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Local women second in Sea2Summit

Race goes ahead with date and course changes In the 2003 Sea2Summit Adventure Race, the real adventure began well before the competition got underway. The original date for the two-day race was moved back from Sept.

Race goes ahead with date and course changes

In the 2003 Sea2Summit Adventure Race, the real adventure began well before the competition got underway.

The original date for the two-day race was moved back from Sept. 13-14 to last weekend after an elevated fire hazard resulted in the closure of the backcountry all along the south coast of the province.

Just one week before the re-scheduled race, record rainfalls washed out roads, trails and bridges, forcing the organizers to alter the route at the last minute.

"Someone phoned in and mentioned that maybe the Sea2Summit was not meant to be this year," wrote Dean Payne, the race director for Coast Mountain Sports. "We say that this is quite the opposite. In fact this is already the most memorable S2S on record and we have not even gone one metre of the course.

"We have all had to endure many logistical challenges and adventures of our own just worrying about the big day! Not even a bit of high water will stop us this time."

Day one of the race was kept as planned, with a long paddle in Howe Sound, followed by a bike ride and a cross-country trek to Squamish. Day two started at Creekside in Whistler with a bike ride south to the Brandywine Valley for orienteering. Following the orienteering, the racers got back on their bikes for a 40 km ride back to Creekside, where they began the traverse over the Northwest Passage to Whistler Village.

Both days were long for this time of year, with competitors finishing well after dark with the aid of headlamps.

Race times varied from less than 14 hours to more than 30 hours for some participants.

Almost 200 athletes took part as solos or as part of teams of two or four. Numbers were down overall from previous years, which the organizers are attributing to the date change and flooding.

A pair of Whistler women, racing as Team Sweep, finished second out of six teams in the team of two category with a total time of 25 hours, 20 minutes.

It was the first adventure race that Julie Waterhouse and Carlee Howell have competed in. They started training for the event back in February, however, and kept it up right until the beginning of September when the race was supposed to take place.

"After that I kind of fell of the wagon a little," said Howell. "We trained to peak in September, and when we found out that the event was moved back by six weeks we slowed right down."

"We went from training together every day to training on our own," said Waterhouse. "It was hard to stay motivated."

Waterhouse and Howell had no idea where they finished in the rankings until their name was called at the awards ceremony. They were originally told that they had won their division, only to find out two days later that officials had made a timing error, and they actually placed second.

Their goal was just to finish, and they were excited to make such a strong finish.

The low point of the race occurred on day one as they set out for the trek. The distance was supposed to be 10 kilometres, according to race organizers, and take competitors around two hours to finish.

The course was actually 16 km in length as a result of a mapping error, and the top solo competitor in the race took closer to three hours to finish. As a result, Waterhouse and Howell didn’t finish until well after 10 o’clock that night.

"We were a bit freaked out, but it was pretty cool at the same time. Sometimes you could see the headlamps of the other hikers way up ahead, so at least we knew we were going in the right direction," said Howell.

Waterhouse said turning back was never an option, no matter how cold or dark it got. "It was pretty scary. We ran into three teams that were turning back, and one of them was a team with four guys. We kept going, but were always wondering if we were doing the right thing. We couldn’t see any city lights after a while, and we went a long time without seeing any other groups. We pressed on, and I’m glad we did."

The hardest part for the pair was the biking, which accounted for more than 10 hours of their total time – including more than six hours on the second day of racing.

"We thought we were doing some the Cheakamus route, but the way we went was even harder," said Waterhouse. "I think our longest training ride was about three and a half hours, so we weren’t really prepared for it. We had to climb up to the Microwave Tower, which wasn’t expected. Definitely next time I would spend more time on the bike."

They ate a late dinner that night, and got about seven hours sleep before they had to wake up and go through it all again.

"We looked at each other in the morning and said that we didn’t think we could race. We had to push ourselves a bit to get going, run our bikes up the steep hills, and we pushed ourselves through it and started to feel better and better. We felt good right to the finish," said Howell.

Howell said it was one of the biggest accomplishments of her life to finish the race.

"I’ve never put my body through so much pain before. It’s just amazing what a body can do when it’s put to the test," she said.

Although both competitors swore during the race that this was the first and last Sea2Summit they would ever compete in, their prize – a substantial discount for next year’s race – already has them thinking hard about next year.

"During the race we were saying that we would never do this again, but by the end we were talking about maybe doing Panorama next year, which is a three-day race, now that we kind of know what to expect," said Waterhouse.

"We were talking the whole time actually. A lot of the teams were pretty quietly, but we had a conversation for the whole 25 hours, which probably helped us. It was just such a rush to get to the finish line, so I definitely think we could do it again."

A pair of Whistler racers, Sarah Cormode and Eric Barry raced in the Team of Four Co-ed category with Power To Be. They finished fourth in their category with a time of 22:47:37.

Jen Segger, who is competing in the six-day Southern Traverse adventure race in New Zealand, also raced in a four-person co-ed team. Her team finished fifth in their category with a time of 24:28:28.

In the Solo Male category, the top finisher was David Kvick of North Vancouver, who posted a total time of 13 hours, 41 minutes and three seconds over both days. He finished more than an hour faster than the second-place finisher, Ron Carmichael of Vancouver, whose time was 14:47:52.

The top Solo Female was Annie Kvick of North Vancouver, who crossed the line in 23:19:39.

The Solo Masters category went to Tom Barichello of Langley with a time of 15:40:24.

The top Team of Two was Team CanAm, with Mark Gosney of Yelma, Washington and Dave Howells of North Vancouver pulling across the line in 13:56:42.

Team Helly Hansen – Denis Fontaine of Deep Cove and Cheryl Beatty of North Vancouver – won the Team of Two Coed category in 15:18:25.

The Team of Four Male category went to X-tremely Nutz, with Rick Uhlrich of Wenatchee, Washington; Mike Choate of Portland, Oregon; Tim Knebel of Mercer Island, Washington; and Dwayne Speegle of Eagle, Idaho. They finished in 16:13:50.

The Team of Four Female category went to "They told me this was a wine tour", with Sherri Iwaschuk, Lisa James, Nicole Todosichuk, and Elladee Brown of Vancouver in 22:08:23.

The Coed team category went to Deakin Adventure Racing with Melissa Pace and Peter Poburan of North Vancouver and Mike Sherwood and Evan Deakin of Vancouver. Their time was 18:16:10.

The complete results of the competition, including photographs from the race, are available online at www.sea2summit.com.