May 4, 2019 was just too nice a day for an Adventure
Race. Light winds, cool temps, no bugs,
no rain, and clear skies. Team Lupine
meet at the St. Cloud recreation center in Wisconsin, just
North of the Northern unit of the kettle Moraine State Forest. The race was the
Chasin the Bone 9 hour Adventure race.
This was the 2nd race of the 2019 Wisconsin Adventure racing series, and
Race directors Anthony Leiton and Mike Prucha were getting to be old hands at
directing this race. The race started at
9:00AM, with a short Mountain Bike ride to the paddle put-in on the Sheboygan
river. Located on the river, both
upstream and down, were checkpoints of
varying values. (two check points
downstream were worth 1 and 2 points, and another, located upstream was worth 3
points) Team Lupine members Dan Ziegler,
Michele Ericsson, myself, along with fill-in
team member Andy Starsky loaded into canoes, and set off on a 8 mile paddle to
collect the 3 checkpoints . We also hooked up with Solo racer Jeff
Everson, whom will be racing with us in a couple weeks (Rib Mountain Adventure Race). Jeff stayed with us the remainder of the
race. Always nice to have another set of
eyes on the map. After the paddle leg, which took us 1 hour 49 minutes, we transitioned to Mountain bikes for a 7 mile
road ride to TA2 at the Red Oaks Orienteering section in the North Kettle
Moraine state Forest. The woods are very
topographically challenging, but we found the 11 controls with little difficulty,
returning to the TA2 and setting off on a 5 mile road ride to the Greenbush
area of the Northern Kettles. At the TA3
we hit the Mountain bike trails for 9 miles on the Greenbush Mountain bike
trails. We completed this section
exhausted, but with the 2nd fastest time.
Again now at TA3 we transitioned to the last orienteering section on the
Greenbush maps. The maps and area that we were orienteering in are some of the
best that Wisconsin has to offer. If you
ever get the opportunity to do an orienteering event here (Usually hosted by
the Badger Orienteering club) I highly recommend it. This area was sculptured by a glacier hundreds
of thousands of years ago, and the woods are very clean and run-able. We
managed to locate 18 of the 24 controls (2hrs 24 minutes), before our self
imposed time limit of 5PM made it necessary to return to the TA3. We then quickly transitioned back to Mt.Bikes
for the last 10 mile bike leg back to the finish in St.Cloud. The team finished at 5:41PM, with a total of 40 out of
a possible 46 controls.
So, when all was said and done, we finished in 2nd place in
the Coed Elite division, 3rd overall. We
managed a qualifying spot in the USARA Nationals race in September down in
North Carolina., Due to the fact the 1st place team racing the Chasin the Bone
adventure race (Rib Mountain Racing team ) had already received the $400.00
sponsorship towards Nationals in an earlier race this year, that sponsorship
rolled down to us. That, and $100.00
cash for 2nd place finish in our division made a nice day even better.
Thank you to Lupine Lights, Hammer Nutrition, Suunto, Zeal and Salomon!
Thank you to Lupine Lights, Hammer Nutrition, Suunto, Zeal and Salomon!
http://www.ribmountainadventurechallenge.com/Race/Home.html
