Sunday, January 31, 2016

USARA 2015 National Championship, Pineville, Kentucky



USARA 2015 Nationals, Pineville Kentucky
Oct 2 & 3, 30HR AR
Jason Zorilla(JZ) Team Captain, Rick Schnell and Paula Pearson (PWild)

Pineville, Kentucky is going to be beautiful we thought til we looked at the weather….rain, rain and more rain.  This will be a wet and muddy race and will test the mental limits of all teams and Stephanie Ross with Flying Squirrel Adventures is known to test your physical limits too in her course designs. 
Arriving in Pineville Kentucky just in time for check in to hotel and get to race check in before it closes at 5:30pm Thursday.  Unloaded our gear in our room at the lodge and decided to do the bike drop after the pre race meeting from 7-8.   We re checked the weather several times in hopes that mother nature would blow the hurricane on the east coast north of us so we would at least have 50% chance of rain instead of 100%. HaHa right, not going to happen.  The rain gear was ready to use all race.

Off to the pre race meeting that ran late so it put some pressure on us to get the bikes to the bike drop, but with no maps it was off to bed after we all did our normal night before repacking of packs, showers, snack, beer, chit chat or whatever and to sleep. 
Alarms set for 4am.  The lodge set up a grab and go breakfast at 5am that was very nice.  Getting a couple extra breakfast sandwiches and tossing them in our packs for hours later was a plus since temps going to be somewhat cold anyway.  


Map at 5:30 am(two), plot 30 points and realized we had mulitiple TA, breaking up disciplines(we liked this).   JZ and Rick worked on the maps and planning while PWild listen to random instructions from RD and kept the coffee hot.    Load bus at 7:00, now its raining again.  The school buses were packed as most team carried their paddle gear on board to stage at the start of the race. (last minute change during pre race meeting night before by RD)  Buses travel about 30 minutes up and down the Kentucky roads coming to a bridge way above the river.  We unloaded the buses, and had final pre race bridging at 7:45am.  PROLOGUE: TREKKING Mandatory Pts 10  RD handed out a prolog map, CPs at different point levels, you had to get 10 points total on foot and then run back to your paddle bag and run another mile down to the paddle put in where the boats were.   We went after CP 6 & 4b.(no credit for extra points)  Its spitting rain still.  Race start at 8AM. 

At this point PWild overdressed again (she gets worried about being cold after a Hypothermia situation in a race a few years ago).  Rushing down to the paddle put in PWild grabs a boat, JZ gets the paddle gear out and Rick is checking into the TA(turn in prologue passport and get main passport).   All is well, passed a few teams just in the transition area getting our boat in the water.  We thought we were going to have different canoes but nope the big yellow banana boats it is.  Yep, we got one that kept dragging left….this frustrated JZ but with the white small white water on the river it was a ride ….and its now RAINING. 
 
STAGE 1 : PADDLING  (TA1, CP1, CP2, TA2)
Two points on the paddle leg that was about X miles long.  Teams are to check in and out of TAs, these are points as well.  It pretty much rained the whole paddle leg and we had small rapid sections on and off along the way.  We could tell the water level had been much higher at one point as to the random stuff hanging from the trees.  We finally came to the paddle take out and it seem to be a bottle neck.  PWild grabbed the daisy chains and gave them to JZ, PWild took two of the dry bags with packs in them.  JZ and Rick pulled the boat up the muddy ramp past a few teams having trouble getting footing in the mud.  Yep, how many more hours of this rain and mud?  Carrying the boat up to the top of the paddle take out we knew we would see the boat again later in the race on a lake paddle.  Usually Pwild is excited when the paddle is over but this time she didn’t even say “good bye big F%$King yellow banana”.

STAGE 2 : MOUNTAIN BIKING “King of the Mt”(TA3, TA4)
The name of this stage just tells you that there is a big hill!  This is where the race change VERY much for us. We had to first trek about a mile to the bike drop were we changed out gear out and began the long assent, we weren't shooting to break a record just keep our pace up the mountain. most of this was road riding until we got to ridge road where it turned to overgrown road and then eventually jeep road. we were not more then 300 meters away from the TA.  We knew it was getting bad when a 4 wheel drive decided to stop trying to make the top. Around we went and JZ was in the front just slipping and sliding around the puddles then JZ took a fall....at first it just seemed like a mild fall until he let out this girlish child scream...."it wasn't pretty". He was not even walking for about 5 min...just wincing in pain. Rick took JZ bike an PWild took his pack as he struggled the last bit up to the TA and walked off most of the pain. Rick got to work cleaning  and dressing the wound and this is when he says "yea that probably needs stitches". The amazing volunteers were already on the phone calling up the medics. While waiting we planned our route and got ready for the O section. Jason says "to much time we gotta go". Off we went...The medics were going to be a while anyway....keep racing.

STAGE 3: Orienteering Trek  (TA,4b, CP3-7 any order) We approached this O section in a Counter clockwise approach. knowing the condition of Jason's knee this is kind of were our race dynamic changed for us, it became more of a keep up the pace and push on. Rick stepped up as Rabbit and NAV taking some of the Nav points here while PWild continued with her Positive Encouragement. Did we mention "Its still Raining" we stopped to check JZ's knee and dressing and found a pretty bloody leg. We had to use his calf support to keep the dressing on with all rain and treking we had left. Thanks to all the teams we saw out there for offering assistance....Adventure
Racers are Amazing people.We finished the O section up strong and made our way back to the TA. The medic was waiting to clean and dress JZ's knee again. the medic agree'ed with Rick that it should have some stiches or glue, but there was no glues to be had so waver signed and off we went on the loong ass bike section. 

