Event: Don’t Get Lost’s Raid the Rib
Date: April 9th, 2011
Location: Palgrave, Ontario
For lots of Ontario adventure racers, Don’t Get Lost’s Raid the Rib is a season kick-off. I’ve been doing this event for 6 or 7 years and I always find it to be a great orienteering / navigation tune-up as well as a gauge of my fitness going into the racing season.
This year, the people I enjoy racing with the most are both off pursuing other interests, so I wasn’t sure if I’d be doing the race this year. Then, I got a great invitation to join fellow Running Free team member Denise Rispolie and uber-navigator Kristen Harrison on the Wonderbroads for this event. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to race with these two great women!
The race featured a mass start at Glen Haffy Conservation Area just outside of Orangeville, Ontario. Teams had to follow a marked course until the found the first CP, after which they could head straight to the second control. The trick here was to make sure you were watching the map en route to the first CP so that you’d know where you were (and what direction to take) to get to CP2.
CPs 2-7 (called the “Nav ‘N’ Run” section) were done in regular order and featured some good climbs in and out of valleys. We climbed one extra hill by mistake which cost us a bit of time but our mistake was fairly quickly recognized and corrected. After CP7, a marked route took teams to the start of “Walk the Line” where three CPs are located along a route that has to be followed carefully since you don’t know where on the line they are. I always approach this section with trepidation, so I was glad that Kristen was leading the navigation today! We made one small error right off the start but backtracked and found CPs 8-10 without trouble. Phew!
CPs 11-13 took us to the first aid station at 14. We had a big bobble on CP12 that cost us a few minutes, but aside from this, everything was going smoothly. At CP14, we began the “Gnarly Nav Scramble” which featured 6 CPs that could be punched in any order. We hit all these controls with relative ease and headed back to CP14/15 and onto the Dog Bones Matrix.
The Don’t Get Lost races usually feature a Matrix section which is the only section of the race where team members to split up. This year’s “Dog Bones Matrix” put a bit of a twist on the usual format by grouping three sets of CPs into two and putting them all on separate maps. Denise, Kristen and I each took one map (two CPs) and agreed on a meeting spot. Splitting up in these races always makes me nervous as I’ve seen what can go wrong when an otherwise confident group separates, but today there were no navigational casualties and we regrouped at our meeting point very efficiently.
The last section of the course featured a road run into Albion Hills Conservation Area and a handful more CPs (16-20) to get along the way. No major errors for us here, but we were certainly glad to be done as we ran down the final hill towards the chalet. The Wonderbroads were out there for just under 7 hours and we were third in the female category. Rumour has it that the advertised 25km (ish) course was anywhere from 33-38 km depending on the route you took, which we were relieved to hear since it had taken us longer than anticipated. We had beautiful weather for the race and it was fun racing with some new people, who I’d happily join again anytime!
