Cornhusker State Games
7/19/2008

Branched Oak Lake

This year’s CSG Adventure Race proved to be much different from the one we raced in a couple years ago.  After racing the long course in Chadron, Fairbury, and Ord, we felt pretty well prepared for this event this year. 

The weather was great; decent temps and minimal wind (for July in Nebraska anyways).  Jim gave us last minute instructions at the prerace meeting.  There were 3 transition areas (TA’s) and multiple check points (CP’s) we had to ‘visit’.  The rules allowed us to go in any order, as long as we followed the instructions concerning checking in and out of the TA’s.

After looking over our map, we decided we would head to the south side of the lake to avoid the mass of people and get the CP’s in TA 3 punched.  As we lined up to start the race, we realized many other teams had the same idea.  At the last second, BentVenture decided to ditch the bikes and packs and start with the tube paddling. 

As Jim yelled ‘GO’, we quickly headed down to the beach, which was TA 1, to grab a tube and paddle for each of us.  We were instructed to get into our tube and paddle out to the buoys and then over to the CP and back to the beach. 

We each settled into our own rhythm and finished this event rather quickly.  We headed back up the beach and completed our team challenge, which consisted of two team members each running a short distance with a tube around the both of them.

We checked out of TA 1, picked up our bikes, packs and helmets, and began the ride to the south side and TA 3.  Once we checked in at TA 3, we ran a couple miles to the next CP’s.  Luckily we were familiar with ‘bushwhacking’ which saved us some time in this section.

Back at the TA check-in, we grabbed our bikes and set off for the remaining CP’s in the area.  We found most of them fairly easily with the exception of one.  A little mistake on our part lead to us having to back track for one of the CP’s. 

After punching our card at each CP, we went back again to TA 3 check-in.  We had another team challenge, this time consisting of one team mate standing knee deep in water while the other two threw tennis balls to him.  Adam easily snagged the balls with the bucket and we quickly checked out and headed for our final CP’s and TA 2.

On the way to TA 2, another mistake again cost us some time as we looked for a CP.  We had to back track since none of us saw the trail marker along the road, which indicated where we needed to head down the trail. 

We finally found the CP and continued on to TA 2 and the remaining CP’s.  Checking in at TA 2, we were instructed to run a course to find the last CP’s.  After finding them, we again bushwhacked back to check out of TA 2 and ride to the finish.

Crossing the finish line, we were happy to hear we had completed the race much faster than we had anticipated. 

BentVenture would like to thank Jim Craig and all the volunteers who helped put on a great event!  And great job to all the teams who raced!

Matt M
matt@bentventure.com