A little off course

7 days 11 hours till the Renegade Off-Road Triathlon. So far I'm feeling pretty good about it... well about the run and the bike, I really should have done some swimming. I'm going out there to survive the swim. Last Saturday the race organizers did a pre-ride of the bike course and I found out too late but read the e-mail to say they were doing it again today.

Well, I read the e-mail again last night and found that it's on Sunday but I did find that they posted a map of the course on the web site and since I'm playing guitar for kids in the morning I decided I'd give it a go on my own.



So I set out with a map folded up in my pocket and gave it a go. The first part was pretty familiar, actually it was the run path from the last LA Tri-Express I did 2 years ago but went on past the gate in into the camp grounds. Past there was right near the Brackett airport where it turned up onto a trail up the hill. I swtarted up one trail and pretty quikly figured out I was on the wrong one so I turned and headed down to get back on track. Up the hill it was very washed out and rocky, I got off once to navigate around. Once a the top it was a nice fire road down to a tunnel underpass to cross the paved road. This was about the 3 mile mark, I think it was just up the hill from here that I made a wrong turn.

I now think I was supposed to follow the first trail to the right, I went left and kept climbing and then ended up with a great downhill ride with mile 4 at the bottom. Then it was uphill for a full mile to what I think is the trail I was supposed to be on at mile 5. From there it was a fun, fast downhill to mile 6 where there is another tunnel to cross the pavement.

From there I think I followed the trail pretty well until past mile 8 when I got to the top of the dam. I took a turn and followed a trail across the base of the dam. Once across the dam I realized it was the wrong way and turned around to follow the paved road over the top of the dam. Once across I found the trail that follows the edge of the lake around to the finish.

Overall I made a 7.5 mile loop into 10.25 miles and I think I added in the steepest hill climbs of the day. Next week should be better marked and there will be other people to follow so it should be OK.