Team Go Ugly Early WAR Race Report
 

I meet my brother Scott, the second half of Team Go Ugly Early, Friday evening to
pack up for the trip to Warren for the WAR.  I get there to find out he has not
yet packed, so we quickly pack all his gear and hit the road.  On the drive, Tim
Spang of Team Spang calls and offers us a space at their cabin so we decide to
set-up my tent there and enjoy a few beers and good company with Tim, Edna and
John Ralston of Team Blaze.  We do some bike maintenance and final gear prep and
hit the sack around midnight.  Team Go Ugly Early is sitting in third overall in
the series and needs a good showing to finish the series strong.  We're not one
of the teams that wins these races, but being consistent and making good
decisions during the races has paid off.
 
We wake up around 6:30am and go to the McDonalds in Warren for coffee and
breakfast and head off to the Roper Hollow Marina to launch the canoe and paddle
to Camp Olmstead.  John Ralston is already there (does he beat us everywhere?)
and we unload the gear/canoes while John and Dan get into a verbal altercation
with an unreasonable local unsuccessfully trying to back his fishing boat into
the lake.  Gear loaded, Scott and I paddle over ultra-flat quiet water to Camp
Olmstead.  I can’t believe how peaceful the water is, the paddle leg should be
awesome.  Scott heads up the hill to register for the race and I take a short
run along the shoreline back to Roper Hollow to get the vehicle. 

 
I arrive at Camp Olmstead and am immediately greeted by more bugs than I’ve
encountered in my entire life.  I get to registration and Beth-Ann hasn’t seen
Scott yet.  Uh-oh, it must be farther to the water than I expected.  So, I get
us registered and Scott shows up minutes later.  We realize that we have to put
numbers on the bikes and turn the canoe around, so we head back down to the water
and do our final prep on the gear.  Everything looks stable so we’re good to
go.  We head back up to the top of the hill for the pre-race meeting.  The
pre-race meeting is short and sweet and I think Frank said something about
plotting a northern direction to locate CP7 during the trekking section, and was
going to ask for clarification, but decided we had it under control.
 
The race starts and we haul the mail down the ¾ mile steep rocky hill to the
canoes.  Scott gets in the canoe and I shove the canoe off and jump in while we
watch one team flip their canoe.  Lucky for them it didn’t happen in the middle
of the reservoir as it’s probably pretty hard to retrieve mountain bikes in 80
feet of water.  We start the paddle in 4th and I notice the glassy flat water
has turned into rather turbulent 1 foot waves which make the paddling a bit
difficult.  More difficult because we decided to stand the bikes up (Frank said
this was a good idea and how he’d have done it) and they decide to continually
tip to the left during the paddle making things a bit more difficult than we
like.  I spend the entire 1 hour and 6 minutes of paddling sitting in the back
of the canoe leaning to the right side and pushing on my rear wheel with my knee
to counter balance the bikes so we don’t capsize.  Somehow, we arrive safely and
dry (for the most part) but due to the difficulty with the bikes we’re in about
14th place.  We make quick work of the transition passing 3 or 4 teams as we
leave TA. 

 
We uneventfully climb the first 6 miles and drop the two teams that were close
to us as we left TA.  We enter the ATV trail and hammer to CP9, to CP11 and onto
the dreaded CP12 which is reportedly “concealed in deadfall”.   On the way to
CP12 we realize we’ve gone too far, and after turning around quickly find CP12. 
It’s much easier to find when a team behind you is punching their card when you
get there.  We finish the loop and hammer back down to TA (finally some
downhill).  We took the front wheels off the bikes and packed the canoe in a
much more stable manner for the long paddle back to the finish before heading
off on the trek leg.  
 
We pass two more teams in another quick transition as we head out on the trek
leg.  The shoreline is brutal to walk on but at least the first two CP’s are
easy to find.  The Batty Boys pass us as we are heading from CP1 to CP2.  We get
to CP2 and shoot a bearing to CP3.  Seriously, Frank wants us to climb 580
vertical feet straight up this hill?  Up we go; I think this is the steepest
climb we’ve ever encountered in a GRR event.  We get to the top and work our way
to the high point and find the checkpoint.  We move on to CP’s 3, 4, 5 and 6
with no problems while being trailed by the Incompetent Bastards.  I get us lost
heading to CP7 because I misunderstood Frank’s directions during the meeting,
fortunately Scott is really good at realizing when something is not right and
turns us west up the hill to the high point where, by dumb luck, we walk into
CP7.  Fortunately for us, we run into Team Spang who just came from CP8 so we
join them for a jog to CP8 and down the trail (at least it was a trail for a
while) back to TA.  We beat the Spangs back to TA by about 30 seconds,
re-pass the Incompetent Bastards who took a quicker route back to TA, and
quickly hit the water.  We can see 4 teams out ahead of us on the water but we
aren’t strong enough paddlers to catch them and didn’t have enough of a lead to
hold off Team Spang, who are excellent paddlers.  So we paddle to the finish as
we watch the sun set, settle into 9th, and finish strong.  Best I can tell as
the overall results aren't available; we probably finished the series in 4^th
(actually 5^th—a mere 2 points behind 4^th—FE).  I think we passed the second
place team for the overall but unfortunately probably got passed by two other
teams that were breathing down our necks.
 
We are already looking forward to next year.  We would like to extend a big
thanks to ALL the GRR folks including the volunteers for your time and
dedication to the series.  I have never been involved with a more dedicated crew
of individuals.  I'd also like to thank Joe Biss for racing the SORCAR with me
and serving as our substitute this year, that effort set us up for a great
series finish. 

 
See you next year - Team Go Ugly Early