We have been waiting three and a half long, cold months for our first event. It was worth the running in the brain numbing cold to be ready for it.
Yesterday the Blister Sisters and the Band Aid ran the Raid the Rib Adventure Race. To do this event we needed a team of three so we enlisted our good friend Jean to be our “Band Aid”. Jean runs like a gazelle over the trails but this is the second time she has joined our team so we must be doing ok to keep up with her. We had so much fun, we just laugh the entire time.
Blister Sisters and the Band Aid
The event was held at Rock Ridge Ranch on the escarpment near Milton Ontario. This location was great, the escarpment terrain offers a lot of navigational challenges from rocky ground to cliffs and creeks, nothing about is it flat and rolling. Besides the spring thaw with mud and flooding, at the ranch location, you are also dealing with horse trails that twist and double back so there wasn’t an easy route to any control.
The Don’t Get Lost organization hosts great events always with little twists thrown in to even out the field. The Rib Raid was a scramble so every team could plan their own route. There was no set course, which is just what we like, if we couldn’t find something we could just move on. This time it was mandatory to head back to the start midway through the race and each member of the team had to do an individual navigation challenge.
The morning started out on time for us, but Jean was a little late arriving at the Ranch. She was driving in from another direction than us. She got behind a Don’t Get Lost car and decided it would be easy just to follow it to the Ranch. Unfortunately it didn’t come directly to the ranch, so she was just a little lost (Get it – Don’t Get Lost! LOL) and little late arriving.
This left us a little less time to come up with our plan of attack, but we managed to pull it together and we felt we were good to go at least for an hour or so. This was a 4 hour event so we were going to have to plan on the run as well.
All was good until the start when the entire field took off running in the opposite direction than we wanted to go! We sort of stood there dumb struck and then trotted off to follow them, having no idea where we were going. Then our brains kicked in and we hauled butt in the opposite direction to find our first control. Now we were in charge of our plan again. The first and second controls were right were we thought they should be. We over shot our third control and got a little turned around. I even had to pull out the compass to see which way was north, I hardly ever do that. (We really need to take a navigation course). After some bush whacking, we ended up on a double track trail not really knowing where we were on the map, but three heads together, we took a good guess and we were right. We found more controls before heading back for the individual challenge.
Oh Yea! Found one!
Now it was supposed to be 10 degrees C with some sun, but in reality it was windy and cold, I froze waiting at the individual challenge, luckily none of us took too long to find our controls and off we went with an hour to go to finish the race.
Now we were in those twisty horse trails I mention. They just seem to go in circles and they looked the same. The land is treed and rocky with a few outcrops and bogs. Tough going, we eventually, after a spectacular fall by Glenis, decided we had better figure out how to find our way back to the finish.
Needless to say we didn’t win, but we didn’t set out to win, just to have a great time together. We would defiantly recommend this event and any of the Don’t Get lost events to anyone interested in trail running with a twist of navigation thrown in.
After a nice barbeque (we even stayed for the awards) we gave Jean a hug and set November 8th, Raid the Hammer, for our next team adventure.
The sisters now have a month to figure out how to mountain bike again before our next race at Storm the Trent! I guess we better get our bikes out now! Oh yea and that canoe!
Blister Sister Adventure Race Team 