Race Report: Rockstar Adventure Race (4 hour)

My buddy and I did the 4 hour version of the Rockstar Adventure Race.

Great race, lots of fun.

Edit: We Won!  Top team of 2 male!  Results

Stage 1: Short Run + Mountain Bike

The race started with about a 1.5km run, before heading out on bikes.  This was presumably to spread out the bikes before hitting the trails - very good idea indeed!

By the time we got biking the skies had really opened up.  I was quickly into the red, badly... just the heat, humidity, and fast start really kicked me in the nuts.  I pushed to keep up with my buddy but a few times had to slow us down.

Stage 2:  Running and canoeing and random weird stuff

After this point we had over 3 hours left to visit as many checkpoints as possible.  We were given a map of all the checkpoints with brief descriptions of each.  You could paddle (canoe) or run to all of them, your choice.

A few of them were goofy challenge things - like you had to go out on a rubber inner tube to a flag in the middle of a pond, or dive to the bottom of the lake to retrieve a CD, or use a slingshot...

Each was worth a certain amount of points (30/40/50/60/80).

The first problem was our plan had been to canoe first - but because of the storm we weren't allowed on the water.  Instead we did one of the running loops to pick up two 50 and two 40 point checkpoints.  That went pretty well and fast.

After that we did the canoe to the paddleboard station, where we had to use the stand-up paddle board to retrieve a flag from a buoy.  My buddy did that one, went well.

Next we paddled to everything we had intended to paddle to.  Our big mistake was in our planning we thought we could hit them all, so we didn't spend a whole lot of time strategizing on which to put the highest priority on.  Sometimes you could nail off a bunch of 30/40 pointers in quick succession (ie. on the boat) but other ones like the inner tube just took way too much time.  We had to run about a kilometer each way, carrying an inner tube, plus the time to swim out - it took way too long for 60 points!

As a result we missed out on the 80 point one, just ran out of time.

At the end we had a choice to nail off a 30 and 40 point one one by running or to canoe back to the finish and try the goofy ones near there.  We chose to do the run - which I think was the right choice!  Except the skis opened up - massive terrifying lightning and thunder.  Some of the flashes were so close, there was nothing between the flash and the thunder.  Freaky!

Because of the storm we were stuck out in the middle of nowhere and couldn't paddle back to the finish in time.  It's supposed to be a 10 point penalty every minute you're late, we were very very late.  But they stayed true to not penalizing people for being stuck off the lake, so what would have been a 290 point penalty was reversed.

Overall...

We won!  I know we weren't the fastest team, but I think we made best of our 4 hours.  Maybe not perfectly, but well enough to win.

It was a really good time.  The format was cool, lots of thinking and even the navigation was pretty darn cool.  Other than my being in the red for half the race I thought we did really well, learned a few things for next time.