As some of you may know, team NSAR is leaving next tuesday to compete in Untamed New England (www.untamedne.com).  It’s a 60 hour race (likely 72) that is an AR World Series event, and also happens to be a qualifier for the world championship of adventure racing in Portugal.  It will be the longest event we’ve ever done, but we’ve also got the strongest team we’ve ever had.  Wish us luck!  The race website will offer live tracking of all 40 teams and will also allow you to send us trail mail during the event.  This is a great event hosted by one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet.  Grant Killian does an excellent job organizing events so if you’re looking to step up to a 30 hour or 60 hour race definetly check out his website.

Cheers,

Nat

And the full results are in: Click here

Photos will be added to the WYD page soon.

I just wanted to take a couple of lines to thank everyone who made this year’s Who’s Your Daddy Adventure Race a success.

First our sponsors….Cannons Cross Pub provided a great venue for us to kick off the race and a nice spot to sit down, have a giggly pop and tell some stories….Thanks! We had some great prizes donated by Bob Matthews and Taylor Petroleum, PQA Ltd and, NB Road Builders Association. They were appreciated and anxiously received by the participants. Thank you! Fred-FM, you gave us one of your morning talents (Newman) for the day and some great ‘plugs’ on air leading up to the race, during and after. This station ROCKS….check em out online at www.fredfm.ca

Second our Volunteers….special thanks to Bob Matthews, and Natasha Woods for helping Nathaniel and I out during the event. Also thanks to Mandy Lowery for taking lots of photos, we will try and get something posted asap.

Last but certainly not the least……our racers…..you all had fantastic performances, Nathaniel and I were surprised that you all navigating the course so easily, I guess next year we need to step up our game. The tire pulls were done with excellent times, it seemed like you had all been practicing since last year’s Daddy. Great job everyone!

Finally we all know who our Daddy and Mommy are, Jason and Kelly turned out excellent performances. We will do our best to get all the results posted ASAP so be sure to check back soon.

Thanks again to everyone! The next six weeks will be extremely busy for Nat and I, we are off to QC to race next week-end, the following 3 week-ends will see us traveling to Northern NB to continue the work on Race the Phantom, then we are off to New England for a 60hr race, then back in the saddle for some more Phantom work. Busy summer but lots of fun.

Only 5 days left!! You have waited a year to find out who it could be and the time is almost here. The DNA tests have been submitted and now we are just waiting for the results. Who will be your Daddy for 2009? Do you have any suspicions? Who will it be?

The course is looking good. A strong team will be challenged to clear the course but we don’t think it is impossible, just hard. The conditions are/were good, a bit of mud because of the rain but nothing that will stop you from achieving your goal of finishing.

The START location has been revealed as Cannons Cross Pub located at 15 Riverside Drive. There are drink and nacho specials following the event so be sure to stick around for a ‘pop’, some food and some stories. If you show up as early as 7am you can get your maps, the race will start at 9am sharp.

If you have any questions please drop us a note, see you soon.

cheers
Troy and Nat

Another winter has come and gone, and with it, another training season comes to an end. As some of you may recall, last year I signed up for the Capital City Road Runner’s (Fredericton’s local running club) Intermediate Marathon Running clinic which took me through a structured training regimen that prepared me for a spring marathon. I enjoyed the experience so much I decided to sign up again this year and as a result have been running regularly since January in preparation for another spring marathon. The training schedule targeted the Fredericton Marathon once again, but worked out reasonably well for quite a few folks who went to Boston and for those going to run Ottawa. The Fredericton marathon takes place on Sunday May 10th, and will be my second attempt at the marathon. It’s a “manicured trail” marathon, so although not as wild as the typical events I compete in, it’s not quite a road marathon, yet.

This year training has gone very well and I have to admit that I’ve been less lazy and have skipped less runs this year. The intermediate group was smaller, but we were very dedicated and rarely missed a workout. I believe my speed is up, I’ve done more long distance runs, did more hills, and hope to improve my time by a few minutes putting me below the qualifying time for Boston.

I’ve always been the type of person who procrastinates and crams for exams, but if I’ve learned anything from the past 2 years of running its that you don’t run 42kms easily, even if you’ve done your homework and have spent the necessary hours preparing. This is of course unless you run well below your potential.

I found myself in a tremendous amount of pain during the last 10km of last years marathon and I suspect this one won’t be any different. What’s funny, is that I don’t believe for a second that the next marathon will ever be easier than the last one, because no matter what shape I’m in, I will push myself till it hurts… even badly…

Perhaps appropriately, Allyson, the clinic leader for our Intermediate group, just sent out a quote yesterday that said: “Pain is temporary, quiting is forever”. I’ll be repeating this over and over again until I cross the finish line. A lot of hard work went into preparing for this marathon and I don’t plan on wasting it.

Nat

Now that I’ve finally managed to catch up on some much needed sleep I thought I would share our (Team NSAR: aka Nat and Troy) experience at E2C (www.hrsar.ca/e2c) this year. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this event, Eco-Endurance Challenge (E2C) is a Rogaine event, and this one in particular comes in two flavors: 8 hours and 24 hours. A Rogaine, is simply a very large orienteering course/event, and because of the duration of the event and the amount of territory covered, navigation is typically carried out with larger scale maps(less detailed) than orienteering and involves a lot more walking or running between each control.

We drove to Halifax on Friday after work, with five of us spread out comfortably in Mike’s racing/family caravan. The crew included Team Radical Edge aka Mike and Antoine’s excellent adventure (Mike Davis and Antoine Arcand), Team NSAR (Myself and Troy) and Shaunda, Antoine’s better half. Andrew Lowery, of Team Cogeyed, was nice enough to, yet again, let a bunch of smelly, messy racers stay at his house, so we took advantage. Thanks Andrew. Morning came quickly, as young Bodin Lowery made sure we would not be late for registration by waking us up for some morning playtime at 4am.

