Team Black Dome ventured down to Helen, GA this past weekend and came back with a hard fought top 5 finish at the premier southeastern race of 2007...
What value for the money!
1. All CPs correct and present (well, we can't speak for 20...but it sounds like it was there.)
2. A free hotel room the night before!
3. An included dinner at the pre-race meeting the night before!
4. Very nice waterproof maps...No map fumbling!
5. Good mix of manned and un-manned CPs to keep you on your toes but not feeling abandoned.
6. Sweet technical T.
Plenty of food and drink at the finish.
8. Very inebriated and entertaining southern gentlemen (ok, rednecks) near CP16.
Great job guys! This is the race you get when you combine a promoter that has vision and industry contacts, with a course designer that has a sadomasochistic streak like Tony...
Black Dome tried an interesting experiment this weekend...With our lead navigator Chris Brown out because of the impending birth of his second child, we decided to race with one of our sponsors...owner and wheel designer from Industry Nine Wheels, Clint Spiegel...While Clint had done a couple of longer races, he had never raced with the intensity of a top team and it would be curious to see what would happen when you combine the competitiveness of a quick team with a self-proclaimed middle-of-the-packer...The result was some serious pain!
With a relatively quick first run, we started the paddle right behind Enduraventure and Rock Creek in about 6th or 7th and really dug in for about 30 minutes...With Clint in the back of the boat steering, we started to feel the effects of true race pace quickly...zig-zagging all over the place for a couple of hours, we lost place after place until it was time to go to shore, dump the water out and switch to plan B...Now with Monica in the stern, Clint could rest a bit and we seemed to track straighter...After about 4:45 on the water, we came ashore in around 25th - 30th.
From the start of the bike, it was all about time management...I had calculated that it was possible, but unlikely, for us to get all the points...I planned to skip possibly one point on the bike and 2 on the final trek to make it by 2pm...We , however, managed to nail the nav on the first o-course with a counter-clockwise course that took us straight to all the points (no running at all however as Clint was still pretty worked from the paddle)...and as we hiked down to the bikes from CP9, it was apparent that we were about 2 hours ahead of schedule...From 10 it was a loooooong dirt road ride up and around to 11 & 12...and then there was 13...We got to the bend at the gap and simply went to the top of the knob...walked south about 60 yards, and took a bearing of 210 degrees...We bushed right to 13 sitting on the little flat area exactly where it was supposed to be...then came the fun part. We chose to bush down to the creek from 13 and on the little trail...after an hour of falling off a cliff, trying to cross that nasty creek and then dealing with the blow-downs on the trail, we emerged back on Trey Gap Road pretty beat down and began the slog up to the gap. 15 was just a matter of bushing on a bearing straight down a reentrant, across the creek and up to the little trail that went right to the point (we never saw the field, but it was dark and might have been there)...After 15, it was a matter of getting back up to Trey Gap and down to the lodge...My original estimate had us to the Unicoi Lodge at 4am...We arrived at 3am...Still probably only enough time for 3 of the 5 trekking points.
After only 10 minutes in TA, we set of on foot for 18 and the long bushwhack up to the burned out car, followed by the dirt road to Trey Gap...We got to the gap right at 7:30am and decided there to abandon 20 (and probably 21)...We took off down towards 22 with Jim Kelleher and his teammate...Getting to 22, we all decided to gamble and go for 21...a huge bushwhack with what looked like some cliffs to deal with...By this time, Clint was really spent...but holding up. I was worried this final bush would just crush him and we'd miss the 2pm cut-off...In the end, we made it down to 21 and back up to get the punch at 22 in just over an hour! Clint was a little wobbly, but still moving...I hooked him back on the bungee tow and we set off for the finish...Hooking up with another team, we managed the final short bush down to the lake and hiked in at noon for a well-deserved 5th...
Some great Clint-isms during his baptism:
"Are we going to go this fast the whole time?"
"How many hours do you guys sleep during one of these?"
"Wow. You guys don't ever take rests during the paddle."
"We're already supposed to leave the TA? We just got here!"
"There's no way I can go back up that...Just leave me."
and, in the middle of the bush out of 13:
"This sucks amazingly bad...but I'm still having the best time of my life!"
Thanks again to Yak, Tony and everyone else...We had a blast!
Team Black Dome
