| The U.S. Adventure Racing Nationals of 2009 |
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| Written by Charlie Duke | |
| Monday, 08 February 2010 | |
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A first-hand look back at the 24-hour race of local adventure racing team Verlassen, as told by Charlie Duke. Olaf Schulz, Wendy Ragle, and I raced at U.S. Adventure Race Association’s 24-hr national championship race in Pilot Point, Texas, on October 23-24, 2009. It’s kind of a big part of the athletic year. For the uninitiated, adventure racing is a recipe for tired athletes. The recipe for this large scale scavenger hunt goes something like this: 2 c mountain biking, 2 c trail running, 1.5 c canoeing, 1 oz map coordinate plotting, 2.5 lbs orienteering with a map and compass (no GPS allowed), 15 lbs soggy safety gear, lifejackets, paddles, and food in a backpack, 2 wet soggy feet with muddy socks, 1 dash dehydration, 1 sprig poison ivy, Salt to taste. Generally, all ingredients are put in a bowl and mixed for 8-36 hours. Makes 3 servings. Generally adventure races start at some ridiculously early time with maps handed out to cold participants and a separate list of numerical coordinates for checkpoints (CPs), which are numbered (CP1, CP2, etc). Each team then plots the CPs on their map and follows the instructions to collect the points in ordered or unordered sections. To “collect a point” the team, traveling within 100 feet of each other, must locate the CP (usually an orange flag or a PVC pipe) hanging in the middle of a forest, river, trail, etc., and punch their team card (AKA “passport”) with the Braille punch attached to the CP. The team that turns in a passport containing the most CP’s in the required time wins.Often, a large part of the skill is choosing the best order of CPs to pick up, as that can easily determine whether you finish a section in one hour or five. Usually there are several large legs to the race including mountain biking, canoeing or kayaking, trail running, and special events such as rappelling or zip-line rides. Did I mention that these things are fun yet? Foot sections in adventure races are called rogaines (1) or “land-navs” and usually have CPs closer together than on bike sections, to accommodate the slower pace of going by foot. The CPs in a rogaine are taken in any order you wish and the trick is reading the fastest way to several points taking terrain, weather, and other CPs into account (2). I got into racing adventure races with Olaf this spring; he’s been at it for a few years and is becoming quite a good navigator this year. We qualified for Nationals at the Natchez Trace Adventure race in March of this year with Joy Johnson(3), one of the more fun race days of my career. I can’t say enough how good of a teammate Joy was. She had good spirits the whole time and generally kicked tail for the entire day. Olaf’s always been tough, so I’ll not go into unnecessary praises there except to say that I’m glad to call both of them teammates, and we’re all friends after the fact; that’s not a given in this sport. Since the qualification notification came, we’d been in a state of anticipation, preparation, and dread for what promised to be a tough 24-hour race. In fact, it is only intended to be a 24-hour race for the winners. We mortals were most likely to endure a 30-hour death march of a race intended for far more experienced scavenger hunters. To make things more daunting, Joy has this alter ego as one of the top Ironman athletes in the region and had some piddly race to do in Kona, HI (4), three weeks before 24-hr Nationals. Sadly, she was out of the running and we spent the rest of the year looking for the perfect fit. I guess we were the two bears because we hadn’t selected our Goldilocks yet with three weeks to go. Or maybe we were Goldilocks’ and we needed a bear or we were after porridge or…whatever. You get the point. Five or so candidates didn’t work out, were injured, or had other teams. After we begged Joy once more to skip Kona (we were unsuccessful), we invited Wendy to fill in since she’d raced at nationals once before with Olaf several years ago in his formative years. Wendy doesn’t own a mountain bike but is a really fast competitive road runner in Dallas. I was skeptical that someone focusing on 5 and 10 K results would be happy in such a long race. Olaf assured me that she would be great to race with and in retrospect that was understatement. I’m continually awed to be on teams with people like these two over and over. Another major portion of the year was spent collecting odd bits of equipment that were required for the race (you have to have it , they check your gear). My two favorite things we looked for included “strobe light, 2-mi visibility;” strobe light manufacturers don’t always advertize their visibility, it seems. The other was “tincture of benzoin” (5). Our race year consisted of teamwork development and, considering our incomplete team, that meant Olaf and me racing. A lot. Generally, the way Olaf and I have divvied up the duties is that Olaf navigates and I try to keep him fed and question everything along the way, stopping just short of irritating him horribly. In a 12 hour race, split-second mistakes can very easily cost you 3 hours of walking around in circles so questioning every move is essential. Also in 12 hours a constant nagging teammate