Race Reports, Uncategorized

Weather was projected in the teens, gusts were over 30 mph and conditions were Icy. This was a great day for a Diet and a fantastic way to kick off the New Year!

Shane and I arrived at the Rapidian Wildlife Management area in Shenandoah, VA, at 8:10am for the 9-12 hour DIET slated to begin at 9:00am. Weather on 2 January was projected to be in the teens with wind chill in the single digits. Icy conditions and 5 river crossings awaited.  I was there to get a great workout and glean a few AR tidbits from Share who was shaking out his gear and plan for NGARs in mid-January

After the race brief and a few gear adjustments, we stepped off at 9:20am. We had a solid plan to return within 6 hours as we both had commitments later in the evening.

CP 1 We made it to checkpoint 1 without incident. However, what we thought was supposed to be the pink tape marker did not have the required word/message written on it. After searching for 15 minutes or so, we decided to move on to CP2. We found out later that no words were required at CP1. Careful reading of the passport would have told us that.

CP2  A series of river crossings were required from CP1 to CP2. As we approached the first major river crossing, the teams were scattered in various states of crossing. Some were crawling across logs and others were scouring the banks for a suitable crossing area.

As the clear veteran of the two person team, Shane quickly surveyed the shoreline and made the decision to slog through the water. However, I  was reluctant to get my shoes soaked in that weather with another hour plus projected on the bike. After too long a time searching for a suitable crossing, I pulled my shoes and socks off and  waded through. Subsequent water crossings were completed much faster by shoes and sock removal method. Note to Shane,  thanks for your patience. Note to self, just suck it up next time and wade through)

CP 3 and 4 – Transition to Trek.  Miguel, hot soup and hot cocoa welcomed us at CP3 where we transitioned to the trek. The trek consisted of 4 locations labeled A,B,C and D. After bagging A-C, it was after 1:00pm and we made a decision to skip D due to our commitment to our 6 hour cut off. Back to the TA area and we were off.

CP5  After CP4, we hopped on the bikes and headed down the hard ball to CP 5. We quickly made CP 5 and realized we may have a little extra time and CP 7 wasn’t that far away. What the hell, we decided, let’s go get them.

CP6  and 7  After accidently passing CP7, we made it to the base of the mountain where CP 6 was. Although a trail wound to the hilltop, we made the decision to stash our bikes and make a bee line for the top. We quickly made the ascent to CP6 and were able to see CP 7 from the hilltop. CP 7 was located without incident.

CP 8, 9 and finish  CP 8 and 9  were right off the hardball and we picked them up as we made the  12-13 mile bike back to the start. This was pretty much a straight shot, however the events of the day had begun to catch up with me. I was a lot slower than I expected on the ride back and will need to work on my nutrition plan next time.

Thanks to Michelle for putting this together, Todd for assisting her with course setting, and Miguel for hot soup, hot chocolate and a warm vehicle.

Brian

Race Reports, Uncategorized

It all started with a few phone calls.  We qualified, the money rolled down to us, we might as well go…  But, the race is in Texas.  How much will it cost, how will we get there, how will our bikes get there?  All valid questions, and ones I am sure racers across the country struggled with.  Jeremy couldn’t make it.  Jen Moos and I were hemming, hawing and ultimately leaning toward skipping it this year.

Then I called Mark Lattanzi.  ”Hey Mark, its Shane.  How are you?”…blah, blah, blah.  ”We qualified for Nationals, and are looking for a third.  It’s in Texas this year, wanna go?”   He replied, “Actually, that is one of two races let this year I wanted to do.  Let me think about it.”  Me, “It’s in Texas.”  Mark, “I know, that’s one reason I want to do it, I haven’t ever raced in Texas.”

(Before I get any hate mail from the Texans - the race, Texas and Texans were all great.)

Obviously he decided to do it, and with a phenomenal navigator and stellar woman how could I say no?

We arrived within 30 minutes of each other the day before the race at DFW airport.  Grabbed a rental car, grabbed some Texmex (mandatory, right?), and drove up to check-in to the hotel.  Spent some time getting out bikes reassembled and we arrived at pre-race registration shortly after they opened.

Pre-race is always a great time.  High stress and speculation is coupled with the great feelings of seeing old friends and catching up.  We did all of the above, and were off to dinner.  Caught a great Italian meal across the street from the Four Horsemen motel, and drove back the the event hotel.  Pre-race meeting - we’ll get our maps at 5:00 am and start the race at 7:00 am, a few questions and back to the hotel.

