Rumon Carter's MOMAR #1 Report

Originally posted at rumoncarter.blogspot.com

The Ucluelet MOMAR (Mind Over Mountain Adventure Race) May 13th on the west coast of Vancouver Island represented for me the closing of a full circle. In May 2004, in the middle of dealing with an electrical cardiac condition, I traded prudence for optimism and signed up for my first MOMAR, in Duncan. I made it through the paddle and mountain bike segments, but the run up Mt. Tzouhalem proved too much for my troubled ticker. I sat at the edge of a precipice, waiting for the medics to arrive while pondering whether my multisport days were done. For three years my cardiologist had been unable to diagnose exactly what was wrong with my heart and my frustration levels were rising while my positivity fell.

Fast forwarding two years finds me at the start line in Ucluelet with a fixed heart (I had a catheter ablation in January this year) though possessed of a body with much less fitness than it once enjoyed. I hoped excitement and anticipation (and bed head) would make up for the speed I lacked.

Almost, but not quite.

The first leg paddle was hella tough. Having heard the paddle last year was a little obnoxious with waves and chop, I chose to bring out an OC-1 (single outrigger canoe) borrowed from my paddling club. Hopefully I scored some points for style, because I wasn't earning any for speed in the glassy conditions Saturday. I made an early error missing the wake of a good group and spent most of the rest of the paddle in no-man's land (with the exception of a couple of pulls at the middle and end of the leg compliments of a couple of guys sporting the skull & crossbones standard - thanks guys!). Take-home #1: Work on my set-up in a surf ski before the next race. Boat speed good.

One benefit of the paddle was the lack of opportunities to go off-course. I made up for that as soon as I was on the bike, missing one of the very first turns. Take-home #2: Put a cyclecomputer on my mountain bike and pay better attention when my roommate - and eventual solo winner Normon Thibault - was describing his error on that exact same corner last year.

Once back on course, things went smoothly the rest of the ride and I did my best to ignore my complaining legs and pick my way through the field. Everyone along the route was super-positive. On the other hand, perhaps they felt obliged to be nice to the village idiot who had missed the easiest intersection along the entire race course.

The trek. Sure, it was steep enough that my sweat looked more like milk due to lactic acid content, but more to the point, if you were racing did you stop to fathom that that entire unending embankment is a DH mountain bike run?!? Walking and running up was hard enough; riding down would be insane. To ease the pain going up, I went with my lightweight adidas adistar Comps on my feet. (I'll opt for light weight shoes in most situations, especially when they're going to get soaked. However - touch wood - I don't have a history of lower leg issues or going over on my ankle.) Besides their functional utility, can you see them in the photo? They're orange!

Given the mercifully straightforward second bike leg, I was able to stay on course. In fact, while half the racers in front of me were trying to take the "Walk in the Forest" CP (Check Point) by surprise, coming at it up a labyrinthine creek, I simply rode right up to it and made up a bunch of time. Often - not always - the most obvious route is the fastest.

No longer in that no-man's land I'd been residing in since midway through the paddle, I hooked up with Normon for a 2-man Team Frontrunners time trial back to the transition in Ucluelet. There, two things happened: (1) we picked up our new maps for the final running stage; and (2) Normon dropped me like a sack of hammers. Take-home #3: Track down some of those crazy duathlon platforms NT was rocking on his bike. One thing that did not happen in transition: I didn't put my new map in a drybag. This would come back to haunt me.

On the way into transition we had seen the frontrunning teams and individual heading towards the Wild Pacific Trail; they had a few minutes on us. Perhaps owing to a metal detector I didn't know was implanted in my body, I was able to make up a bunch of time bee-lining to the first CP of the run where our "challenge" was to find a fake gold coin buried in the sand (the race had a pirate theme). My bee to honey imitation leap-frogged me (too many insect/animal metaphors?) from somewhere around 10th up to 3rd, behind two teams of two. The rest of the teams were caught out zigging where they should have zagged.

Around that time the competitive juices started to flow. Up until that point I had been wholly satisfied to simply make my way around the course, happy to just finish my first post-surgery AR. I should have known this state of mind couldn't last. Trouble was, right about the time the competitive juices got to flowing, the energetic juices got to running dry. Although I had been intelligent with my nutrition, by 4 hours into the race I was well beyond my aerobic comfort zone. I won't bother making a take-home out of "train more" - that much is obvious.

My goals became simple: keep hydrating and don't make any mistakes. What I didn't count on was the fact I had already made my critical error when I neglected to bag my map back in transition. By the time I was halfway through the frigid ocean swim between CPs 18 and 19 and realized my error the damage was done. While I tried to pull apart the pages of my now-glued-together map and instructions, I hedged my bets and headed towards the finish at the Tauca Lea Resort. With enough time to make the necessary turns, I was able to pull apart a 2" square section of map that pointed to CP #20, the penultimate CP. The rest of the map was by now a lump of papier mache balled in my right hand. But I figured I was set. With only 21 CPs on my card, I contentedly trudged for home, blithely counting on CP 21 being the finish line.



It was only after I had crossed the finish line (second overall, first solo), after stuffing enough cookies in my mouth to feed a high school gym class after a 30-Hour Famine, after giving a couple of interviews, after (gingerly) heading back to my cabin, after pulling off my gear and heading to the shower, only after Bryan Tasaka, Race Director, intercepted me at the door that I clued in that something had gone awry. The CP wasn't the final CP; no, I had run right past the final CP, a half mile from the finish line. So I did what any self-respecting man in a towel would do: I headed back out onto the course to correct my error. In my towel.

Take-home #4: Don't fulfill your Scottish heritage when running through a rural town dressed only in a towel. You'll either get beaten or married, both of which I had proposed...in a manner of speaking.

I did, however, make it home to tell this little tale. The downside was that in the 45 minutes that passed between originally crossing the finish line and re-crossing with a full compliment of CPs checked off a number of teams and one solo racer had themselves crossed the finish line. Oh well, that's adventure racing. And in adventure racing, as Normon was quick to point out, putting together the perfect race is a pipe dream.

But it's in imperfection that we find the basis for our more memorable stories. So consider this the story of my imperfect adventure racing circle closed. It's good to be back off the beaten track.

Thanks to everyone who helped me get here, including Norm & Stef and the crew at Frontrunners Nanaimo.

- R