Well I found my first caches in a long while last weekend, but that is not the success story. The story lies in the reason for the Geocaching inactivity. Since early in the spring all of my non-working, non-family time was devoted to training for the Balance Bar Adventure Sprint Race at Ft. Yargo. What I've Been Doing

The success is that my team actually finished. For those of you that have met me know that I was about 270 pounds and except for Geocaching led a fairly sedentary life. Since February I have become a Mountian Biker and runner. I have discovered that the Mystery Cache loop at Elatchee can be run at 7AM on Saturday mornings, and that there should be more Caches for finding with Mountain Bikes.

If you read the details about the Yargo race you will see that one of the special tests was a short orienteering course. I found out after the race that Black Knight designed and constructed this special test. He did a great job. I saw Skeetman and Snake during the race as they were volunteers handing out maps and collecting punch cards for the same special test. As a participant I want to thank all of them for their efforts.

I have missed finding the caches, reading the board and see everyone at meetings. Hopefully, I will see you at meeting or on the trail soon. By the way, I am planning on doing the Muddy Buddy (www.muddybuddy.com) in September. If you think you may want get into non-traditional racing this would be a good race to start with.

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there should be more Caches for finding with Mountain Bikes.

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Well our Tallulah Gorge Cache is on a combination mountain bike, hiking trail. We have been to it both by hiking and biking.

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there should be more Caches for finding with Mountain Bikes.

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There are two caches icebreaker and not2easy
just out of Ellijay on the following Trail-Bear Creek Mountain Bike Trail

Also check out GC8DB7 "Outcrop", specifically mentions mountain bike trail.

Never mind. I see you've done that one.

This sounds like an awesome race and a fun time. I ride my mtn bike as much as possible and I'll put up with some running to do this. I really want to do the Muddy Buddy in Sept. I'm gonna read over the pages and find someone to do it with me. Teams of 2 right? How much to sign up?

I would like to know what you did for training or what you would recommend. I ride my bike about 10 miles every weekend and a stationary bike 5 miles 4 days out of the week. I can run if I have to but not very far.

The registration costs $85 per team and $90 if you sign up wihtin 3 weeks of the event. It is 2 person teams. The total race is 10k or 6.2 miles, so figure on needing to run a total of 3 miles but not all at once.

My training for the Adventure race was not nearly enough, but I ran at the gym 2 or 3 mornings a week (less when I had to travel for work) and had Saturday morning training sessions with one of my teammates every week. We usually alternated doing a 4 mile trial run with a 3 - 6 mile bike ride each week. One week we ran the Buford 5k for our traing activity. Of course there were a few weeks when we couldn't meet. I also did strength training on the week days I did not run or ride.

The race itself started with a 6 mile trail run (and walk in my case), so I got my weakest part out of the way first. The last discipline was the 11 mile mountain bike ride. This overall was a moderately difficult bike course but I hit a severe wall about half-way through and there was some serious doubt about our finishing the race. This was due to the fact that I should have been training since last fall. But I didn't know about the race until February, so whataya gonna do? Basically I plan to train for next year's race starting now.

If you ride ten miles at a time now, you should have enough time to get ready for the Muddy Buddy. If you have any other questions you can email me through my profile page on Geocaching.com.

geojacket wrote:

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One week we ran the Buford 5k for our traing activity.

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Ha! My wife, dog, and I were holding up signs near the finish line which read 'GO GREG'.

We can pretend that we misspelled 'geojacket', if that helps.

-AndymanD

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Originally posted by AndymanD:
Ha! My wife, dog, and I were holding up signs near the finish line which read 'GO GREG'.

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Thanks for your support Andyman.

Wait, I wasn't running in that event?!

Wow! The running might kill me, but if I start now then maybe I'll be ready for the "Beast" category!!!