Caleb Suter writes:
Hello TriHarders,
Mark, Woody, Daniel and I competed as
TriHarder in the 24-30 hour ARC Muskoka Overnight race on the weekend. We
had the wonderful support crew of Dawn (Mark's wife), Sarah (Mark's
daughter), and John (my father). Using his many connections Pierre raced
with another team and will have his own interesting stories. I have some
good news and bad news. The good news: my muscles are sore today so yes,
I'm not superhuman unlike all of the rumors to the contrary. The bad news:
I don't have the map so all of my distances are estimates. Any of the other
racers are encouraged to correct them.
We arrived at the registration around 5:30pm
and unpacked all of our gear and grabbed dinner. The captain's meeting
began at 9:30pm and we worked on our maps and packed up the support vehicles
until 1:00am. We woke up at 4:45am, had some ARC supplied breakfast and
boarded buses at 5:45 to take us to the start.
The race began with a 3km trail run to our
canoes. We had to carry all of the canoeing gear. We then paddled about
15km with three short portages (including one down a cliff!). The rest of
the canoe section was pretty straight forward. We were very fast in the
boats - I don't remember ever having a paddle at this pace before in my
life.
We had a quick transition (10 minutes?) to
the hiking section. We had to carry our rappelling gear and wore our life
jackets for the next whole section. Mark did a great job navigating our way
to the first CP. We had four landmarks which we were planning to find and
then change our bearings in order to have the fastest route. We did
mistakenly identify the last landmark which cause a little confusion but we
quickly recovered. The next CP was located "at the end of a meandering well
marked trail or bushwhack directly to UTM ##". Unfortunately this statement
was correct and false. The trail sucks. It did meander. It was not marked
well nor appeared to be well traveled. After following the trail for a
short time we determined our exact position and decided to just bushwhack to
the next CP. Again Mark was on the ball and got us there with no effort.
We rappelled down a cliff with a small overhang - this was my first rappel
and I had no idea what I was doing (besides the instruction I received from
Woody when paddling in the canoe). I received no words of encouragement
from the staff - they told me "that in all likelihood I would plunge to my
death, that this was a very difficult rappel that they were not prepared to
do themselves, that the equipment they supplied was defective, that my gear
wasn't up to standards but would have to do...." I made it and I will own a
photo to prove that I was hanging over a cliff. We then had the option of
"continuing to follow the trail to the next CP located on a road". We
wisely choose to hike 1km cross country to the road and run the road to the
CP.
We had a 20 minute transition to our bikes.
The trails we followed were in infamous B105, 4/14 and the power line trails
from last year's race (and I had just gotten over my nightmares). We had a
trail ride to a road and along the road to a CP. We then rode north along
power lines to another CP. We kept riding snowmobile trails (with plenty of
water/mud c/o ATVs) and cottage roads for a total of 5 CPs and a good 6
hours of riding - 4 of which was in the dark. I'd go into more detail but
it was all the same - dark, muddy, non-ridable for what seemed like kms at a
time, and tiring.
We were happy to arrive at the next TA. We
packed up our paddling gear, wore our life jackets and Costeered to the next
CP (the "Paul the Race Directors Adventure Racing Dictionary" defines
Costeering as "navigating a coast line"). We essentially swam across a
river and did a series of island hopping for a total of 6 swims and a good
couple kms of wading waste deep in lake water at 2:00 in the morning. We
then ran a series of roads/trail for about 6kms to the boat launch. We
arrived around 4:00am and there was a 9:00am cut off time. The race
director then asked us to take the short cut and was going to cut off all of
the teams behind us (we were in third place overall at this time).
Apparently this would cutoff about 2 1/2 hours of canoeing and a 5km
bushwhacking leg. The race was much longer than they had anticipated. We
took the short cut and paddled about 20 kms to the next TA. The route we
took was the reverse of the route from last year (up and over a concrete dam
and over a beaver dam to a roadway with a portage back to a softball field).
We then transitioned back to our dirty,
poorly tuned bikes for the exact same as last year's final ride to the
finish. We went south at the hydro lines to a road, through Bala and to the
Pinecrest Lodge in Torrance. We were the second team to cross the finish
line (the team in front of us was a team of two - two members had to drop
out).
We finished in 28 hrs, 40 mins earning a 1st
place victory in the open male category and a 3rd place finish overall. I
want to thank Mark who was so strong through the race. His navigating was
awesome, he never seemed to get tired, and he towed me on the highway
through Bala at the end (his brakes weren't working and I was his
brakeman). Daniel was strong in all disciplines and waited for me with
words of encouragement during the trail riding (I would not have had the
spirit to get through some of the mud puddles otherwise). Once again Daniel
solved a tough navigation problem by seemingly to point at a random point on
the map (a good km from where we thought we were) and declared that that was
where we were - he was right. Woody was a master of all disciplines, never
seemed tired (except for a brief nap in the canoe), towed me early in the
race to conserve my energy, and managed to race despite having being stung
by two bees to which he is allergic experiencing a fat lip, a sore throat,
and the bites being really itchy. We eventually found him some medication
which contributed to his need for a nap in the canoe.
Like always we have been very fortunate to
find excellent support. Our gear was always laid out on time, our bikes
were cleaned, our clothing was dry (most of the time). We had great,
freshly prepared food which the race director even displayed some envy
towards and they were very helpful with filling our water, and reacting to
last minute requests (demands?) from the racers. We managed to keep all of
our TA times to less than 20 minutes which would not have been possible
without great support. Dawn, Sarah and John deserve a big "Thank You" for
all of their help. They actually had a lot more to do than to support us -
Sarah came down with an illness and had to go to the hospital hours away to
get some mediation. Had we not been told about it - we would never have
known.
Once again - thank you to everyone.
Caleb
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