Laurentian rogaining 2007
About the race: Laurentian Rogaining 2007 was also the North American Championships. Sponsored by Espresso sports event was held in Sainte Adele, 65 km from Montreal. 8 and 24 h categories. Points valued by their number (point 55 is worth 55 points), the last digit shows the complexity on a scale from 0-6. Race was also North American Rogaining championship. No sport ident, but punch cards. Rain basically all the time the first 12 hours. Team Mergeo.com members Kimberly Shavender and Peteris Ledins took a part in the event under the name "A hippopotamus and a rabbit". A map of race and their approximate route can be seen here. Checkpoint descriptions - here. A set of pictures which includes also Kimberly and Peteris finishing - here.
Peteris Ledins (with edits from Kimberly):
Laurentian Rogaining was the first race Kimberly and I have flown to. After a 3-hr layover in the hot and sunny LA airport, we arrived in Montreal late on the eve of the race. With rental car, we moved in direction of St. Adele, trying to understand where and when we have to be. The weather upon arrival was hot and wet, but not raining.
Weather when we woke up - hot and wet and raining pretty hard. At the start area we found some people known to Kimberly - Scott Pleban of Team ATP and his race partner John. I wonder whether Vladimir Gusyatnikov is there, and he seems to be not. The pre-race meeting is a funny one - Francis Falardeau, a little bit freezing, speaks with two older guys around him, one holding a megaphone, not smiling, very serious, the other - smiles as he holds an umbrella. The meeting is half in French, half in English - some random jokes about the time map was finished, a bit of explaining, some words which I do not hear (or were there those?) and turn out to be important later.
At 9 am we grab the maps and use our tiny Yaris car for routing. 9.55 - I wander around for some tape to close the map bag (it will be wet!!). At 10.00 we hear the whistle and start to run. The plan is to come back after a larger part of the race is done and continue after eating.
10:10 Kimberly takes off her upper jacket. At 10:15 I realize I have made my first mistake - we are going to point 55 and I did not notice the trail which would lead us across the tiny little river. So, we plunge into to the river and Kimberly asks me if I'm a derogatory term as I whine at least twice. It is going to be wet! Our legs are soaking in less than 20 minutes into the race. The next mistake again is a map reading problem of a minute or two when it takes some time to realize that yellow is an open space and white is wood. When going up for 55, I give a hand to some French guys which in turn help a bit later in the distance.
55 stands on a nice cliff. Slippery, so I do not risk to move closer. We continue with 61, up a ski hill and 22 near that. Next one is 30 and I choose the shortest route – trail which leads to a rock drop off. We continue with our choice as another team goes back although it ends with pretty steep rock that takes some time. We come to a dead end (Cul de Sac) street and bushwack again. 30 is a water control I do not notice at first although we walk just by the house and thus we have to come back.
We do some more bushwack for the next control and it is a mistake – the small trails are hard to be found, although once on it we continue till the attack point. I cannot find 24, but the same Frenchies come to us saying "where we come from". 53 - no thinker, up the hill. Downhill is harder, I'm afraid a bit and Kimberly says we should have come straighter to the trail. 41 involves some choice for trails and we pass a beaver created lake under electricity lines. At 70 we meet our Frenchies who do not know where exactly they are. I show them and we run together till the point. A random dog joins us and after the point Kimberly spends a minute or two trying to show the dog its home. The next bushwack is more walking in some sometimes wet meadow (although raining all the time the whole place was kind of dry - it had not rained for quite a while so no fire was allowed...), which ends at two houses with no road that leads from them. Spooky!
More running for 90 (we try to take all the valuable checkpoints – we take 4 most valuable during the race) and crossing some private property for the next one. We meet a team with a greet saying "how do you do" and moving accordingly as an aristocrat of beginning of 19th century would or at least as I imagine he would. I find some apples and throw to Kimberly.
61 is on top of a hill, end of a road with a trail leading away from it. On the way to 50 we cross some entertainment property (some marriage going on there or something like that and I have to concentrate to keep the look on my face called "I know what I am doing here and where I have to go") after which I make a mistake for the first time with trails - I do not read the map correctly there since all the trails seem to be of equal size while in fact there are some pretty large roads which scare me and we finish the route to 50 with a little bushwack, meeting a horse and a rider and crossing of a stream.
