Salomon Adventure Challenge - Bon Echo, Ontario (May '05)

[Lejon]

Team Dead Reckoning/Running Free's race report from the Salomon Adventure Challenge (www.raidthenorth.com) that took place in May 2005 at Bon Echo Provincial Park in Ontario.

Team Dead Reckoning would like to thank Running Free (www.runningfree.ca), Toronto's premiere multisports store catering to runners, triathletes and adventure sports athletes. Running Free's Athlete/Team Sponsorship Program "Believe it, Achieve it" is a unique sponsorship program for athletes, clubs and teams.

Special thanks goes to program sponsors Marmot (www.marmot.com), Montrail (www.montrail.com), Brooks (www.brooksrunning.ca), Aquaman (www.aquamantri.ca) and Fox River (www.foxsox.com).


1= never do this race, 5= Wow!

Course: 4.0
Excellent paddling and trekking, almost no biking
Organization:3.0
Very good, except misplaced CP and post-race confusion
Pre/Post Race Facilities: 3.0
Opportunity missed, great location but no real atmosphere for a post-race party was made a priority
Value for Money: 3.5
A bit of a long way for a sprint but discounted rate and addition of advanced section make up for it
Fun: 4.0
Misplaced CP was unfortunate so actual race fun factor is a 5 while post-race fun factor (after finding out about CP) is a 3…average to 4
Food: 3.0
BBQ from local not-for-profit…cold dry burgers if you did the advanced CP and came in later
Swag: 3.0
Standard tech-t, funky water bottle
Overall Rating: 3.5
Potential was there for a terrific race…misplaced CP was a bummer
Race Highlight: 4.0
Best paddling section of any sprint race I’ve done


Team Dead Reckoning

With our teammate Lisa Rogers away for the weekend, Conor and I decided to do the Bon Echo race with a racer I’d been in touch with last year but couldn’t settle on a race to do together. Jacek (Jack) Jackiewicz had done quite well in Sea-2-Summit races as a solo racer, coming in 2nd place on one occasion behind Dave Norona. Conor and I were preparing for a 3-day race in Michigan in June, so this was a good opportunity to shake some of the cobwebs off our gear (and our bodies!).

Gentlemen start your engines

The race started with a Lemans-style running start to the beach, about 3km away. Teams took off at a blistering pace to try to get the best boats and I would guess to try to be near the front once we reached the first of several portages. We decided to not start out too fast, as sprinting is not our forte. Nonetheless, we kept up a quick pace and began speeding up as we neared the beach. To our surprise, we hit the water among the top 5 teams or so.

We were going to use a beachball for the middle person to sit on, but I found that the yoke was actually quite wide and comfortable to sit on. Jack, a former competitive paddler, launched the boat forward on every stroke. As we kept pace with the likes of Simon River Sports and Beowolf near the front of the pack…I knew we were in for a good race.

While we were able to keep pace and even pass some of the top teams on the water, we did lose some time on the portages…primarily because Conor and I were not used to racing with Jack and should have done a better job at communicating what we needed him to do. The paddle was spectacular, the best ever for me in a sprint race. Long open sections along sheer cliffs, with some tricky narrow routes between lakes. We exited the water in 12th overall, but within 10 minutes of 3rd place. Only EAS hammer and Running Free had pulled significantly ahead of the pack.


Run Forest Run!

From TA1, it was a short 2.5k bike to the start of the trek. Kind of useless as a biking section…but I guess it was better than just having us run the road. We blazed through the TA and Conor’s quick decision making for route choice out of the park on the bike helped us move up 3 spots in that short section.

From 9th, we started the trek to CP5 which was on the south side of Bon Echo Lake. It was a mix of trails and bushwacking, although the bush was quite sparse here and we could practically jog through some parts. No one really made any progress on each other here, as we basically moved at the same speed through the terrain. We were only down 10 minutes or so from the lead teams and were just a couple of minutes out of the top 5…so the energy level among the 3 of us was quite high.

It’s got to be here somewhere!

From CP5, we followed the ridgeline below Bon Echo Lake for a while before taking a bearing and making a beeline to CP6, at the tip of Pearson Lake about 4km away. We could see teams ahead of us in the distance following the same route. Once we came close to the lake though, we got really confused. Just ahead, there were 3 or 4 teams rushing about frantically where we thought the CP would be. Conor and I checked the map and confirmed that we were in the right spot…at least what seemed right at the time.

Well, there was no use adding another team to the search party in such a small place…so we figured that the CP must actually be along the Skootamatta River which flowed from Pearson Lake. Lo and behold, a few hundred metres from where we had stopped, there was the CP. Assuming it was just as a result of the water feature changing since the map was published, we didn’t think twice about why the CP wasn’t in the spot we originally looked for. Best of all, we were now in 3rd place since all the lead teams seemed to be searching for the CP up ahead. Truth is the CP was misplaced by some 500 metres, which was not discovered until after the race and in fact caused this entire section to be eliminated from the final standings.

Lost

Well, not as an excuse but just as part of my rationale, we went off course from CP6 to the advanced CP (6A) partially because we took a bearing from a different spot on the map than we thought we were (due to the misplaced CP). We should still have caught some of the variations in the features, but in the end we wandered off our path and ended up north of CP6A.

The bushwack to CP6A was tough, through some nasty swamps. I stupidly forgot my old rule of no shorts…but as this was a sprint race I decided to forego it this time. WRONG! My legs got torn to shreds by the dead tress in the swamp…to the point that my socks were soaked in blood. Oh well..we always need a reminder of why we choose to make certain rules at time.

The combination of the terrain and missing the advanced CP ended up causing us to be out much longer than anticipated, and we therefore ran out of water. We also forgot to take any Pristine along…as who would have thought we’d need some on such a short race. Oh well…another lesson learned. We finally got on track and hit CP6A to discover we were in 20th place. What a bummer. We did not know though at the time that the misplaced CP would change the results to-date and our current positioning was irrelevant.

Nonetheless, we kicked it into high gear and rushed to the bike pick-up for the final ride. There was almost no hope that we’d make the final race cut-off, but we hoped that it would have been extended due to the minimal number of teams that actually made it through the whole course including the advanced CP. It was tough going as we were out of water. Cramped legs & parched throats are not conducive to a quick trail run.

Road home

The final ride back was about 8k on paved roads back to the campsite. We were quite disappointed because we assumed we had missed the cut-off and would be unranked. After over 8hrs of racing, double what I’ve done other sprints in, being unranked was totally unacceptable.

Well, we soon learned about the misplaced CP and the mess that this had caused. While the lead teams went to the correct spot and then decided to move on with the assumption that the CP was misplaced, the vast majority of teams searched the area and eventually found it. There was not going to be a way to solve this without upsetting someone, so eventually F.A.R. decided to eliminate the times between CP5 & CP6 plus between CP6 & CP6A or CP6 and CP7 depending on whether you did the advanced CP or not.

As a result, we managed to secure 5th spot in the all-male category behind some of the best teams in eastern Canada including EAS Hammer, Beowolf and Canyonero. Overall, we were 11th but only a matter of minutes behind the teams just ahead of us.

Although not the exact race and result we were looking for, I think we were quite happy with our performance and the fact that we were able to maintain pace with the top teams for a good part of the day. It was also a great first experience for us racing with Jack and I’m sure he’ll be racing with Dead Reckoning again in the future.

Joe Gabor