From 4LPH41337.com

Contents 1 Howl at the Moon Pictures 2 Howl at the Moon Maps 3 Howl at the Moon Website 4 Howl at the Moon Results 5 Howl at the Moon Reviews 5.1 Josh's Take 5.2 Joanna's Take 5.3 Holly's Take 5.4 Jack's Take

Howl at the Moon Pictures

Pictures
Holly Josh Jack Campsite	Team Start	Josh Towing	Jack Josh Joanna Towing
Jack Towing Holly	Team Checking Results	Team Post Race

Howl at the Moon Maps

Howl at the Moon Website

Howl at the Moon

Howl at the Moon Results

Final Results

Final Results By Category

Howl at the Moon Reviews

Josh's Take

I was excited about Howl at the Moon for a few reasons:

• Last race of the year
• Jack's first nighttime race
• Everybody was going to be navigating at various segments
• Finally got to try out the Bike Towing System I built, as well as our canoe towing idea
• I wanted vengeance for having such a crappy Gold Nugget race , and since this was my first race playing the workhorse role officially, I had ample opportunity to work out that aggression.

First of all, we had major pre-race organizational issues. Since organizing the team and managing the bulk of the logistics is part of my role within the team, this fell on me. Our team was originally supposed to include Andy McCann, but unfortunately he fell ill before the race and he graciously offered up his spot when he felt he wasn't going to recover. The other thing that was going on simultaneously is that we had made plans (using admittedly loose assumptions based on the race website, which was not a great pre-race source of information) to camp out the night before the race in the TA. After several phone conversations with Elias (RD) and the park, it was clear that the central TA was not in the park, yet not on private land. It was in limbo. And there were weird restrictions camping like open tents only, etc. Anyway, the killer was that we found out week of that we were not allowed to camp out there the night before, according to the property owner. SOOOOOOoooooOooOooOoOoo, all the pre-race decisions about whether to camp or stay in a hotel, and where to meet Joanna (who was flying in), etc, flew out the door, and we decided to wake up early and drive down there day of the race. That's what we get for trying to plan ahead. The irony of it is that because we were waiting on information from RDs about where to stay, etc, we actually held off all the planning until much later than usual--week of! (I know, the horror!).

Anyhow, on to the race. We started out as usual--blazing through the woods with abandon and physically out-pacing most while not paying attention to how much distance we'd actually traveled. As such, we blew past OP1 and continued on for a mile and a half before realizing our bad. The next 45 minutes to an hour were spent backtracking and bushwhacking. The cool of it was the forest in Northern Florida is a cool mix of the thick undergrowth you find across the south and a tropical/fern-based foliage you would see in some areas of Central America. So the bushwhacking was pretty fun.

After that setback, I imagine we were in the back of the pack, but seemed to be good physically, so we continued at a quick pace in order to make up lost time. We took some routes that others most did not, so we didn't actually see anybody during our pursuit until we came out of the woods and all of the sudden we were in the midst of them. So good work catching up and bushwhacking the correct course. We came to the point in the river where we decided to cross it again and found we weren't the only ones taking that route. We rolled past a group of hesitant teams deciding on the shore if they wanted to or not. The current was pretty swift, so we ended up a bit downstream, and the water was literally the color of tea due to all the Spanish moss in the area staining it, so my first impression was "this water is STANK". Had a good laugh about it, but I didn't care--I played in drainage ditches when I was a kid.

After the second river crossing, it was roads and woods to the bridge where we'd cross back over and this is where the trek was getting tiresome. Jack and Joanna were having some foot issues due to wetness and I busted a double-tow. We took advantage of the open ground and hauled past a group of 3-4 teams traveling together, making comments about "no running in AR".

On the other side of the bridge, we found that there was a new road construction overlaying where we thought the road we were supposed to take went but following the wrong bearing. We took it, and then second guessing ourselves, asked a couple of drunk teen girls on a 4-wheeler what the road was while Jack was attempting unsuccessfully to put moleskin on his wet foot. The drunk girls told us whatever (I wasn't listening to their slurs, though Jack was interested), and we continued on the road, hoping to cross over at some point, though it was risky since there was no bushwhacking it if there wasn't a road. Ended up being one, and we were back on track.

