Executive summary:
It was a gorgeous day to be out running around in the woods. I pushed hard, am sore as hell today, saw some neat country, paddled some fun riffles, and hung around after and drank beer with some awesome folks. I also made some silly mistakes and had some poor physical preparation, both of which I’d like to do better on in the future. The most important thing is that it was a very well conceived, organized, and run race. Josh and the Rocky Mountaineers deserve huge kudos.

The race started with a six mile trail run with two off-trail orienteering checkpoints, transitioned to a 3 mile paddle, then onto the bike for nine mandatory and two bonus checkpoints spread through the varied pines and logging roads of the Lubretch forest. You had to be able to run to do well, but it was a cyclists’ course. Not a mountain bikers course (no singletrack ridden, almost all easy roads), but in the competitive catgories (mens and co-ed) only strong riders needed apply.

The (very nice MyTopo waterproof) map is below.

On the bike my route went: O, P, B, R, I, A, L, C, J, E (the 60 minute bonus).

N was a 30 minute bonus off the above picture about 1/2 mile and 500′ above checkpoint L.  I skipped it as I reckoned my wrecked legs would suffer enough from the run back down that I’d loose time on it.  You can see the arrow marking my bushwack from C over the mountain and down to the south.  There was a convenient logging road that let me sneak down towards Highway 200 and only do a bit of forest hike-a-biking to find the mysterious checkpoint E.

The funny thing is that the plan I had in my head at the starting line yesterday was largely the opposite.  After climbing back up from B I headed around to the north until I hit consistent snow on solid north aspects, and turned around to formulate another plan.  The new route went well, though the adventurous hike over the mountain went quite slowly.  My legs were wrecked after the run, I fought hideous calf cramping for the first hour of riding, and couldn’t hike downhill too easily thereafter.  Doing some running beforehand might have been a good idea.  I also killed too much time fiddling with the map on the bike.  A few teams had these, which look like music stands on the bars but would have probably saved me 10-15 minutes on the day. 

Of course, the best parts of the day (other than bushwaking with the bike), were chatting with folks while eating spaghetti and meatballs and drinking beer before the awards ceremony.  I might have to do more of these.