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Start of the Race , June 25
Steve and Janet pose by the race
car in the staging area for the start of the race. Yes
that's the U.S. capital building directly behind them.
'The official start at our nations Capitol
was an inspiring sight. Going in along Constitution Avenue
gave us opportunities to boo some of our favorite government
institutions, such as the IRS and the EPA. The row of towering
edifices is truly inspiring.
The two hours in place before the official
start flew by. We were interviewed by Steve Hoare of Land
Rover Monthly magazine, and it was good to see several
of our customers who came out to see us off and root us
on. The Rover is a big hit with the crowd, and we had a
constant parade of folks taking pictures. More than a few
said they grew up in one, usually as overseas missionaries,
and they got a little misty eyed seeing one again.
Click
here to see
an 800K MPEG movie of the Land Rover race car being
given the green flag and starting out in the Greatrace.
The race took us west out of DC on crowded
freeways, with more stop and go in hot, humid weather.
It affected our speedometer calibration run, which we are
still trying to get a handle on, but everyone else had
the same problem.
The race start was hairy: many big dump
trucks in the way. Our start was flubbed but I was able
to stop a dump truck by waving my arm and Janet corrected
it so well that we ended up with a :01 second leg.
The real mess was a funeral procession that
pulled into the course. The roads were two lane and beautiful:
Virginia is green and quite lovely, and it is a slower
pace of life, so traffic jams on remote roads are rare.
We started running into slow civilian traffic: speed limit
45, we were doing 40, and the traffic was at 35. There
was no place to pass, and the curves prevented us from
seeing too far ahead. We did 5 'stop and go's', a maneuver
we practiced before we left, which is exactly what it sounds
like: a full stop in the middle of the road, then back
to speed. We know how long it takes to do one, it lets
the traffic move on, and we know exactly how many seconds
we are off. Every time we caught them again. On one hill
we could see the line was several cars long, interspersed
with race cars whose days were being ruined.
We saw a stop sign ahead with about 15 cars
lined up behind it: impossible to do and keep to your time.
So, we pulled over and stopped. We waited for the traffic
to thin out, then the next set of race cars that were
still one minute apart as they should be. A mess like
that only affects 5 or 6 cars out of the 100 running.
Lucky us. Anyway, we inserted ourselves between
these two cars, and finished out the day there. At
the mid day stop we filed a 'time delay'. This is an official
document used when something happens outside of your
control and you don't have the time to make it up. Part
of the document requires witnesses or other cars to verify
that it was unavoidable.
Janet filed a 2:40 request for time delay.
That was the combination of the 5 stop and go's plus the
time waiting at the stop sign. It doesn't sound like much,
but it feels like an eternity. Time delays can only be
filed in :10 second increments, and her calculation worked
out to 2:35. So she had to guess. She went with 2:40.
More on this later.
The second half of the day was a long run
at fixed speeds, no real maneuvers to speak of, at 30 mph.
For hours. This is an endurance rally after all, but does
that sound boring? This was run in the Shenandoah National
Park, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. The Skyline
Drive climbs 3,800 feet, and we ran 65 miles of ridgeline
roads. The area was beautiful, with sweeping views of
the valleys below. All of this on the same day we were
fighting the Beltway traffic. Greatrace is like that,
and the Land Rover took it all in stride.
The timed portion was over about 6:00 PM,
6 hours after we took the green flag. We came out of the
forest and off the mountains heading to Harrisonburg through
Elkton. Everywhere we looked, people had their lawn chairs
set up and were waving to the cars coming in. Some intersections
had dozens of cheerful folks waving to us, taking pictures
and holding up welcome signs. This was not our stop,
just folks coming out to say howdy. It's really something.
The day ended in Harrisonburg, a nice traditional
town with a downtown courthouse and square. We had a big
crowd around the Rover, including a BBC reporter (!) who
taped an interview and will do a write-up. Two media interviews
in one day!
Our score was :19, a very good day considering
the damage control exercises. Janet's guess on the time
delay went the wrong way: had she put down 2:30, we would
have had an :11 second day, which is very good. There was
no way for her to tell, but we did a lot better than the
5 other cars in the mess who didn't get out. No scores
posted yet so we don't know the ranking, but it can't be
too bad. We beat some top teams today.
We're very encouraged, and the Land Rover
is proving itself to be a fine rally rig. Absolutely no
mechanical trouble of any kind, she ran great.
Tomorrow it's on to Kentucky: 90 degree
weather with afternoon thunderstorms. We're ready!
Steve & Janet
Greatrace 45
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