Raid the North: Canadian Championships
Simon River Sports - Canadian Champs
Chris Koch / 27.09.2005
How does everyone feel physically and mentally?
Alain:
At this moment, we all feel extremely good. None of us really sustained any injury other than the odd blister or leg scratches. Benoît Létourneau doesn\'t know what the word \"pain\" means, Benoît Tremblay is young so he can suffer, Liza has a little bruise on her chin but her radiant smile hasn\'t been affected and as for myself the only damage I have sustained is some graffiti a funny disrespectful (!!) racer did on my feet after I fell asleep on a couch while doing some post-race chit-chat on Saturday night. We are still on a high from the victory; we had been preparing for this race for a long time and had high expectations too.
Liza:
I think everyone feels pretty great at the moment, mentally and physically. Of course it is always nice to end up with a medal around your neck at the end of a race, but what makes me smile most, and the things that I remember most, are the times before and after the race that I get to spend with our fellow racers and race staff, as well as the beautiful journey that my teamates and I get to experience together. I come out of every race feeling stronger as an individual, and stronger in my role as an asset to an amazing AR team. So, I guess you could say that the metal high of another successful race has not yet worn off and I\'ve been feeling pretty satisfied these last couple of days!! Spending the entire day today on the couch in front of the T.V. was pretty good too!!
How did you find Bob Miller\'s course design? It sounded like it was a rainy start - did weather affect your race? Favourite section?
Alain:
The Esprit Rafting site was really perfect for a race headquarters. Beautiful setting on the Ottawa river, it has a bar with lounge, a \"restaurant\" serving meals on the outside terrace overlooking the river at sunset and very friendly staff that is accustomed to young adrenaline seeking crowds, lots of grassy areas ideal for emptying and re-organizing a gear bin 20 times before race start. A very good choice.
As for the racecourse design, I think Bob Miller did an exceptional job. On a normal RTN, the course designer has to \"cater\" to a very large range of racers, from slow to fast and from totally inexperienced to very experienced. For the most experienced teams, it can sometimes be a bit disappointing. Like having a mandatory portage over a small class II rapid or a too short bushwhack section. For this race, since there were only a limited number of teams but all of them with a fairly good experience of expedition races and since it was a Championships race, I think Bob had more latitude. The result was an extremely interesting course design: more white water than a surfer can dream of, some very interesting navigational sections with challenging route selection options; none were obvious and the \"ideal\" route had more to do with your team\'s ability (bushwhack versus detour on a possible trail versus pack raft, etc.) and we even decided on our final routes while on the course after assessing the accuracy of the back road maps provided and the \"cleanliness\" of the forests.
We can tell that a lot of careful preparation and testing had been done prior to the race and that was very much appreciated. The race instructions were very clean and fair with the right amount of details. I personally really enjoyed all the canoe sections, I never thought there could be so much white water rapids in a RTN event, the Coulonge river section in the morning fog on Saturday was brutally cold but super fun to paddle with its endless succession of rapids. And after a long race, we were all treated to fun \"goodies\" at the end of the race with a spectacular zip line over chutes and a self guided raft ride on the Ottawa river to top it all. The racecourse was very well balanced, challenging without being uselessly cruel which kept it interesting and fun until the end. I hope many racers will regret not coming to this event.
The weather was very good when we got there on Wednesday, sunny and very warm, it felt like summer on the terrace, the kind of setting that would have made it overly tempting for a team like Spirit to order a few pitchers of beer the night before the race (ed: In the words of Dave H. – I resemble that remark!). As far as we are concerned, that is the only moment of the race where it\'s important to have nice weather.
I can\'t really remember exactly when the rain started pouring on us, we were paddling on the river so it\'s hardly noticeable, but the volunteers will tell you about it (!!). In fact, the worst was probably the near zero temperatures on Saturday morning while we were doing the advanced section on the Coulonge river, paddling from 1 AM to 9 AM. The thick fog reduced the visibility to zero during the night, headlamps were helpless and even making it worse, we had trouble seeing the river banks all of that combined with the usual 2nd sleepless night hallucinations and confusion, fighting sleep monsters. When the morning came, it also took a while before the sun could lift the fog and finally warm our shivering wet bodies.
Liza: I can\'t say that the weather really affected our race. It sure was pretty rainy on Thursday afternoon and into the evening, but rain doesn\'t really affect paddling or trekking conditions. I was a little worried about staying warm that night if the sky cleared up and we were still soaking wet, but I had brought some extra clothes with me (beyond what the organizers called for) just to ease my mind. I didn\'t end up using them since the rain stopped and we sort of dried off before the sky opened up to the stars. The coldest part of the race for me was Saturday morning in the boat on the Coulonge. I pulled out the old emergency blanket and wrapped it around my legs while I sat in the canoe. It really made a difference, and I\'m glad that item is part of our mandatory gear. All in all, in the end I sometimes think that the cold makes for a better race because we just have to keep on moving or else we\'ll freeze!
The Ottawa Valley is home to me, and I can\'t say how happy it made me to be racing through these familiar forests and paddling down these rivers who\'s names are etched in my memory. The paddling was amazing and beautiful. Challenging enough to provide an advantage to those who had the skills to paddle clean lines, and exciting enough to keep us all awake on day two on the Coulonge River. As Alain said, one of the most spectacular moments of the race was the very early Saturday morning on the Coulonge. The air was heavy with thick damp fog and as the moon rose behind the pine forests on the river banks it created these fabulous moon beams through the mist. I also loved the zip line across the chutes coulonge. We were there at a spectacular time of day and the sun was shining bright and all we had ahead of us was fun upon fun with the zip and the rafting and a bit of biking. I liked that some goodies were saved for the end of the course. The rafting was amazing, and I laughed to myself thinking that we were probably some of the most sleep-deprived people to ever paddle down that section of the Ottawa. We were being kind of goofy at that point and spent some time trying to surf our raft in holes and purposefully running some of the rapids backwards. Who says SRS is a serious team? :)
SleepMonsters
