Ride and Seek '19

I text Nick "Dick 'n Spray" Barlow at 6:20AM just to be sure he was up.  He's someone I've found that I can count on, but being that we were in for hours and hours of soupy mud riding today, mebbe he got smarter than he is considerate.

"I'm up.  Walking my dog.  Leaving soon."

Well, shit.  I guess we're doing this thing.

He scoops me up, offers me a Taco Bell breakfast burrito of some sort.

"I'm fine.  I had two Pop Tarts."

Get there, he offers me the burrito once more.  I take it... because... burrito.

Sign in, suit up, agree that we agree to have a good time.  Nothing more.

I have to run to get the map with the checkpoints.  So begins the things I was not looking forward to when I signed up for this event. 

*sigh*

The run isn't as dreadful as it coulda been, as we were told to run towards the flat water boat docks... which were in my mind miles away.  The gigantic laminated maps were handed out at the bottom of the first hill, a long way from the docks.  Kudos.

Run back into oncoming traffic.

We look at the map and decide to knock out the most Northern of the seventeen checkpoints first.  The three mystery checkpoints?  Totally unknown, but we were told that MCP 1 would tell you where MCP 2 was and so on, and that we were likely to stumble on one eventually and that would either help or not.

Fuckery but I knew that's what this race was about.  Fun type fuckery.

We leave out towards the north, and I suggested we take the trail that parallels the main road thinking mebbe there would be some "mystery benefit" to doing so.  We stumble right into one... but it's MCP 3.  No clues towards the other two.  We had to do some strange walk with a helmet sammiched between our backs and drop it into a bucket.  We mastered it as if it were just part of our day jobs (it's not).

Off and up and we get to MCP 1 on Smokey.  One teammate does 10 pushups, the other 15 burpees.  I take the burpees because I think I sorta understand what they are (after she explains them to me).  I totally suck at them, but we get credit and find out the location of MCP 2.

Smokey to Bandit to Panda and now we have 5 of a potential 20 CPs.  Much buenos and it's still early.  Ride the road back towards the center, drop into Academy and then some more trails that if you have never ridden USNWC, you wouldn't know what I was talking about.

Get towards the end of the Thread Trail and see a yellow CP cone right there to our left.  We punch our card, turn around... and see a directional arrow.

Shit.

According to the rules, all trails must be used in the direction of the design.  I thought we were still on the Thread, but we went the wrong way on Figure Eight for all of about thirty or forty feet.  We roll out quietly, and then talk about what to do.

"We can just tell them at the finish that we didn't get that checkpoint."

"We could also finish the loop and then go back and ride around it all again."

Shit.

Back around and to the checkpoint again and ride the same trail out we already rode once.

Shit.

On our route around to repeat the CP (legally), we could see the CP on the Jack Rabbit Loop just a few yards up the hill.  Frustrating to be so close yet so far away.

Back out to the main loop around the fake river channel... start looking for the Jack Rabbit Loop.  Neither one of us had ever ridden this beginner loop before, so we spent some time riding around aimlessly looking for it.  We found it (unmarked?) and did the little loop to the yellow cone we'd seen some time ago. 

From here, I feel like I can navigate the middle third of our route without a whole lotta looking at the map.  I know the access roads and trails pretty well.  Up into Carpet Loop and into the MCP 2.  Had to choose a set of letters, dump them out, and unscramble the word.  I spill them out while Nick grabs a candy bar.

My Enigma Machine kicks in...

"FLAPJACK!"

We roll on, get the south CPs, and head over to the Lake Loop.

At this point, we're pretty much covered in mud.  I haven't been able to drink much, my bottles gritty with mud and mebbe dog poop.  I was counting on that nutrition.  Nick was counting my stupidity... thus him offering me that spare burrito earlier in the day.

I wasn't sure we'd have enough time to grab the east side of the trails, but with an hour and a half to go, it looks like we're going there.  Prairie is a mess, we enter Tributary at an illogical point (because I'm afraid we might take a non-approved entrance (I was wrong there), but end up getting all the remaining CPs.  I also find out the hard way that my rear brake pads shoulda been changes either before the race or about an hour after it started.

We never really pushed the pace all that much, but I can tell that I mighta ran outta my reserve tank, what with only about 111 of the 444 calories in my bottles consumed.

Still, we managed to roll in at 3:37 with all the CPs punched on our card.  6th place in the Open Men division.

Also pretty sure I was the first person to have all my laundry done and my bike clean, and as of Sunday, after an hour and a half working on my bike, 100% of my bearings in tact or replaced.

Some sort of podium material right there.