MOMAR – Cumberland

It was back when I was training for stormy that the Momar seed was first planted.  We were at the tail end of a 2.5 hour training run and my friend Katie mentioned that her and a friend we going to do the race in Cumberland.  I was excited for her and expressed that I had always been interested in adventure racing and was hoping to start with Momar one of these days.  About a week later I got the call up via a facebook message, Katie’s partner couldn’t race and was I interested?  Sure.

A week later we were into full time training, alternating nightly workouts between running, mountain biking and kayaking, trying to get comfortable with all the disciplines that would be required come race day.  We took on a Momar specific orienteering course that saw us booting it around the Nth shore on a Saturday, compass in hand, fighting the urge to bushwhack our way to each checkpoint.  We tested our Kayak skills in a MEC sponsored Big Chop Kayak race and finished respectably, washed up our kayak and then finished it off with a 10km tempo run.  It is pretty safe to say that leading up to the Momar, even without having raced it, I had had a pretty good Momar experience just in training for the event.

Roll around race weekend, and I’m excited and nervous all at the same time.  I love that feeling, excited of the unknown day of adventure ahead.  We had talked about our expectations for the race and knowing Katie and myself to be both quite competitive personalities it was important to manage our expectations accordingly and the emphasis was placed on racing hard, but more importantly having fun.  Also, I wanted to take some of the pressure off me as a navigator, knowing that if I screwed up then I could totally be accountable for lost time.  Fun was the key for a good day.

Riding Fools

We traveled over to the island on Friday and made our way to the Riding Fool hostel for check in, were a little bit early so stopped by Seeds to pick up some food for the weekend. We got a nice selection of fresh veggies, some eggs and yogurt and then went about the check in process.  There was a keg at the package pick up so I grabbed an ale downed it and then downed Katie’s and actually got a nice little beer buzz while we passed thought registration and picked up our race kits.  Then it was off to find our hotel, get an early night and prep for race day. 

This is where things got interesting. Katie was prepared enough to have printed maps out detailing the routes to our intended destinations.  Small problem was the Google maps didn’t actually know where our hotel destination was and within 30 minutes we were lost.  The worst part about this was that we were in my truck and had access to GPS enabled Google maps and we still couldn’t find our hotel.  Eventually we found a main road, and a sign for Mt Washington and ended up following the sign, stopping at every intersection, squinting at street signs until we finally found our way to the winding incline that would take us to Bear Lodge, our home for the next 2 nights.

Needless to say, I hardly slept that night.  I was a bit worried that if we couldn’t even navigate a simple signed road system, with a GPS, then how the hell were we going to pull off a Momar..?  5:30am rolled around and I robbed Katie of an extra 15 minutes sleep by flicking on and off the light switch in excitement.  We both ate a really descent breakfast and headed into Cumberland to the bike drop.  We chatted with a few racers, then made our way to the camp ground and start area.. after a small detour again in the wrong direction..

There were a few formalities here, like signing a waiver for the Kayak rental, finding the Kayak, loading our packs, and getting the map, which honestly didn’t really mean that much to me at first glance.  The hour between 8am and 9am was supposed to be the time where everyone gets the map, studies it and plans the race.  All I really paid attention to was how to get from checkpoint 1 to checkpoint 2.  The rest could happen on the fly, as long as we could confidently get from the first to the second I was sure we would be ok.  As 9am got closer we start to launch our Kayak when Katie made probably the best game time decision of the day and decided that we should go barefoot in the kayak and keep our shoes dry for the rest of that day.  Good call Katie, because of this we were comfortable for the rest of the day and blister free.

