I took Riley to this event and she rode in the back-pack. This is the 1st time I’ve raced with her (rather than just hike) since knee surgery, but I did pretty well. I’m guessing that the weight of her, plus the pack, plus water, and a snack, is around 40 lbs.

I chose to do the orange course, which is the last intermediate course, vs. one of the advanced for two reasons. First, Lake Johnson is small and is difficult to have a technically challenging advanced course, so they made it more challenging by double or triple controls. For example, if a control was in a re-entrant, and there were 2 or 3 re-entrants in a row, then they put controls in each of them. So you really had to be spot on! Second, I was worried about how my knee would handle running with Riley, and how long Riley would want to be out there.

Well, the results below show we did quiet well. 🙂 I was able to run most of the course. I have to admit, she is getting really heavy, or I am really out of shape, or both! I was really getting tired at the end. The orange controls are slightly easier then green or red, which I normally run, so that also helped us go fast.

One final note. Riley had carried a little green bag full of goodies (toys, trinkets, etc.) but she dropped it at some point. We were about to go try to look for it after the race, one a husband wife team came in with it. Considering the size of the area, and the fact that I was slight off when I think she dropped it, we got really lucky that someone found it and returned it. Riley was really happy about getting it back.