Summit County Adventure Race

I convinced one of my old race partners Jesse to fly out here from MN and race in Summit county where they don't beleive in providing oxygen to visitors. Jean's boss/manager (great guy!) let us use his townhome in Frisco so we had cheap comfortable accomodations about a mile from the race site.
We started from the Frisco Nordic Center. Compared to Dan's Wild Adventure Race series, this was a pretty low key start. They simply announced "It's 7:30 - get going!" or something to that effect - no starter gun, no count down. We took a nice easy jog for about 1km to the marina where we jumped into some of the best inflatable kayaks we've ever used. SOOOO much better than the old yellow Sevoy "rubber duckies". We quickly repassed all the uncoordinated paddlers and settled into rythm. We were the 4th boat done by 8 minutes. I don't count the solo racers because they got to use their own hard shell kayaks. One guy finished 45 minutes ahead of us!!
Next was the bike. We took our sweet ass time in transition but finally got rolling. This is where the oxygen deprevation really hit Jesse. On the flats and non-technical stuff, I had to really hold back or I just walked away from him. Living at 5500 feet for a year is better than living at 800 feet when the low point of the race is at 9009 feet. We took the paved trail to Breckenridge and then climbed the Ski Hill Road. It was the long way but it was pavement - race smarter not harder! We had about 9 miles of technical single track to get one last point and back to Frisco. This is where Jesse had to wait for me.
The trekking/orienteering was all in the Frisco Peninsula Recreation Area. RMOC set it up nice. 30 CPs total, we had to hit 15 minimum. We decided to hit them all. Jesse did the navigating and I played "punch-boy" for once. (Sorry Alan, I'll never make fun of that job again!) Only one screwup that cost us less than 10 minutes and another we'll call a half strike when he did his non-bearing of "a little north of west" and we stayed too high on the hill and went a few hundred meters too far. Other than that - it was spot on. It would have been tough for me to beat it.
We ended up with the 2nd fastest team time on the O course.
Only 4 teams finished ahead of us. 2 - 4 person and 2 - 2 person. We took 2nd in our 2 person open division. Not bad for a flatlander and a transplant!

Final stop was for beer and pizza in Idaho Springs. thats what makes it all worth it.