SOGGY BOTTOM BOYS
FALL URBAN O-MEET
Nov 5, 2011
“Richmond ASR: Raging Burritos” traveled to Virginia Beach on an overcast windy morning. This time it was just me and Daniel Rodriguez since most of the team was busily setting up and running the 18-Hour Mountain Bike race at Brady Saunders camp in Goochland. By the way, we did show up to help clean up Sunday morning just so you don’t think we skipped our duties.
We started at Chicho’s Bar at 29th and Pacific. There were 70 potential checkpoints and the idea was to get as many as possible in the time allowed…otherwise known as rogaine-style orienteering. We had to do at least 2 hours on foot before we could get on the bikes and luckily there was a nice southerly loop that included about 17 points. We started running that direction at about 10:25 knowing we had to be back in no less than two hours. Now remember that Daniel runs marathons somewhere in the high 2-hour range so he’s fast! Phil is not so fast, but we covered about 10 miles and the 17 checkpoints in the two hours. We found murals on walls, how many pay phones were at the 7-11, statues in front yards, hours of operation for laundromats, the number of boat ramps at Owl Creek, and numerous other fun things. The wind was blowing hard out of the north and there were a few times on the return that it almost stopped us dead in our tracks. This allowed me a little rest so it wasn’t all bad! We were back to Chicho’s with 5 minutes to transition and out again by about 12:30PM.
We decided on taking a big loop north up the beachfront, into a couple of neighborhoods, and then First Landing Park. The weather was getting sunny but the wind was still blowing hard. We were definitely leaning hard a couple of times in order not to get blown sideways! The cool thing about this part of the race was that we discovered all kinds of cool trails that I’d not known about before. The trail along the waterfront in the park was cool; the bike trail alongside Shore Drive was cool. We found mailboxes, telephone poles, a few O-flags, walked our bikes down the beach, read plaques on benches, and found huge boats in tiny canals. Time was starting to get a little tight as we started south along Great Neck Road and First Colonial. We realized we’d have to skip the points off Mill Dam Road and around the Cavalier Golf Course (which were probably beautiful places too) and head east along Laskin as fast as we could go. The head wind didn’t help much. Our last stop was Blue Ridge Mountain Sports where we punched our passport but didn’t have time for a Gatorade. We made it back to Chicho’s with one minute to spare! Turns out that last stop at Blue Ridge was key; we won by 10 points (out of 3080…so it was tight!). We want to thank Mark Montague for a great course and look forward to next year. What a great way to spend a Saturday!
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