could easily drive a mild mannered navigator into a homicidal rage. It’s a delicate balance, to say the least and people could quite easily disappear up in them hills… Anyway, the day finally arrived that we took off to Pilot Point, TX north of Dallas with three bikes, a Subaru full of junk food, Gatorade, bananas, helmets, paddles, piles of warm clothes, packs, space blankets, signal mirrors, and trail shoes. Pilot Point had just received a record 5” of rain and a temperature drop of at least ten degrees F. Thus, the race setting was a man-made lake complete with stands of trees in the middle and the occasional road running directly into the water. The weather was in the suddenly chilly range of 40-oF and cloudy (6). I had meal bags with food designated to supply 250 kcal/hr for 8 hours each. I’m a sucker for a good measurement. They came out to around 4 lbs each, being progressively heavier as the later bags were comprised of higher proportions of real food instead of simple sugars. There were four of them. And then there was transition area food and recovery food. I like to think I’m fairly educated in race nutrition needs. The amount of food I set aside after planning was the first sign that this was going to be profoundly difficult. It was about 15 pounds of food for just the on-the-go race stuff, which were the densest, lightest calorie sources I could find. Yikes. 5AM: Gentlemen, start your engines We lined up with the best of the nation Friday morning at 5a.m. the Lantana Lodge resort and the race organizers gave out the maps. We used up all of the 2 hours before the 7a.m. race start to plot, plan routes, reorganize food, and get under the arches to hear the startling cannon go off. 7AM: Ready, Set, Go! In all, 225 people ran through the arch in the dark and down the Lantana Lodge driveway to get on bikes in the dark. The irony of running to get to bikes in the first 5 minutes of a 20-30 hr slog wasn’t lost on me. Sadly, in the rush of the first 50 meters, there was a crash and we later found out that a woman had separated her shoulder and was out less than 2 min into the race. Her team would go on without her after she was cared for, but was ineligible for ranking. The following 75 min was spent riding hard into the wind on mountain bikes down highways around the lake to the canoes. It was a surprisingly difficult ride with heavy packs and the pack seemed to move a little faster than was realistic for such a long race. 8:30AM: To the Boats! Regardless, we got there, hopped into a canoe, and headed off, again into a headwind. This headwind theme would be continued on the boat for the next 6.5 hours. In reality, this wasn’t a headwind; we actually had a crossing tailwind that we didn’t think much of at first. I noticed at some point that we were pulling to the left as the wind came across from the back left. Soon, from the back of the boat, I was doing nothing but steering and this would essentially be my only duty for the rest of the paddle. It was frustrating to want to move forward and only be able to pull water from one side over and over. I felt like I wasn’t really helping our progress, but that’s what the conditions mandated. The first few checks were a bit of a blur since we were jockeying for position and had no clue how long the paddle was going to take. At CP2, we saw the team ahead of us drop their passport and carabineer into the lake and go diving after it. I heard later that they never found it and that their race was over. To boot, I can’t imagine how cold they got. This is one more example of how a split-second mistake can have big consequences in these events. What a cautionary tale! By the approach to CP3, we were paddling right along with some people we knew to be fast & capable paddlers including Lab Rats and, not far off, Bikes Plus Little Rock. This was either a good indication of our paddling abilities or a warning sign that we’d overexerted in the first three hours of our long day. It’s always hard to tell until you either finish well or bonk (7). When we arrived at the CP3 area, there were a lot of boats listing about looking confused including Renn Multisport. It’s still not clear what the deal was, because our trusty navigator took us right to the check back in a swampy nook (8). Have I mentioned that Olaf is getting really good? After a little while in the single-boat wide queue to get to the CP, we noticed that no boats were coming back out. That was when Olaf, who had been studying his map said one of the most dreaded words a paddler hears. “Portage.” We hauled the boat up a hill with Olaf and Wendy pushing and me pulling. When we got to the top, there was a guard rail and accompanying road with no other than adventure race legend Robyn Benincasa standing there (9). She was blogging on a blackberry and encouraging teams as they came through. She asked our names & race number before grabbing the bow of our boat and singlehandedly pulling the boat full of packs and paddles over the rail onto the road. I mean literally singlehandedly, because she was typing on the blackberry with the other. Within a minute, Wendy was wearing three loaded packs and carrying three paddles. Olaf and I were jogging under the canoe with no view of where we were headed. We must’ve been quite a sight for the race photographer we didn’t see from under the boat. From the little bit of the world I could see