 By Gary RobbinsThis past weekend, Todd Nowack and myself headed to North Bend, Washington to compete in an adventure race series we had never heard of before Bryan Tasaka blogged about it a few weeks ago.
It was a sprint type race, similar in length to a MOMAR but without a paddling leg, mainly due to its December race date. It was supposed to be a biking and running race, with special surprise elements thrown in throughout the race. Due to our crazy weather this past month the original race course was blanketed in snow and apparently it took a full on last minute effort to re-design all but about 20% of the original course. Special thanks go to the race organizers for not cancelling the event all together.
\'The Beast\' adventure race series is designed with the beginner in mind and their main goal seems to be getting new people into the sport. For this particular race there were 85 people who showed up to brave the elements. As with any race there are always at least a handful of teams there to compete, and this field of racers and vollys had no fewer than 6 people who had competed in a Primal Quest expedition race.
This was the first time that Todd and I had raced together, and we wanted something low key to go out and enjoy, without any self imposed pressure to do well. The Beast promised to be exactly what we were looking for.
The race consisted of 37 checkpoints and had absolutely no flagging whatsoever. You needed at least basic map reading skills to make it through the course and for experienced navigators there were numerous route choices throughout many sections of the race. | 
