I’ve raced this now in 2006, 2008, and 2009…  This year I was 24th out of about 40 in my division– about the same place as normal, which is somewhere near the back end of the middle of the pack.  (I’ve never been that fast in this short of a race, which took me about an hour and 15 minutes).

I had planned on scooting up a bit closer to the front this year to work for position, since it is about a 50 yard sprint in a mass start to the single track.  But somehow there were a lot more people, and there were 3 categories mixed at the start line.  Each category started a couple minutes apart, but I couldn’t get up as close as I would have liked even though I got to the start 10 minutes before the gun.

I may have finished a bit higher if I had started closer to the front.  There was one rider that I thought would have been in the clydesdale category but who was in my division.   I tried to pass him twice on the 1st loop, once to get knocked down by him on a hill (it was not his fault, just happens), and the 2nd time just lost my back wheel and fell.  The 1st time, I probably lost 8-10 spots as it was still early in the race and we were all bunched up.  I finally got by him about 1/2 mile before the start of the 2nd loop.  At the end of the day, it probably didn’t matter much, as the 2nd loop I only got passed once and probably only passed 2 other riders.

Happy fun racing put on a great, low key race, and I will definitely be back.

And thanks for the photos…  Great shots!

The Bear was the 1st road race I have done in years, but what better way to come back than a 5 mile race that climbs 1500+ feet and finishes at the top of Grandfather Mountain?  (I have mostly not run road races as I almost exclusively run trails these days, and a few years of knee problems have meant not that much running anyway.  The knee is getting better and better and I plan on attempting a couple of longer trail runs and adventure races as time permits.)

The profile was a little intimidating:

It was raining off and on most of the day, and my sister Kerin kept saying she wasn’t going to run.  About 10 minutes before the start she finally said she would, so Kerin, Kim (another sister) and I headed to the start about 400 meters away.

My race plan was simple — try to hang with my sister Kim as long as I could.  When the gun went off, Kim took off, and I thought the pace was going to be way too much.  She has gotten really fast!   I was able to watch her slowly pull away, until she was 30 or 40 meters in front.  But around mile 3 I realized she was coming back in, and I passed her around mile 3.5 or so.

The last mile got really steep, and it felt like a Tour de France finish at the the top — the crowds were cheering loudly and closing in on you and we were channeled through all the people to the finish.  We also finished in a cloud, so you couldn’t see more than 20 or 30 meters around.  I crossed in just under 50 minutes…  Kim came in just a minute later, and we walked down to meet Kerin and run her in.

The only real problem with the race is that without a personal cheering section this year (due to the rain) we had no way down other than to wait for a shuttle.  We missed the first two out, and there were only two buses, so we had quite a wait.  Finally a “box truck” (aka a short u-haul truck) offered to take us down, and about 30 or 40 of us piled in.  It was quite cramped!  The highway patrol drove up as we were about to leave, but he gave us permission to drive down like refugees, and eventually we made it down to the bottom.

It was a fun race though I don’t know that I will do it again unless anyone else I know wants to race it.

I used the free version of RunKeeper on my iphone to get the following GPS info… It was not that accurate on overall distance, off by about 10%, but the elevation gain is pretty close…  All in all a fun tool to use when working out.

(I think Run Keeper is off on my speed towards the end!  It got very steep, but I was not crawling!  And the other information it gives (not shown here) shows that’s where I likely lost GPS signal…)

I ran the Red course at the BOK event on 9/22, but my results show green.  The problem is that I was a DNF on red, missing control 8 (#62).  However, the green course was the same as red except for 8 (#62), 9 (#63), and 10 (#60), so I get credit for green.   That’s great in that I was not a DNF and finished 3rd on green.  🙂   From the results table, it shows that Holly who won green did the same thing I did — ran red and missed #62.  She just happened to finish 50+ minutes faster than me anyway.