At 50 there is some team who is doing our first days route in approximately the same order except from the other end. It feels nice that they have done what we are planning to do and it has taken them 6.15 hours - we calculate we are middle, although some wear-and-tear (usually called tired) is starting to be noticable. On our way to 46 I have problems with non-existant trails, but we see teams coming out and it we have no problems. For 66 I make a decision to go around the steep climb and first find other little marshes around. We probably lose some 10 minutes, but the final result is good. We take 25 together with 2 other teams, one of which is some EMS or ESM who are doing almost our route. We go to 45 which we take in an unplanned way - I did not want to go to the large road, but I just did not see the trail we have to take.
We climb down the hill and continue for 64 - the road is big and by the map it seems to fork into two - so that is what I'm looking for as I continue my mantra "we are going too long to north...". We take a trail to the right which leads into some swamp. Come back and continue on road till I say stop and it's getting dark. Takes good 3 minutes to find where we are and start walking back. We meet a team who has walked pass the trail as well. I say they are making a mistake as they continue. For 64 it is dark and I leave one of my two lights hanging on trail blinking - I want to come back there! While going for this point I fall on steep rock on my elbows. We take the point and while coming back to trail we meet the team which we met last. They say they saw the trail from the road, but were looking for something bigger.
36 is our first point we planned to, but do not take. We meet a team at 40 and at point 56 - we walk straight to point while the team near close has spent some time there. We show where the point is and walk out. Kimberly wants to eat proper food and says we must head back to the hash house, but I convince her we must take 35 and we head into the woods. We spend a good hour there - I follow a small spring which is just some branch of the main one. We take the point as another team comes in. Kimberly is discouraged by the time it took to take such a difficult and low-valued point.
After 35, we manage to lengthen the route by a minute or five to take point 32 before heading back to the HH where (at exactly 0:00) we meet some teams waiting for food or eating while I (turns out I was rude, according to Kimberly) say I cannot wait on the spot and I walk to our car for re-supplies and new shoes. Kimberly orders two pastas for each of us: I eat one, she eats both of hers and asks for more sauce. She gets some non-vegetarian one, but still eats it. We leave the hash house after 45 or more minutes, with me feeling discouraged about the time that has passed!
Point 20 is on the other side of pretty large river that we ultimately decide not to swim across due to the darkness and the width of the river. Just before the race I asked the main organizer, whether the rivers are crossable and he said something like "yes, at spots where the points are placed close to the river". So we do not believe him after this point. Our next checkpoint is 72 which we take without any problems. The next one is 62, but as we get there (2 kms of walk and one incident with some glaring eyes of some animal), we find that we do not see how to cross the river - at the point where the trail comes in it is way too large, but where it gets smaller it is almost raging. So we walk around - approx 2 kms back and 3 kms to 51. Another imprecision in map - there is a house built on one of the roads in the map, so we walk around.
For 60 we drop our bags at an intersection of roads and run down to get it. We run back, pick up our bags and go for 91. I tow Kimberly as she tries to sleep without telling me and tumbles blindly into a small washout in road that I managed to skirt around. Just a few scrapes and bruises. 91 is a no-problem and 73 is easy. Finally, the sky begins to lighten and we meet some other teams. From 73 we get on road as the time is running out. Kimberly hears that and starts to run as we catch one team and then another. We take 23 as the other teams try to pass us without taking it.
At 80 we are 3 teams together - two guys leave faster and we call them back as they leave a map behind. I try to talk them into taking 43, but don't succeed. The other team of two girls still goes for the 72. The next 20 minutes I spend convincing Kimberly that we will not head home with the other teams, but will forge ahead and take more points. We stop at some house with a quiet but vicious looking dog where Kimberly changes her socks, takes some hydropel and ibuprofene and is ready to run again. We take 43 (she changes from tights to shorts) and meet John and Scott. Kimberly gets some chocolate from Scott and I am happy to see John - he looks worse than I do. Out last point is 31 which we take without any problems and we have more than 30 minutes to get to the hash house - a distance of less than 3 km through Sainte Adele. Kimberly tries to run, but I'm too tired and my knees hurt from running on pavement. I do not see any motivation for that, so I walk and we talk about Kimberly's dream veggie burger.
At the final sprint to the finish we catch Scott and John, give away our control card with more than 10 minutes to go. Our result is around 1580 while the first guys are in 19 hundreds. The best coed team has some 18 hundreds, but the full results are not announced just after the race.
I want to sleep immediately, but Kimberly does not - she goes for groceries before the awards. I sleep for 7 hours when we get back to hotel and for some 10 at the night - as always. The next day is Montreal and flight back home.