Crossing the steep drainages, climbing over and under vegetation, it was short but excellent Barkley training. John and Dave found the little pond and our next checkpoint, then we aimed cross-country to the 4th one, in a drainage system. One guy from Julie and Doug's team wished John "Happy Birthday!" every time he saw him, that was funny. We were back and forth with a couple teams here, including Julie and Doug and two racers from Colorado. That worked, and we continued up to the next ridge. I surveyed the next bit of landscape and pointed at the spur where I suspected the next CP was located. The first checkpoint in a drainage was easy, then we followed it down to cross a larger drainage and hop over the next spur. It was so odd being able to see the entire topography, the dead trees, the new growth starting from the ground. We were in the middle of the burned out section of park from the Bastrop forest fires a couple years ago. We jogged down the road toward the trekking loop. Glad we got that over with early! My toes and fingers were also no longer cold, that was a plus. Hey John - I love you! A bit of a scream, then the fun part of flying down the zipline and the funner part of reaching solid ground again. The tower rocked every time a racer stepped off the edge to zip down, so I was fine with getting going on the getting down so I didn't have to hang out and "enjoy" that sensation any longer than necessary. Jason and the volunteer there got me seated and untangled, then I sat to calm down and assess what was next. I got near the top eventually, couldn't figure out what to grab onto to pull myself onto the top platform, and asked for a little help. So I had to do all my own climbing, but at least when I came off the wall (which was often), I could sit in my harness to get re-situated. I asked the guy manning the belay whether Dave was allowed to help pull me up, but the guy said he would help me. As soon as a couple of us got geared up, there was an opening on the climbing wall and John started up, followed by Jason. We opted to start with the high ropes course and follow up with the trekking section (we could do them in either order, to reduce a backup at the ropes). Camp Wilderness Ridge has a large climbing wall/zipline thing, and we were about to get familiar with it. A couple teams rode past us on the road, good morning! A few miles later we reached the bike drop and noticed a large wooden structure towering above us. We were the first team to get our checkpoint plotted and saddle up. John got a "birthday mention" at the pre-race meeting - Happy Birthday! I'm not sure he was that keen on all the attention, but we did have fun singing to him.īiking start, brrr! At least it was a long, gentle uphill out of Buescher State Park, heading on the park road toward Bastrop. We bundled up, and John took his larger pack so we could shed clothes as we went. The forecast said that if we could survive the start, the rest of the race would get a lot better. The night before the race was dang chilly (by Texas standards), and there was a layer of frost on the boats and bikes. Plus it was John's birthday, at least for the majority of the race, and we were happy to be running around the woods as a team to celebrate. We just wanted to finish and have a good time. Dave and Jason (who worked hard to get healthy enough so he could also join us) made it clear that none of us was too worried about going fast. We actually did paddle our inflatable boat on Lake Palestine a couple times and I biked around Frankston. Dave asked if we would race Too Cool's Big Chill adventure race with him, and we were like, Heck Yeah! We clarified that we had not done any paddling or biking recently and were unlikely to be well-trained for that part.
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