WAR Season Finale Race Report-Team Spang
WAR Race Report Warren County, PA
September 20, 2010
It’s 8:00 a.m. Saturday morning and we lazily climb out of bed in our cozy cabin near Warren; we love the noon start of the WAR. We thought we had all the time in the world to get to the race start and get our gear in order…..we thought wrong! At Olmsted Boy Scout camp, Bethann tells us to get all of our gear, head down to canoe racks, grab a canoe quick (before the good, fast ones are gone), carry it down to the Kinzua Reservoir and load everything before returning for the 10:30 race meeting. How far is the boat rack and water? ¼ mile Bethann tells us. OK, no problem. So we decide to head straight down with only our bikes and get a fast canoe before they are all gone. We go down, down, down….this is not a ¼ mile…I must have misunderstood. There were lots of canoes there but no fast ones! We carry it down a steep and rocky road to the water and load our bikes. We hoof it up, up, up the hill with only 25 minutes until the meeting. We grab all of our gear and go back down, down, down to the water. Slap everything in the boat and say a prayer that it will be stable and not tip over in the middle of the reservoir. We speed walk up the hill in a full sweat now to get to the pre-race meeting that has already started.
RACE START 12:00 noon
We get called to the starting line and told to line up. “ How long til the start,” someone yells, “17 minutes.” This is our 2nd test of the day….waiting 17 minutes while 50 million bugs drive us insane. It was like an aerobics class the way everyone was doing arm circles, jumping jacks and leg kicks to keep the gnats at bay. All of a sudden…..GO! We take off down the rocky and steep road at a full run. As we near the water the first teams are getting into their canoes and starting the paddle leg, we see a team tip over and they and equipment are in the lake….oh on…I hope this doesn’t happen to us.
PADDLE LEG - 4 miles
I jump in the overloaded canoe and Tim pushes us out. We start to paddle when I notice the 2-3 foot waves and the wind. Oh damn….I am scared because we are wobbly. We calm down and get into our paddling rhythm. Every wave we go over sends a little more water in the boat. We make it across the lake and into the cove; we gained a lot of ground and now are paddling in 4th, right behind the leaders. Only one team is close behind and the rest of the group is back a distance. Pulling into the transition area we are right with the top teams. We grab our punch card and head out on the bikes.
BIKE LEG - 23 miles
The bike leg takes us up about 6 miles on a forest road to the Willow Creek ATV trail. The trail is very loose with a lot of twists and turns with only a few semi-technical rock gardens. We lose a bit of time debating where we are on the trail but without much drama we locate all the checkpoints and sail back down the mountain to TA to start the run leg.
RUN Leg - 10+ miles
The run leg takes us around the coast of the reservoir and across a few inlets. We attempt a shortcut across an inlet and find that we are in some sort of shoe-eating quicksand! As we pull our feet free we are now a few pounds heavier on each foot, it is a gooey, disgusting mess. Running on the coast is crazy because of the giant slabs of fossil covered slate everywhere….footing is sketchy to say the least. CP1 and CP2 were located without a problem. Next we had to decide whether to take a straight bearing to CP3 or get on a trail and meander our way up. We chose the straight route up the mountain. MISTAKE! The hill was brutal and I found myself bent over gasping for air every 10 meters. I fashioned some hiking poles out of sticks and pushed myself up to CP3. More hills to CP4 and as we arrive there we ran into Blaze and those pesky youngsters (FIZBo). This is awesome; we are now running with the leaders! Well, maybe for 3 minutes, they sprinted off into the distance while we plugged along at our usual pace (slow but sure). CP5 and CP6 no problem. Did I mention the hills and the bugs!!! We are looking for CP7 and the blazed trail we are on suddenly ends at a fallen tree. We decide to head up to the high point (which is the clue) and look around for the CP…..not there. So we head to the next high point… not there, on our way to the next high point we run into the Batty Boys and they tell us we missed CP7 back that way and that we were actually at CP8. CRAP!! We finally figured out where we were on the map and headed back to CP7 which was on the first high point we went up, we just didn’t look around enough. On the way to CP8 Go Ugly Early caught up and passed us. We lost at least a half hour on that mess. Sticking close to the Ugly team we headed South and bushwacked to the North Country Trail and back to the lake and TA.
PADDLE LEG #2 – 4miles
Frank says we are #9 and that a co-ed team (Bald Bull) is only 10 min. ahead of us. Back in the boat our legs are cramping, my knees are bleeding, I’m hungry, and we are on the home stretch! The lake is now flat and no wind….this will be a breeze to the finish. We catch the Ugly team and cruise by them while they are having a picnic on the water (was that the Statue of Liberty?). They both had identity concealing masks on but we knew who they were by their fashionable undergarments. We could see 3 canoes out in the distance and decided to make a push to catch up to them. Suddenly, our sleek fast canoe turned into a barge and seemed to be going backwards. Tim keeps yelling at me to stop paddling so hard on the left, because we keep going to the right (I know it is him that is causing the right sway), I pantomime paddling harder on the left. Our breeze to the finish turns into a hard, grueling paddle. I am about to bonk….back, arms and shoulders are burning, we are not catching up with the other canoes and it is now dark. We just couldn’t paddle down Bald Bull, we could see them but they were just too good.
That was the toughest 1hr 10min paddle ever. Pulling into the finish in 8th (I think) overall and 2nd Co-ed was a relief. 7 Hours, 41 minutes.Holy shit we are not finished yet! We have to take all of our gear back up, up, up that hill!!!
Overall the race was challenging, the competition great and the soup was out of this world. Frank and Bethann… you are awesome! Congrats to the mens version of Blaze…you guys rocked. Oh yeah, I have the best partner ever 
Submitted by: Edna Spang (Team Spang)
Wow, what a great recount - I am surprised you remembered so much especially under the extreme circumstances. I would like to see some of the other competitor comments. This is hard to top! Well done Team Spang - next you should take on Australia!!
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well, on the way from CP2 to CP3, we did initially follow the trail that went along the creek, but as we saw that it meandered uphill on the slope on the opposite side of the creek of where CP3 was located, we then abbandoned trail and went for the creek bed and then uphill straight to the ridge (spur), and from there, to CP3. Sure, it is a steep climb, but it is also direct. About the terrain around CP7, because it did not have many features, and it was a bit flatish, one had to be careful in recognizing terrain features. I usually don't trust man-made maped features, such as trails. Terrain mapped features, such as re-entrants, saddles, spurs, don't lie, and can be trusted.
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