2010 Siege On Fort Yargo
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2010 Siege On Fort Yargo Info
- Trailblazers' Siege On Fort Yargo
- Date: June 5th
- Location: Winder, GA
- Event Details: 5 hours
- Event Description:
- 8-10 miles of mountain biking on single track & roads.
- 5-6 miles of trekking & orienteering
- 1 mile of self powered "floating"
- Event Points Category:
- Checkpoint Tracker Sprint-length Race
- Teams Registered:
2010 Siege On Fort Yargo Pictures
| 2010 Siege On Fort Yargo Team ROC Gear/4LPH4 1337 | |||
Mike & Josh Strategizing |
Josh With ROC Gear Raft |
Expedition Team |
Sprint Team Leading Expedition Team At Prologue |
Expedition Team Finishing Bike Leg |
2010 Siege On Fort Yargo Map
2010 Siege On Fort Yargo Website
http://siegeyargo.trailblazerar.com/
2009 Siege On Fort Yargo Results
- Team ROC Gear/4LPH4 1337 - Expedition: 4th Coed Elite category out of 23, 8th overall out of 87; 21 pts in 4:59:30
- Team ROC Gear/4LPH4 1337 - Sprint: 6th Coed Elite category out of 23, 13th overall out of 87; 20 pts in 4:59:11
2010 Siege On Fort Yargo Reviews
Josh's Take
Coming straight off a near victory last week a the Wild, Wonderful 24, I was ready to race again. I suited up in the new tights, and was ready to race. The night before, I even made some "optimizations" to my Walmart-raft. After theorizing that we'd be blowing our rafts up a couple of times on the course, I slapped some duct tape on it, cut it where the tape was so I could blow it up faster, and figured I'd just patch that with some additional duct tape after inflation.
The prologue had me and Holly on rafts. Turns out, lighter (and more balanced) is better, as she managed to edge me out by about 30 seconds on the prologue swim. Turns out the fastest raft was Allen McAdams', who comically had a big arm-chair style raft. Because he's a light guy, and was high above the water (thanks to the tall raft), he was able to keep his forward stroking arms from dragging on the water and the raft, which because it was so big, sat flat on top of the water, glided for longer than the rest of our half-submarine inflatables. Duly noted.
Anyway, we sliced my raft with a knife to quickly deflate (we had 4 total), and carried it back to the TA. We transitioned quickly but not quick enough to bikes, coming into the TA in roughly 10th and out in roughly 15th-20th. After the crowd stopped short on the 1st CP and I played follow the leader, the crowd was well on top of us. We mainly rode behind the traffic jam. We played leap frog with the Sprint team for a while until finally out-pacing them at some point before the orienteering TA, after which we never saw them again until the finish.
We opted to do the bike section in one fail swoop, as we didn't want to get stuck in another traffic jam on the single track after the orienteering course. This paid off and we made it back to the TA 2nd after clearing the bike course.
We spent a lot of time optimizing our TA so that we could transition to trek in less than 3 minutes. All went well, we left the TA, and took off for the trek. However, about 400 meters out, I realized my PFD was not attached to my pack. All our planning shot by one mistake. Dadgummit!
Continuing out yet AGAIN on the trek, we made decent time but the heat was catching up to us. Made our way to the orienteering course, getting trekking points along the way. Skipped a couple that looked difficult (CP7 we heard was in a thicket and CP3, which was just beyond our threshhold for out of the way).
At that point, we were done with the orienteering course and back on the trek. Now the heat was in full effect, and we were really looking forward to the swim. We headed down to T4, inflated our rafts in preparation for the swim across the lake. Laura and Mike brought their secret weapon--a very light weight air mattress pump. In no time, they had their rafts inflated. Meanwhile, I had given up on blowing up mine through the sliced duct-tape hole. I slapped another piece of duct tape on it, and prepared to inflate it with their pump. Inflated and go. About 40 feet into the water, I realized that my duct tape patch was not working...at all. The raft was already 50% deflated, and filling with water.
I ignored and swam. At a later point, Laura and Mike had caught and passed me, and I held onto Mike's heel and he towed me. We got to the other side, and realized time was getting short. We would attempt T8, make a time decision possibly for T9, then come back, make a time decision for T10. After some small navigational errors getting to T8, we didn't really have the time to get T9, so we skipped it, got out of the water (draining my raft of all the water it had in it), and skidattled back.
