Backyard Challenge V
race report

From David Weber, Team Inside Lane

This was my first Back Yard Challenge (BYC) with Colorado FROG. I will definitely be back as I had a great time and got to meet great people. Thanks to Cammie, Steve, and everyone else who helped make this event happen. I was racing without my wife or other regular teammates for the first time too. A lot of firsts. I found a teammate, John, with the help of Cammie and wasn't able to meet him in person until the morning of the race. Not a recipe for good race dynamics and teamwork in most cases, but as it turned out everything worked out great. I'm hoping to be able to race with him in the future.

I met John's friend Jeff, who was to be our support person, at the mandatory check in on Saturday afternoon. I picked up the maps and received the other race instructions from Cammie and Steve. I was pretty familiar with several sections of the route, which I realized would be an advantage during the race. I talked with John on the phone that evening and discussed the course and our goals for the event. We agreed that we wanted to have fun, and to give it our best shot.

The next morning John and I finally got to meet and get under way. The first leg of the race was an inline skate up the Boulder Creek bike path through Boulder. It went by really quick, and before we knew it we were on foot heading up to the top of Flagstaff Road. John and I were the first team out of the skate-to-trek transition and I think chose a different route than most other teams. We opted to take city streets up to Baseline Road and then head up Gregory Canyon trail from the trailhead. This was John's idea and I think a good one. Our route allowed us to travel uphill the whole way, without any downhill that would just add more elevation gain later on. I think most teams took the trail adjacent to the TA instead, and then went up to the Amphitheater at the top of Flagstaff. I don't know if our route was any better (a small thing at best) but we did end up at the 2nd TA in first with about a three-minute lead on Team RPM (Todd, Jason, and Daphne). We would see them a few other times during the day. More later.

Getting on the bikes for the first time, John and I headed over the top of Flagstaff, down past Walker Ranch, and then up towards Gross Reservoir. The bike riding during this section was either a straight uphill grind or a fast descent. We would make it though the bike section in good shape and arrive at TA 3 with a slightly larger lead. We knew what our advantage was (about 6 minutes or so) because we got to the TA faster than Cammie could get there from one of the previous checkpoints. Fortunately Cammie realized she would not make it there in time and had given the master orienteering map to RPM so that we could proceed with the leg when they arrived. It didn't take long as they were hot on our heels.

For me the on foot orienteering leg was the coolest section of the race and the most challenging. John and I got off to a great start by nailing the first orienteering point in short order. Following this, we had a much harder time with the next two points. The second point we must have spent an extra fifteen minutes searching in vain for it. We didn't find it until we got some help from Team RPM and another team (whose team name or teammates names I never learned). It was a little frustrating to have lost that much time. Moving onto the 3rd point we had a good plan in place and thought we were headed straight for it along the reservoir. We were but unfortunately, we made an error and based the location of the point of where it was along the reservoir. Our problem was that the map we were using showed the water level in the reservoir when it is full, not the water level during a drought year. So, as a result we spent quite a bit of time looking for the flag down at the water level, when it was up at the high-water mark about a 100' up the scree slope above us, much farther in towards the inlet. Live and learn from that one. We should have been tipped off by the elevation difference if nothing else. The remainder of the orienteering course was relatively easy for us and we made it back to the TA in short order. We were now in third place about ten minutes down.

Back on the bikes, the ride up to Magnolia Road was particularly hard with a strong headwind and a tough grade. John and I made it in short order to the rappelling section. We ditched our bikes and quickly discovered where the rappel was to take place. Jason from Team RPM was just heading down the rope when we arrived, so we had made up some of the time we lost on the earlier orienteering section. John and I made it down all right, and quickly headed off to the closest CP. We must have gone the opposite direction that RPM took as we arrived at the CP at the same time as they did. From there we were traveling together for a little while, as there was really only one way to head towards the remaining checkpoints (which we could hit in any order that we wanted).

My familiarity with the area that we were riding came in handy at this point. I had suggested to John that we approach the final three checkpoints (17, 18, and 19) before the finish in reverse order from how they were listed on the map. I thought this route would avoid extra climbing on the bikes and would shorten the distance we would have to travel. With this in mind we allowed RPM to open a bit of a gap hoping that they wouldn't chose the same route too. After finding 19 and then 18 pretty easily, we crossed paths with RPM. I think that they had just come from 17 and still had 18 and 19 to go. Shortly afterward, we saw another team that was having trouble finding 17. I am not sure how this team was tackling the final checkpoints, and never did find out. Anyway, John and I kept quiet so as not to assist them and quickly found 17, and then headed to the finish in Nederland.