Kayak

Paddle Paddle

We lined up near the front of the Kayaks had a bit of a chat and a few jokes with the other racers.  It was such a beautiful day everyone was in great spirits, and just excited to be out on the water.  I wasn’t nervous at all, I knew our kayak leg would suck a bit, but like everyone else, I was just happy to be out there on the water participating in the event.  We got going after a group photo and after some initial splashing we just got down to work.  I matched Katie’s strokes, and we paddled for a bit over an hour.  Not too much exciting happens out on the water in a Kayak, except our first buoy of the day.  I managed to pick a pretty aggressive line leading up to the corner and we hit it at speed, did about 6 or 7 hard strokes on the left and snuck inside about 5 other kayaks.  We tried to power out strongly and did a good job of it, then we paddled again.  The remainder of the buoys were uneventful and soon enough we were on the beach carrying our kayak and putting on our shoes.

Trek/Run

Trekin'

The next leg was going to be our strongest and a good chance for us to make up some places that we lost on the Kayak.  We are both strong runners, and there was about 10-15km of good hard trail running ahead, I was pretty excited.  We took off down the road, forced ourselves to eat some solid food, gave each other a high five and settled into our run.  I was studying the map pretty hard and using the ‘thumbing’ technique we made the next checkpoint easily and confidently.  there was a ton of climbing ahead and we made really good ground, but there were a few too many people on the trail and whoever was leading took a wrong turn and like the sheep we all are everyone followed, I didn’t even look at my map on this climb until it was too late and like everyone else we were scrambling for checkpoint 3.  After a few failed missions down various trails when were fortunate enough to find our orienteering coach who roughly pointed a group of us in the right direction.  Pretty quickly we could here the cry’s of ‘here it is’ and we were back on track.

Some nice fast downhill and then some winding single track saw us easily thought checkpoint 4 and 5 and we were making good time and having a ton of fun.  We were approaching the bike transition when I made my first good nav call of the day.  We were following a confident looking (read: matching team jerseys) team of 4 who ran right past the right hand turn I had mapped out for us.  They passed the gate which was clearly mapped and took the next right. As much as I wanted to follow, I made the call to take the earlier right, and Katie followed without question.  We ended up making the right call and the checkpoint was up a slight incline and around the corner.  Another high five, and some fast downhill saw us speeding Into the bike transition.  Bryan Tasaka was there and gladly told us we were running in second coed double team.  WOOT!  Another high five and a very fast transition on the bikes thanks to Katie’s sense of urgency and drive in the transitions, we were off..

Bike 1

Bike Transition

The first bike leg started off on old fire roads and there was a bit of climbing.  I was fiddling with the map, which I had removed for the zip lock that Katie had supplied and stuffed into my damp jersey pocket.  The bike course was all marked so i decided to put the map away, but not in my pocket as it was wet, I would put it into Katie’s pack so I could access it easily.  The first part of the bike leg was mostly fire roads, a bit of climbing and some flat single track.  We hit up another checkpoint and entered some of the more technical single track where we had to let a fair few riders past.  Quite simply we are runners, who can ride a bit.  There were a tone of guys out on the Momar course who can’t run or paddle but are simply awesome on the bike.  We got to see the backs of a fair few of them that day.  That’s not to say we didn’t have an absolute ball out there on the bike, I loved every minute of it, and worked hard to keep a good pace going, it was too much fun and I lost count of the number of times I couldn’t hold back and went at the trails full blast hollering all the way.

As the bike miles ticked off I was conscious of what was next, I grabbed the map from Katie’s pack, studied it while she collected another checkpoint, downed a gel and then stuffed it back in my damp jersey pocket.  We took off on some more climbing at soon saw us at the hike a bike section which I can honestly say I enjoyed.  It was nice to get a rest from the pedaling and to be back on my feet and I was strong on the hike pushing my bike up from both the seat and handle bars, we made good time up the hike.

Where’s the map?

Map

So I decided that while we hiked our bikes I needed to examine our map and re orientate ourselves on the course.  I was curious as to how much riding was left so I hit up Katie’s pack for the map.  Panic strikes when I realize the map wasn’t in the pocket where I had left it.  So I dump my bike, and start frantically rummaging thought her pack desperately looking for the map, as without it our day was over.  No map, and I start freaking out.. ‘umm where’s the map?  this cant be happening’  100% my responsibility and I have no idea where it is.. Katie was rad and kept her cool, I think she asked me if it was in my pocket, which of course I would have dismissed that ridiculous notion, however I was desperate and as I reached around to my back pocket I could feel the now damp ratty screwed up ball of paper that was our map.  Sweet! Why are we standing around? lets get movin’.