At T10, Mike had leg cramps pretty fierce and Laura was digging deep. With 6 minutes until cutoff, I grabbed the passport, ran up to T10, punched it, and ran back down. We then had like 4 minutes to get back and about a half mile to go. We all dug deep to get in, getting back to the central transition area. We saw just 10 seconds ahead of us the Sprint team, and after Mike and I lost to Jack last year by 2 seconds, I worried we had done it again. We hurried up the hill to the finish, with 30 seconds to spare for the 5 hour race cutoff.
We found out after cooling down a bit that we got 1 more CP than the Sprint team (so we didn't lose by 10 seconds this time).
Kudos to Zach and the rest of the Trailblazers Adventure Racing Club for so many well-placed CPs, keeping us aware of time so we could narrowly make the cutoff, and general running of the event. Well done!
Michael's Take
Pre-pre-race
The pump. This year we were told that instead of the traditional canoe section, we'd just need a plain mattress-style inflatable raft. This gave us the chance to straegize on how to best deal with the rafts, especially how to inflate them. As Laura and I looked around the house the night before the race, we found our manual air matress pump. Made of lightweight plastic, and featuring a 12" long, 3" diameter barrel that pumps air on the up and down strokes, we'd have a great advantage if we needed to inflate the raft on the fly.
The packs. Josh also suggested we opt for a two pack strategy. We each had two packs with water and mandatory gear so that we'd just have to swap packs in the TA instead of refilling water. Both the pump and the packs paid off during the race.
Pre-race
Copying trails. Maps were handed out when we checked in giving us plenty of time to read the rules and pick our routes. This year we had a large, color map with all the CPs and some roads/trails, a small b&w trail map, and a second color trail map (that was given to us later). Rather that have multiple maps to deal with during the race, we drew the trails on the large color map. This helped us because we didn't have to look at multiple maps, but hurt us because we had to guess how close and on what side the trails were in relation to the CPs. A few times I was thrown off because the CP was not "right off the trail" that we'd drawn.
Prologue
Josh swam, Laura and I ran. We kept up a good pace on the trails and arrived at the meeting place just after Josh got out of the water. We headed back to the TA and were quickly off on the bike.
Bike
We ran into the usual traffic jam on the bikes in the beginning and made the mistake of following the crowd that stopped a few hundred meters short of the first CP. We eventually found it and got back on the bikes. As the crowd thinned we worked our way through the bike CPs opting to obtain them all since we had to ride a loop around the park. Thankfully this leg was rather uneventful.
Trek/Orienteering
After a small mishap at the TA (see Josh's review) we walked/ran to the first 3 CPs then opted to transition to the Orienteering section. Overlaid trails once again threw me off and we had to backtrack to known locations several times to re-attack. With the cutoff looming and knowing we'd have to swim, we opted to skip two of the outlying CPs and get back to the Trek section. We headed to CP 4 and got out the secret weapon pump in preparation for the swim. The pump inflated the mattresses in about a minute and we were quickly on the water. Laying flat on the mattress allowed for the necessary glide while swimming, at least for Laura and me. Josh's raft didn't really allow for gliding, or much of anything, so there was some pushing and pulling to get through the swim.
The Finish
After making it across the lake without much time before the cutoff, we decided to stick with our usual strategy of taking the risk. We hurried off to CP 8, which would involve a swim and take us away from the finish. Another nav mistake on my part took us the long way to get there so we had to run even faster. We got it and turned around to race for the finish. With cramps creeping up in both legs, I was ready to head straight there, but Josh, faithfully sticking to our risk-taking strategy, pushed us to take the slight detour to get CP 10. During the final run to the finish I learned 4 or 5 new running styles to avoid cramps in my calves and hamstrings. I'm not sure how graceful I looked but we pushed it through the TA up to the finish and made the cutoff with 30 seconds to spare. Typical.
Thanks to Zach, the Trailblazers, and the volunteers for another great Siege!
Laura's Take
We were excited to race this race again and are thankful for the great volunteers and their support. I was along for the ride (as I usually am) with Mike and Josh. We learned that there were no boats in the race, but only inflatable, cheap beach floats. Earlier in the week of the race, Mike and Josh started scheeming how to inflate these floats most efficiently while on the course. We found a pump in our closet that is intended to inflate our airmatress. It was determined to be light enough for Mike to carry in his pack during the treking portion of the race. Another thing we decided to do this race was to work on our transition times. So, we each came with approximately 2 sets of all gear and had them prepared for different legs of the race. The idea being we could come in, drop everything, switch shoes as needed, grab next bag, and continue. Both great ideas!
