The Kraken
11 11 2006Jeff and I headed over to Virginia Beach to participate in the Kraken Challenge. The Kraken was comprised of three races over two days…The Sea and Sand 12hr Adventure Race was held on Saturday, and the 5mi Bear of the Beach trail run and the Va Beach Metr-O, a 6hr urban rogaine, took place on Sunday. Racers would be ranked according their cumulative finish in the three events.
We received our maps for the Sea and Sand Friday night. The first leg was a 5mi ocean kayak followed by a mile portage. We had guessed that there would be a lengthy portage from some hints that were dropped on their website, so both Jeff and I had invested in kayak caddies. As we were plotting points we theorized that we could actually run with our kayaks faster than we could paddle in open seas. There were some off limits areas that needed to be avoided but there was in fact a reasonable route, about 1mi on paved road and 4mi along the beach, that would allow us to portage the entire leg. After confirming that the 6am race start would be during low tide, we were convinced that the strategy was sound.
Early the next morning, we drove the 30mi south to Little Island Park (at the southern end of Sandbridge) and the start of the race. After the short pre-race meeting we talked with the RD to make sure our strategy was kosher. He said that it was but he was a little skeptical about our plan. At 6am racers started paddling into the surf…it turns out that actual race start would take place in the ocean at 6:30am. This gave us the chance to watch everyone try to paddle past the surf. People were paddling everything…from tandems to sit-on-tops. We even saw one team in a canoe. I would guess that less than half of the teams made through the surf on the first attempt. Teams were capsizing all over the place…I have to admit that it was somewhat entertaining. The race started promptly at 6:30 (a few teams hadn’t even gotten out to open water yet) and we raced from the beach back to the parking lot where we had staged our kayaks. The first mile was on a paved road which made for relatively easy portaging. Jeff found it easier to pull his kayak while I opted for pushing. There were dunes along the side of the road which prevented us from gauging our progress against the rest of the field. At the end of the road we had to cross the dunes and continue along the beach. When we crested the dune we could see the pack of leading teams immediately across from us…which meant we were holding our own. Almost all of the lead teams were paddling tandems. There were several teams paddling single kayaks a few minutes behind the leaders and then the rest of the field. Bolstered by the knowledge that our strategy was paying off, we continued our portage down the beach. We continued holding our position relative to the leaders for the better part of the remaining 4 miles, and despite the slower sand and fatiguing legs we managed to arrive at CP1 in second. We had another 1 mile portage across the bank before arriving at CP 2 on the Back Bay. The previous 5 miles were taking their toll and a few teams sneaked by us. We dropped the kayaks at CP2 and started on a short trek to find 3 points scattered around False Cape State Park. The maps weren’t great so there was a little bit of hunting and pecking to find the points but we managed to find them without too much delay. We headed back to the kayaks to start a lengthy 8 mile paddle back to the race start. I think we were still in the top 5 at the time but that wouldn’t last for long. The teams paddling tandems quickly passed us on this leg (and who says that gear doesn’t matter). The paddle was long and largely uneventful (with the exception of Jeff taking a swim while trying to get back in his kayak). After a few hours of paddling we reached the race start/CP 9 where we exchanged the kayaks for mountain bikes. We basically retraced our initial portage down the beach. However, this time it was high tide which made riding the beach nearly impossible. What we thought was going to be an easy ride turned out to be a nearly 3 mile hike-a-bike. At the end of beach we turned onto a series of dirt and sand roads that crisscrossed through False Cape State Park. There were 4 CPs on this leg which could be obtained in any order. The CPs were plotted on a standard 1:25k quad but not all the roads were on the map. A more detailed map of the area was provided but we found it challenging cross-referencing the two. We overshot the first CP but felt confident we knew where it was and could easily get it on the way back. The second CP proved difficult as well, and we wasted 45min on a wild goose chase. We found the remaining CPs without too much trouble but we felt we lost any chance of a top finish. The frustration on this leg was compounded by the difficult terrain. The roads were a mixture of hard packed dirt and deep, soft sand. You could ride a hundred or so feet then you would have to dismount and push your bike through deep sand for another hundred feet. It was like this for miles. We finally got back to the main stretch of beach which meant just 5 more miles to the finish line. We picked off two teams in this final stretch. We closed to within a hair’s breath of a third team but they were able to pull away in the final mile. We were surprised to see that we had finished 11th. We were sure that our navigation mishap had put us further back. We picked up some pizza on the way home and got some shut-eye for the next day’s events.
