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Huntsville Hammer

Cody Truitt / 12.02.2010

Ok, a big dilemma came up the Wednesday before the race. One of our teammates (Stacie) thought a month long trip to Nepal was more important than the race and wasn’t up to racing; had only been back a week. So Bambi and I scrambled around and found none other than the Rock Star Canadian himself (Jason Maloney) to race with us. We were surprised and honored that he decided to race with us, HFAR Chick N’ Nuts.

So we get to the race and thought being first at boat drop would win us a prize, but then we went to the wrong spot; just a little too short of the drop. I was hoping this wasn’t a sign a things to come since I would be naving this race. We set up TA and we were ready for the first run. The first leg was a run with the Sprint racers, took our time since we were going for 12 hrs. Came in a respectable time, don’t believe our first two splits on the Results post. We weren’t that slow on the first run and we weren’t that fast on the first bike – so was some combination between the two. The next leg was a bike to the Boat Drop but we had to get a nav point on the way. I knew this point was going to be tricky because we had to ride the feeder of I-45 but it wasn’t on our map. I had no idea how far from 45 the point would be so I had to look at topo and bends of the road for an indication. One small hiccup and then we found the right road and cp in culvert.

Now to boat drop, we jump in the boats and Jason decided he wanted a quick dip in the lake mid morning. Already?! It’s not even hot yet. He was paddling our KayakTrek Baja solo while we were in the Necky. He dumps the water out and tries getting in it again with success and we are off, but he realizes the pedals aren’t adjusted for his leg length so he was having to use all upper body. I tried explaining how to adjust the pedals but I have only paddled the boat myself a couple of times. Once he did, he was leaving Bambi and I in the dust while we working our A$$es off to keep up. One cp at the bridge easily located and we portaged across the road to cut out 1 km of paddling, thanks for the help Werewolves – ooowwwww!

Off to the next cp south of the bridge with one land nav point 200 km inland. Getting back in the boats I forgot to zip up my map case and dumped my compass in the lake. We were in knee deep water and I still couldn’t find it, luckily it was the only casualty from the race. Now for one more cp on the way to boat drop. It was a clearly defined feature and not hard to find when there was about 5 teams heading to the same spot. Got it and back to boat drop, it gets tricky with all the canals and creeks leading back to Stubblefield and ran into a couple of roadblocks but made it back without losing too much time.

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