Poky
05-12-08, 05:47 AM
My brother and I did our first adventure race yesterday as team Two Old Geezers. It was considerably harder than what we were expecting but much fun never the less. Two hundred + particpants met at a riverside park in the village of Warsaw ON. In order to spread the start out a bit there was a "pre-start race of about 4km where we had to find three check points around town and get a card punched at each. Then it was into the canoes for a 5km paddle up the Indian River to the Warsaw Caves conservation area. There are two hiking trails here of about 7km each. Around each were placed several check points with various score values depending on how difficult they are two find using the supplied topo maps. We did the harder route first and located all the check points in just over 1 hour, then we made our mistake by doing the second trail which only had 3 low value checkpoints and was a longer run, this took another hour. Then back in the canoe to the start and onto the mountain bikes for a 45km ride involving locating simillar checkpoints. There were 3 mandatory checks at the farthest points on the trail so that you had to cover the distance but the route was optional. We got to the last mandatory checkpoint with only 15 minutes left within the 6 hour time limit before penalty time points were assessed, so rather than do the 15km very rough trail back to the start which had only 3 medium value checkpoints, we opted to ride back on roads for 22km. We were still 40 minutes late for a 400 point time penalty giving us a total score of -- 0.:rolleyes: Sure was fun though.:)