Can a 13-year old navigate us for 6 hours straight?

Continued short story: do adventure races with your kids!

A week removed from RD’ing Spring Bloom AR, lets participate in a race, forget kiddo, would I have the energy? 🙂

Racing with Xander again, our 3rd race this year and again with Xander navigating, I’m rabbiting, and offering advice only when he asks and won’t even have a map in my hands. At 6 hours long, this will be his longest race to date. 

Driving to Delaware (Trap Pond State Park) as soon as Xander is off school, we’ll experience some rush hour but wait what… now its 4+ hours because some dude is protesting by climbing the Frederick Douglass Bridge causing it to get closed down and all traffic getting rerouted and crammed everywhere else… 

We passed through a small town in Delaware called Bridgeville. We counted exactly 0 bridges… Total ripoff, we demand you rename this town or you start building a bunch of bridges. 

Got to Trap Pond State Park with 5 minutes before the camp office closed, got our parking/site pass, and then had to set up our tent in the dark, always fun.

We quickly realized the campground section of Trap Pond is more like a “camping” section. Way too many campsites crammed inches from each other, and out of the 25+ sites around us, we were 1 of only 2 people with an actual tent; everyone else had massive RVs, trailers and were basically staring at us as we set up our tent like they’d never seen one before… and they were playing loud music all night and having a good ole time till like 2am… we got very little sleep.

Regardless, we prepped out packs and bikes that night so we’d have nothing but maps to do in the morning. We played a couple card games of Tacta, and then tried our best to sleep in the loud and very cold night. When we woke up, we agreed we didn’t want to camp again after the race and deal with all that again, so we picked up our tent in the morning, now we could just head home after the race.

Quick race check-in and Xander got to map planning while I prepped/staged our bikes and paddle gear and chit-chatted with the other racers, many of which who had nice things to say about Spring Bloom which I was so relieved to hear, so glad everyone had a great time regardless of the low waters on the Rappahannock last week. 

Jumped back in the car where Xander was map planning and just like last race he already had a plan and maps marked up. In this race you would either started with paddle or trek but it was a random draw to start the race so we put both those maps in the same case, ready to do either. 

Xander had a trek loop figured out, and his paddle strategy was try to go in the opposite order he thought everyone else would go in, my favorite to avoid stack-ups at CPs. 

10 min before race start we got our mystery envelope, we drew paddle, so we put our paddle gear next to an open spot no one else appeared to be launching from, we lined up for the start and RD Jon took a pre-race group photo and then we were off. Good divvying up tasks, Xander prepped the gear while I carried the boat and we were in the water in under a minute. 

We immediately went for P4, a checkpoint behind an island and were definitely the first ones to go for it, because as we were coming through a secluded stream a mama goose 2 feet from us freaked the hell out and flew 2 inches from Xander’s face flapping her wings and honking loudly.

Xander was appropriately freaked out and didn’t want to exit the way we entered, we got the CP and quickly warned all the other racers what was waiting for them if they went out that way.. and then I convinced Xander it was quicker and we could get out without angering the goose the 2nd time, we succeeded the 2nd time. Poor mama goose had a nest on a tiny island and likely had a long day of being bothered by adventure racers. 

As all adventure racers do, Xander was a little shaky on measuring distance to the 2nd CP, we were well short when he thought we were there, but we spotted it off in the distance. Once we got that one, he found a rhythm properly measuring distance to the map’s scale and we pretty much ripped through the rest of the CPs on this leg with no problem.

We quickly realized almost 80% of the CP clues for this race were “down tree” “horizontal tree” or “cypress tree” hah, but its ok cause all the flags were exactly where they were supposed to be so great for easy navigating.

Taking a moment to say I LOVE paddling through a cypress swamp and Trap Pond S.P. has one of the coolest ones around, 4 CPs in this area and it's so awesome to experience, I would paddle here all the time if I lived closer. 5 stars, would recommend.

