Tag: Lupine Lights

2016 – Florida State Championship (Turkey Burn)

On By DavidIn Adventure Race3 Comments

Team Disoriented wins one!

Wekiwa Springs State Park was the location of the 2016 Florida State Championship AKA Turkey Burn 12Hr Adventure Race.  Dave Brault and Jim Feudner teamed up to design another amazing race that pushed all the teams for everything they were worth.  This was our first time at the Turkey Burn.  Unfortunately, we were missing our #GetRad guy, Stephen, who was off doing stuff like getting married, adopting a dog, and working his ass off over in Europe…

Bier & Bratwurst?

…or not.

Bike 1 (~8 miles)

For the 4AM race start, Dave led the teams to the bottom of a sugar sand covered jeep trail.  At go, we put on our best hardcore faces and pedaled for everything we were worth, until we passed the volunteer snapping photos 20 feet ahead.  Once safely past, my race face changed to Mr. Huff and Puff and I concentrated on staying upright and not hyperventilating as my back tire churned up sand.  In front of us, Good ‘Nuff kicked up a cloud of sugar sand as they powered through, their taillights vanishing in the darkness.  I have words for moments like that…special words.

This section had 4 CPs that we had to get in order, and as much as we wanted to pull away from the other teams, they were having none of it.  Behind us was a steady stream of lights with mere seconds between teams.  This was no time to screw up and we cleared the section quickly, racing back to the Main TA where we had our first special test, making S’mores at a campfire.  Pretty sweet!

Foot 1 (~3.5 miles)

The start of Foot 1 presented us with our first strategic decision.  We could either do the foot section while carrying our paddle gear, or clear the foot section and then go back to the Main TA to get our paddle gear before heading off to the canoe section.  We decided to carry all of our paddle gear and raced out of the TA.  Then we realized that they probably had PFDs at the canoes and it would be smarter to not carry ours.  We ran back to the Main TA, dropped our PFDs, and raced out of there only to realize we forgot to grab extra water for the 4 hour canoe section.  Crappy, crappy transition.  Luckily, I helped us recover by totally screwing up the first checkpoint on the foot section.  Why stay in second place when 5th is much more fun.

Y’all ready for a pro tip?  Here it is.  The scale on an O-Course map is probably different than the scale on a 1:24000 map.  You see, CP5 was only about 200 meters from the bend in the road if you use the right scale.  Use the wrong scale and it looks more like 350 meters.  It’s pretty stinking hard to find a little orange and white flag when your 150 meters past it, at night, in the woods.  What’s really cool is if you can watch the headlights of other teams pass you as you struggle in vain to find the CP.  I have plenty of these pro tips, ya just gotta ask.

Boat (~12 miles)

The canoe along the Wekiva river was beautiful.  The canoe along the backwater channels was hell.  Of course, all of the CPs were along the backwater channels.  According to many race directors, the word “canoe” is Native American for “hunk of fiberglass you push and pull over many downed trees.”  Todd was nailing the nav on this section as we struggled to regain the time we lost on the previous foot section.

view-from-otter-camp

After 3.5 hours of paddling and getting soaked to our waist from jumping in and out of the water, we were freezing and just wanted to get off the canoe.  Once we landed, we ran back to the Main TA on numb feet and chattering teeth.  It took the entire 15 minute run back for us to warm up.

wekiwa-springs_contest_cortney-busscher_kayak-adventure-at-wakiwa-spring

Bike 2 (~12 miles)

Boom! Lookin’ Pro! Long enough to take the photo anyway.

This section had us going in a clockwise direction to collect the CPs in order.  Somewhere close to CP24 we ran into Ron, Courtney and Erik from Lost Cause.  It was the first time we had seen another team since the paddle section.  We ventured to CP24 and CP25 together, and after punching CP25 away they all flew like the down of a thistle.  What the hell does that mean?!  Seriously!  I’ve heard that line for 44 years and still have no clue what it means…down of a thistle…whatever.

In more tortoise-like fashion we raced back to the Main TA and almost got ran over by Good ‘Nuff as they were flying up to CP25.  They are crazy fast!

