My husband and I used to do long adventure races years ago, to include going to USARA Nationals twice. It's been awhile for me since I did a long adventure race. It was also the first 30 hour for Zdenek and Dave and for us as a team. We were all pretty excited but, knew there would be some serious competition coming from all over the U.S.
There were a total of 3 teams and one individual from Missouri who were invited to compete in USARA Nationals this year too. Essential Racing (Masters division), Alpine Shop, and Melissa Lemus were also there eager to battle it out. I thought it was pretty cool to have several teams representing our state at Nationals this year. Go Missouri!
We
arrived at race headquarters for the team check-in. We received a bag
with lots of really cool schwag and had a little fun at the team photo
shoot. Then, we went to the cabin to prepare all of our gear, food, and
bikes as much as we could without knowing the course and discipline order. This is hard because we didn't know how to divide up the food yet. I decided to make up 5 hour bags with 200-300 calories per hour. 
After dinner, we ran into Carrie Sona who was unable to compete in this length of race yet
due to coming back from an injury. Carrie gave us words of
encouragement and support. She is one of the coolest people I know and
always supportive of other racers. She was also there to support her
team, Alpine Shop. Carrie just started coming back to the racing scene
recently and I have a hunch she will back full force in 2014. A super fast chica, Melissa Lemus, was also there from St. Louis racing with a team from the East Coast. This team is known for their speed and experience. We exchanged words of encouragement at dinner and wished each other luck. I love that this sport, like mountain biking, has supportive and caring folks out there no matter how competitive we are.
Thursday
night was the mandatory racer meeting with several well-known speakers. The man with the masterplan and course designer was Brian Holzhausen who runs the current Dino Series in Indiana. He is a super nice guy and puts on quality races to include runs, mountain bike races, off-road triathlons, and adventure races. Patrick Harper, a former adventure racing pro from one of top 3 teams in the world, Team Montrail, who tested the course and Troy Farrar, president and founder of USARA, also discussed the rules and course. They were also not shy about sharing how wet we would be and the numerous thorns we would encounter out there bushwhacking.
We were instructed to plan on bringing food and water to last 30 hours since we would probably not be coming back to headquarters until the end of the race. I was thinking we were going to have some heavy packs and definitely, be looking for more water on the course. We were able to bring our own paddles and life jackets as long as we put them in a large durable bag and placed the bag in the Dino truck to be transported to a drop point. After the meeting, we headed back to the cabins to tweak our gear a little more and then, we went to bed to get a good nights sleep...yeah right!
Friday morning came quick and it already felt like we only got 3 hours of sleep. At 6:00 AM, we were given 2 massive topographical maps and race instructions with 36 coordinates to plot on them. This means we had only 1hr 45 minutes to plot our maps for the race and had to be at the race start by 7:30 AM. Todd had the idea of grabbing us a table in the lodge while we went to get maps so we had a nice area to plot these ginormous maps. Once we got everything plotted and routes planned, we headed towards the start line. We were to start with a prologue run.
Prologue: 1.5 mile Trail Run
We gathered around the start to hear final announcements and the prologue run instructions.
We quickly crowded behind the start line banner and the gun went off. We
started off with a 1.5 mile prologue trail run. We decided to wear our helmets
and run with trail running
shoes on. We were allowed to leave our packs at the TA which was at
the finish of the run. I was happy about that since our packs were
heavy with full bladders and food along with mandatory gear. There were so many people on the single track so it was
impossible to go fast since you couldn't pass due to the narrow trail. The strategy here
would have been to go out super fast if you could but, there were folks way faster than me/us. However, we still had 29hrs 45 minutes to go. We completed the run and came into the TA where we would transition to the mountain bike. A quick change of shoes and put on a pack then, we were off.Stage 1: Mountain Biking
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| Team #19 |
We arrived at Hesitation Point, which was an incredible view, with our 3 poker chips which we needed for exchange to punch CP 1. Todd thought we were top 20 coming off this section. While Dave was getting our passport punched, Zdenek and I studied the maps to check out a route selection for our next 6 checkpoints. We would need to get to those points as close as we could by bike. Then, we would have to drop the bikes and run deeper into the woods to find the checkpoints.
We could get checkpoints 2-6 in order so we decided to do 2, 3, 5, 4, and then 6. We were able to take roads to get to CP 2 and 3. We would quickly drop our bikes just off the road and ran into the woods in our bike shoes to get the checkpoints. Then, we went to find CP 5. We had to take several dirt roads, double track, and single track to reach it. However, we struggle with this one. The trails were splitting off each other. I remember hearing at the pre-race meeting that not all trails are on the map. After running around and accidently finding another trail, which didn't make sense to where we were, we decided to back track to a spot where we knew on the map. It was then where we found this "other" trail. We decided to take it since it seemed to be going the right direction. Then, it all fell into place and we punched CP 5 which could almost be seen from the trail. We were all a little frustrated at this point but, moved on.We were then able to quickly get CP 4 and 6 which were pretty straight forward. Next, we rolled into TA 1 which would be our transition from bike to paddle. We had a quick gear check here. A boy no older than 12 asked us in his cute southern accent to see our whistles, emergency blanket, and strobe light. This made sense since we we going to have a long paddle potentially going into the dark. I was also quickly interviewed by the race staff on how we were doing so she could update the website on team stories. I knew we lost a lot of time on this last mountain biking/orienteering section especially, after we saw how many bikes were at the TA already. However, I told the lady we had a good start, lost some time on the orienteering section but, looking to make up a lot of time on the paddling which I think we are good at.