Time to pack, repack and adjust plans.  The deluge of rain put a lot of the course underwater, necessitating multiple changes.  The bike drop was cancelled, and we would see a central TA during the race.  So, we set the car up to act as our TA site, did final prep on our gear, and racked out.

Friday morning came early (we set alarms for 4:00).  Some coffee in our bellies and we were out the door.  By 5 o’clock there was general mayhem as everyone was looking for some real estate to set up their plotting/planning areas.  They gave us our maps and rules of travel and we went to work.  We managed to get everything plotted and work out the vast majority of our routes with time to spare.  Back to the car, final prep to our TA locations, drop the bikes and…

Let’s race!  We jogged about 300 meters downhill to the scoots, hopped on and roared off - or more accurately we rode off with nearly 200 other racers.  Lights on, stay together, and move through the largest sustained peleton AR has ever seen.  A few teams took off and over time we moved to the front and then started closing the gaps from one group to the next.  38 kilometers later we arrived at the boat TA along with Berlin Bike in about 6th.  Into the boats, and time to paddle.  Grrrrr, one heck of a wind had the Race Director mandating that we hug the coastline.  With the wind and waves coming at the side of the boat, the stern was getting pushed pretty hard.  Lots of left side only paddling for the guy in the back (me).  But, that all changed hours later on the return part of the paddle!  We paddled well together moving quickly across the water and knocking out the points.  The terrain around CP4 wasn’t depicted quite the same on the map as on the water, so that slowed us a bit.  We figured it out, punched it and portaged to CP 5.  Paddled back around, wind to our back and then side and returned to the TA.  Although they were a bit of a time suck off the water, we were definitely happy with our decision to carry 3 four piece kayak paddles.

Back on the bikes and still in the top 6 or so.  Bike to the first trek section.  Just how many plants with spikes, thorns, barbs and prickers are there?  How can they all be in the same place?  Why would anyone put CPs in the thickest parts of them?  We got the points, tore our clothes, and moved on.

Bike here, bike there and time to orienteer.  Mark absolutely crushed it.  Period.  Mere seconds off the fastest time (there is a story there, for another time).  Back on the bikes, hop in a pace line and more riding.  Drop the bikes and trek to CP 15, a point with a clue of “…low red wall.”  Low translated to about one brick above water!  Back to the bikes and toward the TA, getting there in the top 5.

In and out quickly, except for the excessive time spent on the jammed buckles on my Sidi shoes.  Hint, go straight to the knife to clean the junk out!  Restocked on food, fluids and some dry clothes, off we go.

Off the road and on to a horse trail.  This was a cross between swampy double track and wet cement.  Miserable, especially for Jen’s driveline.  I had bad chainsuck, hers was terrible.  Mark had a Rohloff and his driveline was unfazed.   That’s going on the Christmas wish list!  Mark seamlessly guided us to the points, and we caught up with Dart Nuun.  They had a map issue, so we rolled together for about the next 5 hours.  We worked well as a 6 headed mob, and reeled in the points.  Hung up on the one near the construction area, found it, punched it and moved on.  More riding through wet cement, more points and we parted ways with Dart Nuun (great racing with you guys!!!).  Next stop was the TA for the final trek and we were still in the top 5 or 6 teams.

It was good to be on foot and work some other muscles.  We had a solid plan and knocked out the points quickly.  When we returned to the TA we learned that three teams were in front of us, and the final trek section was cancelled.  There were also a lot of very fast competent teams just behind us - time to put the hammer down.

Back to the slop.  We ground it out, constantly looking over our shoulders and pushed to the finish.  We arrived at the finish line, and went in to the final punch.  While inside, I was informed that one of the teams in front of us hadn’t cleared the course.  Unofficially, we were 3rd!!!  I told Jen and Mark, we were ecstatic!!!  We got our pictures taken at the finish line, cleaned some gear and went to clean up.

We came back later, grabbed breakfast and watched teams coming in.  It was great to be a part of the energy at the finish line of such an epic event.  The rest of the day was gear work, napping and eating.  The awards ceremony was excellent, and for an avid racer a great way to get your fix listening to everyone’s stories.  Although we all raced to the same checkpoints, the journeys we had from start to finish are the cool parts.  And every team had a different and interesting tale to tell.

Ultimately, we rode about 112 miles, paddled over 5.5 hours, and were on our feet for approximately 8 hours.

A special thanks to our sponsors, we couldn’t do this without you.  Jen and Mark, you are both such incredibly gifted athletes.  This was definitely a pinnacle race, we worked extremely well together and had a great time.  2009 USARA Nationals are in the books, and we took 3rd.  A great cap on the year, and a phenomenal way to debut the ImOnPoint.org race team.  Look for us next year…

See you outside!

