Goomna AR 2007 Report

Bill Stevens, Jim Schmid, & Shelley Stewart

Up to his usual creativity, race director Mark Rosen started this year's race with a short journey/task for one person from each team. We decided I would do that, and while I was away, Jim and Shelley were given a couple of word problems to solve in the hopes of earning some bonus minutes off our final race time. My task involved running a little over a mile from Spindler Park to the city pool, jumping in the water (where a group of kids were patiently waiting for us to get done so they could start a lesson), finding a bag with our clue sheet, and then running back to the park. The run wasn't bad, but holding my breath under water was tough with my heart rate up. Luckily our bag had enough air to counteract the weight of the rock inside, and it was floating on the surface. Some bags were 5' down.

The clue sheet confirmed what we had assumed earlier, when we copied all the control points from the master map, which was that we'd be running to the canoe section first. A different group of teams would start on the bikes, and yet a third group would be trekking around town first. Jim and Shelley had completed the word problems to be turned in later, so it was time to don the backpacks and head north about 3 miles to Silver Lake. The hats were on to keep down those brain temperatures in the sunshine. Canoes, PFD's, and paddles were lined up at CP1 about 50 yards from water. It turned out the water was a little pool separated from the main lake by a small levee, so a portage was in our future at CP2.

Ahh! Open Water! Here we could clearly see the four teams from our group that were ahead of us. During the 1.5 mile paddle to CP3 we passed one team, providing a good morale boost. CP4 was just a stone's throw away (but we paddled), and it was there that one person had to leave the boat and run back to the levee control point via trail. Jim elected to run, and it wasn't long before we all met up at CP5 (same as CP2). It was a quick paddle across the pool, and then we dragged the canoe up the hill to CP6 / CP1. After a quick moleskin replacement on my little toe, we jogged back to Spindler Park / CP7 / TA1.

The next section was a 3-mile trek to some control points around Highland: a park, an historical house site, and a baseball field. Several racers were going light by leaving the backpacks at the TA. Shelley opted for this and just carried a water bottle. Jim and I decided "going light" meant we wouldn't refill our backpack water reservoirs until the next TA. At the ball field (CP10) we had some simple navigating to do with the compass (another mystery event). It involved counting steps along a few headings and retrieving a card to prove we found the end point. No problem with that task, and a short trek brought us back to the TA (CP11).

It was time for the bikes, and we were eager to make up time on some teams who had been a little stronger on the foot and paddle sections. One setback, though, was that my front brake was rubbing the rim, and fiddling with it for a couple minutes didn't fix it. So plan B was to just disconnect the cable and go with the rear brake only. Woohoo! Good thing most of Highland isn't too steep. Control points 12, 13, 14, and 15 were along paved roads and easy to find. Ice-cold bottles of water were available at the manned CP14, and even though some clouds were moving in, the air temps were up there. CP15 was where Shelley's bike slid out last year, so Jim and I warned her many times of the approaching gravel. (Hey, if you can't tease your teammates, who can you tease?)

CP15 also marked the entrance to the wooded trail section of the race, and this was an exact duplicate from last year. Mark made it clear that we were to use the trail, so we didn't have the option of going around it on the road (like last year). The strategy was to keep close to the lake, because otherwise the winding, criss-cross trails would take you somewhere else. There were several logs over the trail, and in many places the dried-up horse tracks were worse than speed bumps, so travel was slow. Having only one brake was interesting for me on the downhill slopes, so I made sure to keep my distance behind Jim or Shelley. After all that, we found CP16, and Jim was ready to make the short swim with the passport to a nail that acted as a hole punch.

We started retracing our route back to the trail entrance, and with about a half mile to go it started raining. The trail quickly got slick and slowed us down even more. By the time we reached CP17 / CP15 the rain was coming down hard and there was some thunder in the distance. Under the umbrella of one of the volunteers I gratefully refolded the map for the next CP. We also had a little bike maintenance to do: Shelley's handlebar stem had come loose on the trail, as well as another bracket. That trail was rough!

The volunteers at this point had been told not to allow any more teams to enter the trail, due to unsafe muddy conditions. But there had been no word of a race cancellation, so we took off toward CP18 on the road again. FLASH-BOOM!!! That lightning flash was close, and as I was pondering where we might hunker down for a few minutes to let this storm cell pass by, a team was approaching from ahead. They flagged us down and said that Mark was calling volunteers to announce the end of the race. Just like last year, there was just too much lightning to let us keep romping around out there. A volunteer's truck gave us a great ride back to the TA, and by then the weather had cleared more or less to allow for an easy pack-up and go. Only one team finished the whole race: Alpine Shop. We estimated that we had another 90 minutes of biking, which would have put us at about 8hrs 30min for a finish time. Better luck next year!