We have a preliminary date for the next year Calleva Race. Mark your calendar for the 5th edition: Sunday, August 5th 2012. We should have all main permits by the end of the week. It's all new and different from previous years. As for now enjoy the memories from this year race in "2011 Calleva Race" movie:
Nov 7, 2011
Nov 3, 2011
Championship race report. Part 2.
First I have to say that we are incredibly lucky to have such generous sponsors as Calleva Outdoor Adventure. Without their support we would never get this incredible result. Thank you guys!
The 2011 CheckPoint Tracker National Championship was hosted at Lake Barkley resort in Cadiz, KY. The race was covering northern part of the wonderful Land between the Lakes national recreation area. That was my first trip to Kentucky, but I did my homework and downloaded all possible maps of the area to my laptop. I also checked some previous editions of Bonk Hard Racing events and realized that navigation will be the key of this year national championship. Here is what I learned about Bonk Hard Racing O-courses:
1) Distance between CPs is 1 km or more. That means it is very hard to attack one CP from another.
2) Very complicated land surface combined with 20 feet contour lines makes it very difficult to follow any small or even medium size features.
3) Most of good attack points are located on roads, but running on roads increases the travel distance by factor of 3 or even 4.
With this knowledge, Google Earth and bunch of maps in my laptop I started late night quiz on the race strategy. We got maps at 9 pm, race start was scheduled for 7 am next morning, and every minute I spent on the maps was deducted from my night sleep. Fortunately, we got maps and rules of travel only for the first half of the race and I squeezed 5 hours of sleep into this tight schedule.
Race started with a short prologue, followed by 3 CPs O-course, and 1 hour paddling leg. Very fast and easy, except the fact that we came in 4th in coed-2 to the main O-course transition. I was surprised by the level of the competition. We had great season with Michelle this year and team Orion was the only one that managed to beat us at Equinox Traverse a couple of month ago. This time it was different and we were not in the lead any more… at least for now. I prepared very solid strategy for the o-course and the first half dozen checkpoints were acquired with no mistakes or delays. That next one was tricky, and we did a mistake trying to attack it from the merging point of two creeks, instead of the road. Merging was not a point, it was 400 feet wide area of dense bushes. Attacking from there didn’t work well and we missed our re-entrée. We lost 40 more minutes looking around and finally gave up this CP. Now, when we were behind the schedule, we decided to skip 3 remote CPs, and move closer to the end of the O-course, where many easy CPs were located. Here I beat my personal record and navigated 1.1 kilometer straight line from one CP to another within 10 meters precision! Last 2 CPs (out of 29) were located on the opposite side of the lake and we had only 1 hour and at least 6 miles of travel to find them. That was very challenging, especially after sunset, and we couldn’t find the second one on time. We ran back to transition and made the 10 hours cutoff within 5 minutes! Our total losses were 5 missed CPs and soar legs from 10 hours of running.
In total dark we transitioned back to canoes and paddled north, to biking transition area. That’s where we got maps of the rest of the race. We spent 10 minutes plotting CPs and possible routes of travel: the biking leg was HUGE; more than 60 miles, mostly in dark, and mostly on technical single track! And all this in 13 hours till the finish cutoff that includes 5 miles of paddling back to the finish. It was tough. Michelle liked the biking leg, I didn’t… So read her race report about the biking leg of the race, since I am going to skip it here. I couldn’t believe we are going to make it on time until our canoe hit the sandy shore of the finish line. Only 10 minutes left till the 30 hours cutoff and any additional mistake would send us behind many teams. Likely we did no more mistakes.
This year I had really great season and the best teammate. I learned a lot of new stuff and my navigation is much better now. The season is over, but we have great plans for the next year. See you then…
Dima
Results of the race are here.
All our photos are here.
Vlad’s photos from the championship are here.
The 2011 CheckPoint Tracker National Championship was hosted at Lake Barkley resort in Cadiz, KY. The race was covering northern part of the wonderful Land between the Lakes national recreation area. That was my first trip to Kentucky, but I did my homework and downloaded all possible maps of the area to my laptop. I also checked some previous editions of Bonk Hard Racing events and realized that navigation will be the key of this year national championship. Here is what I learned about Bonk Hard Racing O-courses:
1) Distance between CPs is 1 km or more. That means it is very hard to attack one CP from another.
2) Very complicated land surface combined with 20 feet contour lines makes it very difficult to follow any small or even medium size features.
3) Most of good attack points are located on roads, but running on roads increases the travel distance by factor of 3 or even 4.