Shane

Race Reports, Uncategorized

At about 2 am, seven hours into a 24 hour race, I nearly capsized our canoe.  This was not a “Oops, we misjudged that” near miss.  No, this was me laughing so hard, that the boat was unstable and nearly went over.  The 2009 Bushwack 24 hour Adventure Race was one of the most fun races I have ever done.  The course was great and the racers I shared the experience with put it over the top.

Several weeks ago, I received a phone call from Ronny of Odyssey Adventure Racing.  He planned on racing in Bushwack Adventure’s 24 hour Bushwack race and was interested me joining Hollie and himself.   Fast forward  a few weeks later and I was knocking out a multi-event training weekend in Roanoke with both of them.  The three of us meshed together as a team really well, the training was great (talk about living in a perfect place to train!) and we knew regardless of the official outcome, we were going to have a great race.

Ronnie reached out to through his vast network, and found us our support crew.  Thanks again to David and James for all your hard work.

Some map recon, scheming and planning…We were ready.

Race day arrived, and we all made our drive down to Raleigh for the 7 pm start.  We linked up, met the support crew and got checked in.  This was a Rogaine style race, different CPs had different values.  If you couldn’t clear the course, you really needed a good plan for which points you did and didn’t get.  However, we only received the points for the first third of the course.  We plotted out points, came up with our plan (and back-up plan) based on the information at hand, and were ready to go.

Here is the race:

Prologue, use ariel imagery maps to navigate to a set of nearby ponds.  CPs will be in the vicinity of the pond.

Awesome singletrack - essentially a bike-o section on an intricate trail system.

Great lake paddle with a nuclear power plant nearby.  The lighting from the facility, coupled with an overcast evening gave a surreal feel to this paddle leg.  Lots of points stashed away in various coves.  We were having a great time, when the conversation turned to race bibs.  Apparently, they want those bibs back after the race.  I was laughing as I described how I have accumulated a collection of them from his events.  The more we talked the funnier it was.  Hollie was laughing, I was howling and we nearly flipped the boat.

More biking followed by river canoeing.  This quickly became shallow water canoe racing.  For some unknown reason, there was a massive water release downstream just before the race.  What should have been several feet of nicely moving water turned into one inch less water than the draft of our Old Town canoe.  This was an exercise in getting in and out of the boat quickly and often.  We also perfected a “paddle and scoot” drill to get off of the rocks we were just barely hung up on.

Great trek/Orienteering section.  There was an O section during the later part of the paddle.  Great points, and definitely forcing teams to make decisions.  We had already missed one of the early paddle CPs and the ropes section (could be completed along the paddle or at the end).  So, Ronny came up with a solid attack plan for the section.  We moved quickly, adjusted the plan to grad a few more points and got back the our boats.

More shallow water canoe racing and back to the bikes.  Some riding and we were on another trek/O course.  Ronny crushed it once again, with Hollie and I as his wingmen working through the woods and picking off points.

The final bike leg to the finish area, a quick trip down to the ropes (crazy high points value) and we were done.  Final standings - 3rd in the coed elite and more fun than anyone has a right to have racing.

Hollie and Ronny - thank you for inviting me to join you.  We truly made some great memories.  To the Bushwack AR crew, great event, epic sections, tons of variety and lots of swag.  It was obvious that a lot of time and effort went into the course design and event execution.

To all our sponsors - wow.  We couldn’t race at the level we do without your assistance.  A special thanks to Spokes, Etc bike shop for getting my wheels essentially rebuilt in a few hours.

See you outside!

Race Reports, Uncategorized

For this year’s Lionheart race, TeamHalfwayThere.com fielded three, 3 person coed teams.  I was fortunate enough to be racing with Jen and Jeremy again.  It was great seeing Doug Crytzer, and as always he puts on an incredible event.  This years race was a modified Rogaine format.  You choose which points to get while following a general overall route by, with, through and around Ohiopyle State park.

Doug surprised us this year with a short prologue up to the campground entrance and back.  Then a quick TA to our bikes and we rode straight up Sugarloaf Mountain.  About 1100′ to 2800′, as fast or slow as you raced  Another TA, drop the bikes and run 9 miles, mostly downhill to the Yough River and the put it for the Duckies.  Paddle downriver for a few hours and the takeout was just downriver from the central TA.  Out of the boats, in to TA and get on the rappelling kit.  Jog over to the bridge, do the rap and hoof it back to the TA.