8/8 CPs on the paddle, as we exited the boat Glen Lewis was sprinting in returning from the Trek leg which was definitely designed to be considerably longer than the paddle… Xander asked me if I thought he would clear… hah, I said probably in 4.5hrs I ended up being very close on that estimate. 

I forgot to mention how cold this race was, specifically in comparison to last year when I did this race and I think it was 95 degrees cloudless blaring sun, whereas this year it was completely cloudy, barely hitting 60 degrees with a chance of rain and cold wind in your face the whole time. So we wore our waterproof rain jacket layers from the start just for the warmth. As we started the trek we agreed to stay layered up and got to work.

We walked at a brisk pace with occasional jogging when we were on flat/clear trails and I’d say Xander absolutely nailed the navigation for the first 7 (of 15) trekking checkpoints. We’d occasionally catch some teams doing a lot of running, but we kept our own pace. 

We also encountered a lot of cyclists on the multiuse trail as there was a cycling event going on that day, which is awesome, but I continue to be dumbfounded in recent years at the growing number of people who ride bikes without helmets, and have their kids riding bikes without helmets… and also at the number of parents buying their kids e-bikes… fully capable kids who definitely do not need pedal-assistance.

We made a clockwise loop around the pond/lake and when we got to the south side Xander said the next CP should be “just off the trail when the trail makes a sharp right turn.” We hit a big right turn and Xander pointed me into the woods and I dove in like any good rabbit would do, only I couldn’t find a flag. We stayed in contact and he confirmed the clue was something like “downed tree by ditch.” I was indeed by a ditch/reentrant with downed trees everywhere but no flag. I searched for about 5 minutes when finally I came back out and he was dumbfounded and for the first time asked for my opinion/help. He showed me the trail on the map we were using and the circle for the CP encompassed the trail so the CP shouldn’t be deep in the woods, but after one quick look I taught him the all important technique of using your compass to confirm you are where you think you are, hah.

In this case the trail had two sharp-ish turns in it about 300 meters from each other, and the one we needed should have pointed us north, we were not pointing north, therefore we were one sharp turn too early. We walked a small distance further and another sharp turn, this time with a flag a few steps into the woods. Easy quick lesson learned.

The rest of the trek Xander continued nailing the navigation, I only temporarily took the map a few times when I was making him eat/drink keeping him fueled so we can go 6 hours. We kept a brisk walking pace, and as we were coming in to the final 2 CPs of our loop we could see some of the top teams heading out on their bikes, so we were behind, but not that far behind considering we were not doing any running. 

As we were finishing up the trek I asked him what our plan was for the bike, we would have about 2.5 hours remaining, the bike leg had an initial outer road loop and some inner trail CPs and then if you got all that you could go get bonus CPs far away but you couldn’t get those unless you got everything else. We agreed it was unlikely we had time for the bonus stuff but we’d attempt to clear the normal bike leg. We established 2 different spots where we’d do a time-check and make a decision to head back or get more depending on what time was left (so we didn’t repeat our Walnut Creek lateness)..

So 15 of 15 Trek CPs, time for biking. I was happy to get to do this with Xander because biking has not been a great experience in his last 2 races. We had the crazy mountain trails at Walnut Creek where he bonked and we ended up late and then just last week at Spring Bloom he was racing with a friend in the Youth Division and his friend had an unfortunate crash before the first CP and so they skipped the biking. 

This race the first 6-7 points involved riding on public roads; country roads with not a lot of traffic but still roads, and Xander did great, he followed all the good tenets of riding on a road, staying to the side, no crazy movements and got off the road any time we needed to talk or look at the map. His pace started good, but after a few miles he really slowed, it was basically flat but we were edging close to 5 hours into the race with no breaks or stopping as all our TAs were super quick.

I did a quick “how you feeling?” check and he just said “I’m tired.” Got it, no problem, so I told him, no biggie, lets just stop and rest for a minute at the next CP, so we did. It was a CP by a small boat ramp off the road, we sat down, he got a minute to fully hydrate, got a Fruit Roll-up, and then he asked me a hilarious out of the blue question: “Can we get Arby’s on the way home? We passed one on the way here and I like their curly fries.”  Hah. Deal. 

