Yellowwood and Swedes

Ran the blue course at the ICO Yellowwood meet last weekend.  Legs felt good.  Nav was pretty much spot on, (although I did have a couple of questionable route choices).  I only had to slow down a bit twice to make sure that I really was where I thought I was.  (I was both times, but it still cost me time)

And I still got schooled.

Granted, it was only 4 minutes, but when Cristal attempted to cover for my potentially slower run while talking with Mattias (a Swede, that's relevant later) by letting him know that I'd been travelling the past week and had not been able to train he responded by saying, "I don't really train much".  (Or something close enough to that as to not matter.)  Still a good effort by Cristal.

Thankfully this beating wasn't anywhere as bad as the Conquer the Crossroads drubbing of 2010 where Fredrik and Rachel from Bushwhacker smoked McInnes and I by two and a half days (OK, it was hours, but it may as well have been days.)

Fredrik is from Sweden too.

Damn Swedes...

Here's the blue course:

And here's links to our routes.  I managed to get them overlaid in Google Earth, but haven't the foggiest how to post that here so I'll summarize.

Mattias had a better route.

Mattias

Mike

2011 CPT Nationals

After 25 hours and 20 minutes of racing Bushwhacker managed a 5th place finish in the Coed 4 division, and 6th place overall.  Despite a couple of blunders on the long land nav section we were hanging on to 3rd for a bit but there was some tough competition out there that managed to reel us on in on the monster biking leg.

Weather was beautiful although pretty chilly at night, (which made for a pretty spectacular sunrise on the Saturday morning paddle, the video of which I may or may not figure out how to post in my report...)

Full race report to follow as soon as I can get my hands on some photos.

For now, the obligatory gear bomb shot...

You know it's bad when you can stink up an

open air patio...

Checkpoint Tracker National Championship

So Friday is the CPT National Championship race in Kentucky that I'm racing with Bushwhacker.  It's being held at (in the?) Land Between the Lakes, site of the Bonk Hard race of the same name the past three years.  (Also the site of my best/worst sufferfest EVER this past April.  I guess now I'll get to figure out if all that cramping was due to it being an early season race, or if I've just got some bad mojo in that part of Kentucky.  If it's bad mojo, I hope Fredrik has his towing legs for this race!)

Last years race in Moab had more than a little bit of controversy so it should be interesting to see how this years race goes.  But, Bonk Hard always puts on top notch events, so if that's any indicator it should be a great race!

In theory, the race can be followed here.  But as with all adventure race "live updates" the accuracy and timeliness of the updates may or may not be all that, well, accurate.  Or timely...