At this point we are about 6.5 hours into the race, feeling good and staying competitive.  Time to do the Mount Laurel trail.  Fast forward about 1.5 hours, and I am not feeling well.  Let me surmise this trail:  1100′ to 2500′ to 1250′ to 2600′ to 1500′ to 2600 (ish)’ again.  In about 8 miles.  Did I mention I wasn’t feeling well?  Wow, I was completely in the hurt locker.  Jermey and Jen ended up grabbing my pack on portions of those uphills, they are both animals!

Next, it was off the trail, through a small town and down to the Yough (1200′).  Cross the Yough (straight across, we don’t need no stinkin’ bridges!) and about 7 miles up (the way we came down earlier) returning to our bikes (back up and over 2800′) on Sugarloaf mountain.  Anyone see a trend here?!?!  Ultimately, as the sun was disappearing and we were seeing our bikes again I believe we had logged a total of 31 miles on foot.

Time to bike.  We set off on the bikes with a good plan for all the points provided we could find a feasible way to hit CP12.  We didn’t.  CP 12 was dropped, we got the rest of the bike CP’s and I managed to convince myself we should see the top of another 2600′ mountain.  We did fall into some unmarked trails, got back to the the final first/last bike CP and descended the mountain back to the central TA.

We checked in, and I was completely destroyed.  Jeremy and Jen were very understanding.  As I dry heaved (nausea x 10 hours, nearly 0 food, alternating hot sweats and chills) Jeremy laid out a tarp.  I stammered something about this not being a 5 minute TA and he looked at me and said, “I know.”  The tarp was for the sick guy to crash on.  I grabbed a fleece blanket, and passed out.  In a few short minutes, Jeremy woke me up.  I asked him how long I had been asleep, he replied, “19 minutes.”  ”19 minutes?”  ”No, 90 minutes!”  Ugh!!!  They wanted to keep racing.  I didn’t.

I changed my mind, and we went off to bag a few more points.  Two very painful bike points later (with a lot of them pushing and pulling me), and we were on our way back to the finish.   Yeah, all done.

A special thanks to Doug Crytzer at American Adventure Sports for his direct sponsorship for his events.  Doug - we couldn’t do this at the level we do without your assistance.  Additionally, all our other sponsors, friends and families - without your help, acceptance of our addiction to this sport, and understanding we wouldn’t be out here doing this.  Thanks!!!

See you outside.

Shane

Race Reports

“The decisions you make trying to win a race are different than the ones you make just trying to finish.”  Jeremy said, as we were reviewing the race during our drives home.  What did we do right?  What did we do wrong?  Most importantly, what drove those decisions.

What did we do right?  Most importantly, we put together a great team.  Jeremy and I combined forces with Jen Moos and Mark Bolyard from Paradofobia.  We definitely had a great team dynamic and worked together through double flats, debilitating cramps, nausea, vomiting, thunder and lightening, difficult night orienteering points, rolled ankles and a complete front flip on a bike.  Although we didn’t achieve our goal of standing on the podium we had an excellent race.

What did we do wrong?  We made decisions on the race course that had they worked, we would have made up significant chunks of time.  But…they didn’t work and instead cost us both time and energy.  That takes up back to Jeremy’s opening comment.  We came to stand on the podium, made decisions commensurate with our goals and missed.

Next time!  :)

Ronnie from Odyssey truly put together an epic event.  A special thanks to him and his hard working staff.  As always, kudos to our sponsors - your support is truly appreciated!!!

Already focusing on the next race,

Shane

Race Reports

Promised Land State park was the start and finish for the 2009 GOALS Cradle of Liberty race.  From early Saturday morning until Sunday afternoon we paddled, shot (paintballs), trekked, biked, and navigated our way over, under and through northeastern PA.

We had two new additions to the team for this race: Jen Moos from the Paradofobia AR team flew in from Ft. Lauderdale and my personal friend Tim Miller raced this as his inaugural AR event.    We had a good race and ultimately ended up 5th in both the overall and three person coed categories.   Thanks so much to both of you for doing this with me!

Highlights from the race:

Pre-race.  The drive from Northern VA to NY to pick up Jen en route to Tim’s house outside of West Point, NY.  Friday I-95 traffic.  Grrrr….. 12 plus hours of driving.  Getting Jen, arriving at Tim’s and chowing on some BBQ - worth the effort

Race.  A short time into the race there was a paintball event - one person per team had 20 paintballs to knock over a gallon water jug, failure to do so resulted in a 10 minute penalty.  Tim smoked it.

