Eastern US Nationals # 3 Jellico, TN
Last weekend marked the competition of our 3rd WeRock Eastern rock crawling competition. This event was held in Jellico, TN, which last year was the competition where I had my worst roll over.
Needless to say, I was very nervous heading back to this location.
We left early Friday morning and arrived in Jellico late in the afternoon. We arrived in for tech inspection, passed and headed back to the hotel as the rain began to pour down.
Saturday morning we arrived at the event site, received our running order and walked the courses we would be running for the day. The first course was very technical, with two bonus gates. The first competitor in our group got hung up in the middle and timed out without finishing the course. The second competitor finished it, while clearing both bonus gates. We were up next. Our strategy was to just take our time and finish the course. There was no need in my eyes to do the bonus, since the very first competitor didn't finish the course. We maneuvered our way through the course with little hesitation and finished the course with a score of 0.
On course 2, the competitor in front of us put his Jeep on its side so once again we just planned on taking as little back up points as possible and finish the course. We tried to get as close to the first set of cones as possible without hitting one, but that did not work. We hit one cone and finished the course with a score of 9.
Course number 3 had us going down a steep hill and then through a challenging rocky section to the finish gates. The first 2 competitors before us were not able to finish the course, so that was our main focus -- just finish it. As we started to descend down the hill, I felt the back of the Jeep get light. I started to steer into it, gave it the gas and was able to save the Jeep from a rollover. I didn't know how I did it; I thought for sure it was going over. Once at the bottom, we maneuvered through the rocky section with some help from the gas pedal and were able to finish the course with a score of 15, as we had hit a cone at the top of the hill on our way down.
The final course was one I was worried about all day. It had us climbing up a rocky hill and over the top of a rock in the middle of the climb before crawling back down through a set of cones on a rocky section. As we climbed up the rock, we decided to pull forward and back down the hill.
I was so nervous about doing this that I noticed I had both feet on the brake pedal. My spotter did an excellent job guiding me down, and we made it to the bottom with no problems. We were hung up a little on the climb back up the other side, but it was nothing the gas pedal couldn’t help us with. As we made the turn to the finish gate, we had a minute and a half to finish. We climbed over a technical rocky section and were able to finish the course with a score of 4. Our total score for the day was 28 and we were in 5th place out of 12 competitors!
For Sunday, our goal was to play it smart, finish all of the courses with the least amount of points and try to get into the shoot-out. Only the top 6 places advanced to the shoot-out, so Sunday's courses left no room for error. The running order was redone so we could get done quicker, and that put us first on our first obstacle. On Sunday's we usually run the previous day's obstacles in the reverse direction.
Our first course, we got hung up on a rocky section towards the end of the course, but with a little finesse and my spotter's direction, we were able to finish the course with a score of 3.
Course number 2 had us going back up the hill that made me uneasy on day 1; however, this time we did not have to climb all the way to the top.
We hit a cone as we climbed one of the side hills and were able to finish the course with a score of 13.
Course 3 for the day was by far one of our best. We finished the course with no problems and only backed up 1 time, which gave us a score of -2.
Finally we were down to our last course for the day. The start of this course had a huge rock that we had to balance one side of our Jeeps over because on the other side was a cone. The Jeep was very tippy on this rock, but we were able to crawl over it very slowly with no problems. The rocky section towards the end gave us some problems, but we were able to finish the course with a score of 1. Our total points for Sunday were 15, and our total points for the weekend were 43 -- a personal best for us. As we walked over to the scoreboard to see what position we were in, we were met with congratulations -- we hung onto 5th place and made it to the shoot-out!
The shoot-out course was a combination of 2 of our previous courses we had ran earlier that day, but with 2 bonus gates. The competitor in 6th place was only one point behind us and he was first in line on this course. He ended up breaking both drive shafts, so we figured, all we had to do was be smart, take our time and finish the course and we would have a guaranteed 5th place.
On our run of this course, we made it through the first 2 sets of gates no problem. There was a portion in the middle we did get hung up on, but the gas pedal helped bump us up and over. We finished the shoot-out course with a score of -1!
The competitor who was sitting in 4th place was next. He was only 15 points ahead of us.
As he approached the middle of the course, he was hung up pretty badly. Then we heard him tell his spotter to pull on the spotter strap. My team and I were standing there doing the math in our heads. The spotter strap is an automatic 8 points. So that cut his lead from us down to 7 points. As he worked his way lose, he gave his Jeep too much gas and was out of control. As he headed up through the last set of gates, he hit a cone = 10 more points. That moved us into 4th place!!! And that's where we finished the weekend.
This weekend was full of personal bests for me and the team. It was the highest position we had ever finished, and the first time we have ever completed every single course and the lowest score we have ever achieved for the entire weekend (42). It definitely was a high for us, especially considering the guy we beat for 4th place drives the rig for 4WD's leading competitor.
Our next competition is July 14-15 at Rausch Creek Off-Road Park in Tremont, PA.
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