Section 2: Paddling
We dropped the boat into the Beanblossom Creek. I was excited to just be able to drop my head and motor us down the creek to gain some time. However, this wasn't possible. We were greeted with very low water levels which required us to walk in the creek more than we could paddle it. We had our running tows around our waists so it helped to attach it to the boat at times to pull it. Just when the water would be deep enough to paddle, there were massive log jams which required us to launch the canoe through it or over it. We were completely soaked this entire leg and our shoes were constantly full of sand. We knew it was going to be a long 6-7 mile paddle at this pace. We picked up CP 7 which was along the creek by a bridge.It was about 6 or so hours into the race and our water bladders were getting pretty low and we really didn't want to refill with creek water and iodine tablets. Zdenek spotted a summer home along the water which had an outside sink. We pulled over and filled up all our water bladders and bottles. It was hard to watch 4 boats paddle right by us but, everyone is going to need to fill up their water bladders at some point. But, we were able to catch right back up to them since the water was higher now as it started to flow into Lemon Lake.
The next two CPs, 8 and 9, would require us to dock our canoe on the side of Lake Lemon and head into the woods again on foot. Unfortunately, we struggled with these CPs again and lost more time. We all put our head in the maps and we were able to work together to figure out our mistake. Again, we were all a little frustrated but, we motored on to CP 10. Here we were told that the team could split up in order to complete two sections-a short paddle with rafts across the lake and an orienteering section on foot for 2 checkpoints.
Stage 3: Trekking
Here's where we started using a little strategy to play the game and hopefully, gain some time. It was dark now, around 11pm, and we knew it wasn't possible to finish the whole course by 2pm the next day. We looked at the maps and the next 5 checkpoints were taking teams a long time (some 5-8hrs) to complete this 15 mile section. The CPs were really spread out and deep in the woods. We are allowed to skip any CPs without a penalty. We decide to head down the road bypassing 4 CPs (12-15) which would of taken us hours and was very far away. Instead,
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| Another racer with similar looking feet! |
Stage 4: Orienteering
At TA3, we were given an orienteering map where the CPs were pre-plotted. There were 7 pairs of CPs. We had to get 4 sets of them. 4 CPs from the North and 4 CPs from the South. Each CP had a letter (NPQRSTU) and these 4 pairs had to have a matching letter. We choose PUTN for our pairs. Zdenek was attacking all these with no difficulty. We quickly finished these up and headed back to TA3 to pick up our bikes.Stage 5: Mountain Biking
We headed off in the dark on our bikes and I believe it was around 5-6 AM since I was thinking the sun would be coming up soon. Our eyes were a little heavy and Dave broke out the "magic beans." We each had some of those and vroooommmm....we were off! Those coffee beans really work! CPs 17-20 were pretty straight forward for us. Zdenek was able to nail each one without difficulty and we hammered out the last bike section which was all gravel and paved roads. We pulled in to TA4 which was the start of the race around 9ish AM. We had to be done with the race by 2 PM or we would start loosing 1 CP for every minute after 2:00 PM. We were greeted by Todd with words of encouragement.
Stage 6: Orienteering
The last and final stage of the race consisted of 6 CPs (AA-FF) which could be done in any order on foot.
We seemed to struggle with the first 2 CPs. We could see other teams running around not finding some of the same two we were looking for too. This cost us a lot of time and mentally, after 28 hours of racing, navigating and having a difficult time with navigation was draining. All three of us had our head in the maps again and eventually, we found them. We decided to go for a really easy CP next, the tower, and take a mental break. The only problem with this 3rd CP was it was a leg burner and of course, the flag with punch was at the top! We scurried down the stairs and it was time to check how much time we had left.
There were still 3 more CPs but, we only had 2 more hours.
we decided we had time for one more 1 CP but, it wasn't close. After about an hour into it we decided to bail since this would only give us an hour to get back. We trekked, waddled, jogged back to the finish line. We had no idea how we finished and if our strategy, skipping the previous 15
Usara put together a really nice awards ceremony and banquet. They gave away more schwag with random name draws and the prizes to the winners were awesome. The best part of the banquet was the guest speaker, Tori McClure. Tori was the first woman to row across the Atlantic Ocean and 1st American and woman to ski to the South Pole. She shared her brutal experiences with rowing totally unsupported and alone across the ocean through hurricanes and skiing unsupported and alone in white out conditions in which she had to rely on a map and compass to guide her way. Her reasoning for sharing her incredible journeys was to relate to our experiences racing for 30 hours through pain and with a compass. Her points were that anyone can achieve a goal they set out to achieve. We can learn from our mistakes and can persevere through them. After hearing what she went through, I left dinner with my head now lifted and knew, with persistence, practice, and determination, we, as a team, can improve to achieve our own goals and achievements we set out for.We still have much to learn and practice alone and as a team. This race helped us learn our weakness and strengths and we will gain from this knowledge. We talked things out after the race so we will improve for 2014. I'm excited about our big plans for next year and I am confident we will only keep on improving and getting better as a team.
Up next, Castlewood 8 hour Adventure Race right in my back yard. I have a few other races I'm throwing in for my own training too-the Wild in the Woods trail running series (3 races), the Skippo 30K trail running race, and the Pere Marquette 7.5 mile trail running race. Check back here to see how the adventure race and my trail running races went.
