Team LogsRocksandSteel.com at Raid the Hammer 2009 - Bob the Navigator, KatieMac, and Frankenjack. Photo: Mike Waddington

This was a crazy adventure of a running race.  100 teams of three challenging on either the “25 km” Raid course or the 10km Enduro course.
BobtheNavigator (adventure racer and organizer of the Canadian Multisport Championships), Katiemac (Blaze the Niagara Escarpment Racer), and I teamed up to form team LogsRocksandSteel.com and challenge for the co-ed title.

One of my sisters teamed up with a classmate from Redeemer University College and a friend who has picked up some Navigation skills as an army reservist to form team Dutch Touch.

We started in Hamilton’s Red Hill Valley, where the King’s Foresters orienteering club held its first race 40 years ago. As an adventure running race, the “course” was a general area defined on maps that spread across 3 pages (links are below), with circles denoting the checkpoints we had to reach. We ran through the Red Hill Valley, then west along the various footpaths and the Bruce Trail along the Niagara Escarpment before spreading out again for several technical points in the Dundas Valley.  For most of the race we ran together, with all three of us touching the flag at each checkpoint (and logging our little microchip to confirm the time we reached it. The organizers also gave us 2 sections, called matrices, where we could split up to get a number of punches on our maps.  It being the Niagara Escarpment, these guys also set up a mini-contest within the race that awarded points  to the first teams up a series of 5 escarpment climbs – one of which was the Claremont Access used in the 2003 world road cycling championships.

Click here to see map 1: in the Red Hill Valley. You can follow the route we took (marked in green, fading to yellow-orange-red where we slowed down

We took the first 4  checkpoints to get warmed up, and were in 3rd  overall coming out of the first matrix, just ahead of 7Systems, who made some different route choices but were hot on our tail until the second matrix. Bob took the lower four, Kate went straight, and I took the upper four – and managed to bungle it up a fair bit on the first two (I get a bit excited and move too fast to process my surroundings), but was better on the second pair of checkpoints.  Nova Scotia had some trouble in this section as well, and we came out ahead of them. 7Systems and The Jetsons  passed us, putting us in 4th at the start of the “King of the Mountains” contest.

Click here to see map 2-the Matrix and Climbs 1 and 2 of the Mountains Contest.

We passed The Jetsons on the way up the second climb, and cut down the lead of 7Systems and The Foreigners, who were out in front.

Click here to see map3 -the King of the Mountains Contest continues …

Map 4 begins with the King of the Mountains Relay at the bottom right; the race continues Left (west) to the finish.

I took the first leg of the relay, running through a tunnel under a ski hill and up the edge of the next slope to the top of the escarpment.  Kate was next, running up and down the slope I had run under. We refilled our bottles and observed the other teams that were there while Bob ran back and up 280 stairs, again cresting the escarpment. We had his bottle ready and were off again, bound for checkpoint 12.

Checking splits from the base of the first climb to the first timecheck past the climbing relay (#12), LogsRocksandSteel was fastest overall by 17 seconds over Nova Scotia, 1 min 32 seconds over the foreigners, and and 3 minutes 12 seconds over 7Systems.

The race snaked along the Radial Trail as we gradually closed on 7Systems, and made our move on the “walk the line”, section where 2 flags were located along a meandering course leading through woods and meadows. Over the 403 and along the Bruce Trail and down the escarpment led us into the Dundas Valley. We had run over 20km and were starting to tire at this point, particularly hip flexors (me), quads (bob), and calves (kate), but we seemed to be making some time on the Foreigners. We took some conservative routes, preferring to run a little further on trails than deal with steep valleys and rough woods, but were pretty wiped by the last checkpoint. Kate’s local knowledge of the valley came in handy a couple of times, particularly when we came across a narrow trail that wasn’t on the map, and she led us home to the finish, where we came in at 3 hours, 39 minutes, 40 seconds – 1o minutes and 33 seconds behind The Foreigners.

7 Systems came in a few minutes later.

Dutch Touch came in 12th overall, having confused some other teams (evidently their orange jerseys resembled checkpoint flags), tired but enthusiastic about adventure running.

Thanks to Bob and Kate for being great race teammates, Bob for turning the data into these cool maps, Hans and Mike for organizing, and all those volunteers for making it happen!