RockstAR

Event: RockstAR

Date: July 12, 2008.

Length: 8 hour adventure race

Location: Bark Lake Leadership Centre, near Irondale, Ontario

Verdict: add this one to your calendar for next year!

For a few years now, Mark and Heather Arnold have been putting on a top notch race each June with ESAR.  This year, after joining forces with Sean Roper of STORM events, HARK events have expanded their race calendar with a new race,  RockstAR. With the tag line, “isn’t it time that adventure racers were treated like the rock stars that they are?”, I knew I had to check out this new event in Ontario’s adventure racing line-up.

The real reason that I wanted to race the RockstAR was its unique format: teams (of 2 or 3) would begin with a 2-3 marked mountain bike course, then have the remainder of the 8 hour time limit to find up to 20 orienteering CPs via boat or foot.  Each CP had a different point value, so strategy would play a major role in this race.  Added to this was a luxurious 12:00 start time, the promise of mud, a hearty buffet dinner, and a liscensed after party. What more could an adventure racer ask for?

Race registration began at 8:00 on Saturday morning, and much to my teammate’s chagrin, I insisted that we were there at 7:55.  Even though the race didn’t start until 12:00, there was much to be done beforehand, the most important of which was to plot a course that would allow us to get the CPs with the maximum point value and still get back to the “Hub” before the 8:00 pm cutoff time.  Since the mountain bike course was marked, our plan here was to go balls out while managing our energy for the rest of the race.  When it came to the trek/paddle, racers had one major decision to make: the highest value CPs could only be found after a lengthy portage and extra paddle section across a second lake.  Once racers got there, the CPs were all on features that were easily identified, so the real choice was whether or not it would be worth the portage and the extra paddling to get there.  My teammate and I came up with a Plan A: do the portage and go across the second lake (the go big or go home strategy) or Plan B: play it safe by collecting more CPs around Bark Lake (but these were worth much fewer points).  After setting up our transition area (where we all had personalized chairs with our names on them – just as rock stars should), and loading our bikes, we all headed on to school buses that took us to the start line.

We were told that this race would involved what Mark Arnold called “real mountain biking” and by that he meant, flooded ATV and snowmobile trails that guaranteed that no one would be dry after the first five minutes of the race.  As someone who is moderately comfortable on technical trails, I LOVED the bike section.  The trails were wide enough that passing (or stopping) could be done safely, with lots of climbs and descents, gigantic puddles that you weren’t sure if you would make it out of (some I didn’t), and lots of rocks to keep riders on their toes. After about 10 km of trail, we biked back into Bark Lake on a combination of dirt and paved roads, for a total of 26km of biking.  My teammate and I were gradually picking teams off and knew that we were near the front of the pack.  When we got back to Bark Lake, we were told that we were the 1st female team and about 5th or 6th overall.  This news motivated us to have a very efficient transition, and we were thrilled about the extra time we had gained on the bike (we had estimated 2.5 hours and it took us 85 minutes).

We headed off across Bark Lake and tried to concentrate on our paddling (our worst AR discipline).  There was one high value CP in the middle of the lake that we found easily before heading over to the portage trail.  Things had been going smoothly until now…

When we got to the trail that we thought was the portage trail, two other teams pulled up behind us who thought that this trail was going to take them to a different CP. Rather than trusting my instinct (and my map, for pete’s sake), I let myself be convinced otherwise.   Let’s fast forward an hour, since this time was spent aimlessly wandering the woods for a phantom CP and swearing at deer flies.  Suffice to say, lesson learned: don’t listen to other teams.

We were warned at the race briefing about the possibility of thunderstorms, and although there was no thunder or lightning yet, it had begun to rain and winds had made the lake a lot choppier than ideal.  After our bad start, my teammate put out the idea that we put Plan B into effect, meaning not do the portage to get the higher point CPs.  Since I didn’t want to waste time or energy arguing about it, I agreed (a decision that is still haunting me!).  To compensate for our earlier mishap, we decided to try and make up this lost time by hauling ass around as much of the rest of the course that we could.  Now accustomed to the map scale, things started going more smoothly as we knocked off CPs. We made safe route choices and capitalized on the trails in the area so that we could move faster.

A mandatory stop back to the Hub before 7:00 pm affected racer’s route choice.  We checked in around 6:30 pm, dropped our boat, then ran around to collect as many CPs as we could before the 8:00 pm cutoff.  In an earlier race this year (February’s Snowshoe Raid), we ended up coming back 9 minutes late, which meant losing 90 of our hard-earned points!  I was determined not to let this happen again, and we got back to the Hub with 20 minutes to spare, immediately jumping into the lake to cool off.  All we could hope for was that our pace would make up for the fact that we had made an agregious error at the beginning of this section.

Unfortunately, we were bested by another all female team whose aggressive route choice had put them 30 points ahead of us.  Stephania and I (aka The Funderstorm) finished 2nd in the 2 person all female category, winning some very nice Saucony technical shirts.  After the race ended, racers were treated to an amazing pasta buffet dinner, complete with a salad bar in a canoe!, and a make your own sundae station.  Although tired from the day’s efforts, racers stayed up to enjoy the liscensed post-race party that featured teams vying against each other in another competition: the Rock Band video game!

Mark, Heather, and Sean really pulled out all the stops for this race.  Bark Lake is an amazing location to race out of, and the course allowed all teams to race to their experience and goals.  Without a doubt, the Funderstorm will be back in 2009 to race the RockstAR again!