Salomon Snowshoe Raid
Saturday February 21st 2009
Horseshoe Resort, Barrie On
This is a race that needs to be on everybody’s calendar. The 3rd annual Salomon Snowshoe Raid was a fantastic event to kick off the 2009 race season with 84 teams (that’s over 160 athletes) making their way up to Horseshoe Resort, the home of the Raid. And for the 3rd year in a row the weather conditions were ideal for racing. With bright sunshine, temps in the -5 to -10 range and a good amount of snow on the ground, Bob Miller and the crew from Don’t Get Lost could not have asked for a better day.
Race packages were available early and the smart teams made good use of that time plotting out their planned course in order to secure as many of the checkpoints as possible that were scattered throughout the backcountry. Each checkpoint has a point value attached to it with the “easy” checkpoints worth less and the more difficult CP’s worth more. Racers had a max. time of 3 hours to get as many CP’s as possible, with a 10 point penalty for every minute you were late crossing the finish line. Hills, valleys, river crossings and dense forests were only a few of the challenges that awaited all teams as they hit the starting line. My teammate for this race was Sally Heath, a member of Team Running Free and one of my teammates on our Team Breathe Magazine/Running Free AR Team. With a bit of experience racing together and with Sally as our navigator, we hoped to land somewhere in the top half of the highly competitive Co-Ed division. With our course planned and plotted, we felt confident as we started the race.
Our race started really well. We banged off the first couple of checkpoints no problem and were feeling pretty good as we continued through the woods in search for more. Sally’s nav. skills are really solid and we continued to pick of checkpoints. At the 1 hour mark we had a slight detour that forced us to change our planned route of attack slightly but it turned out to be a good thing as we were able to hit a couple of high scoring CP’s. As we hit the aid station at around the 1/2 way point, we still felt physically strong. Good thing as we were about to attack the highest scoring CP’s on the course. We were able to bag them and we started to plot our course for home to avoid any penalties. We hit 4 or 5 more CP’s and struggled to hit the final one on our route but we were able to successfully find it hidden away in a valley before the sprint to the finish. We knew that our time was tight but we were determined to get as many points as possible before the race ended. We made our sprint to the finish and came in at 3:02, just over the 3 hour limit but we were happy with our race and felt good about the effort.
As the points were being tallied, racers enjoyed some well-earned post race pizza. We also had a chance to check out the impressive prize table, filled with cool stuff and to study the map of the winning team that was projected on the wall for all to see. The race organizers really put in the time and effort to make the entire race experience a positive one for all of the athletes. That is a big reason why this race has grown in popularity over the years.
Although we didn’t finish in the medals (we later found out that we finished 5th in our division and 22nd overall…..awesome), we had a great day and we were pretty pleased with both our effort and our teamwork on course. It was a fantastic race and we are already looking forward to the Giant Rib Raid coming up in April.
AHS Adventure Racing
I also wanted to congratulate the members of the AHS AR team for their efforts at the race. We had 4 athletes competing in the 5km race and 2 teams racing in the 3 hour raid. Tyler Gosselin won the mens 5km with Stephen Seto finishing 3rd and Colin Thompson 5th. On the Women’s side, Kim Jeffries won the 5km race. Awesome!In the raid, the team of Elyse Nieuwold and Maryke Van Bemmel won the Junior category and finished 60th overall. The team of Colleen Barblinardo and Katie Hildebrant finished 3rd in the Junior category and 70th overall. Great work by all racers.
Marcus
I think you’ve overestimated the skills of your navigator! 🙂