High water levels, and the last 2/3rds of the paddling was in a raft.  Question.  What is the maximum  hull speed for an inflatable raft?  Answer.  Crazy slow.  Quantified as 1 to 2 knots faster than drunk people propelling themselves by having their small children swim behind their rafts.

Wet bike sections on “almost” unrideable trails.  Wet roots, rocks and deadfall everywhere.  Any worse, and the effort to ride would not have been worth it.  But, it was rideable and we made decent time riding it. (Read -  we worked our butts off trying to keep up with Jen, she absolutely crushed everyone in sight on these sections.)

Dismal trails on the O-section.  Hindsight, it would have been better to  bushwhack than attempt to follow the trails.

Making some great decisions as a team late in the race.  We assessed how long the trek would take vs. the point value of the the CP’s along it.  So we skipped the trek, bagged some high value bike points, and had more time for the final bike o-section.  Definitely a good team move.

Post race.  Chatting with all my fellow racers - always one of the best parts of the racing scene.

Ordering one of everything on a McDonald’s menu.  Strawberry shakes….hmmmm.

Racking out on the most comfortable bed ever - Tim’s giant couch.

Thanks to Bill and Ann Gibbons and all of their staff for putting on a great, epic race.  Can’t wait for next year’s edition!

Lastly, a special thanks to our sponsors.  We could not compete at the level we do without your assistance.  Thanks to all of you for making this possible!

See you outside,

Shane

Race Reports, Uncategorized

We came into this race with one goal, a top 3 finish. We feel like we are very much a team on the rise and a Top 3 would never be considered a guarantee for us. Tough competition has seemed to follow us this year and ‘Wild and Wonderful’ was no different. But we had our goal, the team was united behind it and we knew it would be and extremely tough slog. Odyssey put on a great race, an extremely tough race, and one that posed a tremendous challenge to any team in the field, regardless of whether or not they had raced in this area before over the last 15 years Odyssey has been putting races on here. I’m certainly proud of everything the team did, we left it out on the course, ran a very good race, every time we needed to push, we all pushed and did what we needed to do as a team to move forward. We ran our race, and came up tantalizing close to our goal. We have to thank Spokes Etc, WTB, Crankbrothers, Ellsworth, and all our other sponsors who help us along the way.

So often in adventure racing you have “what if” moments. It rewards mental toughness and strategic thinking, and forces you to have those qualities at 3am, while you’re under varied degrees of physical stress. Afterwards, when not in those conditions, you have time to look back and figure out how well you did and what you could have done differently. I’m not talking about bad stomachs, cramps, sleep monsters, etc. Those are things all teams have to suffer through; I’m talking about that decision to bushwhack vs. taking a trail, hitting a road that no one else finds, saying “we have to head” back when it seems like you have more time to finish the course. Our race essentially came down to a point “J” moment. We missed our cut-off by just over an hour. It took us roughly an hour to unsuccessfully get this point. That one decision (my decision) sent us from 3^rd, to 23^rd.

It’s what I love about this sport, and making those mistakes kill me, it’s the sort of thing I’m still working out as a racer.

Race Registration

Odyssey Race registration is always a bit of an experience, they’ve got it down to a science, a chaotic science. Given the website had us plotting 20+ points I was glad we got there early. After we got our maps and cracked open the passport we had…8 points to plot, and a 15 pt o-course that we would get later. We plotted our points, got our gear ready, did all the pre-race stuff you have to do, and slept a luxurious few hours before our 6am wake-up.

Race Day

We loaded on the buses to head to the raft put-in. Funny as these things are, my team said maybe 5 things to each other and we tried to sleep most of the hr long bus ride. We get to the put-in, start getting our boat positions…and wait, and wait, and wait. We’re on the last boat of the last flight of boats…AGAIN. Odyssey’s random drawing has had us pulling rear for the 2^nd time in the 4 times they’ve had the rafting. Oh well, we had a 4 person male team with us and those guys looked like they could pull a boat…and they could. We ended up catching the flight in front of us, getting off the river, and on our way to CP2/TA2 in no time.

The path up to CP 2 was straight forward, you turn up, head up, and keep going up some more until you reach Fayetteville. Despite our boat position, we got to CP2 in 6^th place, transitioned, and out of CP2 in 3^rd or 4^th place. CP2-3 was a fairly straightforward bike along the rim of the Gorge to a day use area near Thurmond. We headed into CP3 in 3^rd place, right were we needed to be, and we set about getting ready for the o-course.

