One crazy day about 8 months ago, a couple friends, Boris and Elise, decided it would be super fun to do this race in the mountains, down on the island. It was called Momar, and of no the 30 km Sport course wouldn't do... we definitely had to do the 50 km Enduro course.
The race included kayaking (never done before), running (right up my alley), and mountain biking (never mountain biked in the mountains). Oh yeah I was ready.
Here We Go...
I was so nervous. It was awesome as I haven't been nervous like that in a long time. We drove down to drop our bikes off at the bike drop and there were sooooo many bikes (remember this sentence). After some test rides we were off to the race start at Comox Lake.
The Kayak was the first leg. I was so jealous cause the kayak Boris and Elise got was named the Libra XT and it was neon pink. It was definitely a faster kayak than ours... Their exceptional kayaking skills had nothing to do with it, it was all about the libra...
We got our map about 45 minutes before the race and it looked not to bad.... maybe...
"OK we can do this no problem" we thought.
With 10 minutes to go we hopped into our kayaks and headed out to the start line on the lake. I smacked one of the sponsored team players in the head with my paddle by accident on the way out. I joked about it being to help my competitive advantage... He didn't find it very funny.
The horn went and we were off. For the first 5 km I felt like a snake on the water. Our 5 km was more like 7 km with Justin's stellar steering ability. It's easy to lay blame about why you are sucking until one of race marshal's at the first buoy yelled at me to flip my paddle around because it was upside down... That was embarrassing. I'm sure Justin was gloating in the back but he was nice enough to keep his mouth shut about it.
We made some ground after the paddle correction and felt like a rocket on the water... Again, we were crushed when a fellow kayaker made a comment about how well were doing considering how brutal we looked!! He must have ruined our mojo because at that moment Elise and Boris took off. Apparently Boris wanted to beat some dude up ahead and he is VERY goal orientated. Well they might as well have been reading magazines and drinking coffee waiting for us to finally glide up on shore. 9KM and Checkpoint 1 done. Who'd a thought we could kayak 9 km!
Oh yeah, as we headed out the announcer made a point of saying "Oh you're from Edmonton?!?! You're going to get your a$$es kicked!!"
The run was now on. We switched into our running shoes and were off! We ended up following a group to some new trail created for the 1st checkpoint and it was a 2 km climb up to the summit of one of the mountains. It was a lucky shot as we got the lead on a bunch of teams with this little shortcut. We followed the Kootenay Chaos team as they were bright red and hard to lose. All I was thinking while we climbed was oh my, what the cuss have we got ourselves into. We got to the top and Wuhoo!! CheckPoint 2!! On we continued. We were doing awesome!
Again, more up... and down... and up... and lots of single track trail... but again luck was on our side. We found CheckPoint 3 no problem. Still following the wonderful Kootenay Chaos team.
We were on a role! We jumped out onto a gravel road and followed it to a T where we went left.. That is what the map said... That is what the map said... Well the road ended. It was supposed to be a long road and it just ended. All we saw was a huge wide open pit of old fallen lumber. We had two choices. Run back, or push through and hopefully the road picked up further down. The race instructions did say there would be bushwhacking involved. IN WE WENT.... Along with many many other teams. That is when the race took a turn for the worst.
Well it was pretty exciting at first. It was pretty thick bush but there were lots of teams in the there to enjoy the bushwhacking experience with. There was no road, no trail, nothing that resembled anything civilized. By the time we realized that we were hopelessly lost there was no turning back. And well all those teams that went in were no where to be found. Out came the trustee compasses. Thank God we "You Tubed" How to Read a Compass Without a Map. We were so incredibly lost. We were stuck in the bushes for 3 crazy hours!! 3 Hours!! It was getting a bit desperate. I'm not going to lie. I was starting to panic a little, wondering how warm those emergency blankets would truly be late at night. The bush was so thick, all our shins were bleeding from plodding through. I started randomly plowing though bush because I wanted out SO BAD!! Elise said a prayer thank goodness because not seconds later we heard voices from heaven...
"Hello!!" said too friendly voices calling for help. (Thank you so much Lynn and Kathy!!)