My problem is that I always spend far too long looking for a control when I don’t find it quickly, probably due to lack of confidence.  I went back in to look for the “small depression” from 2 or 3 different angles, and I kept coming on what I thought was a borderline a shallow ditch or a small depression.  After the course, I talked to others that did find it, and they said I was within 20 feet of the real control, but that the flag was in it and not visible from where I was.  I swear I walked all around that same area. 

Anyway, it was fun as always, and my knee felt fine.  But now my right hip has been bugging me a bit.  😦

Green Course: 12 KP 5.7 km

1 Holly Kuestner               1:14:12     76 69 44 52 57 59 61 63 60 58 56 55 45 47
2 Joseph Huberman              1:18:49     76 69 44 52 57 59 61 58 56 55 45 47
3 Sean M Butler                2:08:42     76 69 44 52 57 59 61 63 60 58 56 55 45 47

…

…

Tropical storm Hanna went through here Friday night – Saturday a.m.  We lost power Saturday morning for a few hours, and got about 5 inches of rain, but that was it.  Not much wind and no damage/down trees.

I drove by the 64 put-in on the Haw Saturday to see how the water looked, and it was crazy high.  The chart below shows flood level at 11 feet at the Bynum Gage.  I saw the water when it was around 13′.  No way would I paddle that!  But again, I have very little white water experience — I’ve been on a few guided whiter water rafting trips with class 3 rapids, and some class 2 in a canoe during an adventure race.   While we picked up a used white water boat a couple years ago, we just haven’t had the time (and child care!) to go out.

But Sunday, the water was coming down, and Mark from church showed some interest… We ended up putting in at 15/501 in Bynum when the level was about 7.5 feet.   That was higher than Mark’s ever paddled, so we figured it could get interesting.  We ended up making it all the way to Robeson Creek in 50 minutes — about 20 minutes faster than Mark has ever made it before.  We opted to skip much of the class 3 on the lower Haw, including Gabriel’s bend.   However, the lowest picture in the link below shows class 2/3 for “The Ledge” which we did go through, and I would say that was mostly class 3 yesterday with the water as high as it was.  Here are some definitions from wikipedia:

Class 1: Very small rough areas, requires no maneuvering. (Skill Level: None)
Class 2: Some rough water, maybe some rocks, might require maneuvering.(Skill Level: Basic Paddling Skill)
Class 3: Whitewater, small waves, maybe a small drop, but no considerable danger. May require significant maneuvering.(Skill Level: Experienced paddling skills)

Here is a good link with all the routes and classes on this run:

http://www.triangleoutdoors.com/trails/HawRiver.htm

I was pretty happy with my paddling, considering this was my first true run in a white water kayak.  On the middle Haw there was one point where my hand slipped off my paddle, and I lost balance for a second.  By the time I recovered I could not avoid a pretty good drop rapid, so I just went straight into it.  The water hit me square in the face — that’s how much I dropped — but I made it through.  In the lower section, it took some strong paddling to maneuver away from Gabriel’s Bend and all the class 3 rapids.  There was one point where Mark pinned a bit and had to get out, and I struggled to avoid him and my boat turned sideways.  I almost lost my paddle under the boat, but eventually was able to recover it.

All in all a fantastic run.  I don’t think I’d go out with the water much higher than 8 on the gauge without a lot more practice — and maybe a class or two!

I raced this back in 2006, but missed it last year for some reason.  Again, it was my 1st race in a long long time.   Other than orienteering, I have not done any other kind of racing at all since 2006.   In addition, this was probably only the 2nd or 3rd time I’ve ridden real single track since I raced this same race in 2006!  Granted, I do get some fire roads in now and then, but that is not the same thing.  And the part of me that got the most tired was my hands and wrists.  They are not used to having to hold on so tight like you do on single track!  Luckily, Lake Crabtree is probably the easiest single track around.

This race starts with a very short sprint of no more than 50 yards on a road to get to the single track, so there is not a lot of time to spread out.  I decided to start in the middle of the pack to avoid the more aggressive riders that are there win, but try to get in front of any of the slower riders.   I was pretty much spot on, as I had to pass a few earlier on, but also got passed a little.  Within 10-15 minutes, we were all spread out, and passing/getting passed wasn’t too much of a concern the rest of the way.