O-course

After doing all our initial plotting and planning for the race we knew the o-course was going to make or break the race for the entire field. When we got the map the first thing we noticed was the course was set predominantly in an area that had been heavily strip mined, which meant the piece of paper in our hands was, at best, a only good approximation. We set an initial pace that was going to get us as much daylight on the o-course as possible. We set out about 2:30 in the afternoon, giving ourselves about 10 hours out on the course. By sunset we had 8 points, and were halfway to our 9^th point, having a few twists and turns but nothing terrible and feeling pretty good…oh what a few hrs of darkness will do to a racer’s morale.

We made the ninth point without any major issues. On our way to the 10^th point we ran into some sort of industrial wood chipping outfit…all roads led into and out of this place. The very nice night-shift worker and his dog led us through the back way, telling us that we were pretty far behind other folks who had come through a bit earlier. We made it up to the point we were looking for, unhappy because of the 400 meter scramble through thigh high stinging nettles and made our way back to…the wood chipping place. We worked our way around to the backside of the place, eventually getting to the road we needed to find with the 2ish hrs left before our drop dead time, we set out to try to get as many of the final points as we could. We hit our attack point for our 11^th point (J) and set out to get it…no good, we went back out and reattacked it… same. We tried one more time pressed on trying to use a little side trail to cut around…we gave up and headed back. We’d spent at least an hour trying to attack that point (didn’t find it) and now we and to rush to make it back.

We made the decision to try for two more, gave ourselves only 10 minutes to deviate off of our main trail for each one. Luckily, we were dead on for both of them and only took about 15 minutes of extra time to bag them….1 am, way late for our jump out and we had to cruise. No shape to run it out, we had to hustle the best we good…It was going to be close. The route out seemed simple enough, but like everything on this o-course, looks were deceiving. We had no major navigational issues, just took way longer than we estimated, and we came in much, much too late to CP 4, at 2:45am. Found out we were in 3^rd if we could make the cut-off….If only I had not bothered sending us after J!!! After what seemed to be a long 22 minute TA (but pretty much what everyone else did) we were off at 3:11…and we had a flat. We pumped it up and got going, but we knew it would need to be changed eventually.

The Final push

So, doing the math, we had a 15 minute credit from being in the last wave of rafts, so just over 4 hrs to make the 7am cutoff at cp6. We had originally said this leg would take 5 hrs, we now had 4, this was going to take a herculean effort, quite a feat if we could pull it off. I set the initial pace guessing we’d need an hour from CP5-6, we needed to go 40km in 3 hours, mostly uphill. I could only handle that pace for about 5-8 km. Luke took the lead and we pushed, and pushed, and pushed. Time kept slipping by and it became apparent that we weren’t making the Cut-off. Our pace slowed, a bit, we kept moving forward, eventually coming to the turn-off and hike-a-bike.

This section was slow moving, we were all hurt, Nate had saddle sores that could be considered cruel and unusual punishment, everyone was looking forward to getting back to the road. We made it to CP5 a bit after 7am, 10 minutes to make the cut-off that was 10 km away. No surprise we weren’t going to get there in time. We make it to CP6 with me taking one very nasty spill on the bike along the way, but no nav issues to contend with. The area had changed considerably, much to the benefit of racers as that whole area is normally strewn with deadfall. After CP6 it was a short road ride up to Washington Carver for our finish.

All in all a great event. Our team worked well together, we pushed through, some very challenging sections. We tried to hit a goal, didn’t miss it by much and we’re getting ready to give it another go.

Race Reports

The 2009 Wild and Wonderful race was another excellent Odyssey event.  We fielded 2 and 1/2 teams:  Teamhalfwaythere.com, Teamhalfwaythere/RottenCheeseburgers and a combination of myself and Yoga Slackers creating Halfway Yoga.  The short version of the race:  We prepped, slept, paddled, trekked, biked, orienteered, biked, made a critical cutoff, trekked and finished 3rd.

The long version is a bit more entertaining…

I had been looking forward to this race for over six months.  Way back in December, Jeremy signed us up and we put together a 4 person team.  Unfortunately, life gets in the way and I did not think I be able to race.  So, Nate stepped in and all was well.  Just weeks before the race, my wife surprised me and I was back in the game - but without a team!  I few phone calls and emails to Mark and Sara of Yoga Slackers, an addition of Luther Papenfus and bingo, we have a rock solid team.

