Desert Rage - San Diego County

Hats of to Rick Eastman, Sierra Adventure Sports crew and volunteers for putting together a fast, scenic race in Southern California (Escondido). Numbers of Racers about 75. Weather, it warmed up in Ca this last week with the Santa Ana Winds blowing in a few days before - About 85 deg and dry once the sun came out. Overall elevation gain - some gain. Overall race vibe: Great - always nice to see familiar faces, and everyone from crew, volunteers and other racers were very supportive. My teamate Nat and I (Team "I saved a bunch by switching to Geico") arrived at 6:30 a.m. when the gates opened at the lake along with about 50 fishermen and small boats. It was a bit chilly as the sun hadn't quite come up yet, but we basically had an hour to unload the boats, set the bikes and transition area as the race meeting was at 7:30. The transition area was static (and non-crew supported race) so we would come back here to retrieve bikes, kayaks etc later on. Race start was at 8a.m. and began with a 2 mile jog to the first three marked CPs (check points) where we would be given UTM coordinates and Maps for the rest of the race. After the last of the first three check points, it was time to plot the CPs 4 through 17. We found a bench, sat down and started going over the coordinates. Let me tell, you it's kinda tough to be plotting on the run and I wasn't as accurate as I should have been. As I was plotting, I felt rushed as other teams were getting on the kayaks and taking off. Add the fact that my heart rate was up from the run and it was hard to settle down and focus. Lesson: As Barrie Adsett mentioned to me, we should have had my teamate read off the Northing and Easting numbers while I plotted on the map. Anyways, about 10 minutes and the rest of the Paddle, Run, Paddle, Run, Paddle, Bike, Run points were reasonably plotted. A short run back to the TA to grab the Kayak for the next 4 CPs. Our transition to the kayak was relatively quick and we were off into our boats. CP4 was basically on the other side of the lake towards at a dam and we were able to catch a few teams on the Kayak. From the dam, CP 5 was a a kayak landing, then a short 200 yard hike up a hill and back to the boat again. Kayak to CP6 seemed like another corner of the lake. (Lake Hodges is sorta Triangular) and it took us through some neat areas of "swamp" as I'd like to call it, where trees were basically buried under 10-15 feet of water and branches would stick up through the water. We'd have to paddle navigate through the shrubery. Reminded me of an 80's movie called "Southern Comfort". We landed at a manned CP6 where there was a gear check (kayaks dropped) and then it was off on foot to get another three points. CP7 was a trek up through some hiking trails where Nat and I learned about Flora and Fauna because there were signs all over describing plant life throughout the area. CP8 took us through some more walking paths behinds some houses in a neighborhood. At one point, we had to hop a fence and avoid a very beautiful Australian sheep dog, then down a hill through some bushwack. CP9 took us near a strip mall wear we had to get an address number off a building of some senior center. CP10 was a short hike up a hill, approx 100-200 feet in elevation gain. CP11 was back at the kayak pickup again. All in all I'd say it was about a 4 or 5 mile trek. Back in the Kayak to CP 12. Now during the time of trek, we had hooked up with Barrie Adsett and it's always amazing to see the different teamates he hooks up with. Glad to see that he's sharing the word of AR to newer racers. On our way to CP12 Barry's Tandem broke a rudder and we had to drop them but we'd see him again later. CP 12 was another far off corner of the lake and then it was back to the transition area (CP13). I would have to say we probably paddled around 6+ miles, but the water was smooth with hardly any wind chop or boat wakes to contend with. Now back at the TA there was a scrabble word challenge in which teamates would pick a 5 letter word and then would have to alternate running back and forth to a bucket full of letters retrieving letters to spell the word. Pretty straight forward. Then it was off to the bikes. CP14 was a pretty easy find along a bike path while CP15 was a bit more trouble for us as it was kind of a long climb to get to this one. We had a little trouble around a water tank landmark thinking that the CP was there, but in reality, it was further up on the climb. We decided to drop our bikes (it would have been a bit of hike-a-bike anyways on the loose rocky section), so we headed out on foot, found the manned CP, grabbed our bikes again and headed back down towards 16. CP16 was another booger for us. It just so happens that some of the CP makers were 3 foot orange stakes with markings. Well.... CP16 was under a bridge construction area and whether you know it or not, there were about 100 other orange marked stakes as well used for construction surveying. LOL. Turns out, we blew by the stake marker that was a bit above eye level and we had to re-plot and backtrack to find it. Doh, shame on me for missing this one. CP17 was another bit of adventure that took us through the Escondido Mall area. Here we hooked up with several other confused teams, including Barrie's team again. This CP was extremely tough to get to because of the mall, one way street traffic and bridge construction going on. Once you got past all that and found the bike path, it was a short climb up the top of a hill and back to the TA again. Overall, I logged about 18 miles on the bike. The final game/challenge was a rope/wiffle ball game in which we had to balance a wiffle ball on a ring with 4 rope ends over from on top of one pole to the other. We failed at our first 5 attempts on Pole1, finally we switched to the other pole station and were able to do it on the first try - something about the knots on station one that was harder.?!?!?? The last final orienteering section consisted of five orienteering points (OPs) in which one team member was given 5 points and a radio, while the other (rover) member(s) was given a map with no points and a radio. The nav person would basically have to translate the points verbally over the radio to the rover and the rover would have to find all 5 on foot. We were nearing our last hour before the 5pm. cutoff. so we had one hour to do this. We had some radio problems (out of range) and couldn't communicate so I just went off on my own and tried to find as many OPs as possible by just running the trails and spotting on other teams. When I could communicate, I would get a bearing on landmarks on the hill and just followed the trails until I found the OPs. Anyways, we got four of the five and were satisfied with that. We came in at 8 hours 54 minutes (4:54p.m) 6 minutes under the cutoff. Alot of people stuck around for the awards and cleanup which was nice. The race was slated as 31 total miles. I'm guessing it was 18 on bike, 6 on kayak and another 8 on foot for our team. Ahhh update, I just got word that the actual mileage was: Bike 15 (we did about 18 ), Kayak 11, and 9 on foot. So we covered about 38 miles. All in all it was a great race and we had a lot of fun. I would do another one of Rick's races in a heartbeat I'm going to have to get out to more of the races in AZ as races in So Cal are sorta drying up this last year. Next stop, Barrie's mini-AR in Mission Bay San Diego - Dec-02-06. AR isn't dead, it just smells funny Louis