With this knowledge, Google Earth and bunch of maps in my laptop I started late night quiz on the race strategy. We got maps at 9 pm, race start was scheduled for 7 am next morning, and every minute I spent on the maps was deducted from my night sleep. Fortunately, we got maps and rules of travel only for the first half of the race and I squeezed 5 hours of sleep into this tight schedule.
Race started with a short prologue, followed by 3 CPs O-course, and 1 hour paddling leg. Very fast and easy, except the fact that we came in 4th in coed-2 to the main O-course transition. I was surprised by the level of the competition. We had great season with Michelle this year and team Orion was the only one that managed to beat us at Equinox Traverse a couple of month ago. This time it was different and we were not in the lead any more… at least for now. I prepared very solid strategy for the o-course and the first half dozen checkpoints were acquired with no mistakes or delays. That next one was tricky, and we did a mistake trying to attack it from the merging point of two creeks, instead of the road. Merging was not a point, it was 400 feet wide area of dense bushes. Attacking from there didn’t work well and we missed our re-entrée. We lost 40 more minutes looking around and finally gave up this CP. Now, when we were behind the schedule, we decided to skip 3 remote CPs, and move closer to the end of the O-course, where many easy CPs were located. Here I beat my personal record and navigated 1.1 kilometer straight line from one CP to another within 10 meters precision! Last 2 CPs (out of 29) were located on the opposite side of the lake and we had only 1 hour and at least 6 miles of travel to find them. That was very challenging, especially after sunset, and we couldn’t find the second one on time. We ran back to transition and made the 10 hours cutoff within 5 minutes! Our total losses were 5 missed CPs and soar legs from 10 hours of running.
In total dark we transitioned back to canoes and paddled north, to biking transition area. That’s where we got maps of the rest of the race. We spent 10 minutes plotting CPs and possible routes of travel: the biking leg was HUGE; more than 60 miles, mostly in dark, and mostly on technical single track! And all this in 13 hours till the finish cutoff that includes 5 miles of paddling back to the finish. It was tough. Michelle liked the biking leg, I didn’t… So read her race report about the biking leg of the race, since I am going to skip it here. I couldn’t believe we are going to make it on time until our canoe hit the sandy shore of the finish line. Only 10 minutes left till the 30 hours cutoff and any additional mistake would send us behind many teams. Likely we did no more mistakes.
This year I had really great season and the best teammate. I learned a lot of new stuff and my navigation is much better now. The season is over, but we have great plans for the next year. See you then…
Dima
Results of the race are here.
All our photos are here.
Vlad’s photos from the championship are here.
Oct 29, 2011
Championship race report. Part 1.
This past weekend Dima and I headed out to Kentucky and an area known as the Land between the Lakes for the Checkpoint Zero National Championship race. The race was the final one for us as a team this year as Team Calleva/Halfwaythere.com and we were excited about racing in a new area and on new terrain that we knew would be challenging. Bonk Hard racing designed the race course for Checkpoint Tracker and after 30 hours of full on racing (actually 29 hours and 50 minutes for us) we can say that it truly was a championship caliber course. Going into the race Dima and I were ranked # 1 in the 2 person co-ed division and we knew that regardless of our race there was no way anyone could over take us in the final rankings for the year. However there were 12, 2 person co-ed teams and some great competition most notably team Orion from Minnesota. They beat us at the Equinox Traverse over the summer and we knew they would be our competition for this race. The race started at 7am Friday morning as the sun was rising over the Land between the Lakes. We were blessed with perfect racing weather for the whole 30 hours. Not too cold, not hot at all. Perfect racing conditions with Kentucky fall foliage as our playground.