The night before the race we all arrive, check in and plot all 8 points.  8 points?  Huh?  Yep, there is an orienteering course in the middle.  We’ll receive and plot those 15 points at CP3.  Additionally, the key time hack for the race is 7:00 am at CP 6.  Some backwards planning, and we estimate it will take us 5 1/2 hours to get from CP4 to CP6.  So, we plan on leaving CP4 at 1:30 am.   We finish packing our stuff, attend the race brief, stage our bikes and packs next to the Odyssey vehicles and rack out.  Unfortunately, some racers didn’t have their kit ready so they had to come back before 5 am to drop off their packs.  Apparently, they thought since they were awake, we all should be.  Lesson learned - camp farther away from the hub of activity!  Grrrrr….

Race day.  Eat, grab sunglasses, and get on a bus.  Knock out a run/swim prologue and start paddling.  The water was high and our guide wanted to do well (financial incentive and bragging rights involved), great combo - we hit those rapids head on!  A little over an hour later and we were in TA and prepping for our trek.  Foot movement for about another hour to CP1 and our bikes.  Quick TA and we are gone.  Excellent double track and single track.  Couple of short climbs, overall great ride.  Show up and CP3 in 4th just behind TeamHalfwaythere.com.  Top off on water, plot points, quick plan and we are out of there.  

Orienteering in and around strip mines is difficult.  Huge kudos to Luther and Mark for some great nav.  Like everyone else, the movement consisted of a lot of elevation change, scaling and descending small cliffs, and navigating in terrain not always accurately depicted on the maps.  After over 12 hours, we ended up with 11 points and came into CP4 almost an hour late. 

Very quick TA and we left at 2:31 am.  We had 4 1/2 hours to get to CP6.  We figured it would be close and if we pulled it off, we were in the top three.  Essentially our race was against the clock for the next several hours, with little margin for navigational errors.  Thanks again to Mark and Luther, we made it error free seemingly biking uphill the majority of the time.  There was a short hike a bike a bit before CP5 just to change things up.  We hit our critical intersections, always chose the correct route and and pulled into CP6 at 6:31 am - exactly 4 hours after leaving CP4.  

From there some easy trekking to CP7 and then the finish.  Through this section the views were incredible, sun was up and we were all in great spirits coming into the finish.

As always, a special thanks to all our sponsors for their assistance.  We really couldn’t all compete at this level without your help.  

Final results for all of us were:  Halfway Yoga 3rd, Halfway Rotten Cheeseburger 5th and Halfwaythere.com 7th in coed elite.

Lastly, thank you to Mark, Sara and Luther.  It was great racing together -  I look forward to the next time we combine efforts.

Shane

Race Reports, Uncategorized

Race Report

Wild Wonderful 24, 5/26/2009

Brian Hyland, Aaron Bernarn, Andi Ballou and Bryce Read formed TeamHalfwaythere.com/RottenCheeseburgers (RottenCheeseburgers). 

Welcome to the Wild Wonderful 24 Adventure race in Fayetteville, WV.  This is a 24 hour adventure race composing of White water rafting, running, trekking, mountain biking and orienteering all taking place in the hilly New River Gorge and surrounding area.  This race is unsupported and we needed to carry all gear with us creating some heaaavvvy packs. 

The race started off with a 12 mile white water paddle (class III-V rapids) and each boat had about 8 people and a guide.  Normally these guided tours are slow and for fun, but for this race the guides were given monetary incentives for their finishes, so it was fast and non-stop.  Once the race began one person from each boat had to do a run and swim to the boat, luckily we had a swimmer in the bunch, and ours (Karen a solo racer) made it back to the boat in 2^nd.  We pushed hard and worked well as a team.  We jockeyed back and forth with a couple other teams and we also saw a few people from other boats go overboard.  Apparently Brian hadn’t gotten his sea legs yet and he almost dismounted a few times.  We finished up strong and were the first boat off the river in a little less than 1 hour and 20 minutes.

            From there we transitioned to a run, we had about a 1.5 hour run ahead of us and took it slow and steady walking most of the hills and running the flats and downhill’s.  We made it the TA in good shape and quickly changed into biking gear and stored all our running gear in our packs, adding a little extra weight. 

            Got on the bikes and started moving out, we estimated 3 hours on bike.  The weight on our back definitely changed our balance and made for some fun windy single track to get out onto the main roads.  We took a couple short breaks here to catch out breath and adjust ourselves, but overall we kept a good pace arriving at the next TA mid-pack.