Foot 2 (~7.5 miles)

Foot 2 is where the strategy started to come in.  We were clearing the course up to this point.  But, we knew that we wouldn’t be able to clear the entire course and doubted any other team would either.  So, we had to make decisions to maximize our points.  Todd and I debated two far away CPs.  We estimated it would take us 30-40 minutes to grab them both and get back.  I wanted to get them.  Todd wanted to leave them and save our legs for the last foot section.   In the end, I agreed with Todd and it ended up being a wise move.  Mentally, it is hard to drop any points when you’re clearing a course, but who can resist Todd’s Cheesy McPleasy smile?

Cheesy McPleasy – You can’t resist me!

Bike 3 (~11 miles)

Not much to say on this section.  I have little chicken legs and knew we wouldn’t be able to get many bike points, so we didn’t try.  With the sugar sand trails that suck the life out of you, we knew we’d end up killing ourselves for just a few points when there were more to get on foot.  Instead, we raced to get the first easy bike CP and then headed right back to the Main TA and transitioned to foot.

 

Foot 3 (~4.5 miles)

The final foot was the make or break section.  We knew we had to clear it and get back as quickly as we could to have any chance of winning.  There wasn’t any room for errors here and we tried to be as solid as we could with the navigation.  With Ana pace counting and Todd spotting CPs with his super x-ray vision, we cleared this section efficiently.  One final push to the Main TA and we finished after 11:31:00 of solid racing.

There is this feeling you get in your gut when you get to the finish and realize you left 30 minutes and a whole bunch of checkpoints out on the course.  It is not a pleasant feeling.  It’s more like that feeling you get the day after you eat bad sushi.  You have no idea what the other teams got and your mind replays the whole race and every point you left out there.  Should we have gotten those two far checkpoints?  Could we have picked up one more on the bike?  30 minutes is an eternity to wait.

In the end it turned out great.  We tied Lost Cause on points but won on time.  Only thing left to do was eat some delicious spaghetti, check Todd over for ticks, pack up, and drive the 6 hours back home.

As always, a big thanks to Dave, Jim, and all of the volunteers that made this event awesome!  There is nothing better than racing hard with great friends out in the beautiful woods of Florida.  This is why we do it:

 

 

Lupine Piko

On By DavidIn GearLeave a comment

Capture

We were at the 2015 USARA National Championship when I had finally had it with my headlamps.  Rather than resting at the cabin in preparation for the next day’s race, I was at the bike staging area wrapping my bike helmet with a Walmart bag.  My cheaply made headlamp and batteries were not waterproof, not even water resistant, and they wouldn’t survive the evening’s downpour without protection.  At that moment I decided this was BS and if I was going to take this racing thing seriously, then I needed to be willing to invest in better gear.  First on my list was a great set of lights.

When you think about it, few things will improve your overall course speed better than good lights.  For night sections, you use lights during every event: trail running, biking and canoeing.  Very few pieces of gear cross all 3 of the main domains of adventure racing.  So, in my book, it’s definitely worth the cost.  Cheap lights are simply a frustration to be avoided.  I wanted lights that I could throw in my pack and if I have to swim across a river, or hike for hours in a downpour, I don’t have to worry about them.  I like gear that I can trust.  There is nothing worse than bombing down a muddy mountain bike trail at night, in the rain, and have your headlamp fail on you.  And if you adventure race, you know that you WILL be bombing down a trail, at night, in the rain…every race director has a direct line to the rain gods to make that happen.

So, I asked some racing buddies of mine what lights they recommended and did a few inquiries online and chose the Lupine Piko.

Piko-Farbe

I’m not a professional gear reviewer, I just like sharing what works for me.  If you want to hear the good remarks from the pros then check out the reviews.  But here’s the skinny:

All that in 55 grams.  55 GRAMS!  Oh sorry…1.94 ounces.  Yeah, that doesn’t help either does it.  How about this, it’s freakin’ light, like 2 slices of toast light.  Yeah, I know, that doesn’t include the battery weight.  But, who knows what battery size you’re going to use.   You can choose either the 2.2Ah, 3.3Ah, 6.6Ah, 13.2Ah or the mack daddy 20Ah Bottle Battery.  For me, when I want to attach it to my bike helmet, I use the 3.3Ah

helmet

When I’m doing night orienteering and need a lot of light for a long time, I’ll throw the 6.6Ah into my pack and run an extension cable up to my headband.  This means that all the weight is in my pack and I’m kicking out 1500 lumens with only a 55 gram light on my head.  So what does 1500 lumens look like?

