Team Bushtuakah: (Left to right…then bottom) Geoff, Jeremy, Myself, Margot, Tyson and Jeff

I am sitting on my couch, surrounded by my stuff, most of it smells like swamp and my fingers are the only part of my body I can move freely without having to rest after a few minutes…wait… let me start from the beginning.

Welcome to race day.

After getting up in the morning, noting that the weather was not great and eating a couple of bars we headed back to the fire hall for the promised breakfast – swing and a miss – no breakfast. After finishing the final touches on the transition bags (A and B) we threw them on the pile of bags to go out on the field after marking each with the identifying tickets. At debriefing we got our maps and instructions, 3 command points (CPs) on water, 5 in the swamp, 5 on the hills surrounding Plaisance; We listened to the blurb about CPs that were mislabeled on the map, made the appropriate changes and as we waited for the call to assemble at the start line we laughed about how little we had prepared for this race… between the three teams of us that came together, probably less than 2 days worth of training…

3,2,1… go!

We were off, first a 800/900-meter run to the first transition point, mostly pavement, cutting through one ditch.  We threw on our lifejackets, grabbed some paddles and launched our canoe – here goes the first leg: paddling. Several teams flipped on launch and a couple more less than a dozen strokes into the water. We winded through a river and off into a bayish area. At this point things got a bit messy, the wind started and white caps were developing, to accentuate that problem most of the paddling was horizontal across the body of water, riding right across the waves rather than through them, that meant more paddling as we had to zigzag to maintain stability; several more teams capsize and rescue boats snatch them up. We missed the first CP by a long shot and had to scramble across three peninsulas to nab it… we were behind and the weather was getting worse, we crossed the bay again with some pretty dangerous waves throwing us around – rescue boats stayed pretty close by. After nabbing CP2 were had to portage about 20 minutes, we passed a few teams who had trouble carrying their canoe; we hit the river and paddled down to Transition 1 again to hit the swamp for some orienteering.

5 CPs in the swamp now, we jogged through the bike paths and wadded out to small islands and deadfall to nab the CPS, sometimes up to our chests in delicious swamp water, the bottom was incredibly muddy and was full of downed logs that had long since sank. Lots of people made a bad habit of falling over them, as you can’t see your feet, now as soaked as I was from the rain; I was at that point super soaked with all manners of things stuck to me. At one point I crawled out of the swamp near a walking path where two elderly folks stopped and stared at me; “Is the whole trail like that?” they asked in French, “No, I came from the water” I assured them… but they didn’t feel assured, they turned and walked the other way. Now the nice thing about being in the middle of the pack is that most of the path finding is done for you; with a semi-keen eye you can spot the trample from the 20 teams before you and plod down their trail to make it even more obvious for the 20 behind you, we had no problem finding the swamp CPs. We ran to Transition 2, full of swamp and thoroughly waterlogged, it was time to jump on the bikes.

We hit Transition 2 and swapped some water bottles for full ones, threw on our helmets and hit the pavement, after a short cycle through Plaisance, using the easy terrain of town to down a couple of power bars,  we were on the ATV trails. The soil around Plaisance is quite full of clay, it was raining all day too so the mountain biking was harder than it needed to be. Wet clay, for those of you who are initiated, is very slick so the terrain was muddy and slippery. It was a blast!!! We probably had to peddle 4 or 5 times the amount it would have taken if it were dry. We snagged a few more CPs than my partner had a spill and messed up their knee. We had to stay within 100 meters of each other so I was cooked too.

That was it for us.

I had never done an adventure race before, but it was incredible. It was so much fun, there was so much variation and the company was of course fantastic. For those of you who read this and thought; “that sound like so much fun!” I highly recommend trying the sport. The Raid Pulse has three or four races per year – the May one being the easiest. I know I am going back next year; I would love to hear that some of you read this and showed up.
As for my friends Geoff Vance and Jeff Moore; they placed very well. Tyson and Jeremy had some bike issues, but really who needs a rear derailleur anyway?

50km later- 7km trekking/swamp creaturing, 8km paddling and 35km mountain biking – I am all smiles, stench and soreness.

See you there next year!!!

-C-Dill

Edit: This was written on Sunday the 16th, I left right after to do some whitewater and just got back to post it