Yumay and I had big shoes to fill this weekend when we raced as MerGeo.com at the 6degree of navigation at Lord Hill park in Monroe. Debbie Newell and Dave Tallent put on a great course on a gigantic O-map and Yumay and I had to give it all we had, did real deep sometimes and come back from bad letdowns to win this one! Eric Bone had won it for MerGeo.com with William Emerson and Liz Stahl the two years before, but he was at the World Orienteering Championships in Japan so it was up to my navigation to see how well we will do.
The race started well for us and we built a good lead on the first Orienteering Section, only to realize that I had forgotten to go pick up the kayaks, so we had to run up the big hill again to do so, and were passed by 5 teams...
Kayaking went well and we were once again trekking, this time across the whole park and fought it out with several teams, the nav was hard so teams stuck together at times to find the CP's faster, and it was clear that the Biking leg in the midday heat will decide...
Yumay and I were able to pull away good at the pipeline trail, the steepest section in the park, where we had to carry our bikes up all the way. I carried both bikes and told yumay I will race her up the hill... she won, but the incentive made us gain a few minutes and we were able to break free from the pack.. after that I made some pretty good nav choices and we gained about 15 minutes, only to loose it on a combination of yumay going over the handlebar and messing up her knee and me misnavigating... we were four teams all together going up the last hill of the day when Yumay and I were able to break free and put important minutes between us and the rest of the teams to make it to the rappel first, and that was key for the win. A few minutes between us and Alex, Brandon, Tamara and Michelle, who took second... sweet!!
Bloody happy to be done... we spare you the view of yumay's knee, but she ended up needing an MRI after the race... fortunately it healed well...
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
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