WILDERNESS TRAVERSE 2011: A GOOD START THAT TURNED INTO A LOT OF BADLUCK AND SICKNESS BUT A WICKED TEAM TO GO THROUGH WITH...

To start with I must say it has been 3 weeks on the dot from when I finished RTNX (6 days expedition race) till the start of what has been a 27h race at Wilderness Traverse. After having massive ankles for the first week following RTNX I tried to go back training maybe a little too quick. I should, maybe, have listened to my dear coach Steve when he said "do Not go running today". But me being me, I felt ok and went on a run...15min later my knee was hurting pretty bad.The following couple of days went even worse and after seing a physio, I had to "rest up". Which meant no running or riding (or a really small amount of riding). I then spent a few days in the pool swimming and tried to paddle a canoe and did a bit of bush bashing (to try and get better at this). So when the race day came (last saturday), I had done no running since before RTNX (so about a month...we didn't run at RTNX but walked the all way), bearly 1 ride with the MTB, a couple of ride to work on the roady, 1 paddle and a couple of swims. Let say that I wasn't sure at 100% of my abilities for that 24h+ race coming up...mainly cause i didn't know if my knee will hold up.

On Friday morning I took the bus from Quebec to Montreal to meet up with one of my team mate Brook. I met him at the Ultimate XC, back in june, and we drove to Haliburton, Ontario together to meet up with the rest of the team at the race headquarter/campground.

On the way up Brook got impressed by how much a girl can eat :) It always surprises people who spend time with me haha... We got to the campsite at around 3pm, met up with Peter and Dave, our team captain, and had the afternoon to get organised. By 9pm we had the race briefing and we got the maps. Once our route marked, gears and maps ready, we went off to bed. 5.30am wake up and by 8am the race started. The race consisted in a ~35km trek followed by a ~65-70km ride, a ~35-40km paddle and ~12km trek.

From the start on most of people were running. We, TEAM SPIRIT, in the middle of the pack, started to jog along and a few minutes later Peter and Dave were running full on. I must admit I had a hard time running after them, first cause of my knee but mainly cause I haven't been running for so bloody long. Thanks god painkiller and anti inflamatories worked well and let me run and catch up with them, followed by Brook. Once I got to Dave I hooked up to his tow and pushed it till the end of the trail only a couple of kms away. I have never been so happy to get in the bush, not because I like bush bashing but just cause it meant no more full on running :). The Sunday a week before the race I went with a friend bushbashing and got some tips from him to get better and whilst it didn't seem to work that well on the day, it went super well on race day. I was pushing as much as I could and wasn't loosing any time on my team mates being right behind them. Wearing glasses made a huge difference and lettting my body go down the hill without stopping it too much worked well too. I recall only two face plants in the bush and maybe one in a swamp :/

CP1 went fairly quickly and we were pretty confident moving to CP2. Did a small nav mistakes there but found the CP2. Brook was walking behind me and said I was a good bush basher. That is "the" most appreciated compliment you could do to me knowing that I was really trying hard on that one. My heart filled of joy and pride I tried to keep up that pace for as long as I could. We started moving towards CP3, we were moving fairly fast and quickly we were next to river at what was meant to be 500m from CP3 but 45min later, after a couple of ponds, river crossing and some thick patches of bushbashing, we started to doubt about where we were (sorry Dave). We were, apparently, not "lost" but we only took a little "detour" (I think that's how Dave called it haha). Anyway we ended up finding the bloody thing and started making our way to CP4/Transition 1. We knew at that stage that we had lost a good 2 hours on the first team but were still in race mode. However an hour before the end of the Trek Dave started to cramp badly and started to bonk...You know it's not going to go well when one of your team mate has to sit down :/. We managed our way slugishly to transition. Transition went pretty ok except form the fact that our gear bin as been placed right next to a big poo that I didn't see and stepped in with my socks :/ and got the nickname "poo feet" for the rest of the race thanks to funny Brook!!!! After throwing my socks away, getting dry (I forgot to mention we had a couple of swims accross lakes and ponds and it was raining a little too) and eating some quiche and other yummy food we jumped on our bikes. The first couple of kms were muddy as and not rideable. Dave was still not feeling flesh and Peter was pushing him in the hills. Until about half way through we were moving pretty fast but then Dave was feeling worse and we slowed down and stopped a couple of times. After about 40km we had to get our lights out as the dark was settling down and that's when everything went down and slow. Dave wasn't feeling better and to top up that Peter's chain broke. He repaired it pretty quicly and off we went again on the bike...2kms further his chain broke again...and again...and again...eeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrr. Everytime it was taking more and more time and I was getting closer and closer to hypothermia everytime we had to stop. After the chain was kind of fixed (single speed seemed to be the solution) for what we thought was the last time, Dave decide to get the next map out (the one that was supposed to get us to transition) and then realised we didn't have it!!!

