Race Report: Storm the Trent 2019 (Trek)

The Race

Storm the Trent – we’ve done this every year for the last few, finally got the green “5 year” bibs!

It’s a mix of paddling, mountain biking and running/trekking across marked and unmarked sections.  Some modest navigation, but nothing too serious (although people’s ability to get lost is remarkable).

We stepped up to the Trek distance from Hike.

The Forecast

Rain.  All Day.  Storms.  Yikes.

Our Race

We started off strong with the paddling – although it’s always remarkable just how many people are faster than us!  We have a killer boat but only paddled once this year before the race, and some guys have the strength, it’s amazing.

Water was calm, it was a pretty easy paddle.  My arms were c-o-o-k-e-d by the end, could barely carry the boat back to transition.

Run #1

This was pretty long - from the boats we went upppppp a sharp long climb, then doowwwwwwn back to lake level - and we still weren't at the checkpoint!

Finally reached Glebe Park and did the 3 checkpoints there.  We found them pretty straightforward, which which means people who can run fast passed us pretty easily.

  

We tend to excel at out-smarting those who can out-run us, so more complicated would have been helpful!

Tough running up and down and up and down.

Bike #1

Finally transitioned to bike - and it was a mess for me.

I have two bikes - a hardtail and a full suspension.  I chose the later - but especially on the road it was the wrong choice.  Even when the trails were tougher I don't think I benefitted that much from the suspension, and it's so much heavier and plush - just hard to really hammer.

Worse, my rear skewer was loose - not sure how the hell that happened!  Realized it about 10km into the bike.

The course started on gravel, then a lonnnnng paved section.  Finally some gravel roads, then horrible horrible horrible gunky mud. I was really hating life at that point - we still had 10km to go, and if it was going to be 10km of that?  Uggggh.

But then we transitioned to a much better ATV road - 7.5km of that.  It was hilly and rough but very rideable, lots of fun at times.  Hills were eating me up though!!!

Then ... disaster.  Near disaster, anyway!

There was supposed to be a checkpoint (unmanned) at the trail junction.  We flew by a trail junction, there were a couple cars there, and my partner heard someone who was stopped on their bike say it wasn't the checkpoint...

Of course, it was.  I looked at the map and our direction and finally convinced myself 100% about 5 minutes later... so that cost us 9 minutes round trip back.

Disaster - except almost everyone missed it!  I couldn't believe how many people we saw circling back - some from far, far further away.  So what cost us about 9 minutes cost other teams 20, 30, etc.

The bike ended on some singletrack at Sir Sam's, which was kind of fun, but so muddy still from the extended spring and rain.  Too bad, it looked like it could have been a hoot.  I think a lot of the plans the organizer had were squashed by conditions, unfortunately.

Run #2

This was at Sir Sam's - 3 checkpoints, up the ski hill to the very top and back down in a big loop.

The only weird part here was when we saw another team of 2 men at the last checkpoint... they came down the hill just like us, and we assumed it was their last checkpoint too, so we were a little disheartened when they got their first!

... except as we sprinted to the finish downhill, they went uphill!  So they had clearly messed up the order of their checkpoints somehow, ended up going up, down, up... whoops!

Finished!

At the finish they said were the 5th team to cross of over 20, so we were really delighted with that.  Navigation matters, we learn that every year... sometimes the hard way!

(Official results pending)