Trisha Westman wins national championship, hubby helps

NEWS RELEASE

TEAM SUPPLIER PIPELINE INC.

********************* Foster and Westman win National Sprint Championships and stay alive for Expedition Team Supplier Pipeline Inc., led by Trisha Westman and consisting of Lawrence Foster (Sault Ste. Marie), Dave Corner (Toronto) and Laval St Germain (British Columbia) have just returned from winning the Canadian Adventure Racing Sprint Championships.

Supporting the team was Kyla and J.T. Smith also from Sault Ste. Marie.

The one-day event took place Sunday May 28th near Timmins, Ontario and was the precursor to a longer five-day event which was the Expedition Championships. Adventure Racing is a nonstop series of events that take mixed gender teams of four through hundreds of kilometres of wilderness trekking, mountain biking, paddling and ropes using only a map and compass to find their way.

Teams must stay together the entire race using the disciplines set out by the race organization and hitting checkpoints along the route.

The Canadian Adventure Racing Championships took place from May 28th to June 3rd and consisted of three races - a one-day sprint, a four-day expedition followed by another one-day sprint. You may remember Foster and Westman (shown) as rivals from the Sault Ste. Marie Eco Challenge in which Foster (Team Salomon) won and Westman (Team Water Tower Inn) came in second.

Since that race the two have joined forces in more than one way.

Last summer the two were married in Sault Ste. Marie and in a rare move for the Canadian Championship Race, Foster did not enter his own team (now Holofiber).

Instead he joined his wife's team. "I tried very hard to get my team together for this race," Foster says, "but I have one teammate in Morocco, one in China, and one MIA. There is very little sponsorship to get them home for a week-long race and to be honest I am logistically exhausted."

Foster is responsible for his team's travel arrangements, vehicle rentals, gear and food selection and race entry.

"I analyzed the pros and cons of joining another team and potentially bolstering their reputation and ranking instead of my own team's or worse - having a terrible race and being beaten by another team."

Since 1999 Foster's team has never been beaten by another Canadian team.

"In the end I did the race for the most important reason – the fun of it!" While things started off very well for the team during the first stage (day) of the race with one win under their belt; things started looking bad before the second stages of the race even started.

During the race briefing, Bob Miller – the race course designer was describing a complex set of instructions from two different pages of non-corresponding map coordinates which raised the hair on the team's neck.

After a few uneasy glances at his new teammates, Foster put up his hand and stated: "I am not comfortable paddling white water at night."

Adventure racing is typically a nonstop event where teams race day and night, only stopping when they need rest or when there is extreme danger to continue at night.

White water paddling is one of these dangers. A murmur quickly settled over the other racers as a few other top teams agreed that paddling any moving water at night is too dangerous to have in a race.

The race organizers stated that the river was very shallow and every major rapid had a portage around it.

This did not ease the tension in the room as there are several concerns with moving water at night:

1) it was not a full moon so battery-powered lights would be necessary making unmarked portages difficult to see

2) on cold nights the fog in the morning is impenetrable making spotting rapids and water falls very difficult

3) shallow water is just as dangerous as deep water because of foot entrapment – this is when your foot becomes wedged between two rocks and the force of moving water pushes your body under water – drowning you. The only way to get out of this is to have someone else rescue you.

4) with very little light it will be impossible to see anyone underwater especially when the water is carrying you swiftly away from them making a rescue impossible The race organizers took Foster's concerns into consideration but in the end it was left up to the teams to decide whether to risk the paddle or not.

"I didn’t like this at all," Foster states; "I was concerned for less experienced teams trying it at night and I was concerned that if we were leading or just behind that we might also risk it."

In the end the team made a pact – they would not risk the white water regardless of their position in the race.

As it turned out they hit the white water at the worst possible time – midnight.

With absolute darkness around them and the temperature dropping, they knew that it would be too high of a risk to try the white water.

Worse yet another team had slipped by them in the previous day's 28-hour trek and were now just over an hour ahead of them.

"An hour is not insurmountable in a race that takes five days," Lawrence states. "Death is insurmountable and this sport has taken its share of lives – all but one on the water." As the team sat on the rocky shore of the river waiting five hours daylight, team Simon River Sports slipped through the last sections of white water making their lead impossible to overcome with the one day of racing left.

Lawrence remembers his thoughts that night on the river bank: "I had mixed emotions having to stop at that point. At first I just felt sorry for myself. I mean - seven years of racing and I had never been beaten and now it is going to happen. I was mad, but I got over it right away. I was, after all; with my friends and my wife and we were all alive and healthy – and no race is going to take that away from us. We lit a fire on the still sun warmed rocks of the shore, found some moss to lie down on, and staring up at the stars on a perfectly clear night listening to the rushing water I let Trish's slow and rhythmic breathing pull me into my first sleep in three days." Team Supplier Pipeline did not make up the entire gap between them and Simon River Sports but they did push hard and made up some of it and finish in second place in the Expedition Stage of the race with Team Subaru finishing third. For more information about the race or the teams visit: www.canadianarachampionship.com/ www.adventureracers.ca

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