Because we decided to stop and tend to our wounds and the indecisiveness on the direction at that point, we lost some time and the group of 3-4 teams had passed us. We passed them yet again on the run when we rejoined the path. We were heading to OP4 at this point, and night was falling, and so we had been pushing to reach it for the past hour, but we just couldn't get there in time. Jack handed off the navigation to me and we turned our lights on to get to OP4. Unfortunately, the trail leading to it was a bit difficult to follow, so we were slowed as dusk became dark. Arriving at OP4, we found several headlights were wandering around in the woods. We approached it 3 times using bearings. The first time we used an unsure attack point and it was fruitless, the second time I didn't pay close enough attention to my bearing and got slightly off (hindsight). The third time was a charm and was right on the money because:

1. We came from a KNOWN attack point (distinctive 90 degree turn in trail)
2. I glued my nose to my compass

This whole process took about 1.5 hours because we meandered about in the woods between approaches and actually took approach 2.5 where we "headed towards the headlamps".  :) Looking back, there were several cases (approach 1 and approach 2 where I was within 20 meters of the OP and didn't spot it). UGH! Leaving OP4 there were maybe 3 teams still in the woods with the others that we had worked so hard to catch 15-45 minutes ahead.

We were a pretty demoralized as nightfall set in, but canoe leg got us off our feet, which is always nice. Cold, couldn't see much (fog on water) and pretty boring. We decided before race to try to lash the canoes together and have 3 in the front canoe and 1 in the back. All we (and everyone on the banks of the water) could hear is metal on metal as my kayak paddle scraped the gunwales of the canoe since I was in the center and Holly screaming "Left!" "Right!" back to Joanna who was steering from the rear canoe. Later it became "Left! Left! LEFT!!!" as for some reason the boats were veering to the right constantly.

Again, morale suffered. Jack was fighting off sleep and was cranky in a bad way. Holly was cold and complaining of splashing and everybody having to yell over the scraping, which included ever-important navigational instruction from Joanna. Both of them were secretly upset that they weren't steering from the rear. I was zoning out also and found myself spotlighting another team as they passed us in the opposite direction as we were heading to O7, only noticing when he said, "Cut it out!" It's all pretty comical looking back, since any onlooker would've been confused at the spectacle of us 3 paddling on the front and Joanna sitting in the back of the trailing canoe; they would've thought her either a second-rate citizen or royalty.

We got back to CP3 (TA, Start) and got some hot food thanks to Jordan, refueled, and patched up feet. This TA took us ~30 minutes. Holly must of been clear of the TA in 10 minutes, me in 20; so we got some time by the fire. I thought we were lagging at the time, but turns out we were one of the faster teams through the transition, passing a team in the process. We also had to map the bike points and do some strategery. It was pretty straightforward, and we launched off on the ride.

We felt great on the bikes, Jack and I both had towing systems, and traded off towing Joanna. Jack was happy to [mostly] be off his feet, which were blistered up. This leg of the race was exhilarating because we knew there were teams ahead of us from the trek, but didn't see any on the lonely canoe. We saw many on the bike. There was only one short section on the bridge where we could get to full speed on our bikes because of the sugar sand everywhere. Sometimes we had two choices--sugar sand or extremely wet grass that had the same effect on the work/power ratio as the sand. The sporadic sand/mud pits made for an interesting maiden voyage on the towing side. Generally, my navigation was spot on, except for a point where we dropped the bikes and hiked for about 200 meters due to an underestimated distance to O10. Cost us a few minutes, but not tragic. Looking at results, we were the 4th fastest team on the bike segment, ending up passing 7 additional teams on the bike.

I've got to say, I've never felt better about a race than after this one, which is an excellent way to end a season. Despite pre-race logistical headaches, early trek difficulties, and morale issues, we rallied and finished very strong. And that's 1337.

Joanna's Take

Holly's Take

Jack's Take

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