from my fiberglass turtle shell, I can only assume we went down a beautiful road and through a nice field, over a big hill, and down a pasture full of cattle, over a barbed-wire fence, and to the other side of the peninsula to relaunch with 5k to go to CP4, the farthest point on the paddle. We got to CP4 with 2 hours left to the paddle section cutoff and made comments about heading home with a tailwind and how easy that would be. The following hours were a blur of cramping shoulders, frustrated maneuvering, crashing into dead trees that pepper the shallow lake, and nearly giving up to float to the bottom belly-up. This paddling leg was the single most challenging boating experience I’ve had. At one point we pulled up to a tree to rest and no one spoke for fear of agreement. We were so sick of paddling, in fact, that we pulled to the far side of the boat launch and portaged to the transition area rather than paddling the equivalent distance. We had been paddling for 6.5 hours and made the cutoff by 10 minutes! Olaf laughed and cried (10). 3PM: Transitioning While in transition, we saw several teams come in after the cutoff, which must’ve been devastating (11). We felt fortunate, if cold and exhausted, and we were a good ¼ done with the race! We would later find out that very few teams went for CP4 and many of those that did regretted it. 3:20PM: Back on the Bikes After a brief respite and getting thoroughly cold again (12), we got back on our bikes and headed to the 2nd bike section. From the look of things, we would be heading to a single-track trail and doing some technical mountain biking, but the weather in the days before the race had put the mountain bike trail many feet below water in places. We were not unhappy to be sent down an easier equestrian trail, though the volume of mud we rode through soon changed our minds. If this was the “clean” route, the dirty route might have killed us. We sloshed down 6 miles of thick sandy mud to arrive at a foot section. 4:30PM: Arriving at The First Rogaine The rogaine was heavily marked by the footfalls of scores of previous racers through much of the distance and we were beginning to wonder why we were so far behind so early and it dawned on us that we were among a small group of teams that actually finished the paddling section, and therefore higher up in the rankings than many of those other teams. With renewed determination we sped through a navigation section completing it faster than previous teams suggested was possible, an hour and twenty minutes, finishing just before nightfall (13). 6:30PM: Heading out to the Second Rogaine It’s fuzzy now, but I remember seeing the lake being whipped into whitecaps and thinking that we’d be lost for good if we were on a boat out there. I also remember walking miles amongst locust trees with 2-inch thorns, some of which are probably still embedded in my scalp. 9PM: With renewed vigor we hopped on our bikes and headed back to whence we came, realizing after some time that Olaf had lost a running shoe. Backtracking is never fun, but in light of the potential for hours of trekking in bike shoes, we decided it was worth the time. Another mistake, not using carabineers to secure shoes on our packs, lost us 20 minutes. Somewhere in here it also became apparent that Wendy was having bike troubles. She divulged early in the race that the 30 miles we had gone was more than the sum of her cycling in 2009 to date (14). As we’ve established, Wendy is an exceptional runner, but does not actually own a mountain bike. She had borrowed one for the event and put platform pedals with toe clips rather than the usual clipless pedals and bike shoes cyclists wear. This allowed her to wear running shoes, which became especially handy when she got to sections she couldn’t ride through, as she became fast enough at dismounting, running over an obstacle or through a deep muddy section, and getting back on that we didn’t actually have to slow down. I’m guessing Wendy ran about 30 miles that day combined with acrobatic feats to get on and off of the bike quickly and not slow down. It was really quite impressive to a couple of plain-Jane bikers who just ride through and over things. By the time night set in fully, we had just arrived at a manned CP where we were given a supplemental map and sent off on a rogaine. Assurances from teams just coming in suggested that this would be an hour in-and-out deal. As promised, we set off in the dark with headlamps blazing and ticked off the first five of ten points. Then CP6 got us. We took a bearing from a fence corner and paced off to where the point should be. No point in sight. We went back and did the same measurement again. We went to CP7 and came back to where CP6 should be. Nothing. I took the map and looked for it, we fanned out, we joined 20 other people out searching for an orange flag in a muddy creek bottom in a forest. All told, we had traipsed around for over an hour and a half before we stumbled upon the CP. I still am unconvinced that it was in the right place, but one mustn’t get too bitter about such things. 