Castaic Lake RR:

This race report is from my perspective, which is a guy with aspirations just to finish within 8-10 hours and have a good time:

The 12 hour Adventure Race at Castaic Lake was a hoot, one of the funner events I've done in a long time, and one where I wasn't asking myself "what the hell am I doing out here" over and over again. Maybe I wasn't pushing myself hard enough. Maybe my new teamate was just too nice of a guy and making it easy on me...

I got on a two person team a week and a half ago with someone I'd never met. Thanks team-finder. We were definitely the biggest team out there and would have won the Clydsdale division if there was one (combined 425+ lbs)! It can be intimidating at times looking at all the in-shape flyweights out there. But we never let that bother us.

After I put my kid to bed Friday night, I drove up to LA from OC and arrived at about 1 am because some stupid construction traffic and several accidents (took 2.5 hours to go 85 miles), got to my hotel room, squeeked out 4 hours of sleep, before having to check out early at 5:30 a.m.

2.5 hours left to get to the venue, check in the boats, get my transition box and pack together, look at the maps and plot our route, well not much plotting but we were running very late.

The weather started off cool and cloudy at 8a.m. About 40 teams and I think the elite ones were slated to finish in 5 to 6 hours with a long MTB section.

We got to the start line at about 7 minutes before the gun. Short 1 mile run and we were off in our kayaks for about a mile paddle to the bikes at CP1. (The bikes were ferried over across the lake). At this point, we're at the back of the pack playing catch-up.

Drop off the kayaks, change to biking shoes, put on a helmet and we were on to one of the most scenic rides I've ever done in the Angeles National Forest. It was also very demanding. Lot's of fire road climbing and very technical single track descent comparable silverado motorway 2 or 3 times. Did I mention the bit of heat that sprung up out of no-where when the clouds lifted?

The best part was the canyon ride where there were at least 8 or so crossings switching back over and along side the creek. My chain took a beating and my bike now sounds like a WW2 sherman tank. CP3,4,5 and 6 were along various peaks and basins and we managed to catch
about 6 teams over 27 miles of riding.

Back to the kayaks for about another 5 mile paddle to reach CP 7,8, 9. Nothing much to report here as the paddling was similar to last year's race. By this time it was about 3:30 or 4p.m. and we weren't sure if we were going to be able to finish because the treking section was usually pretty hard, steep and long. I was afraid that we'd still have about 10 miles to go on foot and that they would DNF us if we took to long.

That didn't happen. From Kayaks to CP10 on foot where we were given 3 new OP coordinates to find. We were lucky in that we spotted several teams still on this section that had made some mistakes. It took them a lot longer to find the three orienteering points so we just followed
them, got our 3 OPs and ran to the finish. I think we caught another 4 or 5 teams in this section. We screwed up on a technicality and may have been penalized for not writing down an OP correctly (get instead of eat or vice versa), but two Clydes aren't exactly breaking records, so who cares.

Overall we finished in 9 hours and change just after 5p.m. which I'm guessing is around 30th out of 40 teams. I'm not sure where we finished in the two person division but not bad for me not having paddled or run in many months. We met our goal which was 1) to finish between 8-10 hours or before the food/beer ran out 2) not be last 3) have a great time.

I did this race in 2005 and it was no real advantage. The course was run on the the opposite side of the lake 80% of the course was all new terrain. Not much at all on pavement.

Overall, I think the race for us ran very smoothly. A couple folks weren't happy with the long MTB section (but then it wouldn't be a challenge would i t?!) I thought it was the best part. In fact, I prefer longer rides, and less foot travel!! But overall, it was a good mix of disciplines. The instructions were pretty clear, so there weren't very many snafus on the passport or requirements. The three orienteering points threw me for a loop, I'll have to do a bit more reading on that (176degNM at .59 miles from CP10 as the crow flies - WT#$@#???), I was expecting UTM coordinates.

Looking forward to another BB race. I wish there was more intermediate level stuff down in Southern Cal. Thanks to all that made this race happen.
My teamate and I had a blast.

Louis