more direct fire road. We chose b., which made up a lot of time for us. (hint: following tire tracks on fire roads is your friend).

Begin Orienteering: Anyways at the ski resort CP, the orienteering section was to find 8 of 12 or so check points on foot. This was a challenge, temps started rising to 80's and water got low. We found ourselves bush-wacking along with a lot of other teams to find the orienteering CP's. Anyways we completed this in reasonable time and felt good about ourselves.

Begin Bike CP's (or not): Next, was to find three bike CP's and one bike CP in particular called "Pluto Summit" by the cut-off time. All I'm going to say is that quite a few teams did not make this (maybe 1/4 of the teams didn't make this). A lot of us had climbed about 3/4 up to the summit only to be turned back down. It was a really long and hard climb (lots of elevation gain), and we were a bit discouraged by other riders coming down that had been turned away after nearly summiting as well. Anyways we had talked to a few other teams at the bottom and they were a bit p.o.'d that they weren't allowed to do the bike CP's first and the orienteering 2nd (orienteering CP cutoff time was a bit more liberal). Anyways by missing the bike CP's we were afraid of a DNF, but were told that we would just be penalized for missing the bike CP's and to head back to the finish line.

Finish: So another 4-6 miles via fire road (all downhill) on bike back to the finish and we were done.

Event: was a first class act, real racing bibs, nice swag, t-shirts booths, a nice embroidered fleece. Lots and lots of prizes, like prizes for the best looking dog, most unusual race story (a mother racer breast feed 2 babies during the race), worst road rash etc... and cash prizes for winning teams and overall series winners. Great people, farthest distance I had talked to was someone who came from Atlanta to do this race.

Anyways, I'd do this race again in a heartbeat, but would consider spending more time in Tahoe instead of driving up 9 hours, racing, then back down again. The area is scenic, and the lake water was relatively warm (swimmable).

[ARReports]

And for a report from the winning Silly Rabbits team, check out:

...The Rabbits were first off the 2 mile run to the boats and fourth off the water. In the two mile return run to the start location, where they picked up bikes, they caught up to all but the first two person team. They soon caught them on the bike and then chose to orienteering before doing the bike to get a bigger jump on the competition. The rest of the race was anybody’s guess as to who had the lead b/c team could either bike or orienteer and their were several route choices...

http://www.zdap.com/racereports/viewtopic.php?p=2363#2363

[randy]

My race report and gallery from Tahoe Big Blue are up:

...I was so mad for hurting myself and kept getting redder with frustration as I saw many of the teams that I had passed on the kayak now running ahead of me. I calmed myself down and focused my energies on positives of the situation...

http://www.randyfranklin.com/adventures/bigblue2004/

-Randy

[ARReports]

BJ Hamel from Team Got Mud? posted a good report from the Big Blue Adventure Race on the Got Mud AR site:

...We had decided to hit Mt Pluto first. A short distance into the ride we were riding just behind Sierra they went left and we went straight. We realized about 10 minutes later that this was not the way we had intended to go. We were supposed to turn left and then take the next right. We quickly found another route that would not cost us to much time and kept going. Shortly after getting back on the trail we had intended to be on, we saw Silly Rabbits heading down the hill...

http://www.gotmudar.com/reports/big_blue_2004.html

[ARReports]

The Tahoe Daily Tribunehas a good article about Team Jengiss' experience in the Tahoe Big Blue Adventure Race:

...This year, the trio was determined to avoid the same mistake. The solution - Kristen McDougal - joined the team two weeks ago. She not only eliminated disputes on the orienteering course, she improved Team Jengiss' communication so much that they took third place in the four-person coed division...

http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040916/Sports/109160006/-1/SPORTS