Baker, Brian, and Jennie ventured to the Hamburg, PA for this up and down sprint race.  Unfortunately they did not have any beef patties of goodness but we had an awesome time at this race.  We arrived at about 11pm on Friday night.  Marc from GOALS asked us if we ever showed up to races at a reasonable time.  We proceeded to get our maps and updates on the course.  Bill told us he expected a winning time of about 9 hours.  After spending some time planning the course putting our gear together and setting up the tent we laid down for a couple hours to get some sleep.

An early morning wake up and some more preparation got us ready for the start of the race.  Conditions looked good.  We pounded out a prologue and completed the obstacle course before climbing a mountain to get two CP’s.  After returning to the camp and rappelling we headed out on the bikes.  This meant another climb (1000ft).  Athough as Baker would say “The best part about going up is coming back down.”  As we transitioned to canoes we now had a considerable lead on the pack.

The river was fairly shallow requiring us to get out and drag the boat on occasion.  This apparently better than last year when they dragged the boat and occassionally got in to paddle.  We tried using a third seat I bought for the canoe but had some issues with this.  After the paddle we had a short climb on the bikes to a few O-points.  This was the first of our troubles.  The clue for one of the points stated that it was 200m from trailhead.  So we traveled to the nearest road and looked for the trailhead.  Unfortunately the trailhead was located on another road which was questionably within 200m from the point and the UTM coordinates.  Either way after some searching we found the point.  At this point we saw that many teams had begun to catch up as they saw us come out of the woods from the CP and gave them a huge advantage.  So we ran back to the bikes and started going.

We now had to climb over 1300ft to a firetower.  Again we had a few issues finding the road crossing but were able to begin the sun soaked climb.  We got to the top and found some great volunteers offering greatly appreciated H20.  Now came the fun part, the down.  Unfortunately we had to grab 3 CP’s on the way down so we had to take it easy.  For one of the points we chose to leave the bikes and hike to it.  I accidentally forgot the map on my bike.  Baker and I thought we remembered the clue so we decided to search for it anyway.  After some dismay we had to hike back to the bikes and then back to the CP.  On the final return to the bikes we passed ARMD who we thought might be catching up with the mistakes we had been making.

We knew we only had 2 more CP’s and 1 more 1000ft climb so we had to take off.  Jennie and I were having trouble climbing due to lack of training on the bike so we really had to work together to get over the last mountain, finishing in just under 8 hours.  We were able to hold onto the lead winning by 20 minutes, putting 15 minuted on ARMD over the last mountain.

It was a quick and fast race but we learned a lot making a lot of small mistakes and using some new gear.  I also got to test my new Suunto Core which worked well.  upon return we were quick to grab some cold soda as the heat of the day had set in on the last two climbs.

A quick cleanup, some showers, food, more soda and awards closed out the race.  This was the second straight win for Nature Cure at the KG.  We look forward to returning next year to go for the 3-peat.