The race started out with odd and even teams going to different places. One team member rode their float and the other two ran. Josh started on the float and made it to the meeting place shortly before Mike and I arrived. We then ran back to the TA, grabbed our bikes and packs and started to ride the bike loop. It was a bit congested at the beginning, but we found the CP's along the way farely easily. We continued past the TA/bike drop where we had the options to the take on the Orienteering section. We had planned to continue one and did so after Josh had to climb a ladder to one of the checkpoints. At this point, the trails opened up more as most people had dropped their bikes to do the Orienteering section. ***I should insert something that was fun to see many times during this race. As we had to use these floats/rafts during the trekking section anytime we were in water above our knees, many teams just opted to trekk with them fully inflated. Picture adults running around with gear on their back, PFD's clipped on to their packs or on their backs, carrying floats, walking through trails in the woods. They were easy to spot as we came flying around on our mountain bikes, but they didn't have much room to move off the trail for fear of catching their float on a briar and deflating their mandatory gear.***
We biked on and captured all the biking points, checked back in, and got our trekking passport, and transitioned quickly to our new packs. We set off and about 600 meters into the trek, Josh realized that he didn't have his PFD. So, we went back and then promptly were on our way again. Still, all in all, pretty quick transition time.
We trekked and got to the Orienteering section and got all but 2 of these points. We were able to drop our non inflated floats and our pump for this part and hiked in the woods looking for the Orienteering points. We came back and got our floats (no one stole our pump:)) and then made it to the location where we would jump in and "swim"/"float" across in the water. There were other teams there who were sitting along the path huffing and puffing while we used the pump and were off! Mike instructed us to try to keep our feet on our floats while laying on our stomachs. He was right, and using our arms, we could "glide" across the water. Josh's float had been modified in the hopes that it would inflate more quickly, began to deflate and he wasn't able to "glide". He made across with his face shoved into the pillow and a huge part of his raft sticking up in the air like a big sail. :) Again, quite humorous!
We arrived to the CP, placed in the water, and continued to the bank. At this point, I think that it was 1:38PM, with the cut off being 2:05 and my watch being one minute slower than the official race time. So, we ran to another water entry location where we had to float to that CP and back and started to find ways to deflate these huge rafts. Mike ran his through the briers in one area and his started to flatten quickly. We ran our hearts out toward the finish line. Along the way, Josh insisted on getting one more point, which we did, and then hauled it in to the finish line. I sat down quickly after crossing the line and the race director told us that we made the cut off, which made me feel instantly better! I do think that it was less than a minute till the cut off time. But, we used every second and I am so thankful that we got that last CP, though I was worried about missing the cut off.
Overall, it was a challenging course, more so than I think I was anticipating. I loved the mountain biking and felt more confident than I have in a while. That was encouraging. It was sooo hot and we were sweating from before the start of the race and throughout, which took more out of me than I had planned. I think this is the hardest that I have pushed myself in a long time and whatever the results, I will be pleased. I am so thankful for my wonderful teammates and I was reminded how much fun it is to race with multiple groups of our own team. It was great to run into other 4LPH4 1337 members on the course. Great Job everyone!
Thanks again, Zach, for a great race. Your staff always provides a welcomed smile and encouragement along the way.
Jack's Take
Quick notes: Navigation was challenging, since the trail map wasn't on the topo map (which contained the CP markers). This made it hard to use the trails as a navigational aide. CPs were also "hidden" so that you could bike right by them, unless you looked backwards, while riding a technical trail.
Our race: We had several navigational errors (based on the above issues), but all in all a good race. Not too much issue with the heat. Water with NUUN tablets, and popping more Electrolyte pills about every hour or 2 worked well.
We started with bike and did the optional O-course during this section. In hindsight this may not have been the best decision, but at the time, we liked breaking up the bike with a hike. We cleared the O-course and all bike points.
The trek, we cleared around to the first swim opportunity. Unfortunately, we didn't use our bike pumps to blow up the rafts, and resorted to the blow until you almost pass out method. Taking the rafts across the lake, we noticed JoEllen having issues. Her raft deflated, and she was dead in the water. We doubled back and limped across the lake, being blown off-course, almost to the beach. We took out and ran the extra distance back around to the finish, skipping all checkpoints to barely beat the cutoff time.
Joellen's Take
Holly's Take
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