Mind Over Mountain Adventure Race Cumberland 2008
What a way to wrap up the 2008 season!
Jacqueline Windh / Team CW-X/Injinji / 29.09.2008
After the horrible forecasts we’d been looking at all week, the morning dawned with a peachy glow in the east, and the sky just cleared steadily all day. Perfect racing conditions - and the trails were surprisingly good in spite of the several days of rain we’d already had.
The race commenced at 9am, with a mass kayak start on Comox Lake. We first headed west, upwind, for 2 km, then around a buoy and back towards the start, then looping around another buoy to do a big triangular loop around the east end of the lake. The turns were fun, because you got a chance to see up close who was ahead of you and who was behind you as they passed going the other way.
Approaching the first buoy, I saw two surf skis already coming back, with a good lead on the rest of the pack - first the Ninja Chip-Monkeys (Sasha Brown and Brian McCurdy of Vancouver) and John Markez of Vancouver. Just behind them were Team Helly Hansen/MOMAR (Todd Nowack of Victoria and Gary Robbins of Squamish), paddling some sort of surf-ski with an outrigger on it using kayak paddles. Team DART-nuun (Jen Segger and Norm Hann of Squamish, Ryan Van Gorder of Seattle, and Tom Roozandaal of Duncan subbing in at the last minute for a sick Jen Van Gorder), in two double sea-kayaks, were in hot pursuit of the skis. Rounding the buoy, I then got a look at who was behind me - bringing up the rear of the pack was one surf ski with a very wet paddler trailing her feet over the sides for balance, but pluckily continuing on.
SleepMonsters
