The 2008 USARA Nationals race is in the books. Here are the race highlights from both of our teams, enjoy the different perspectives on the race.

A special thanks to all our sponsors this year - we truly could not compete at the level we do without your support. Spokes, Etc. thanks for all the immeasurable bike support, and for building a rim in a day! Land Rover Alexandria - Wow! What a hook up - arriving at Nationals in two Range Rovers. Talk about the ultimate race support vehicle!

The list goes on - Logistics 2020 for their financial support this year, Eastern Mountain Sports in Arlington for their incredible support of our team with shirts and equipment. Nature Cure and American Adventure Sports for their support and nutritional supplements, Lendal for the phenomenal paddles, NoTubes.com for overnighting a new rim days before the race, Old Town Canoe and Kayak for their continued support, Vassago for building one of the best 29er’s out there, WTB for their support of us and other grassroots racers out there, Crank Bros for their support, Dinotte Lights for their assistance, All About Images for their photo, digital and video help and White Brothers for their support.

Teamhalfwaythere.com I

The race was long!  At the pre-race meeting, the Race Director said most teams would clear the course, and he predicted the top teams would be done in 17 hours.  Ultimately, somewhere between 4 and 8 teams cleared the course, with the winning team - Dart Nunn taking over 25 hours.  Both of our teams did great, getting official finishes and placing 19th and 36th in the coed class.

It was great seeing all the teams gathered for this event, great people, good catching up with other racers.

The RD put on an incredible event, great volunteer support, virtually zero advantage to the locals, and all the points were in the right places!!! Yeah!

Race started with a train ride for about 45 minutes.  Then a quick prologue and a 12 to 14 mile paddle.  No center seats for anyone - totally sucked for the middle paddlers.  Soaking wet for hours, and not able to get a good paddle stroke.

Long portage with the boat on our shoulders.  Nice trail run/trek for a few mile to the bikes.

Long bike section.  Terrible chain suck for me in granny gear.  Sprocket worn out from the mud.  2 miles into the bike - no more granny gear for me.  Ugh!

A lot of the biking becomes hike a bike to points on trails not depicted on the maps.  Trails follow the contours along major terrain features, generally made sense.  Lots of roads and trails from the map (1982) not the same on the ground - we were warned of that

Orienteering section.  Steep mountains, rolling valleys.  An incident with a bull (the electric fence should have been an indicator!!!)

Bike to the next orienteering section.  Seemingly more up than down.

Second O section.  Getting cold.  Still shivering just thinking about it.

This was a cold race, rained a lot, dropped into the 30’s at night, froze on downhills on the bikes.  Our team (Jeremy, Christy and I - Teamhalfwaythere.com I) ran into our Teamhalfwaythere.com II team (Lukas, Mike, Kelly) around 4 am at a TA for an orienteering section.  It was great to see them but Lukas was running a fever and could not warm up.  Reading some race reviews and looking at the 15 plus teams that dropped, this was happening to everyone.  However, they put their heads down and continued on for the next 5 plus hours!

Finally decided to skip our first point (#17) out and back, would have taken at least 2 hours.

Bike some craziness.

With 6 km to go - Christy attacked a railroad tie with her knee.  I don’t know what the poor RR tracks did to her!

So, we pushed it in and finished with 4 minutes to spare.  Good thing we didn’t go for another point!

Thanks to everyone involved, supporting our efforts, racing together, driving us, following online.

Again, an incredible epic adventure.  And that’s why we do this, right?

Shane

Teamhalfwaythere.com II

The race started with a train ride for about 45 minutes.  Then a quick prologue and a 12 to 14 mile paddle.  The end of the prologue presented teams with their first strategic decision: get your feet wet or run an extra 4 km and have dry feet. The race organizers “strategically” put the last prologue point across the river from the canoe TA. Teams could cross the river — about knee high — or run 2 km up river to a foot bridge. We chose to get our feet wet. It was a wise decision, as our feet were soaked at the end of the paddling leg anyway.

The paddling section entailed 12-14 miles of class I rapids and a shallow river. This section  presented its own challenges with no center seat for the middle paddler, an unannounced 3 foot dam (can anyone say rodeo!), and 2 km portage (on our shoulders). We ended the paddling section strong, ultimately making up some time by passing 6-7 teams.

The next few hours hour included a nice trail run/trek for a few miles (to the bikes) and a long ride to the o-section. This is where the rain started. Yes, lovely cold rain! By the time we got to our bikes the rain had stopped (briefly). We jumped on our bikes for a long and very hilly bike section and were greeted by more rain. Somewhere in between the bike TA and the orienteering section, Kelly’s left crank shaft loosened. We stopped to assess the situation and realized we did not have to proper tools to fix it. With my bike tool and paddle key, and Lukas’ ingenuity, we managed to tighten the crank shaft and were on our way. Not sure how we fixed it, but the crank shaft stayed tightened for the remainder of the race.

We arrived to the first o-section in darkness. The section included big mountains, a lot of mud, and some dry weather — yes the rain finally stopped. Unfortunately, the clouds lifted and we began to realize that it would be a cold night!

The next bike section was a never ending stretch to the next orienteering section. Seemingly more up uphill than down, with switchbacks from hell! Yes, switchbacks on a bike leg are not a good sign for what is to come! We survived the climbing and arrived to the second o-section around 4:00 am.

By this time Lukas’ fever — yes, amazingly, he was racing with the flu — had set in. Lukas was having trouble keeping warm and his temperature was fluctuating throughout the night. Did I forget to mention that the outside temperature was around 30 degrees and we were all wet? We decided to go grab CP 15 (an easy CP) and then reassess the situation by the fire (yes, the race organizer had a nice manned CP with a fire — ahhhhhh). After some discussion, we made the difficult decision to begin making our way back — via a shortened route — to the race finish (40 km away). We decided not too gamble with Lukas’s health, given the environmental circumstances (cold, wet, and there were no rescue points between where we were and race finish). At that point we changed our team race strategy from competing for a top 20 finish to just finishing the race.

Despite choosing to shorten our course, getting off the mountain was no easy task. We biked for 40, cold km’s to race finish. Along the way we picked up two additional points. All in all, the final bike leg took us 5 hours, putting us across the finish line around 9:45 am.

Thanks to my teammates for pushing through the long cold course with me — you are both awesome athletes and great people. And thanks to everyone involved with Teamhalfwaythere.com, supporting us, sponsoring us, planning races, racing with us and against us — we can’t do it without you!

Mike

lukas Race Reports Adventure Racing, USARA, USARA Nationals