The G-Rant : Grant's Rants on Adventure Racing

Would have to agree the nav was way challenging..  The new and old fireroad network and nondescript terrain at 3 cp's was challenging.  So, I wonder what some less experienced teams thought.  I heard alot of disgruntled people around cp 11 and cp15.  I just did NGAR last week and were in 2nd place till we cracked.  This nav was way more challenging, seriously.  Or maybe it was the fact that we were racing 2-person?  I do know that a couple of 4-person teams split up and explored trails/roads with only two people.  I called one team on that. So, i was a little unhappy postrace with what i saw taking place.  But, that's a fact of life in AR sometimes and obviously your races are more competitive now.  CP15 went well for us since there were defined attack points (hill and two trails) and we got lucky.  Cp11 was in very nondescript terrain even though it was less than 100 m off the fireroad. The attack point of the road and the backdrop of a creek left a big area in dense vegetation.  We searched it for 90 minutes till we joined forces with a 4-person team.  We went from 2nd place to who knows what..  Then it was search by force all walking side by side.  The 4-person team eventually gave up and moved on but we then found it with another team researching the area for a 5th time.
We found it and must have walked under it several times.  
Reminded me of the Swomp Stomp of last year.  They have very nondescript terrain and they got alot of complaints from experienced teams.  So, at the Nationals and this year's Swomp Stomp, they actually handdrew in some trails and fireroads by using GPS enlayed over a google similar plotting program.  They had less complains except for the famous cp12 at nationals.   I thought Pocahontas was a nice race locale, but i wouldn't subject a teammate to a 2-person format in that environment again.  You definitely needed 3 and 4 teammates or another team to help search in some of the dense vegetation areas.  Just my thought with my 30th AR race.  I loved the race and the challenge.  Still some of the most wonderful volunteers on a course.

Bill    

This was my third HR Adventure event, and I am glad to see that the navigation has gotten more challenging with each race. For any novice or intermediate navigtators who had serious problems with the nav in this race, spend some time at local orienteering meets...they REALLY help your nav skills (you can focus purely on nav skills in a relatively non-competitive environment), and it will put you at a big advantage when you come across a true orienteering section in an adventure race.

We had some difficulty with a few CPs, but in all cases but one (CP 11) the difficulty was due to some basic mental mistakes on our part (like not reading the clue at CP4...or not doing an accurate pace count and then turning too early for CP5 on an unmapped road). I agree that CP11 was just plain difficult to locate (but a nice challenge!). It was hard to tell where the fire road actually ended, and thus hard to determine an accurate bearing to the CP. The vegetation in the area was also very thick. We arrived in 2nd place overall, and the first place team (GOALS) was still there searching for the CP. After spending a long time searching between South and SSW of the "end" of the fire road and then riding back up and down the fire road to try to re-verify our position (maybe 40 minutes or more?), we finally regrouped and started over scientifically. We determined the range of headings that we thought the CP had to be between (we figured between 170 degrees and 210 degrees), and then tested each heading (in 10 degree increments) by one walking into the woods about 150 meters into the woods, with our three team members about 20 meters apart. We first tried 170 degrees, and would have gone on to 180, 190 etc...but we actually found the CP on the 170 heading right before we were about to turn back to the road. It was vary hard to see because it was up in the air and also because the flag was a bit hidden behind a tree from the direction we approached it.

We did not really have any other problems with any of the other regulation CPs (though the bonus CPs were a different story!), and we found them all to be correctly placed and plotted. I agree with Bill that it was helpful to have a 3rd or 4th teammate to help search...and I also saw at least one team or two who probably pushed the "100 meter rule" right to its limit (if not beyond!).

We really enjoyed the race and the nav challenge...we'll definitely be back for more!

I'm curious about two things:

1) Did anyone carry (or even consider carrying) the orienteering map of Pocahontas that we (Quantico Orienteering) use at our events there?

2) Do you think that for future races a more detailed map, such as the Pocahontas orienteering map, should have the checkpoints (and other race relevant features) added to it and be used as the race map?

Hey Greg  -

HR Adventure keeps their race locations secret from the racers until the night before the race, to prevent locals from scouting the course/park and gaining any advantage over other teams. All we knew in advance was that the race would be within an hour's drive of Richmond...and there would not have been enough time to get a QOC map by the next morning once we knew the race was at Pocahontas. With that said, some of the more experienced team (us included) did have strong suspicions that the race would be at Pocahontas...and we even went to the trouble of getting local bike maps and area quads ahead of time to study. Some racers do not allow you to use "outside map"...but HR Adventure has no such restriction. So, I guess we could have obtained a QOC O-Map map, and it probably would have helped in some areas of the course. However, the race covered a pretty big area (we were out there for 9 hours), and I assume the QOC map only covers a fraction of fthe park...so it would not have helped everywhere. As for your second question: More and more adventure races are inccluding "real" orienteering sections with "real" o-maps (which I really like since I have a good bit of orienteering experience and many racers do not)...but the orienteering is generally only for a small section of the course. Teams do have to navgiate the entire time during an adventure race, but the races usually such great distances that USGS quads are more practical. Of course, part of the inherent challenge of using the quads for adventure racing is that they are far less accurate and less up to date than an o-map...which forces teams to think/adjust on the fly, pay more attention to contours, etc.

Jim

Last week I asked "how much nav is too much nav" and the response from racers has generally been, "we...