Once the race started, it appeared as though 95% of the 24 hour competitors headed in the same direction, attempting to navigate the course in a clockwise loop. This meant that for the first few hours you were always surounded by dozens of racers. By the time we reached the most northern set of controls, we were still regularly bumping into 3 or 4 teams at each control, which is rare for this event. This meant that teams would often unintentially give away the location of controls. It also promoted the use of the “piggyback” navigation technique. Team NSAR, like most of the other teams, chose to go clockwise. We had planned to get all of the the controls between the start and the northern river crossing except two. Most of the controls on the way to the north end of the course were low value (400 or less) and were rather easy to pick up. At the northern end of the course there were 5 high-point controls(900/1000 points) that required 1-2km bushwhacks between them, depending on which approach was selected. We were fortunate enough to navigate these before nightfall and as a result made very few navigational mistakes collecting these controls. At 9pm we had reached the northern lake crossing, having fetched all intended controls, exactly as planned in the time we estimated.

The rest was all down, err south, from here on. The next set of controls were clustered quite close together which was good because it was now pitch black. We got the first 2 rather easily and head towards the third which was located on the top of a hill. In the dark we missed the hill entirely and spent some time backtracking to find the control. We eventually did find it, but this is just a reminder at how 5 degrees on your compass can make a big difference. From here we had 5-7 km of road to get to the next set of controls passing by a safety camp. We filled up our water and picked up some chicken noodle soup at the camp and quickly made our way down to the next controls, which were right off the main road. We now had a decision to make, there was a big cluster of high point valued controls south east of where we were, but the only way to get there by road involved a 10-12 km wrap around a big lake and back up to get the controls, much of which we would have to double back to get to the finish. We looked at the bushwhack scenarios and found one that might work and would minimize the bushwhack to about 1k and provided a pretty good margin for error on the other side of the bushwhack.

We headed first south east to a lonely control , number 215 I believe and from this control, there was a small 4-wheeler track heading south that we followed up until it started heading west. There were a few footsteps but it wasn’t used by many racers. This small path, got us to within 1 km of the cluster of high point valued controls, saving us about 10-12 km on the road (which was far for a team who was not running). It was a nasty bushwhack filled with windfalls and messy clearcuts, but we quickly came out the other side and ended up exactly where we needed to be, less than 1km from the famous (222,223) cluster that so many teams had problems with, including us. It was about 3am at this point, very dark and a mist was falling that created a cloud of small reflections in front of your headlamp, reducing visibility. We took a bearing to hit 223, thinking that once we got there we could easily shoot for 222. We quickly got to the hill top where we believed the control should be and looked and looked and looked, along with about 5 other teams, including one that was sleeping in a hole up there, and found nothing. We decided to head north hoping to hit a nearby lake that would allow us to take a new bearing on our way back, hopefully crossing paths with the control. We did exactly that, hit the lake, took the bearing and before we knew it, we bumped into a team that was standing on the road, right back where we started, in a much shorter distance than expected. Something wasn’t adding up, but it was so dark, and we had spent a couple hours here already so we gave up and headed back out to pick up controls on our long way back to the finish.

On our way out, we crossed a stream and a bridge, that according to the map should have been about 1 or 1.2 km from the controls we were just looking for, and it became very clear to us that we had not traveled that far to hit the stream. We now realized that we hadn’t gone in far enough, but decided it was too late to go back. The sun was coming up, and we had quite a few controls between us and the finish, so we just started picking them off, planning to finish plenty early. The rest was smooth sailing, as we picked up a few points on the way back as the blisters on our feet gradually grew larger.

I’ll post the order we visited the controls shortly. All in all, it was another great race with great weather and great people. Glad to see so many other racers out there.

Nat

It’s that time of year, here in the maritimes, where we pull out all our outdoor gear, give it a good shake and see if we can still remember how to read a map and orient oneself using that trusty ol compass.   The first “important” event of the year is in the books, and that would be Jodi Isenor’s Pre-E2C.  The event took place over the past weekend and about 20 teams showed up to enjoy the beautiful weather. 

Jodi did an excellent job setting a course that would challenge and/or frustrate even the best navigators.  The controls were set such that moderately fit teams could reach all of them within the allotted time, but that feat could only be accomplished if navigation was clean.  Making navigation difficult, was the development of new roads and trails that were not indicated on the map.  Everything that was on the map was in fact where it should be, but add in a few major roads and four wheeler trails that were not shown on the map and you have even the best navigators questioning their whereabouts in some places on the course.

Repeating last year’s performance, local favorites Shawn Taylor and Shannon Potter, took home the first place spot smoking the course in 3 hours 23 minutes, 30 minutes faster than the only other team to clear the course.  The full results will be up on the Orienteering Association of Nova Scotia’s website shortly.

Thanks go out to Jodi for putting on a great event that will surely help us all next weekend. 

Nat

Welcome to our new site, we hope you like the layout. 

Here is what is new and upcoming for Natural Selection in 2009…..

• Planning for Race the Phantom 2009 is underway and it is looking like a great race so far, can’t wait for the snow to clear so we can really get out there mapping. The event will be a 30hr race this year making it the most extreme adventure race in Northern New Brunswick. Stay up to date on our website for news and deals coming soon.
• Before you can Race the Phantom you will have a chance to find out who your Daddy is at the 2nd annual Who’s Your Daddy? Adventure Race to be held in Fredericton NB. Look for a date of early June to be announced for this 8hr Urbain/Rural Adventure Race.
• Tire Pulls should also make an appearance for the 2009 training season.  Once the conditions favor a good pull…tire pull that is, come back to find out our 09 schedule.

Thats all for now, see you all soon.