BAMM! About like that!  Oh, and did you notice the red lights on the back of the battery pack?  These serve as a visual indication of the battery’s charge level so you know, before you go.  They can also be set to stay on as a taillight.  Not something you’re going to find in those cheap lights and battery packs.

I will say that the biggest negative for the Piko is switching between bike helmet and headband.  I don’t think the designers were thinking about multi-sport applications, like adventure racing, when they designed the mount.  However, there is a simple fix, and that is to get the GoPro Adapter.  Once you have the GoPro Adapter, your mounting options are endless.  Check out what Team Odyssey did for their Lupine Piko using the GoPro Adapter

Psyched?!  Ready to go Lupine!  Then contact the awesome folks at Lupine North America.  Tell them Team Disoriented highly recommended them.  If you have any questions on the Piko or other Lupine lights, contact Bill and he will help you out.

Lupine North America

If you have any questions for us on the Lupine Piko, or any comments in general, drop us a line below.  Oh and BTW, this isn’t a picture of us, I just thought it was bad ass!

Lampentest-1-von-1-780x520

 

Earth Day Adventure Race

On By DavidIn Adventure RaceLeave a comment

How do you prepare for 6 hours of canoeing followed by a 4 hour bike ride.  Pretty easy actually.  Just drop your shorts, sit your bare ass on your driveway, and have your teammate grab you by the ankles and drag you for 30 feet or so.  I stand here writing this, not wanting to sit on anything for the next week.

Butt, enough with the training, let’s get down to the fun stuff. (See what I did there?  Yep, only the best from yours truly)

Maps, instructions and all the other goodies needed to follow along:

Map 1 / Map 2 / Map 3 / Map 4 / Passport

Santa Fe O-Course / Passport

Ft. White O-Course / Passport

Foot 1

Ana’s knee has been bothering her since Sea to Sea, so I teamed up with Broccoli Covered Powder Babies for this race.  I registered as a solo, but we would really be running this as a 3-person team.  I didn’t want to be responsible for DQ’ing Broccoli, if I had to fall out for some reason.  Anyway, the Earth Day Adventure Race started at 6PM from the River Rise Preserve State Park and leading from the very start was Good Nuf.  They tore out of the TA like Road Runner from those old Looney Tunes cartoons, you know the ones where the road runner is going so fast that the road flies up in the air behind him.  Yeah, it was pretty much like that.  I think I even heard a faint “Beep Beep” in the distance.

Since we couldn’t go off trail for this section, due to park rules, this was pretty much follow-the-leader and we hit all the CPs without issue.

Boat 1:

Ah, the beginning of the boat section…I remember it fondly.  There I was, staring at the beautiful Santa Fe river and my fiberglass canoe seat, anticipating how intimately connected we would become over the next 3.5 hours.

Stephen provided the motor in the front, Todd navigated from the middle, and I flung buckets of water on top of their heads for hours from the rear.  Pretty sweet deal if you ask me.

It was nighttime when we paddled down to CP10 at Blue Springs Park.  As we struggled against the spring’s current, our headlamps illuminated an aqua-colored pool of the clearest waters I’ve seen.  It was absolutely stunning.

Our next checkpoint, CP11, was a gauging station just east of Ginnie Springs.  We actually nailed the navigation to it and saw a tall piece of wood sticking out of the water.  But, we didn’t see any numbers on it and thought that perhaps the gauging station was little further downstream.  We paddled a little further until we ran into some drunk locals hanging out at Ginnie Springs.

Todd yells across the river, “Have you seen a gauging station around here?”

Y’all lookin’ for a PlayStation?

No, a gauging station!

Todd, they wouldn’t know a gauging station if their 6-pack was hanging from it.

Up river we paddled, back to our original location, where two other teams were marking the level of the Santa Fe river.  Come to find out the numbers were on the back of the board.  Oh well.

Cruising past Ginnie Springs was interesting, part campground, part Rave, part spring break…there was a dude wearing a light suit and people dancing around with glow sticks.  If you’re looking for rednecks, drunk women, beer guzzling and loud music, then Ginnie Springs is your place…Todd was in Nirvana and once Stephen and I wrestled him to the floor of the canoe and tied him to his seat, we commenced paddling down the Santa Fe.  It was straight out of Greek mythology were they tied Odysseus to the mast so that he could withstand the Sirens’ call.

Foot 2:

We arrived at the Santa Fe TA after 3.5 hrs of paddling and began our first orienteering section.

