Been a minute

Felt like I should write about this:

I did an adventure race last weekend. If you don't know what an adventure race is don't be ashamed, neither did I. I always knew they were a bit crazy and involved running through the woods, but not quite like this. My best analogy for an adventure race would be an alleycat in the woods where you have lots more rules than an alleycat. Instead of going to street intersection or addresses in the fastest order on bicycle you have to run through the woods or bike down trails to find checkpoints. You'd think they'd put the checkpoints in relatively easy spots on the trail so you could see them, but no they hide them on purpose cause they like to see blood come out of your legs.

There were a lot of people there. I don't know how many teams total, but at least 40 or so. We had a team of 3, me, Jim and Laura. Turns out the Co-ed team category is the most competitive as the best team had 27 checkpoints to our 13. Wahoo 13! The start consisted of running to a point where you team mate swam to. We met up with Jim and continued our run back to the start where we were to decide if we were going to Run or Bike. We chose bike. There were lots of bikes. We went down the trail in the direction which seemed fit and were making pretty good time and then 40+ bikes were just stopped on the trail and people were running around in the woods. We asked "what is going on?" Most people did not answer cause they took the race too seriously and wouldn't want to assist a noob team (we got a lot of that through out the day it seems). Turns out they were looking for the checkpoint. I didn't even know what it looked like. I figured it would be a dude signing manifests in the woods, like an alleycat. I was wrong. It was an orange and white box much like in Mario Brothers, hanging from a tree, with a stamp on it that punched your card. We carried on and tried to avoid the TERRIBLE riders that were stopping every 20 ft in the MIDDLE of the trail.

Soon we came upon the Orienteering course. This was an optional course, but we decided to give it a go. I was put in charge as I could read maps and play with a compass rather well. Turns out I'm pretty good with a compass, but terrible at finding the easiest path around thick brush. After walking briskly through thorns, creeks, mud, and brush we continued on our bikes. There were less people biking now as most people had spread out. The heat of the day began to set in and I began to feel terrible. I had gotten shit for sleep 4 nights leading up to the race and was really running on empty after spending 12 hours in a Fuel Farm in 100+F heat the day before in Miami and only getting 4 hours of "sleep" before the race. I was getting noticeably cranky and annoyed with each request of "where are we?" and "which way do we go?" The map did not have many of the dirt paths we needed to travel on to get to each checkpoint. We were not allowed to ride through the woods on our bikes but only run. We were also not allowed to backtrack on the bicycles on any trail or be DQed. The last 3 checkpoints we tried to find got increasingly more annoying. We got lucky and saw a few people who found some nearby but soon were all alone. The asking of people "did you find B7?" usually was met with silence. I did not get a good feeling from the other racers. It lacked a togetherness feel. Its was obvious we were struggling but not many people offered any help, and this was adding to my frustration. I gave up my map duties and offered insight, but felt it was hopeless. Soon the team agreed and we just decided riding bikes fast would be more fun.

After we spent over 4 hours of biking and doing an orienteering course, in cycling shoes, we pretty much called it quits and made a beeline for the end in hopes to get in a treking(running) checkpoint. I had a slow leak I had been fighting all day which turned into a big leak and I was riding on the rim in short time before I knew it. We were still 2+ miles from the end. I had to change a flat on the fly with no CO2 and a very crappy hand pump. My teammates had left me in the woods as they did not hear my "FLAT!" cries. I knew they'd come back. They did, just in time for me to ride back with them. I dropped a chain within 1/4 mile after that and had to stop. Then my wheel was set wrong and was rubbing the frame, so I had to set that. I was getting more and more and more frustrated and I knew I was nearing the end of my water supply as I did not plan to be out for so long without making it back to our transition area.

After we finally made it back. I felt destroyed. I was tired. I felt I had let the team down with my lack of navigation perfection. Riding on a bearing on a trail that moves around and isn't on a map vs running through the woods are 2 totally different animals I learned. We had 33 minutes till the time cutoff. I really didn't want a DNF so I opted to not try and get the treking check point incase we got lost getting the one checkpoint. Soon after this Laura jumped into the lake followed shortly by me and Jim as it was too damn hot. We ate a pizza and some chikfila and went home. I slept like a log.

Adventure racing is not my speed. I'm just not a big fan of racing that sort of length in an open format I guess. I'll stick to alleycats, short cyclocross races, and the occasional loop around the track when I'm around.