What a great weekend.....

Sarah and I went on a road trip. We left Saturday morning for the O-meet up by Lake McMurray. I had a great run but at the farthest point out on my course I ran into her and knew she shouldn't be out that far. I showed her were she was on the map and then went out looking for her when I finished. It's tough. The course level below her is too easy and this one is a bit too hard.

After that, we drove up to Snoqualmie for Roger's winter adventure race. I wanted to get up there that night before and take advantage of the Hyak Lodge. It is always nice to have time to hang out with old and new friends. We watched PQ ate and even had a couple of beers. We didn't have any maps to do but we couldn't go to bed early because you never get any rest before an adventure race.

This is the first "A" race of the season and the first time I have raced with RVG and Aaron in a long time. We were also lucky enough to scoop up Georgia for this one. RVG and Aaron have been doing alot of racing together in the past year and they have been kickin some butt. I was a bit nervous going into this race. It is always the same. You never want to let your teammates down. I know that I have putting in the time effectively but the pressure remains. On top of that, RVG offered the nav job to me. Now we are all good navigators but it is efficient to only have one lead especially in a sprint race. How could I saY no? But that always just increases the pressure.


Roger put together a great course. His course lay out was nice with no unnessary out and backs. Nice loops with great control locations. They were mostly in strong features like hilltops or beside lakes. There was also a nice mix of routes from long bearing runs through the woods to fast compact trail runs. The legs were intermediate navigation but the close in control finding was always generally easy. We ran without snowshoes for as long as possible but were finally forced to put them on when we got to the Hyak Ski area. It was fun trudging through the snow in the back country.

We held the lead for the entire race. But it is always hard to know how much of a lead you have so we all kept pushing. You are always only one bad nav error away from losing the race. Finally toward the end, we completed a loop and found out that we had a good enough lead to win.

I think that the best part was the plastic squares that RVG brought for us to sled on. At the end we needed to go down Hyak ski area. Those things were unbelievably fast. In a minute, RVG was at the bottom yelling and waving at us. That was a blast.

An the special test? Throwing snowballs at a soda can pyramid. RVG and Aaron handled this no problem. Momar came in second with manny's and Steve Wart's team close behind.

Thanks Roger

Lord Cromwell