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Contents 1 Siege On Fort Yargo Map 2 Siege On Fort Yargo Website 3 Siege On Fort Yargo Results 4 Siege On Fort Yargo Reviews 4.1 Josh's Take 4.2 Jordan's Take 4.3 Jack's Take

Siege On Fort Yargo Map

Siege On Fort Yargo Website

http://siegeyargo.trailblazerar.com/

Siege On Fort Yargo Results

Final Results

Siege On Fort Yargo Reviews

Josh's Take

Overall, I think the race was laid out well for the (relatively) small area. It may just be fresh memory or the special challenges, but I thought this was the best race out of the three.

I think the O sections, which were sprinkled in with the riding portion (race went challenge-run-canoes-challenge-bike-orienteering-bike-challenge-bike-orienteering) were added some choices in an otherwise serial course (most cps had to be done in order, with the exception of the canoe, which was a loop--so no advantage could be gained by choosing one path from another).

1st o-second had 2 near cps and 1 far away. 2nd had 3 near and 1 far away. interested to see if anybody got 6 cps.

all in all i think the race had a good mix. we were pleasantly surprised to have placed in our division.

I loved the mud pit. I thought it was too short though. There were 3 paths to shoot under the ropes to complete it (i guess to make sure it wouldn't be a bottle neck), I thought we'd be going up, back, and up again weaving the paths. that would've 3x'ed the distance of it. since it was so close to the end, i don't imagine it would've been a bottleneck to do it that way.

one thing good about the race is the inclusion of the park map. this helped to reduce the home-field advantage. many people i imagine know the park inside-and-out since it is small venue. for newbs to the location, having a park map and trail overlays on the topo map mitigates the local advantage a bit (i'm a subscriber that home-field advantage should exist, but no so much that it skews results drastically).

other thing i want to compliment the RDs for. mdillon mentioned the raffle prizes being done earlier while they calculated the results. i went back to their table to discuss a passport discrepancy and they were it--nobody around. so they had a lot of time without distraction to score the race quickly! hats off to that--other RDs take notice. results were announced for ranked teams within the hour and emailed out morning next day. that rocks, since for some AR events (depending on how close they are to Rogaine format), you have NO idea as a competitor how you ranked, and it's the first thing you want to know--other than where is the post-race food

Jordan's Take

Jack's Take

Let's see how my memory is after 2 months... Without reading the other accounts first:

We were just hanging out at the central transition area (CTA), not warming up or stretching or anything productive. Josh went off to the team captain meeting. He's back with the map, and we start reading the rules really fast, while Josh is drawing lines all over the map until you can't see anything but his lines :D

They call for everyone to line up at the start for the "find your team number held to the ground with a nail" relay. Josh takes off first, maybe 20 yards to the tags....where's Josh? Still no Josh... Wow, this really does thin the herd... Here he comes. Finally found it. Then Jordan takes off to get the second tag. He comes back and tells me where he saw the third tag. I run and grab it.

I'm back and we take off in a dead sprint to the first CP at a 4 min/mile pace. I think we left some Olympic team members in the dust. My heart is about to explode and I'm breathing like I'm trying to get a campfire started from old coals. I hooked my towline onto the race horse named Jordan, and we picked up the rest of the CPs that we had to get on foot. Yes, I'd warned them that someone would be supplying a tow, at the speeds they wanted to race.

We got to the canoes in 2nd place, I think. We almost swamped getting into the canoe, so we took off with 2" of water in the canoe. We were chasing the first place guys, choosing clockwise as the fasted path. Some teams chose counter-clockwise, but after finding out where the takeout was (not shown on the map), our way was the shortest distance.

We came out still in second place and jumped on the bikes. Here is where knowledge of all the trails (like the locals) would give you a distinct advantage. We made a fairly significant wrong turn, but got back on track after a few minutes. We followed some other teams down the wrong trail for a bit, but realized they didn't know where they were going either. About halfway around the park, there were "optional" checkpoints. I was still winded from the run, and I wasn't "feeling" those extra checkpoints, but I had to take it for the team. We got 2 of the 3 checkpoints. The third was all the way around the lake on the other side of the park (no doubt put there to take out some teams that had no common sense--or to allow some amazing teams to excel). We decided that it was insane to attempt, and we'd see how much time was left after we made it to the finish for some other optional checkpoints after the finish line. By now, my legs were cramping up, but we made it back to the bikes. Jordan was being pretty good about still towing me.

Back on the bikes, we started out to get more CPs on the way back. My calves kept cramping up, but I managed to not stop biking. I was just stiff leg coasting until they subsided. It was pretty bad. We pulled up on a mystery event where we had to guide one team member (who was blind folded) through an obstacle course. Jordan volunteered and managed to make it through the course despite Josh's directions.  ;) Back on the bikes and back to the CTA and finish line...

Josh and Jordan were through the mud pit by the time I managed to get down to it due to legs still trying to cramp up. I made it through the mud and thought, "I'm done..."

Nooooo....we had to go out for more "optional" checkpoints. In Josh's mind there is no such thing as "optional" checkpoints. Josh says, "Come on, we'll just walk. We can walk and get one or two of these before the cut-off." I agreed, and 200 yds down the trail Josh says, "Maybe we can just jog the flat parts and downhills." So we jogged. We bushwacked into a CP with ease, but took a different path out to "save time." That turned into a nightmare of briars, but we made it out. After that, we decided that CP that there wasn't enough time for the last optional CP. We got back to the finish line with a few minutes to spare.

All that hard work paid off. We finished 2nd in the all male division, only 3 minutes behind first place.

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