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Team Santa Fe Newsletter
November 2002
Ashville, NC
November 7-8, 2002
http://www.oarevents.com
Team Santa Fe (Eric Jacobsen, Jan Bear, Kim Bear, and Lisa Barnes) qualified
for this year's USARA National Championship by placing 2nd in the 4 person
coed division of the Beast of the East in June. Because the race was
so close to the Eco Challenge and Eric, Jan and Kim were racing in the Eco
in Fiji, Team Santa Fe assembled a new team of Eric Jacobsen, Bill Remillard,
Deb Lovci, and Sheldon Litwin to race in the National Championship.
We arrived in Ashville on Thursday for the race and spent the day getting
food, doing gear checks, and preparing for the race. We received our
maps at 5:00pm on Thursday, which was really nice. We were able to
plot our course, organize our gear, pack our backpacks, and be in bed by
10:00pm. We got a full night of sleep and were well rested for the
9:00am start on Friday. 34 teams were at the start including 3 other
teams who qualified from the Beast.
The start was a rolling start on bikes and turned almost immediately up a
huge 1400-foot climb over about 3 miles on a road. After about 5 more
miles on pavement, we hit single track and the first checkpoint. In
this race, checkpoints were early and often because the entire race took
place in Panthertown Valley and kept looping back and forth across itself
and over the same mountains and through the same valley. We missed
a turn almost immediately after we hit single track (as did almost all other
teams) and ended up taking a quick route to the base of a mountain and then
having to hike our bikes through the thick forest to get to CP 2. We
made it to CP2 in 23rd and we knew exactly where CP was located because we
had passed it along the way to CP 2 - back through the forest and down the
mountain! The missed turn cost us time on the way to CP2, but made
it much easier to find CP 3 because we knew the way through the bushwhack.
We arrived at CP3 in 17th and spent the entire rest of the race bouncing
between about 15th and 25th. The bike lasted from 9:00am until about
5:00pm when we transitioned to the trek. We were happy about this timing
because we had thought we would start the trek in the dark and we knew the
rappel - a 550-foot cliff - was at the beginning of the trek. We hustled
out of the transition and easily made it to the rappel before dark.
The rappel was beautiful with the sun setting off in the distance, a river
flowing below us, and 550 feet of cliff in front of us. We finished
the trek around midnight and transitioned back to the bikes for a quick ride
to the water. We entered the kayak around 3:00am. We had anticipated
that we would be really slow in the kayak because only one person on the
team had much paddling experience. In fact, we had anticipated the
kayak to take 8-10 hours and that we would be passed by several teams.
Instead, the kayak took less than 5 hours and we actually passed a few teams!
The lake was very calm and beautiful at night with the moon and stars providing
a fantastic backdrop. The weather was quite cold but all of us dressed
very well and never felt the slight wind and cold temperatures, which most
teams complained about. After the paddle, we got on our bikes for the
last leg to the finish. We finished just before 11:00am and in 16th
place.
The race was a great course with some of the most difficult navigation I
have ever experienced in any race. Almost all teams were lost at some
point and everyone joked about the extra miles they covered by taking wrong
turns, backtracking, checking out multiple trails that branched off and weren't
on the maps, and general mistakes. Also, it was unsupported so we had
to carry all food, gear, etc. for the entire course. Our packs were
very heavy compared to most 30-hour races. And the competition was
extremely tough. Because everyone had to qualify, there weren't any teams
who were unprepared or didn't know what to expect. This made the race
very fast. Except for the top 5 teams, the rest of the field finished
within 3 hours of each other so we could have been 6th just as easily as
we could have been 26th. Overall, we were quite happy with our finish in
a very competitive, difficult race.
Thanks to our sponsors as we used the following gear: Princeton Tec
headlights and handhelds, H2Optics sunglasses, GoLite packs, Petzl helmets
and climbing gear, Leki poles, ThorLo socks, and SealSkinz.
Santa Monica, CA November 16-17
Kim Bear, Jan Bear and Lisa Barnes
http://www.adventure360.com/balancebar.cfm
The 2002 Balance Bar 24-Hour Adventure Race series consists of five races.
Team Santa Fe completed the first race of the series in Phoenix, Arizona
and the last race of the series in Santa Monica, California. We were in a
4-way tie for first in the Masters Division. The day before the race
start was spent completing the mandatory gear and safety checks and preparing
for the gear drops. It was a busy day that included driving to the
Malibu Creek State Park to drop off mountain bikes and one of the gear bins.
The weather was beautiful with the Santa Anna winds bringing in above normal
temperatures. At 5 p.m. the barbecue started and was followed by the
pre race meeting, where we were given our maps and 10 of our UTM coordinates.
The four remaining UTM coordinates were to be given to us at a transition
area during the race. By 7 p.m. we were headed back to our hotel room
to finish our route finding on the maps. The race start was not until
6:30 a.m. on Saturday morning, so we were able to get a good night sleep.
The race began on Santa Monica Beach with a 15-mile kayaking leg, heading
north to Dan Blocker Beach. We used 3 person sit on top Cobra kayaks.
We completed this section in about 3.5 hours and were surprised with how
fast this section went. It was fun for the desert-based team to see
seals swimming around our kayaks. A couple sections of the kayak were
quite windy and we were required to head into shore for a checkpoint during
the paddle, but things went fairly smoothly going in and out of the surf.
From Dan Blocker Beach, we exited the water and headed east to Malibu Creek
State Park on an 8-mile trek. Upon reaching Malibu Creek State Park,
we were given 4 UTM coordinates for the next 9 miles of trekking. This
section of the trek took us to the Rock Pool Area
for two Tyrolean traverses and a section of canyoneering. It was slow
traveling for a while, but the landscape was beautiful. At the end of the
final 9-mile trek, we were once again at the Malibu Creek State Park where
we began a 43-mile mountain bike leg heading south along the ridgelines and
canyons. The mountain biking consisted of a great course that we all
enjoyed. We rode to the final transition area at Will Rogers State Park and
traded our bikes for our running shoes. We completed the 79-mile course
with a 4-mile trek, most of it on the sand, back through the finish line
at Santa Monica Beach. We finished the race in 22 hours 47 minutes
with a 2nd place finish in the Coed Master’s Division. We would later
find out that we placed first in the overall standings in the Coed Master’s
Division of the Balance Bar Series.
During the race we used our Litespeed bikes, Princeton Tec headlamps, Bolle
Sunglasses, Leki trekking poles, Nightrider bike lights, and CW-X conditioning
tights.
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