The first Beast race of 2008 came much earlier in the season than in previous years and was designed to allow the first time adventure racer the chance to experience night-time navigation on a shorter course thru moderate-level singletrack trails.  The entire race was held within the confines of beautiful Dash Point State Park, located on the Sound, just south of Federal Way.

 

All Beast races have a mystery special challenge and this race was no exception.  Race director Eric Bone used the special challenge in this race to seed the competitiors for a mulit-stage prologue type start.  The challenge involved "throwing" a beachball thru a suspended Hula hoop from 10 feet away.  Your time to make 5 shots was your seed time. It looked and sounded simple enough until I tryed it!  After watching multiple teams in front of us, I thought I had it down, but the beachball would not cooperate. 1 minute & 13 seconds (and one popped beachball!) later, we found ourselves seeded in what would turn out to be the 5th and final group of racers leaving the start line in 5 minute intervals.

 

The race began with a 2+ mile trekking section that took racers out to the beach, into the frigid waters of Puget Sound for 1 CP, up a steep hill to the 3 more checkpoints hidden in the park, around to the beach and back to the Start line for a transition to the mountain biking section.  We made good progress on the trekking portion and saw many teams that had started in earlier waves - good times!  All during the run, I kept trying to plan our biking route while we were running - which is why I ran off the trail and into the bushes several times!

 

We transitioned quickly to our biking shoes and headed out on the trails behind 2 other teams.  The first trail section was too rugged for any biking, especially in the dark so we all caravaned for the first 300 meters. We made our move at the first trail intersection and made it to the 1st bike CP with some new teams. I opted to take a longer but more open route to the next CP and that seemed to have paid off. Teams that made it to this CP earlier were given the opportunity to add some "Pro Course" check points to their race.  Having started so far back, we didn't make that cuttoff and quickly headed to CP9.

 

Another cluster of riders greeted us there as we punched our passport and headed to CP 10.  I again chose a slightly longer path that looked less technical to CP 10 and it paid off with us being the only team at that CP.  A long, dark trail lead us to CP 11 and a fast, wide trail dropped us off, surprisingly, at the Finish Line.  We finished 3rd among teams that didn't take the longer Pro Course - next time, I'll have to ace the beach ball throwing!

 

A great big THANKS to Eric Bone and all the Beast/Mergeo Volunteers that come together to put on such great midweek adventure races all over the Puget Sound!!!!