SCRAT - It's all about the acorn - Adventure Racing

Today was the Orange County Adventure Race...with nearly 250 competitors...the largest AR in recent history for sure.

I raced with a team I hadn't raced with before. Team SCRAT (like in the movie ICE AGE "It's all about the acorn").

One guy was a guy I'd seen at races and even talked to a few time, his sister, myself, my friend Michael who I've been doing trail run/rides with regularly and a new guy none of us knew until today.

Anyway, we got together for the 5 person Co-Ed race - the premeir division and....smoked the field! We got 1st place for 5 Person Team, 1st Person for 5 Person Co-Ed and yes.... 1st Finishers overall.

We were happily surprised and felt good about the showing. Details of the race are below.

Ok, the race was sprint distance...it started out with about a 1 mile run to three checkpoints. The first you picked up a paddle 'handle' (4 foot stick), at the second CP you got the blade of the paddle (a 10" x 1' flat board with 2 holes drilled in it), and at CP3 you got 2 zip ties per person. Then back at the staging area you had to construct the paddles by putting the blade on the handle and zip tying it together. While that was going on you had to inflate your raft. As a 5 person team we had a 3-man raft and a 2-man raft so we inflated both and were off to the water.

The paddle was about 1 mile or so - short, but no easy task in a raft with funky paddles. The CP was a floating buoy out in the middle of the lake. We were the first team to get there and return to shore.

When we got back our team had to direct two blindfolded team members through a maze of sorts collecting rocks from buckets and then direct them out of the pen.

Now we were off on the Mtn. Bike section. 6 Checkpoints covering about 7 miles of trail. Not a big deal - nothing technical at all, just fire roads. We flew through it and returned to the staging area.

Upon our return we had to do an obstacle course of sorts - nothing to challenging and then off on the run.

The run was about 3-4 miles of trail running with some fire roads mixed in. We flew through it finding the checkpoints with no problems. We came in just under 2 hours for what was billed as a 4 hour race.

As I said - 1st overall, 1st in our division...1st, Numero Uno, Number 1, Tops, The Best, Fastest...should I go on?!

We had a great time, had excellent teamwork and that's what it's all about!