I think we were in 4th place by this time with DeChunkers right in front of us.  The Foot section map shows a beautifully outlined trail following the river.  Some people say there was a trail, some people say there wasn’t.  We fell into the “wasn’t” category.

Foot2

You can see our track above.  We started with CP1 then a straight south bushwhack to CP6.  From their, straight east to CP2.  We tried to pick up CP5 on the way, which was silly since we were going due east and about 150m too far north to see it.  From CP2, it was straight bearing shots to CP3, then CP4.  Then back up to CP2 to attack CP5.  All this time we kept running into DeChunkers.  They’re like freakin’ Space Ghost.  Here we are in the dark searching for a CP thinking there is no one around and all of a sudden, there they are, at the control ahead of us, as if they could materialize out of thin air.  “Hey DeChunkers you want to work together on the next…hey wait…where’d they go!”  Spppaaaacccceeeee GGGGhhhhhoooossstttt!

We struggled on CP7, having no clear attack point, and no clear trail.  Eventually, by wandering around,  working from the river bend and triangulating off of headlamps, we found it and beat feet to the TA where DeChunkers were once again just ahead of us.

Boat 2

One hour of boating from Santa Fe TA to Tudeen TA with no CPs along the way in the middle of the night.  About as exciting as it sounds.  I’m kidding of course.  It was a really nice paddle and the blisters were forming beautifully on my posterior.

Foot 3

We  arrived at Foot 3 slightly in front of DeChunkers.  I think we were now in 1st place by a good 15 seconds or so.  I don’t know what happened to Todd and Stephen on this section, but once we hit it, they turned into a pair of bloodhounds.

My navigation wasn’t all that great, but man you put those two within 50 yards of a CP and they would sniff it out.  As we were heading to a CP, I’d say something like, “Should be right about here.” and then I’d here “Got it!” and off we’d trot to the next CP.  There’s not much more to say on this section, they were bad ass and I was along for the ride.

Boat 3

Transitioning to the boat, we knew we were in 1st, but had no idea what kind of lead we had on any team.  The race had been really close from the beginning and there were some fast teams out there.  So, we got on the water as quickly as we could for a final 2 hour paddle with one CP along the way.

Some people like 3 in a boat…I say they’re wacko.  I hate it.  I feel like I’m on the verge of capsizing with every paddle stroke and my butt is trying to attach itself to the seat like a sucker fish so that we don’t fling ourselves into the water.  We found the sole CP without issue and made it to the final transition area.

Yep, love this pic!  Middle of the night, headlamps on, rockin the USARA jacket.

Bike 1

Can you believe it, there’s actually a bike section in this race.  We hit the final TA knowing that we had some of the fastest bike teams right on our tail and a 4+ hr ride ahead.  Talk about feeling the pressure.

We knew our navigation had to be spot on if we were going to win this thing, so we decided to screw up the first CP.  When the clue says, “Boat Ramp” and you see a sign on the road that says Boat Ramp –>, you gotta take that turn, even if its 1500 meters too soon.  It’s a really good way to waste 15 minutes and get the adrenal glands pumping.

Once we fixed that issue, we formed a pace line and hit the rest of the CPs without much issue until the second to last CP.

We’re racing down sandy horse trails less than 30 minutes away from winning this 18Hr race, knowing that we have speed freak teams behind us and I can’t find the stupid westbound trail that CP24 is on.  Thank god Stephen and Todd were there to sort it all out.  I got turned around on an unmarked westbound trail and couldn’t make sense of where I was.  After studying the map, they got us pointed on the right trail and we raced off to the finish.

Final

And with that, we took our first win of the season.  Although I tried to keep the trophy, Stephen said he had a special place for it and wouldn’t let it go.

As always Craig and FLXAdventures put on another excellent race.  I always look forward to Craig’s races as he takes the time to find really interesting areas with great history.  Glad to see all of our adventure racing friends out there again.  A big thanks to Broccoli Covered Powder Babies for letting me race with you guys.  Y’all are awesome and I always have a blast racing with you guys.  I only wish that Ana could have been there racing as well, she always adds to the fun plus she let’s me drink her beer.

This was primarily a night race with heavy paddling and I relied heavily on my Epic paddle, Lupine lights, and KanPas compasses.  I’ll be writing a review of my Lupine light in the next week or so, but let me say they are AWESOME!