The US National Whitewater Center Time Laps Relay is a 24-Hour relay consisting of teams of 1, 6 or 12 “runners”. Having 7 or more on your team you compete with the 12-person teams. Team F3 Rock Pushers was assembled of nine Gaston guys who pushed the hell out of rocks for the entire 24 hours. We had seven trails to choose from ranging from one mile to 6.8 miles, each route earned the team points based on difficulty.
Our day started with Termite and Orangeman claiming our camp spot as the rest of the guys trickled and raced in before the kickoff dinner and race briefing.
7:00pm Termite toed the line and tore through a 6.8 mile trail called corn-panda followed by Balljoint running 6.3 on east main, Flintstone running 5 on Fig-North, BOS running 4.5 on Academy, Gearwrench running 3.5 on Field Trip, Orangeman running 3.2 on South, Mabelline flying through the 1 mile channel loop, Barney running 5 on Fig-North and Sparky running the 4.5 mile Academy to complete our first team loop.
There is method to this madness. I know…Mabelline on a one mile and BOS on 4.5? BOS runs the channel loop later in the planned attack. If teams run all seven trails in 8 hours the team receives bonus points. There are also bonus points for other challenges along with free WWC passes, and beer too.
Our team ran from 7pm Friday to 7pm Saturday using almost every minute available. On the trails we logged 109 race miles running one at a time. Remember the bonus points mentioned above. Every eight hours we played a game of go find the orange cone. The WWC was divided in a grid and we were provided an area where the cone would be. This was done three times each time having to find eight cones. The mileage clocked during these challenges most likely exceeded the mileage we racked up during the race. We gathered bonus points for running all seven trails and gathering orange cones all three times they were offered.
A big thank you to the men who came out to hang and cheer us on. Jane Fonda, Cheez Whiz, Eh Yall, and 2.0, Pilgrims Progress, Sargento & M. Plus a huge shoutout to Hacksaw and RoundUp who came out and ran a few loops with the guys. RoundUp chased Sparky through the trail so fast they missed one of the check ins. In Sparky’s defense we heard that fork in the trail was missed many times over the weekend.
Many different strategies were tested during the race. We had friendly competition with the Harrisburg and MeCa F3 teams and all tried to get all bonus points along with all the miles possible. We fell short but had a great time. Well except for when Gearwrench was racing with RoundUp through the trails, twisted his ankle so severe he basically flipped his foot upside down. RoundUp said he saw the sole of his shoe on top of his foot!
In total there were 300+ runners on 63 team, 5 of those teams were F3 all who ran a total of 5894.2 miles.
A great time was had by all. Next year we should have two F3 Gastonia teams race each other.
Peace! BOS