About 3/4’s of the way through the 1st lap, I thought I would probably fall apart on the 2nd lap, as my legs were pretty dead.  (They had felt a little dead before I started, and my upper body was sore from yard work the day before — brush hogging with a push mower!).  But while I slowed down a little on the 2nd lap at 39 minutes vs. 36 minutes, I never fell apart as I feared.  The results show I was 13th out of 22, so note quite middle of the pack.   I was never a super fast mountain biker anyway.

One final note.   I did not see that this race was set for 7/20 until around July 1st, so I only rode my bike5 or 6 times in preperation, and only once or twice in the months prior to that!  So I should really have expected to do much better.  I do see there is another race on 8/24 at Harris Lake, so I will try to get out and do that.

I’m very behind on posting… Something like 4 books, 1 cooking club event, and 2 orienteering events. I’ll try to knock them each out over the coming days.

First off is orienteering:

1) Local Backwoods Orienteering Event at Shenck Forrest on 4/15

I ran the red course, and as BOK did at the smaller venue of Lake Johnson a few months back, they made this one tricky by putting out extra controls on the more advance courses. (Shenck is also a bit small for the longer courses when compared to some of our normal venues like Umstead or Raven Rock.)

That means you have to be right-on to get the correct control. I did pretty well in that regard, missing just one of the tricky ones, but overall I was pretty slow. Much of that was due to walking along a fence for 15 or 20 minutes, wondering if I should really jump it or not. Over course looking back, it was obvious that it was not out of bounds on the other side, and the control was clearly on the other side, so I should have jumped it much sooner. But that certainly cut into my time! However, I still ended up 3rd, though much further behind than normal! Give me back my lost 20 minutes and I would have finished more like normal in relation to the other racers. Normally folks I would not have beaten due to that mistake, I still beat. That is because several people decided not to cross the creek, so they were DNF’s. The water was high as there was a ton of rain. In fact, on one of my crossings when I couldn’t find a log to use as a bridge, the water was up to mid-thigh, and it was almost white-water like, so it was pretty strong.

http://treklite.com/bok/news/event-07-04.htm

2) West Point A Meet on 4/28

I was working in Boston and decided to fly home via New York, so I could do this meet in West Point. I lived there a long time ago when my Dad taught at the Academy, so I thought it would be fun to go back. Two things on that… First, I would not fly into JFK or any of the NYC airports again to do this. Traffic in and around the city was crazy. It didn’t help that I ran into Yankee — Red Sox traffic on the way back. Second, the West Point guards would not let me onto base, so I could not see our old place.

As for the race, it was pretty tough. I started out doing ok — not fast, but not terribly slow either. The map was somewhat hard for me to read as the contours were 5m and I’m used to 1 or 3m. And the location was very mountainous. The course was a little over 6K, but had over 325m of elevation gain. While I was not spot on for the 1st 9 controls, I was never too far off. However, #10 proved to be a killer. Took about 30 minutes for me to find it. When I did, I headed off to #11 dejected. Orienteering is so hard when your mind is not in it. I again struggled with #11, and decided to skip it and start heading in. On the way in, I picked up #13 and #14. But I was a DNF since I had missed #11 and #12.

I still had a great time, and the area is so beautiful. I would definitely go back and give it another shot next year if I can work it out.

/Sean

Saturday was Backwoods Orienteering’s (the local club) first A-meet in a couple years, and it was my first A-meet ever. There were a ton of people — in fact, a bus of cadets from West Point made the 12+ drive down to race.

I had gotten a minor stomach bug on Thursday, but strong enough to make me not want to eat much, and that was apparent for me early in the race. I ended up walking a lot more than I had hoped, which is of course evident in my time. My navigation was ok, but not great. There were 20 controls, and I was spot-on on at least 1/2 of them. But there is always one or two that mess me up. I must have gone by one about 5 or 6 times, all within 10-15 feet of it, including running right by it on my entrance to the area, but it was low in a ditch. Problem was there were about 20 ditches all right there so i spent at least 10 minutes looking through that area. 😦

My knee handled the 2+ hours fine, but my legs were pretty dead, so, like I said, I did walk a lot.

