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

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

Race Reports

Thursday nite at 1830 was the start.  My goal was to finish in less than 10hrs and complete the whole 19 point course I designed which by road would be around 100km.

The 19 point course zigzagged across the COB passing by my compound multiple times (testing myself).  I did this all with a pack on, 1 bladder, 2-2liter bottles of water, GPS and some snacks

So, Saddams100 went pretty good.  Well, it went.  I had one guy came with me, but he called it quits after 7 miles.

There were many times that I wanted to quit. 

-The first section was on foot, 25.8km/16mi, it took me almost 4 hours.  I took it slow and steady taking some pictures, going down in bunkers and tunnels exploring, where I startled some birds and they did me too and they tried to escape the bunker but could not see, I had the only light and they kept flying into walls. 

At one point I was looking down at my map and tripped and for a while thought I broke my arm, but it is fine now.

One other cool thing, I was semi-bushwacking (the stuff only comes up to your knees) and I saw a bunch of eyes and came on to a family of 4 foxes.  They were very interested in me and followed me for about a mile.  They were pretty funny, they stayed behind me about 50meters and eveytime I turned around they would look away pretending not to look at me while my headlamp shined on them.

-Transitioned to bike for 41.8km/26.0miles took almost 2 hours.  This was pretty short and uneventful.  It was fun during the nite, all the helos flying around with their spotlights and stuff.  I also rode over and saw some of the secret stuff, that they only take out at nite.

-I took a 20minute break and headed to midnite chow.  You guessed it, cheeseburger.

-The last leg was rough, back on foot for 19.8km/12.3miles which took me a little longer than 3hrs.  The chaffing was bad and it was tempting to call it quits a couple times, but I drudged on and finished at about 4 in the morning.  Lots of desert hiking and stuff, A mixture of road, gravel, desert, sand, hard desert, rutted roads, etc.

I was able to run/jog the whole thing where the road was flat and non-technical.  Walked a good portion, overall I was happy with the event, but I don’t think I will come back for next years.

Overall, I finished in 9.5hrs or so and logged 87k.  If I were to do it again, I wouldn’t have the miles so balanced between the bike and foot.

Race Reports

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!

Traveling in style

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.
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Race Reports Adventure Racing, USARA, USARA Nationals