It was another team just as lost as we were. And amazingly it was a local team who knew the trails in Cumberland like the back of their hands... you must be asking how they were as hopelessly lost as we were. Well we weren't on trails. And ultimately they made a mistake on the map, which led to all of us to get lost... And just as a shout out, this team won Momar Burnaby too, so they were the best help we could have asked for.
With some investigation, and emergency compassing, we quickly realized we were not at all where we thought we were. We were at least 2 km off the course. We were barely on the map! Well we headed north finally and after a tense 3 hours WE WERE OUT!! I can say with certainty I have never been so happy to see a trail. I wooped with joy and almost kissed the dirt. And with amazing luck we popped out on the trail not even 30 metres from the trail head to CheckPoint 4.
Now this is where running into our new found friends was great luck. Now that we were on the trails, they knew exactly where to go. We ran through the trails and got CheckPoint 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9. (They eliminated 8 because surprisingly, all the teams were behind due to getting lost). I managed an epic wipe out during this stage. I accomplished the face plant, feet over head, dirt eating wipe out of epic proportions. So bad that no one had the balls to even laugh at me. The only thing hurt was my pride thankfully and off we continued.
We finally made it to the bike check with seconds to spare. There were no longer lots of bikes, there were 2 bikes besides ours... That might help gain an appreciation for how long we were lost. We spent 22 km in the BC bush and trails.
We hopped on our bikes and raced to CheckPoint 11 hoping to make it before the cut-off time. We so badly did not want to miss any checkpoints. Of course it was all up hill. Of course the the checkpoint was up, up, up. Of course Justin decided to take a shortcut and head up a trail as opposed to continuing on the log road. About 5 minutes into the climb, walking my bike up, I wanted to kill him. It was so steep I could barely get my bike up. We were all dripping sweat and cursing under our breaths, except of course Boris, who's positive encouragement was spewing out to keep us all going. I wanted to throttle him... The trail was so ridiculous that even the checkpoint volunteers were laughing at us for trekking our bikes up it. They commented on the interesting choice we made to get there.
We unfortunately didn't make it and were forced to skip CheckPoint 12. It was disappointing but we didn't have time to pout because we needed to make it to 13 before we got cut-off again. The mountain biking was amazing. It was everything Justin and Elise dreamed of. I was crapping my pants. There were crazy bridges, huge logs, jumps, and we even rode through a hollowed out log. It was awesome. The only person who didn't wipe out was Justin. I wiped out over a hundred times I swear. I need to share a few epic wipe outs before I continue on.
3rd place - Of course me. I went to hop up on my bike after falling down, forgot to take my hands off the brakes and toppled over face first into the bush. That takes the super embarrassing wipe out award. Keep in mind we were all super exhausted by this point.
2nd place - I was trying to pedal through a tree, literally. and got stuck coming to an abrupt stop. I'm not sure what the heck Boris was doing but he came in from behind screaming like a school girl, rear ended me and both of us toppled over in a heap of bike medal.
1st place - Elise had a near death experience, I must say. There was this crazy descent, and I honestly think Elise must be missing some brain cells because I said to her before she attempted it,
"Please don't die...."
She starts down the huge descent and makes it about halfway down with no problems. Then all of a sudden the rear tire starts lifting and Elise, like a cheetah jumps over the front end of her handle bars lands on her feet and then proceeds to turn around preventing her bike from rolling down the hill. It was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. She deserves some special award for that recovery I think. I am forever in awe.
We made it to Checkpoint 13, 14, 15, and got to 16. Again, they told us we had to skip 17 and 18. By this time we were doing this on principle. We were completing this bloody race if it killed us. We raced our bikes to 17 and managed to get it. We had to skip 18 because we had 20 minutes to finish and needed to do the orienteering stage.
Orienteering Stage Details:
Got to orienteering start, received the map, looked at eachother, said Fu@k it, and crossed the finish line with 17 minutes left to spare. We had done more than our share of unplanned orienteering for the day.
We had no idea how we placed or whether we had even completed properly but we had 7 hours and 42 minutes of solid, crazy, BC adventure including a lifetime of memories and fun I will never forget.
P.S WE GOT 3RD PLACE!! Take that "We're going to get our a$$es kicked!" We rocked it.
Thanks Elise, Boris, and of course my amazing husband Justin for an amazing experience!