Here are the results. I am amazed at the winning time!

Red M (27) 7.5 km 330 m 20 C

1 Andras Revesz 62 DVOA M45 65:45
2 Randy Hall 65 DVOA M40 72:20
3 Istvan Nagy 60 DVOA M45 78:11
4 Nadim Ahmed 61 QOC M45 78:15
5 Dylan Thies 87 HOC M20 85:20
6 Josef Trzicky 59 COK M45 85:41
7 Gabriel Svobodny 90 MVOC M20 87:18
8 Neal Trump 87 USMAOC M20 89:33
9 Justin Lane 88 QOC M20 94:01
10 James Lingar 59 QOC M45 95:12
11 Thomas Svobodny 58 MVOC M45 96:38
12 Artem Kazantsev 67 BOK M40 99:17
13 Vladimir Stemkovski 74 BOK MR 99:20
14 Dale Helm 89 QOC M20 99:53
15 Aleks Peterson 90 QOC M20 101:12
16 Linda Kohn 50 ROC MR 111:36
17 William Corkey 73 BOK MR 113:49
18 Patrick Downie 71 BOK M35 114:23
19 Charles Martz 72 COK M35 117:16
20 Benjamin Bruder 83 USMAOC MR 118:33
21 Jeff Porter 67 CAOC M40 120:28
22 Sean Butler 70 BOK M35 124:59
23 Rick Worner 47 ROC M45 130:50
24 Scott Drumm 65 CROC M40 138:30
25 Ken. Hanson 65 BOK M40 140:50
26 Donna Fluegel 59 WCOC MR 171:30

nc Barbara Bryant 62 TOC M45 117:38

In the past, I have a couple of very bad performances at Raven Rock. It’s a park the club only uses once a year, so I’m much less familiar with it, though in theory, that shouldn’t matter. This time around, though, I did relatively well. There was only one control I struggled with that cost me maybe 10-15 minutes. But other than that, I was running well, navigating ok (not great!), and my knee felt fine. I was somewhat disappointed with 5th place, as I thought I would have been a little higher. But the times were relatively close between 2nd and 5th.

Raven Rock is a beautiful park, and doing an advanced course means you get to see some places that people don’t go very often. The course setters did an outstanding job with control placement that allowed us to really go to some neat places. They also used the European style of laying the controls in such a way that you really need to find the feature, not the control. So if you are not navigating well, it would be very hard to get through the advanced courses.

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.

I guess if I’m going to post the good results, I might as well post the bad ones. But this one does come with a caveat.

I again ran the Red course when I had 1st intended to run Green. Normally Red is the longest, and Green the 2nd longest. Every once in a while there is a Blue, which is a 1-2 Km longer than a red. Since there was again a blue, I decided to run red instead of green.

Anyway, after finishing 2nd on red last month, this month’s result was dissappointing to say the least. I was running well, but navigation was not quite right. I waisted a lot of time on control #5 and was about to give up, but decided to attack it from the lake, rather than the road trail intersection, which is probably what I should have done from the beginning. Once I found it, I was back on track, and got 6 and 7 easily. But 8 was another matter. After spending much too much time looking for it, another racer came up, and together we still could not find it. We finally decided to bail. He decided to go on to 9, 10, and 11, and I decided to just call it a day. I had already been out almost 2 hours and saw it was nearing 3 p.m., which is when the courses are normally cut off.

So I headed back in, splitting between 9 and 10, and going to the finish. I got there and told them I was a DNF due to #8, and they said no one had gotten it, and it had likely been taken by someone! So if I had actually gotten 9, 10 and 11, I would not have been a DNF. Based on the distance left for those controls, I probably would have come in around 2 hours and 20 minutes if all had gone ok.

So the moral of the story is, don’t spend too much time on one control when it is pretty obvious you are in the right spot, and always finish the course, even if you do bail on one.