7am and off we went first on a short and I mean short paddle prologue around Ian Adamson off the shore of the beach. Once we got back to the beach we started the race with a trekking leg in Lake Barkley Park. This leg had 3 points we could get in any order, followed by a trek back to the beach for the start of the first paddle. The trek took about an hour and soon we were in our boat for a short 5 mile paddle across the lake. We took out about an hour later at CP 5 and had a brief trek to CP 6 and the start of an epic orienteering section. There were almost 30 points on this O course spread out over 30k. All teams had 10 hours to complete the course and get as many points as we could in any order. We got our plan of attack together for the course and headed out around 10am for what would be a long, hard but very fun day of running around in the woods. Dima did an excellent job of navigating and after 10 full hours we hit all but 4 points on the course. The O course was one of the best I have ever done and I know many other racers felt the same way. Darkness moved in and we made our way back to the boats for a beautiful night paddle under a sky full of stars. There is something special about paddling out in a remote area in the dark with nothing but a few lights in the distance and a quietness that is hard to find anywhere else. Definitely a highlight of the race. By 10:30pm we had landed at the paddle takeout after getting two points on the water. We then made our way by foot to the TA where we got the rest of our race course which was primarily one big bike leg. We transitioned from foot to bike and after plotting the points and our route we were off for what would be about 10 hours of awesome mountain biking including some of the best single track in an adventure race I have ever done. The highlight of the race for me. By the end of the bike leg we were cutting it close for time after deciding that we were getting all the points on that leg, a decision that many teams did not make. But we never never stopped moving and we made it back to the boat put in for the last paddle of the race to the finish. We got on the water at 11:45am and had till 1pm to get to the finish. We were not sure we were going to make it and time got even tighter when we discovered we did not punch the passport at the put in. We had to turn around, paddle back and punch the point before heading out on the paddle for good. From there it was a paddle sprint to the finish and the beach of Lake Barkley State Park came into our sites with 20 minutes left on the clock. We paddled hard and hit the beach and finish line with 10 minutes to spare!! We were one of the last teams to finish due to our decision to clear the bike leg of the race. Many teams except for the top contenders skipped most of the bike section and we knew because of that we either had 1st or 2nd depending on how team Orion did. Well as we found out later they cleared the O Course and finished a few hours ahead of us. Kudos to them for running a great race!!! So we came in 2nd in our division but 1st for the year overall. Overall it was an awesome race with a well thought out and challenging course.
The year has come to an end for us and I would like to say a special thanks to Calleva for making it all possible this year. They have been great sponsors and it has been a privilege racing for them this year. We hope you enjoyed following us this year as much as we enjoyed racing. Dima, thanks for being an awesome teammate. I had a great time at all of our races and could not ask for a better teammate.
Until next year.........
7am and off we went first on a short and I mean short paddle prologue around Ian Adamson off the shore of the beach. Once we got back to the beach we started the race with a trekking leg in Lake Barkley Park. This leg had 3 points we could get in any order, followed by a trek back to the beach for the start of the first paddle. The trek took about an hour and soon we were in our boat for a short 5 mile paddle across the lake. We took out about an hour later at CP 5 and had a brief trek to CP 6 and the start of an epic orienteering section. There were almost 30 points on this O course spread out over 30k. All teams had 10 hours to complete the course and get as many points as we could in any order. We got our plan of attack together for the course and headed out around 10am for what would be a long, hard but very fun day of running around in the woods. Dima did an excellent job of navigating and after 10 full hours we hit all but 4 points on the course. The O course was one of the best I have ever done and I know many other racers felt the same way. Darkness moved in and we made our way back to the boats for a beautiful night paddle under a sky full of stars. There is something special about paddling out in a remote area in the dark with nothing but a few lights in the distance and a quietness that is hard to find anywhere else. Definitely a highlight of the race. By 10:30pm we had landed at the paddle takeout after getting two points on the water. We then made our way by foot to the TA where we got the rest of our race course which was primarily one big bike leg. We transitioned from foot to bike and after plotting the points and our route we were off for what would be about 10 hours of awesome mountain biking including some of the best single track in an adventure race I have ever done. The highlight of the race for me. By the end of the bike leg we were cutting it close for time after deciding that we were getting all the points on that leg, a decision that many teams did not make. But we never never stopped moving and we made it back to the boat put in for the last paddle of the race to the finish. We got on the water at 11:45am and had till 1pm to get to the finish. We were not sure we were going to make it and time got even tighter when we discovered we did not punch the passport at the put in. We had to turn around, paddle back and punch the point before heading out on the paddle for good. From there it was a paddle sprint to the finish and the beach of Lake Barkley State Park came into our sites with 20 minutes left on the clock. We paddled hard and hit the beach and finish line with 10 minutes to spare!! We were one of the last teams to finish due to our decision to clear the bike leg of the race. Many teams except for the top contenders skipped most of the bike section and we knew because of that we either had 1st or 2nd depending on how team Orion did. Well as we found out later they cleared the O Course and finished a few hours ahead of us. Kudos to them for running a great race!!! So we came in 2nd in our division but 1st for the year overall. Overall it was an awesome race with a well thought out and challenging course.
The year has come to an end for us and I would like to say a special thanks to Calleva for making it all possible this year. They have been great sponsors and it has been a privilege racing for them this year. We hope you enjoyed following us this year as much as we enjoyed racing. Dima, thanks for being an awesome teammate. I had a great time at all of our races and could not ask for a better teammate.
Until next year.........
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