Beast Race #4 - Tolt McDonald

This past Tuesday JVG, Glenn and Myself (RVG) competed in the 4th BEAST Race of the year at Tolt McDonald park in Carnation and entered the team lottery system promoted by Mergeo on DART-nuun's behalf. We each got teamed up with individuals that wanted a shot at racing with a member of DART-nuun, did not have a navigator, or just wanted to race with some new faces. I raced with a co-ed two person team known as "Commandough", JVG got paired up with a two person male team called the "Dew Overs" (seen to the right running the water leg with her, picture taken by Jerry Gamez) and Glenn got paired up with a solo woman by the name of Angie.

The race proved to be a real challenge for the teams and took anywhere from 2.5 hours to almost 4 hours for the Dew Overs. It started with a brief 15 minute orienteering course that required one member of the team to travel through the river to retrieve a series of CP's. After that the teams were off on an 8 checkpoint mountain bike ride with a grueling climb to kick start it off. The sun set and it started to rain, which enabled the team to utilize our trusty Light and Motion headlights. I let my new team mate Jill use my Solo Logic Li-Ion while I lit up the forest with the ARC Li-Ion Ultra. My new favorite light for sure!

After our 8 biking checkpoints we were instructed to follow a flagged course, so we could put the map away and just ride for a bit. On to our feet and the navigation test continued. I blasted past the 2nd checkpoint with the Commandoughs and we lost a bit of time retracing our footsteps to get to CP T2, but after that we tracked the CP's down pretty well and carried a good speed along the way.

Almost three hourse after the start we crossed the finish line in 22nd place and with some big smiles on! The lottery program worked great and seems to be getting some traction in the local scene. All the feedback we have received has been positive to this point. Hopefully the individuals that participate in it are having as good of a time as we are. See you out at the next Beast!