2am, just going over the final checklist, ensuring that everything is ready for what should be a very fun and interesting race. My new Salomon pack and shoes sit at the door waiting for the sun to rise while my four alarm clocks strategically placed in my bedroom get ready for a most important job. Sadly, they failed. When I first realized that my eyes had opened Sunday morning well over an hour after they should have I woke in a panic, seeing multiple missed calls from my teammates and embracing a sore neck from what I believe to be a very poor sleep. But it’s a good new story so stay with me. By some miracle I was able to jump out of bed, shower, get ready and pulling up to my friends place in Milton coming from Square One area in 40mins. Once that happened and a coffee was in hand the day could start. And so off to Dundas for the Don’t get Lost Raid the Hammer adventure race.
Our team of three Marcus Wolkowski, Rick Kazanecki, and myself Ryan Chin have never done such a race. In fact all three of us only learned how to use a compass this past week if you can believe it. Once we all got in we were given a brief overview of the race kits and off we were sent to get ready for a pre-race briefing. Everything we very well organized and explained and before you know it we were out to the start area in what had to be some of the best weather we could have asked for doing a race like this.
The next 4 hours and 37 minutes would be spend running, jogging and mostly walking to checkpoints we would navigate to. Along the way there were laughs, falls, wrong directions and some cuts and bruises to finish it all off.
The event itself was very well organized with checkpoints clearly marked and everything well explained prior to the race start. Even for the three of us who had never done anything like this, we caught on pretty quickly.
I had always wanted to get into adventure racing and give it a try and the Don’t Get Lost event was one that I would highly recommend to anyone who is thinking about giving it a try. If you’re like me and tend to stick to the roads for running then this will be quite a different experience and one I’m confident you won’t regret.