STAGE 4: Mountain Biking   (CP8-15 any order, TA5 paddle put in)This was along bike section that we knew would take us well into the rainy night. We came down the hill and hit the rail trail which was an old coal mine trail running along the river. It was a really cool ride filled with old bridges and tunnels. Then we hit the roads running up the Wilderness Trail off road park. We made a plan to see just how bad the trails are weather we would continue south and get the rest of the bike point or turn back and take the road. JZ was being a trooper but his legs was getting weaker. We headed up the hill via the lower branch. This led us past the well known upside down truck in the ditch, which was still warm and smelled of gas. We kept seeing signs for buried gas line so we didn't stick around long to see what the driver may have broken. Up ant Up the big gnarly trail to the top. Rain still coming down the trail was only getting worse after cp 10. This area was turning into a muddy, sloppy, Slick goo, Unfortunately we had no real idea of the terrain and this whole area had been strip mines and hence not accurate on the map. We made our way down to 11 and decided to scrap the rest of the bike points on this leg and head back to the road.  Seeing friends out in the mud and asking "is it worth it?" and we just had to laugh.  Our thought was as slow as we were moving we would be better to leave us more time for the last O section of the race. So high tail it to the paddle we did.

STAGE 5: Paddling  (CP 16-19, in any order, return to TA5) We pulled into the paddle section and were gratefully relieved that it was in a large water treatment plant and the doors were OPEN!  This was a savior as they had burgers grilling and hot coffee and we were able to change cloths and hang our wet ones dry. This was way too nice but it did allow for the medics to tend to JZ again. This was the first time all race when it stopped raining. We packed up our mandatory gear and set off with our paddle gear. The put in was about 800m from the Plant were we put in on a quiet reservoir. The paddle was pretty straight forward four points any order then back to the take out. We shut our lights off for most of the paddle and had it done around 45 min. back to the plant quick redress and back on bikes to head back to the resort. Ahhhhhh, dry cloths.

STAGE 6: Mountain Biking  (CP 20-21 in any order, TA6) This Bike section looked straight forward on the map. It turned out the hill climb up seemed to never end. but once we got to the top we made our way with pretty good time. Grabbing the the two points that brought us to the power line mandatory decent. Ride-able?...maybe with a four wheel drive rock crawler on a dry day. We hiked most of the downhills and JZ knee was really slowing him down. Biking is normally his strong point but not this day. Finally reaching the road with a sigh of relief we still had 4K to the TA and our bikes at this point were so mud laden that it really made the climb to the TA a trudge. But we made it. what a relief.

STAGE 7: Orienteering Trek  (CP 22-30, in any order, Finish Line)Plenty of time still, we did another dressing change out on JZ leg before we set out on the last O section. This was going to be a tricky one as the points are really spread out all over and the navigation was going to be tricky on a the 1/24,000 scale. We started off in the dark and began with Rick on Nav as JZ was hurting bad and needed both hands to use Paula's trekking poles. We were moving no more then a quick walk at this point heading in the counter clockwise direction starting on the ridge. We ended up coming down on 22 a little past it so we had to regroup and attack from below. In out and back up to the ridge trail to attack cp23, oh cp23. We found our attack point via the bend in the trail. Took a bearing and when in. The area got so dense we had issues even following each other. we searched and search and spent way to much time looking and were down so far we decided to leave it. We were all very frustrated as this is a rarity for us to leave one and have such issues finding a cp. We decided the only good way to the bottom is straight down. This was not easy as it was slow going and very dense. looking at the map it was a huge gamble to head down Shelton Branch as the contour lines were 20ft and we could easily gotten cliffed out. Getting quite frustrated and concerned as the canyon walls were closing in on us we reached the narrowest point were the walls came together. The walls came together with only about 12 feet apart and we lucked out...no cliff. Still some more heavy thick coverage and
jumping from one side to the other trying to find our way to the bottom. The last hour took its toll on us and as we went for 24 which was tricky as the clue was re-entrant and a map with 1:24k scale made it tough to find the right one as there were many small deep ones. We finally found it as we were on our way back out to leave this one, we walked right by it coming in because the re-entrant was leading back away from us. but due to the scale was almost impossible to read. We made it back out but JZ was in really bad shape. We were slowed to a slow walk. So we resorted in taking the heavy hitter pain med which brought us to a fast walk. Progress right? We hit 25 without issues. 26 was a bit of a tricky one as the old train tracks we started to follow lead us to a dead end and had to hit the road and then back around to avoid the private property. At this point were gabbing back and forth as we were all still disappointed about having to leave a point out there we should have found. The quiet walk did us well so we could clear our minds and regroup as a team. We found our trail that lead off a bend in the RR bed and worked our way up and around to 26 which threw us for a loop for about 10 min because of 20ft contour lines.  Time was running out and we were getting slower as Rick was Towing JZ just so he could manage his lala land quick walk. We decided on an out and back for 27 after doing some time figures. We would evaluate our condition once we got back up to the lodge. this was a slow hike up JZ was slowed to a crawl and it was not looking good. we decided because he could not do more then a walk that we couldn't make the last two in time. If we could jog we could make it...Jason tried to jog to see but that wasn't happening. We finished the Race as a team stayed together, overcame the adversity and stuck it out as a team until the very end. We are all very proud of this team in what they accomplished at the 2015 USARA Nationals. Because Rick, JZ, and Pwild stuck it out and stayed in the race we finished the season with a very respectable 9th place ranking in the Nation. Not bad for a bunch of old amateurs....Great Job Team Lupine Racing. 
















Thank you to our sponsors for a great 2015 season!  


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