The Bear of the Beach trail run was hosted at Fort Story, an Army base on the north end of Virginia Beach. The run was open to the “public” so we were expecting a much larger crowd than was actually there. The 5 mile run took place on “trails” that were really dirt and sand roads that wound through the wooded hills on base. The sand was deep in sections which made it feel like you were running in place. At one point during the race we ran by some old overgrown concrete bunkers which looked like something out of a WWII movie. Anyway, it was relatively uneventful race. I was little dissatisfied with my finish time but it was good enough for 13th overall. Jeff was a couple of minutes behind in 17th. It started to rain so we headed back to the condo to prep for the Virginia Beach Metr-O.
I’ve never done an urban rogaine so I was excited that the Metr-O was part of the Kraken. This was the event that Jeff and I thought we could make up for the previous day’s navigation fiasco. The 6 hour Metr-O was split in half…the first 3 hours were on foot and the last 3 were on mountain bike. We got a series of quads that were pre-marked with controls. As with a standard rogaine each control was given a certain point value and you had to collect the maximum number of points within the specified timeframe. Instead of the orienteering punches you would find in a traditional rogaine, the Metr-O required answering specific questions at each control. Questions like “what color is the roof at 1313 Crescent St.?” and “what year was the first surfing tournament held at Virginia Beach?” were examples of the types of questions we had to find the answers for. We got the maps about 15 minutes prior to race start which gave us little bit of time for map study. It was pretty clear (at least to us) that the maximum points could be gained by hitting the southern part of the course (which included 4 controls in the Va Beach aquarium) on foot and the northern part of the course on bike. The race started promptly at 11:00am and, as luck would have it, what seemed like a tropical storm had arrived at 10:30am. The wind and rain were unimaginable. Neither of us had raced in conditions like this. The rain was coming down in torrents. By the time we had reached the aquarium we were drenched…like just stepped out of the shower drenched. We received more than a couple of glances as we were running through the aquarium looking for the answers to the four questions. The answer for one question regarding an anemone could only be found if you hit one button on an interactive exhibit. Luckily we were in the right place at the right time as a couple behind hit the button and read the answer out loud. We found two other answers after searching around a bit. The last question however was unanswerable as the exhibit containing the answer had been closed a week earlier. (On a side note, don’t let me baby sit any of your children…Jeff is much better suited for that. As we were running through the downpour along a half mile nature trail between aquarium buildings, we came across two lost children looking for their father. I ran right by them but Jeff stopped and gave them directions back to the main trail. We did happen to run past the father and let him know where we saw the children.) Anyway, we continued collecting points. We had to run/walk for most of it and so we did not get as many controls on foot as we had hoped. We did manage to squeeze in a quick stop at McDonald’s on our way back to the TA (a key benefit to racing in a city instead of in the woods). It seemed as if the storm intensified as soon as we got on the bikes. There were several roads that had flooded out (riding through them was sorta fun). We were headed north straight into the wind which forced us into our granny gears for parts of the ride. As with the aquarium, it turned out that one of the controls had been demolished recently (that’s strike two for the course designer). Our plan was to travel counter-clockwise because the majority of the high point valued controls were in or west of Fort Story. We collected a few controls along the way up to Fort Story. Once we got to the base, we were turned away at the gates. The rent-a-cop manning the gates just said the base was closed and told us to turn around. There went our strategy. We had to head back the way we came and try to attack the north part of the course from a clockwise direction. We knew we couldn’t reach the few high valued controls in time so we had to pick out several lower valued controls instead. I made a big navigation error because I switched maps too soon and we wound up riding around residential neighborhood for what seemed like an eternity. After picking up a few more controls we decided to head back. We were able to pick up some of the controls we had skipped on foot on our way back to the finish. We got back with a couple of minutes to spare…just enough time to transpose our answers onto the question/answer sheet (Jeff had the brilliant idea to write down the answers in a separate waterproof notebook to avoid getting the question/answer sheet wet. We actually ran into one team whose sheet had gotten wet and become unreadable/unwritable.) As soon as it hit 5:00pm we turned in our sheet. The problem was that we had forgotten to transpose all of our answers. We did some quick math and figured that the additional points were worth more than the late penalty so we retrieved the sheet and finished transposing the answers. Between the Fort Story fiasco and our navigation woes we thought we were going to be relegated to a mid-pack finish.
As it turned out, we finished second in the Metr-O. We’re not sure how the scoring worked out given the missing controls, Fort Story issues and penalties, but we’re not complaining. The 2nd place finish gave us a boost for our overall Kraken positions. I finished 3rd and Jeff finished 4th. The disappointing finish in the Sea and Sand probably kept us out of 2nd and 3rd but there was no catching Scott Pleban who took 1st. I thought The Sea and Sand AR, run by the guys at HRAdventure, was a great 12 hour race with just enough suffering to make it feel like a longer race. I definitely plan on doing another one of their races next year.
Categories : Team Race Reports
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