As we reached the next checkpoint, and mandatory gear check (yeah! I get to blow my whistle!) I spied Bryan again out on the course.  I think I yelled something like “dude, this is rad” at him as I blew by and we hit up the gnarliest of trails that day which was named ‘Bucket of Blood’  I’ve never had so much fun on a mountain bike, both Katie and I blew down this section of advanced mountain bike trail like pros, and even more impressively was that Katie handled it all on her hard tail Norco, while almost every other rider had the comfort of dual suspension.  Another checkpoint down, another fire road and we were back at the bike transition.

Urban Nav.

Urban Nav

The next stage was urban Nav where we were handed a new map and were quick to blast to all 3 locations on the main street in Cumberland and pick up the 3 checkpoints. We both stuffed a chocolate bar down the hatch as we moved along and were quick back to the bike and off to some of the unmarked bike Nav.

Bike 2

Sweet Ride

This was a tough one, as my carelessness with the map had left the route to the next checkpoint nothing more than white space on the map.  I didn’t disclose all the details to Katie, and just said that ‘we  cant loose the guys ahead of us otherwise we would be screwed.’ So we were lucky enough to tag along to the first bike Nav checkpoint, but then I made my second best Nav call of the day and with out waiting for anyone to lead, took the trail to the left, bolted down the downhill and weaved our way perfectly back to the main road and to the final checkpoints.

We then had a couple of km on the road to ride back to the final checkpoint and after Another high five we decided to nail it as I was sure that this was the final run home.  So nail it we did, we found the last checkpoint and dumped our bikes and went to get the final stamp.. Only to be rewarded for our efforts with a brand new map.. Complete with 8 new required checkpoints..

Orienteering

Shhh.. Over here..

This was the O section and honestly I had no idea what I was looking at when I tried to make sense of the map. There was no big red ‘you are here’ arrow and I was totally overwhelmed at the number of checkpoints remaining when I was mentally prepared to be running in over the finish line.  Katie was quick to note that the 2 blokes who came in behind us on the bikes looked like they knew where they were going so we just took off after them.  We worked together (read followed them) to the first checkpoint and then decided to take off after another couple scrambling up the side of a hill.  We got to the top, I checked the map and the senses kicked in.  Another good decision to make the left at the top of the trail and head back and successfully found checkpoint B.  The rest of the O was completed in much the same fashion, successfully using the map to navigate to an area that was heavily populated with other racers doing exactly the same thing.  If you were quiet you could hear some of them whispering ‘over here’ or ‘found it’  it was almost like hunting.. hunting for others whispered elation.  In all fairness to our team here, we did actually have a pretty good read of the map and we were pretty quick through the O section.

Once we collected our last O checkpoint we were quick down to the beach and then before we knew it running under the big blue blow up banner and we were done.  Pose for a photo, hit up the buffet and Momar #1 was under our belts.  High fives and hugs were had as we soaked up the massive accomplishment and went about hitting up the awesome selection of post race food.

Yes, she beat me..

We ended up finishing the grueling 50km course in 6:04:27 and were 4th Coed double team and only 3 minutes off the podium!.  Needless to say we are both super happy with the result and I still cant wipe the smile off my face as it truly was an amazing experience.

Huge thanks to Katie, who is an AWESOME team mate.  She never stops, is totally motivating and gives it everything she has.  Thank you for not second guessing my Nav choices and having the confidence to follow at times and then lead and keep pushing at others.

The post race party was a lot of fun and it was good to relax with a few drinks, although I do owe Katie a Chimay after getting ours confiscated just before dinner.. who knew it wasn’t a BYO..

mmm Chimay

One of my favorite weekends of the summer 09. We will be back next year for sure!