Sea2summit Deep Cove
Ten Years of Bliss and Two Days of Fun
Doug Doyle / 15.09.2005
Feel the love.
Squamish, September 10 2005: Yup, it was there, even while I was sitting inside our hotel room in the August Jack Hotel waiting for Chris to finish washing his dank racing gear in the pristine little bathroom. There’s nothing like relaxing in the comfort of a soft bed and watching tired and happy racers cross the finish line after a days racing from North Vancouver to the outdoor recreation capital of the world, Squamish.
Years ago, I can remember racing solo and camping in Squamish with no support and after racing, having to set up camp in the rain, tend to my bike, get up early, cold and stiff and hungry and whining, sleeping poorly cuz I was over hydrated and having to get up in the cold to pee, then waking up to the buzz of base camp, packing and, and….well, you get my drift. I much prefer the hotel option, especially when it is so close to the finish line one can literally stumble to the ground floor room, throw dirty gear on the nondescript rug, have a warm shower and then put on clean clothes and join friends and other racers at the local coffee shop or pub for a cold one and talk about the highs and lows of the race day and what to expect on the morrow.
I’ve got to hand it to Dean and Dave – while they promoted this years race as a return to the ‘classic’ North Vancouver to Whistler format, they did have a couple of tweaks to remind me that in going from point to point, there was enough variety in between to make it interesting.
I especially liked CP2 which interrupted our paddling: I pretended to struggle with getting out of the kayak and forced my team mate Chris to run to the control point while I could sit back and have a long drink and eat some of his race food. That’s one of those adventure racing mysteries – race food from your team mate is always better than what you brought. Chris had asked the race marshal as he shimmied out of the kayak if he needed any mandatory gear to bring with him during the brief run and was told no. He followed the flagging tape which led to a control point and a punch – not having the passport, he relied on an old sesame snap wrapper that was jammed in his pocket to mark that he had been to the CP. Ingenuity! Me….I would have panicked and pierced my tongue with the control punch.
And what about the last trek on day one?? The hand drawn map with no scale or contours and three control points to hit….we stormed (ok, to us it was storming, but to others, it was slinking, stumbling and crawling) up the hill and then realized that we were in for a longer sojourn than we originally thought. Patience, grasshopper. When will it end??
It was great to see lots of racer and friends and seeing M.A. tending to the sick and wounded on the course. M.A. is a wonderful warm and compassionate component of the medical staff and to see her on course is always our pleasure.
SleepMonsters
