Actually Helpful Stuff

Los Dobos here: we’re getting close so here’s a brain dump of everything useful that I know in no particular order. Maybe someone will find it useful.

NEVER try anything new for the first time during a race. This goes for foods, drinks, and gear. You need to know that your body will play nice with any and all fuels you stuff into it while racing non-stop. You also need to have gear that you are familiar with and that is already broken in.Get a good night’s sleep the night before the start. This may seem like a no-brainer but many people struggle to quiet their brains with all the planning and logistics involved in any long-ish adventure race. I take a sleeping pill, and set all the alarms. Getting no sleep for 2 nights instead of just one is a burden you don’t want or need. Obviously you shouldn’t if you’ve never taken any sleep aids in which case a melatonin tablet or two will do nicely.

Are you a regular coffee drinker? Me too. You know what happens when you don’t get your fix, right? Yeah, not pretty. Stack that with staying awake all night and it pays dividends to have access to some sweet, sweet caffeine during your race. This could be in the form of a thermos of coffee in each gear bin/bag, but that severely limits when you can access it. The best way is to snag some over the counter caffeine pills and pack them with your full time mandatory gear.

Check the weather forecasts regularly right up to the morning of the race, and pack accordingly. I will always come to the race expecting it to be cold and bucketing rain but also a hellishly hot UV furnace. You can always leave any unnecessary stuff in the car/hotel room based on conditions the morning of the race.

Pack your gear for each leg as if you will be fully immersed in water, because chances are decent that you will be. Anything that can’t or shouldn’t get wet needs to be in some sort of waterproof bag inside your pack. Maps and instructions obviously need to be in waterproof bags. Some teams will further waterproof their maps with clear MacTac. Also assume that your transition bags/bins will get rained on.

For the paddling leg, assume that you will capsize. What this means is that anything not strapped to either a racer or a canoe will float away or sink. You have been warned.

Navigators should be in the front of the canoe. This lets them stop paddling to check the maps and take bearings while the person in the stern can keep the boat moving. That scenario doesn’t work if the positions are reversed. Trust me on this.

Most teams will be doing some or lots of paddling at night. This means you’ll be using headlights. Often things get cool at night, especially on the water and especially if it’s raining. Make sure that any long sleeve top, be it jersey or shell or jacket is not glaringly bright and super reflective. This is because it will blind you every time your arm passes in front of your face when you’re paddling.

When deciding whether or not to choose routes with portages, you need to keep 2 things in mind. The first is your paddling speed. A ballpark for most teams in non-racing canoes is between 6-8 km/hr. Then you need to factor in the time spent unloading and then re-loading the canoes at the start and finish of each portage. One 1000 metre portage is almost always quicker than 3 x 200 metre portages even though it’s longer.

Most backpacks have a double zipper. Never ever do them up so that the two closures come together at the top of the pack. The weight of the stuff in the pack can force the pack open and you can and will lose vital race kit. The zipper closures need to come together on one side or the other of the pack.

Fuelling is vital, but having to take your pack off, open it, and rummage around every time you need to eat will either cost you loads of time or cause you to skimp on your fuelling. A cheap fanny pack gives you ready access to food and lets you keep moving.

Leave big obvious notes/reminders for yourselves stuck to the insides of your gear bins. Things like “Race bib on top” and “Tracker. Tracker. Tracker.” Teams forgetting both of those have decided top spots in previous editions of WT.

There are 2 fundamental rules to map and compass navigation: always orient the map, and always stay in touch with where you are on it. Do not give into the temptation of ignoring the map and following a slightly faster team. If you lose them, or if they stop and ask you where you think you are, then you will be completely lost. It’s better to go more slowly but on the correct route than to constantly sprint ahead and then waste time trying top relocate yourselves.

Speaking of which, one of the hardest decisions to make is to backtrack to your last known location. It feels so defeatist, but it is almost always the best and sometimes only way of getting back in touch with the map if you’re lost.

Two very simply and very useful tools for navigation are a watch with a timer function and an old school bike computer. Both can be used to track your distances covered, assuming you know how to work your watch and computer. The trick is to break up each leg between CPs into easily identifiable waypoints (such as a hilltop, trail intersection, hydro line, permanent water feature, etc), measure the distances between them, estimate your speed and then get an ETA for each mini-leg. You would have 1 person with a timer zeroing and starting it at each waypoint and calling out when the time estimate comes up. The same applies on the bike leg, except it’s even better since the odometer function measures the distance for you, and more accurately than any GPS, which you’re not allowed to.

Staying in touch with the map on a bike is very tricky without a mapboard mounted on the handlebars. Ideally with a fast settling orienteering compass affixed to it. If you have one, it’ll give you a big leg up on your bike sections. If you don’t then you’ll be stopping often to check the map. Which is still better than not stopping and winding up hopelessly lost.

Heat exhaustion can end your race, so deal with it as soon as it happens. The best thing you can do is get to the nearest bit of water that is deep enough to submerge in. Spending 5 minutes cooling off can save you hours or even a DNF in the long run.

Help each other and ask for help. Parking your ego and admitting you are the weakest link on the team at one point or another and then asking for and accepting help will increase your team speed. This can be as simple as shifting gear to lighten somebody’s pack, using a bungee towline on more open sections of trekking, and drafting effectively or even using a bike tow system on faster non-technical biking sections. Obviously the race is NOT the time to try a bike tow for the first time ever.

Look after each other, keep moving forward and remember: this is fun and you signed up for it.