            CP3 we transitioned to foot for what would be a long and grueling Orienteering course (O-course).  We plotted our points very quickly and away we went passing a bunch of teams still plotting (maybe too quickly).  We took a look at the new Ocourse map and saw lots of strip mines and cliffs, never being in a strip mine we didn’t know what to expect.  We gave ourselves a cut time of midnight that would give us time enough to meet all the race cut times.  To start the Ocourse we had to climb a significant ridge with no trail which put the hurting on all of us.  However, Aaron had other ideas he pretended to be cramping so he could sit down and be stretched out and touched by his teammates (I still haven’t gotten my tip).  This sit down time was a race saver, we took a couple minutes and it saved our race, everyone was fine after that (well, until the bike whack from hell).

            We continued on and made it to the 1^st OP and met up with a few other teams and searched, where we thought the point should be but searched for a few minutes and Karen from team Calleva shared the location of her point and they were a little different.  I made a plotting error and we wasted some time looking but quickly got back on track and joined teams for a good portion of the Ocourse with Karen where the more navigators the merrier.  On to the next CP where we continued on a mesh of old fire roads and trails.  Andi led us to the rest of the OPs without much hassle.  We hit most of our points with daylight which made things easier.  A couple of the points had great views, one we had to climb to was on a large plateau and looked like an African savanna, the same point had an overlook over a huge valley where we could see many miles of gorges, mountains and sky.  This would be our last daylight OP and we took a few minutes to enjoy the view with some wholesome nutrition (i.e. Corn nuts, Fritos, Pringles, and M&Ms). That was a picture moment, however the last video I took of a harrowing 60km/hr ride down a mountain resulted in me putting the camera in my pocket still recording.

            We kept a slow and steady pace on foot and hit more OP’s.  One thing that did bother us was the fact that we couldn’t do the only thing our river guide asked us to do, which was sing the song Peaches.  We could only muster up 4 or 5 lines, but we would have won a prize if trying to sing or remember that song was a category. 

            Getting off the Ocourse was not as easy as we had anticipated; we had left time for ourselves to get out and down the mountain to the TA by 1200 that would leave us 7hrs to make the 0700 cutoff time that was said to take between 4-7 hours.  However, getting off the Ocourse was not what we thought it would be.  We got on the trail we came in on and thought we had a simple way out, not the case.  We got to a point were we said just head east to the cliffs and we will find a way down from there and that is what we did.  We found a safe way down and did some butt-sliding all the way to the CP4 and the transition to the bike from hell.

            We realized we had some time so we took a little; fixed up some feet and got ready for the bike.  We looked over the maps and were surprised we hit 9 Opoints, at that point we had the most of any team that came through the TA.  Andi led us to all the points with little to no error.  We headed out on the bikes and started the climbs, about 50km with what seemed like no downhills (maybe a couple).  The first part of the ride was mainly fire roads that winded and climbed out of the gorge.  It was dark and windy, that’s all I can remember.  We finally made it to the paved road were somehow we still had to climb up the mountain for a couple more hours.  We road for a couple more hours and began to see the fatigue, Brian was talking incoherently when asked questions and the rest of the team was getting quiet. 

            The next thing we saw was a snake like figure of red blinking lights, we came upon a group of about 40 people walking their bikes up the hill.  We passed them over a short period of time and continued on, but were getting close to our trail turn.  We were supposed to be looking for 3 pieces of orange flagging and didn’t see them in time and rode right past it, about 2 extra miles of climbing up that hill.  Came flying back down the 2 miles and hit the turn.  We turned into what would be a brutal bikewhack, pushing our bikes up a dug-out muddy trail.  That too, is a blur of curses and sweat.  I can remember walking past a few teams that had passed us on our overshot and it looked like a war zone, bodies laying everywhere, heads down, people not talking and moaning.  But we made it through and to CP5 where getting short on time especially with a tricky set of turns coming up.  We pushed it to the start of a little village where dogs where nipping at our feet at the break of dawn.  We missed the first turn and got off line for 10 minutes, but we backtracked and saw the sign for the turn we needed coming back and hit it and what followed was in my mind worth all the climbing.  We hit a fire road downhill that was fast, technical and scary (while holding and looking at map and compass).  At this point we had not been passed by any teams and time was running out on the mandatory cut time.  We were thinking we might actually win if some of the other teams tried to bite off more than they could chew on the Ocourse.  We rolled into CP6 and made the cutoff by 30 minutes, it took us around 6 hours to make it there.  At that point we saw team halfway yoga with Shane and realized the other teams were making it off the Ocourse and on their way back.  Alls we had left was a trek back uuuupppp.  We had plenty of time and just pushed it back talking and having some laughs all the way back.

            Race finish was great, good BBQ and got to see everyone all beat up.  We finished great with a mixed experience team in which we had no expectations; we got 5^th out of 50+ teams.

Race Reports