10:15PM: Demoralized and mentally drained, we scooted back to the bikes where local adventure race guru Eunika Rogers kindly reported unflattering quotes from each of us on the race website (15). At this point, I was polishing off the second of my big food bags by downing a monster stack of Pringles. And used a bathroom. A glorious, heated bathroom complete with mirror to see how desperate I looked. Alas, the cold and my steady diet of Gatorade and Powerbars drew me back out and we left for “one quick stop” on the way back to the transition area where warm food, coffee, and all the luxuries in our cars awaited us. MIDNIGHT: Our 25-mile highway commute from the previous early morning was done in reverse until we took a detour for that “quick stop” Olaf mentioned. After leaving the highway for a gravel road, which became a flooded gravel road and a bike drop, we found ourselves walking through puddles and hip-height grass when we came upon none other than Renn Multisport (16) who had just finished the section we were going into. They were happy to be heading to the cars for a much needed sock change and some new food. We trudged off into the swamp. Now, walking through a swamp with the temperatures in the 40’s at midnight is actually more fun that you might imagine, but Olaf wasn’t satisfied with the experience. He took a head-on approach to the situation and used a cypress stump in the knee-deep water to topple himself over so that he could see the bottom of the flooded area up close. I remember thinking that it was going to be terrible giving him my jacket, but he hopped right up and pretended nothing had happened in typical Olaf fashion. Just then he became a true hard man in the Belgian cyclist sense (17). We tried to pick up the pace and monitored his perception of the cold, happy to be heading back to a change of clothes once this section was finished. Now Olaf was surely cold, but the ride back to the transition area was long enough that Wendy began to inquire about our feelings of finishing as a 2-man team (minus Wendy). This is where teamwork in adventure racing really shines, or where everything falls apart. We all go to bad places, and in adventure racing it’s important to communicate your situation at all times. We used a #1-10 how-do-you-feel system of checking on things. If everyone says they feel like an 8/10, all is well. If everyone is feeling a 10/10, we pick it up. If someone is a 4/10, we address their problem immediately as a team. It’s very important that no more than one person dip below 6/10-ish. 1:30AM: Back to Transition Wendy made it back over the 5/10 mark by the time we got to transition, or at least lied and told us so before she disappeared into her car and went to sleep. Olaf got in my car with the heater on full-bore and pretended to read maps, but from his violent shaking it was obviously a lie. I ate Frank’s ravioli, repacked the bikes, restocked food, filled water bottles, and waited. Thirty minutes of packing and eating (18) left me shivering and impatient with my teammates, but Olaf had to warm up to continue. I reluctantly got in the car and shivered myself to sleep while Olaf shivered and pretended to read maps. I had just dozed off when Eunika, our specter of bad quotes and brash motivation, knocked on the window. “What are you doing? Move! You can’t stop now!” We ignored her. I went to sleep. Olaf asked if we were continuing and I didn’t respond for ten minutes. “Sure. I guess so.” We were all at a 4/10 and we all knew it so we didn’t ask. 3AM: Runnin’ on Empty In all, it took us 90 minutes to get out of the cars and back out into the cold, where we began biking slower than ever down a muddy equestrian trail in the middle of the night. I slipped from a 4 to a 3 by getting colder and colder and having little to look forward to in the remaining 8-10 hours to go. It dawned on me that I’d really like to have dry tights and socks rather than the soggy things on my legs and feet. As I was thinking about this, the first placed teams came flying past us on their way back to warmth and relaxation. I’ve rarely been so demoralized. 4AM: Choosing Carefully At the next manned checkpoint we reconsidered what was left and what was possible. We still had 20 miles of soggy equestrian trails to ride, another long rogaine section, and the 2-hour ride back to the finish line. We decided that something would have to go and to spare Wendy the bike acrobatics and ever-increasing IT-band pain, we eschewed the second half of the biking section, pick up a few points, and pack it in. From the comfort of a warm room, some of the next two hours has been forgotten, but somewhere between 2 and 5a.m., I was having a conversation with Wendy about beginning to get a little tired as we biked down a hill at 20 mph - and I fell asleep. It wasn’t a particularly long or restorative nap, but enough that when I woke up and realized I was still up, I felt obliged to tell Olaf that I was at a 2/10 and was no longer interested in looking for checkpoints as much as making sure I didn’t expire in rural Texas. We’ve already discussed how it’s fine for one person to be at a low, but when Olaf and Wendy liked my idea of being tuckered out enough to take on the same rating, we were in some real trouble. We picked up one more CP and headed back to the previous manned checkpoint with intents on heading back to the finish line. The sun was just making an appearance when my guilt from feeling like the first one to fail my teammates set in. I took the map from Olaf, who didn’t see any point in going on, and I suggested we just pick up one more. Just one more! 6AM: And more checkpoints, and more checkpoints.... Olaf said with no hint of a joke in his voice, “Fine, but you’re navigating.” I picked the nearest point and we walked to the edge of a cove on the lake using a straight compass bearing. I wasn’t that confident in my navigational abilities, but didn’t think I’d made any mistakes. 