Adventures in Adventure Racing - Part 1

OK...I'm still feeling a bit off sleepwise. My body's still not back on track after spending well over 24 hours up and about, coupled with some serious exertion and plenty of time feeling nervous. But I'm ready to report on the race. I'm doing it in two parts...as it was a long race, thus it's a long race report.

The tale begins with Jeff and I heading to race headquarters in two vehicles a little after 5 p.m. Jeff had the canoe on the back of the truck, while I had the bike and all of our boogie boards in the Aztek. As we were stopped at the last main intersection before heading out toward the lake, we saw on the digital sign outside the bank that it was 101 degrees. Since those digital signs rarely factor in humidity and heat index, I'm guessing 105 was more accurate. HOT!

The next several hours were spent checking in and sorting gear and packing it into dry bags and getting our packs as light as possible without forgetting anything important. I'm guessing my pack weighed around 20-25 pounds. Sometimes we'd have our PFDs attached, and once we hit the bike leg I then added on one pair of sopping wet trail running shoes (we were able to leave our bike stuff - shoes, helmets, lights - with the bikes when we dropped them off). So lots of weight on the back.

At 11:30 we were given our maps and we began plotting UTM points. Really, Lori and Courtney plotted UTM points while I held the maps down and used my fingers to mark the large coordinates while Lori did the fine tuning. At midnight we were given the go ahead, but we waited a few minutes to get the last bit of plotting done and headed off a few minutes after midnight.

The race began with a prologue before you could set out toward the first checkpoint. It involved a swim across a small inlet to a tree with a glow stick and a password. I did the swim, and for a moment was excited because I thought I'd get a break from the heat. No such luck...the water felt like a hot tub...it was sweltering. There were a bunch of nasty clingy vines in the water making it harder to stroke and kick, as they grabbed you. When I got across I was so thrilled to see I had to climb a shear muddy incline to get the password. Yippee. Even more thrilled when I saw that the password was actually "password". Sigh. Back across the hot tub to Lori and Courtney.

I'd forgotten this until now, but we weren't the first folks to give the password to the prologue checkpoint folks. So how come they directed the "what's the password?" question to Lori and Courtney who were dry and not to the dripping wet team member, that being me!?!?!

Courtney made our start on the paddle a lot easier by purchasing some wheels for the canoe. The thing is HEAVY and we had a semi-long haul to the boat launch. We made it look easy. The wheels came off pretty easy and we set out for checkpoint 1.

Navigating at night, on the water, is just about impossible. We followed the other boats to CP1 and Lori and Courtney hopped out while I stayed with the boat and punched our card for the CP. Then things got tougher. Lots of boats had gone off in different directions, so Lori and Courtney were stuck reading the maps by headlamp while I paddled the whole time. It was impossible to see inlets or to see if large masses of trees were made up of a single island, or two or three. So we overshot CP2 and 3 and made the choice to just head out and try for CP4.

Prior to this we'd run aground in one of the lake's low spots! I hopped out to pull us off, only to find that after several quick steps on land I somehow ended up to my armpits in water. WTF?!? How was I to get back in without tipping the other two out. This was, for me, my one real moment of feeling athletic. Thank goodness I have fairly decent upper body strength. I managed to heave my chest onto the side, while Lori and Courtney held the boat stable with their legs out over each side. Then I somehow turned into a gymnast as I pulled myself in like I was straddling a pommel horse, and I'm sure Courtney had a great shot of my ass, poor thing. Then I somehow pulled myself forward into the seat, then pulled my legs around. The boat rocked a bit...but we didn't have a tipping scare.

On the water on the way to CP4 we came across something really creepy. If it had been a cartoon it would be along the lines of the Corpse Bride. All through the water in front of us arose these silvery white tree trunks and limbs. They were all of varying height and breadth and were very otherworldly in appearance. The smaller ones were almost impossible to see. I spent the bulk of that leg on the water peering through squinted lids, hollering for hard paddling on one side or another to get us around these nasty spectres. Courtney had a go at them once we punched CP 4, and Lori got us through the worst of them at the end as we made our way off the lake to the bikes. After more than five hours on the water.

We punched in for CP5, got our shoes swapped and put on gloves, helmets and lights. Right before we were ready to head off Courtney's light went out. She didn't freak out...she was calm and simply swapped her nice bike light for her headlamp and we punched out for CP6 and were off. That left Lori with the only really bright lamp, but the first leg of the bike took us through some neighborhoods, so street and porch lights added a bit of illumination.

Courtney had lived in that neighborhood before her move up north to Jasper. So we swooped and swerved through the quiet residential streets and found the checkpoint lickety split. So good to get to one easily. We were able to drop off our PFDs at this CP, leaving them atop our boogie boards for the swim. We quickly got some food down and were prepping to head out for CP7 when I looked down and saw I had a flat.

to be continued...