I must admit I did loose it a little asking him where was the F&^!ing map but that only lasted a couple of minutes (with a little pout to avoid loosing it totally on him...sorry Dave :) ). After messing around, missing a turn etc... we finally found the right track and started "riding" again. We were slow, chain did break a last time there I think and Peter's lights started working funny. I did wonder if we would reach the second transition one day or if something else could happened...At 11.30pm we finally got there. Transition went even slower with a Dave on the gound trying to eat but not feeling good. Within 10-15min I was ready to jump on the boats trying to push the guys out of transition but it's only when i called them Princesses that we finally got in the boats. Dave and I were in one boat and Brook and Peter in the other one. Pretty quickly I noticed that the boat was harder to paddle than expected and realised that it wasn't the boat but Dave not feeling very well who was stopping paddling quite often. I must admit I am damn impressed by Dave and his navigation through the paddle cause even if we were dead slow due to his not feeling well state, we didn't do too many detours :). After the first CP on the water Dave started throwing up, again, and again, and again :(. He was still navigating and was doing all the portages (the man is a machine with a canoe on his head even when feeling worse than poo he can carry the bloody thing faster than we walk). Every time we stopped for a portage my temperature was dropping drastically and even with my sharkskin long sleeve on, my goretex jacket, my survival blanket underneath, my pfd and race jersey, I just couldn't get warm. Everytime we started paddling I was feeling better though. Half way through the paddle leg or so Dave jumped in Brook's boat and laid down in the front while Brook, aka Paddling Ulk, was paddling very strongly towards the next CP. He managed to overtake a couple of boats while paddling on his own with Dave half asleep laid in the front. During that time Peter and I were cruising along, falling asleep, not really going in a straight line. For the last bit of the paddle Dave felt better and started paddling again with Peter, letting me paddling with Brook. When we finally reached the last Transition we knew that even if we were walking we only had a couple of hours before getting to the finish. That transition went pretty quickly and I want to thanks the volunteers who get me warm giving me hot water and wrapping me in warm blanket and jacket (She said I was a bit blue when I got there). We strated walking along, finding the trail that was going to lead us to the finish and even attempted what was a 10 to 15 stpes trot but went back to walking straight away. I had to take some more painkillers during the first trek but after that my knee was ok. I started having some troubles with one of my hip during the portages but I think it was more to do with being cold and warming up over and over and over and I must have compensated with my hip to try to not hurt my knee during the bushbash. Anyway, after a couple of kms, my leg muscles were warmed up and I was feeling fine again. after the first CP Dave started not feeling good again and it's only after the second CP that he let me tow him for a couple of kms, until the downhill section that would take us to the road (and finish). He really fought to get to the finish and I am very impressed by his force of caracter. We went through the finish line in 27 hours and managed to finish 18th out of 40 teams which I am still amazed of. We can't say we had a good race for the obvious reasons cited above but the course was amazing, a great job from the organisers and volunteers, great people racing and the most important to me was to finish the race all together and even if it didn't go as well as we wanted, I had a good time with a great team so thank you guys. A big congratulations to Pentathlon des neiges for winning it in just less than 20h but also to Salomon and Kinetic who were following them pretty closely.

Can't wait to be racing again, I can't stay on that feeling that I could have given a lot more...Bring on the next race (and maybe the recovery first too cause I am walking funny today oouucchhh)

cheers,

N.L.




Aug 20-21 2011
I believe the very essence of adventure racing is captured with phrases such as “teamwork”, “wilderness navigation, "route-finding strategy”, and “overcoming physical and mental limits”. These are just words on a page until you get out there and experience it for yourself. Believe me, there is no greater feeling of satisfaction (and yes, relief!) when you cross the finish line in a classic adventure race.