After maybe 3-4 min. we got moving again when he said so, it was encouraging for him to be pushing us to move again. 

I think it's important at this point to note I very specifically was not “trying to win” in this race. I easily could have pushed him, or towed him on the bike, or taken the maps at any point, or (as some teams we saw did, telling him to stay put while I went off and got a CP, which is also a proximity rule violation, ahem…), but the whole point is being a team, spending time together and encouraging and enabling him, wherever we finished doesn’t really matter, its more about spending the time together having fun.

This is actually one of the things I truly love about adventure racing by the way; all the other sports your kids will do, you generally are just a spectator watching your kids; AR offers up the opportunity that you can actually be on a team together, highly recommended. 

We started seeing teams/racers coming at us from out of the park, I told Xander this was a good sign because they still needed to get back to the finish too and they are going the opposite way, so we should have plenty time, he really cheered up at that, he told me he really wanted to clear the initial bike leg (not the bonus stuff).

After 9 miles on the roads we re-entered the trails and thankfully they are super tame, flat with some roots and stuff, the hardest part is they are covered in pine needles which is almost like riding your bike in grass, zapping your speed but otherwise easy stuff for an exhausted Xander. We got a CP on some power lines, and were biking the trail back into the park when we came across Saleena/Lindsay, two of our favorite people on team “Not Lost Yet.” Xander knows who Saleena is and I think seeing her really picked up his mood, it was a friendly face and of course they were both super encouraging to him, and with that he was all “let’s go we’ve got this” :) 

With 55 minutes to go we hit our first “time check” location, we had 4 CPs left on this bike leg, 3 clustered to the left opposite direction of the finish, and 1 on the way back to the finish. We agreed, lets get the cluster of 3. It was more slow-ish but tame pine needle trails but all 3 flags were super easy to navigate, Xander was not fast but he kept a decently moving pace.

And so we had about 25 minutes left and 1 CP to go. We looked at the map together, and agreed that in order to go back to the finish we had to come almost all the way to the CP anyway, and we’d do a final time check when we had to ride away from the finish for that last CP if we wanted it. I was calling out time to him so he knew just how long it was taking. We got to the final turn where we had to commit to the CP or go to the finish and Xander asked if I was ok if we were late, I said absolutely, lets go for it, we had 15 minutes on the clock, and getting the CP would take 2-3 min., only it ended up being deeper in that trail than we thought so more like 6min. So now we had 9 min to go 2 miles to the finish on his very tired legs mostly on trails. 

Xander guided us off the road as we watched another racer blow by the turn, then as we were in the final trail it intersected with another trail and another racer went across us the wrong way and Xander never wavered, he said our trail was the way back, I trusted him. 

Finally the parking lot was in sight with 3 min to go, I stayed with Xander and we cruised into the finish with 2 minutes on the clock, handed our passport to Elke who noted our time. Xander was completely exhausted but with a genuine smile on his face. 12 of 12 normal bike CPs, only missing the 5 bonus CPs.

35 of 40 total checkpoints, awesome. We did 30 total miles (3.5 paddle, 7.5 trek, 19 bike), I don’t know that I ever did anything like that when I was 13 years old, blown away with this kid. 

There were something like 15 veteran soloists in the race plus some other very good teams out there so I think we ended up 23rd-ish overall or something out of 50-60 teams/soloists (final results not out yet). We actually competed in the normal 2-male team division (instead of the family division) and I think we may have been top 5 in that which is amazing. I'm pretty sure Xander was the youngest navigator/captain in the race, but he wasn't alone, there was at least one 15-year old who went solo (who had done Spring bloom 15hr the week prior) and a teen solo female who won that division, which is all so amazing, the future of AR looks good.

Long story short, I’m super proud of this kid, we had an amazing day… chatted with all our racing friends at the finish for a bit… and then yes, he got his Arby’s curly fries on the way home. :)