Wow. We trained, prepped, trained, planned and trained some more – all in anticipation of a 3.5 day race across West Virginia and Virginia. Eight of us, comprising two coed Teamhalfwaythere.com teams showed up on Wednesday night raring to go. We checked in, moved a lot of gear around, picked up our maps and began plotting nearly 300 miles of travel on several different maps. Words like epic don’t do justice to the length of the course, nor to the sheer amount and variety of the terrain we covered.
After a few short hours of sleep, we took off on our bikes at 6am Thursday morning. We cruised downhill toward and along the river picking up a few points along the way and scouting the rougher sections of the river. Got into the rappel section in the top 7 and sat in the waiting area for awhile. Did the rap, moved to the canoes and stuffed our bikes in the boats. Thankfully, we had practiced this, and had a good way of securing everything. Thankfully, because we managed to capsize both boats a few hours later. Talk about cascading events. The water was cold, a lot of equipment got wet, and we spent quite a bit of time getting our kit back together. Shortly after dark, we arrived at the next TA and our gear bin. Rapids at night sound A LOT bigger than they are!!!
After a long TA that included drying all of our maps by the fire and a complete change of clothing we were off. With essentially everything we would need for the next 48 hours, those packs were heavy! With about 40 miles of biking and 48 miles of paddling done, we began an approximately 80 mile bike leg. This was the soon to become infamous “covered bridge tour”. There are an awful lot of covered bridges in West VA and VA. And you can see them all by bike. We did. Just before sunrise we took a 10 minute rest stop. Good call since the nav team was sleep walking. The sun came up and we moved up a mountain and into VA. Nice downhill! More bridges and a Herculean effort to ride up to Mountain Lake Resort. What a hill. Simply crushing, especially as the temp was moving into the upper 70′s. That doesn’t seem hot, until you compare it to the 45 degree cooler temps just 12 hours earlier.
We motored our way to the top, and TA’ed to foot. There were vending machines and water, so we got to do a mini-resupply. Off we went on the first trekking loop. Nearly 14 hours later, we were done with that mountain. In the process we had bagged points, taken an hour and 40 minute nap, fought a headache for 6 hours and ultimately had to call race central to pick up a teammate. In a decimating blow, what had started as a headache became a migraine and Michelle couldn’t go on. Andrew, Jeremy and myself continued. We wrapped up all the CPs on the mountain, hit the TA, checked on Michelle, and bombed one of the most memorable descents of my life. Smooth, clean pavement, corners you could see through, we literally flew down that mountain.
Next stop was Tangent Outfitters in town for a planned resupply. Breakfast! Coffee, biscuits with bacon, ham, sausage, eggs and cheese – perfect real food to fuel up with. A couple of Cokes and Fritos to go and we were gone. This was a fast bike ride to the AT trail, and the second trek section. We were feeling strong (it is a wonder what some good food and sunlight will do for morale!) and moving fast. By the time we arrived at the CP/TA we knew we couldn’t do the trek section fast enough to finish it by the 2:00 pm cut off to go out on the third trek section (CP 24 and 25). Ultimately, only three teams accomplished that feat, and that became the big discriminator between 3rd and 4th place. Great race planning and assessment by Untamed Adventures! They pushed themselves, made the time hack and sewed up 3rd place with 24 hours left in the race. We still pushed ourselves; we wanted to get off the mountain before dark, knowing we would bike out on the same trail network we were trekking all over. We had another motivator as well – we wanted more real food and knew we had to be in the town of Narrows before 9 pm. We made it – barely. Thanks to Daryl (top soloist saved us some seats!).
After an settling into that buffet, we did not want to leave. We finally forced ourselves away from the table and began the last bike leg – all the way back to our gear bin and boats. Many hours later, we arrived. Yeah – warm clothes, a fire, and a tarp. We racked out for a few, and as the sun was rising our other team arrived.
Unfortunately, Christy had not eaten for 16 hours, and had been throwing up for 4 hours. She finally couldn’t continue. So, those three men were racing on without her. We received permission to combine our teams, prepped boats with bikes, finished in the TA, and took off paddling. Hours later, we put in, TA’ed to foot and moved along the river for 10.5 miles to the base of where the race started. Up we went and the six of us crossed the finish line and were met by Christy and Michelle.
Kudos to ATP/Solomon for an incredible job and well deserved win. As always, the CP Zero team was a machine, sewing up second place and Untamed Adventures – excellent strategy on the race course, guaranteeing third.
A special thanks goes out to Yoga Slackers, Berlin Bike and Daryl, the ARarkansas.com soloist. We spent several portions of the race with all of you, and appreciated sharing the experiences.
This race was incredible! It was one of the best races I have done: professionally designed, great flow, varied terrain, postcard views, challenging navigation – everything I expected and much, much more. Thank you so much to Odyssey Adventure Racing for creating such an outstanding adventure for us.
Most importantly, thanks to all my incredible teammates for racing, training, planning and ultimately making this all possible.
See you out there,
Shane
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