We Won the Lottery

By the time we finished the first biking section, we already had two tires that needed air, one crash on the ice, one messed up derailer, one lost pair of bike gloves, one bike helmet left behind and Yumay had just discovered that she was going to be doing the trail running section of the race in her bike shoes because her trekking shoes were still back at Marymoor Park and we were up in the Redmond Watershed. This could be expected from a lottery team who had only met in person a few hours earlier at the pre-race check in. The semi random lottery of solo racers had teamed me up with Duncan Sailor (lead navigator of team Purefit/Missinglink.com), John Zobel and Yumay Chang. Prior to 8 am on the race day, I had never met John, only spoken to Yumay a few times but never trained with her, and trained and raced against Duncan, but never raced with him. With that in mind or early race miscues were nothing to be overly surprised about. What was surprising was that there were only enough bikes for two or three teams sitting around the transition area as we took off on the trail run.

The race had started with a twist. One teammate was to run a marked loop and collect poker chips along the way, while the rest of the team had the option of find letters scattered around the park however they deemed best. John, who is the fastest runner on the team, was the obvious choice to run the loop. Duncan and I who are both navigators each took a map and headed out to collect letters. Lucky for Yumay and the rest of us, she could use these few minutes to fix a problem she just noticed on her bike.

Once we had all returned and solved the word clue, it was on to the bikes. As we started riding, I noticed that my front tire was not a fan of the cold air (29 degrees when I had stepped out of the car a little over an hour earlier and not heating up real fast). Plus my bike gloves were nowhere to be seen. This meant I was in for a cold ride. We stopped, and I got out my pump and filled the tire with air. We were off again. O wait Yumay forgot her bike helmet. The beanie on her head felt close enough to be a helmet, but I am not sure it would help too much in a crash. So we were off again. Somehow we were not that far back. Plus we were all out to simply have a good time racing. We had no real idea how we were going to do, so there was no pressure to perform.

Thanks to nearly flawless navigation by Duncan, we moved through the rest of the first bike very efficiently. That is except one more tire fill (this time Duncan's) and a nice slide on the ice into a pole by Yumay. The French judge only gave her a 2.5, but I think they were on the take. This smooth navigation appeared not to be the case for all the teams, as a one point while we were crossing a road on one of the trails, I saw two teams riding down the road. This would not have been so unusual had they not been going opposite directions, plus we were crossing the road and heading back onto the trail.

The trail run went quickly for us as the navigation was straight forward and Yumay powered through the run/hike in her bike shoes. The best way to learn stuff in adventure racing is to make a mistake. I am fairly certain Yumay will never forget her running shoes again on a bike/hike/bike section of a race. We got back to the bike drop and had to answer a three question quiz. It turns out the few teams that had pulled away from us during the run had gotten an answer incorrect and had to do a little extra running. Since we got all the answer correct, we hopped on our bikes in second place and took off.

The eventual winners of the race passed us on the final bike leg. We had seen them earlier in the race working on a broken chain. Trea, an old teammate, looked like she was having fun as Aaron and Ruaraidh towered her as they flew by us. But hey they were not a lottery team, or even a four person coed, so we were still ahead in both those categories.

After hitting the final CPs on the way back to Marymoor Park, we were tied for third with a solo racer. We started the 14 CP orienteering section neck and neck. We hit the first three or four CP's pretty much at the same time. John (did I mention he is a fast and strong runner) took turns towing Yumay and Duncan while I did my best to navigate us to the next CP. We ended up walking here and there and enjoyed the park, the weather (no rain and mid 30s, nice compared to what is could have been) and simply having fun while racing. At CP 11 we ran into the solo racer again. He was having an issue finding the CP in the bushes. After we found it, we made our way back out of some bushes. What was that??? Another racer was about to catch us. Where had he come from? He appeared to be looking strong. Time to start running again. We pushed it through the last three CPs and kept our lead by about two seconds at the finish line.

We ended up taking forth (3rd thanks to some time penalties). First place in the four person category and in the lottery group. What a great way to race. Meeting people at the start and enjoy the day running around with them. Since we had no idea about how we were going to do and no one really took the race all that serious, the fact that we did so good was even more of a surprise to me. I am ready for the next BEAST, but I am going to have to wait a few months I guess. I hope they have the lottery again, as I think it is a great way to get to know your fellow racer better.

O, I almost forgot, we also won the free shoe raffle sponsored by MPGear.com, so I guess we really did win the lottery. Thanks to all the other sponsors, and Eric, Roger and the rest of team Mergeo for putting on such a fun race series.

As for racing under team Mountainzone.com, well that is what happens when I show up first to the pre-race check in and get to pick the name. Plus I figured Duncan would like to be under it since we had been racing against each other all summer long.