rEco Challenge 2007 - Washington Edition

That's right the Rico Challenge made its presence known as the 2007 edition was held in Washington at the Samamish State Park. In our backyard!

I fielded a powerhouse team for this event, as I knew it was going to be November's biggest production and have the largest cash purse in all of Samamish State Park, at $0 and a cool medal. The team was comprised of the 6.5 month pregnant JVG, my father in law (also known as Captain Dew Over) and stranger Miles...he's fast. Lets get it on!

The race started with a 4.5 mile paddle out of Samamish State Park. At CP2 the teams were forced to search a large area of the lake with stumps coming out of the water for a piece of ribbon with your teams name on it. Rico was out to get us...since we were soo stacked I am convinced the trick was on us, needless to say we spent some good time out on the water cleaning the course. We headed into the technical river section and paddled up stream in class 3 rapids, maybe it was a lake looking like a river but whats the difference.?. A quick portage and we were right back in the thick of it in last place.

There was more about this race than we knew. As we transitioned, off of the clock Raid Style, Rico called a racer meeting to announce that, starting with the 2nd place team each team had to select one member from the team in front of them to compete on their team for the staggered restart. The first place team would have to select from the last place team. Hmmm, I went from DFL to first in the drop of a hat when Andrea and Connie (Double trouble) picked me. We were out of there like a bolt of lightning. To the time trial where we blasted through 3 quick loops of kick biking and a penalty run for being first. Back on our bikes and a bit of a climb later we were cargo netting our way through the ropes course...epic!

We arrived at the next transition near the top of Cougar Mountain, team swap number 2. Now you had to vote a member off...we ro-sham-boed and I lost. Evicted from our second place team to first again! The gods were looking down on me this fine day. Roger, Reed, Max and I were off on the 7 mile trail run at Cougar. We crushed it...then got the mixer again for team swap number three...we waited a couple of minutes for teh second place team of Miles, AV and Connie to roll in.

Soon enough we were bombing down to civilization and Lake Samamish where the finish line and race production were located. Mega-Props to Robin and Eric for a killer race and Cliff for the sweet eats post race. It was good to race with peeps I would not normally get a chance to and to hang out with the PAc NW race crew for a fun filled day. Check out the offical race photo's here.

As rumor has it 2008 is going to be the year of the "Free Race" or perhaps the year of the tightly organized traning competitions. By my estimates there could be 4 underground races in the Pac NW next year with the following races:

-Lava Quest (Aug)

-Primal Smith (???)

-Death Talus (May)

-Rico Challenge. (Nov)