8:30AM: Going Swimming I couldn’t believe it, but the point, which was accompanied by the clue “dam” on our instruction sheet, was out in the middle of the lake! We stood there dumbfounded and warmed up from a combination of the sunrise and our chuckling as we watched team after team come up and either give up or send someone out to get the checkpoint. Adventure racers are a dedicated bunch, but this point was on a two-foot stretch of earthen dam that was just below the lake’s surface. We watched at least four people ease out on the dam, apparently walking on water amid the occasional shrub clump only to fall into the lake head-first. We discussed the value of another point until Olaf became the hero of the day and dared to head out to a certain dunking. We had just warmed up after all getting really cold and tired. Wendy and I agreed that he couldn’t go out there and get his clothes wet and get cold again, as we just didn’t have anything warm for him to change into. So we made him strip. Luckily, and to his horror, there was another team there with a camera to document his odd bondage-inspired race gear for the dam traverse. See the pictures. Sorry Olaf. 10AM: After that, we found two more points and went on our merry way home to finish just in the top half of the race finishers, and very satisfied. 10:33AM: Finishers! 27 hours, 33 minutes, 51 seconds In the end, all of the racers made it back in some condition, washed the bikes (19), enjoyed a nap (20) and a bite to eat, and watched the awards ceremony before heading back to our respective corners of the country. Afterward, Olaf and I were surprised to find how undamaged we felt initially, and how profoundly tired we felt two weeks later. Wendy, it seems, took it in stride and is still pounding the pavement as a fast runner in Dallas. My bike will never be the same after that slog home in the peanut-butter-consistency mud. It’s been two months and I still haven’t gotten it back into working order… I can’t wait until next year (21). Footnotes: 1) ROGAINE - Rugged Outdoor Group Activity Involving Navigation and Endurance – not the popular hair product. 2) The fastest teams are often not the most athletic, but the ones that make the best decisions in these sections. 3) In order to qualify for the national race, a team of three persons (at least one female) must finish in the top three of a regionally sanctioned race. The Natchez race was considered a “sprint” race because the winning teams would finish in 8-12 hours. The national championship race is a 24 hour race, which considered a “standard” adventure race distance. 4) That’s a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride, 26.2 mi run, much of it across lava fields in the blazing sun. Just to get there, you have to rank in the top 3 or 4 slots of your age group at another Ironman Race. Joy is one of the very few elite triathletes in the Memphis area to have qualified for Ironman World Championships. She’s done it four times. 5) Available only at Highland Heights Pharmacy of all of the Memphis pharmacies, it seems. I called over five of them that specialize in hard-to-find items and custom formulations. 6) I think 40 degrees F doesn’t sound extremely cold when you go from your car to your office or when you simply ride your bike for a good 5 hours. When you paddle for 6 hours, run out of food, fall out of a boat, fail to find your spare socks, and are lost for 4-5 hours after falling down in a swamp it’s quite nippy.7) Bonking means running out of blood sugar so that you get sick, fall over, or go into a coma. It happens to the best of us. 8) The water was several feet higher than when the CPs had been put out. 9) Robyn Benincasa raced in every EcoChallenge race and really doesn’t do “short” races like 24-hour deals. She’s more of the 1-3-week type. She and her teammates are multi-time world champions. 10) I was crying well before we got out of the boats. Wendy’s too tough for crying. 11) One CP was penalized for every minute a team arrived after the cutoff. 12) This is a common theme: get tired, stop, get cold, start moving, get tired… 13) We’re not just that good; there was a path of footprints and broken limbs to follow in sections. 14) We went on to bike nearly 80 miles from our estimates and big-fish stories. 15) Olaf says, “Hi Julie and Heike and Brian.” Charlie says (in a weak voice), “Half done!” Wendy says nothing; she’s out of it. 16) Frank Rehnelt, Mike Cooley, and Jeanie Zelinski – tough people, all, but very tired by midnight. Jeanie still had a huge smile going, but I think she would have one even on her deathbed. 17) Belgium is apparently one of the more miserable places to train and race a bicycle because of the terrible weather and the cyclists from there command no small degree of respect. 18) I ate an entire bag of salt & vinegar Dirty Potato Chips, a pint bag of carrots, a handful of Fig Newtons, two cups of coffee, a half gallon of Gatorade, and probably some old socks if they got in the way. 19) There was more mud than bike. 20) Read: short coma. 21) Did I really say that? |
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