Race Director Thoughts and Musings

Frozen Foot Adventure Race Report

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 14:10:10 GMT

A race report for "just" a 5-hour adventure race ��

Short story: do adventure races with your kids!

The short story is: do adventure races with your kids! A perfect activity for quality uninterrupted time with them; plus the opportunity to be reminded how awesome they are.

------------Longer Version------------

This past weekend was the Frozen Foot Adventure Race , there were 10-hour and 5-hour options, and while I’d usually race the longer race with the Broad Run Off Road team, I opted out of this one for 2 reasons: 1st - I just had surgery in December right around the time the BROR crew was deciding to do this race, and I genuinely didn’t know if I’d be ready or able to keep up with the team’s pace yet. I needed a test outing to see what shape I was in first.

2nd - Our oldest son Xander (13) has recently discovered he can participate in AR/orienteering with his friends, and doesn’t have to be bogged down by uncool parents �� After doing some orienteering meets with his friends he asked me if he could do Spring Bloom Adventure Race with his friends as a youth team this April. I’m all for it, I think it’s a great relatable sport/skill set to build, but while he’s done a few adventure races with me and handful of orienteering meets on his own, navigating without a parent/safety net is a big leap, especially having other parents’ kids in tow. So wanting to get him a few more runs of lead navigating meant Team BROR raced the 10hr without me and I was on team “Got Any Grapes?” taking on the 5-hour race.

I set the expectation to Xander that he was doing all the navigating and decision making. I’d occasionally throw ideas his way, but he was ultimately leading like he’s going to need to be for his team. He was excited to boss me around.

We arrived at 6:30, first on site, rockstar parking right next to the TA. We got some clarifications we needed from RD Nick, and from there I told Xander I wanted to split up tasks: I’d take care of checking us in, getting the bikes, bibs, bags and gear all ready while he took first run at planning the maps/route on his own and we’d regroup after. Trying to show him how splitting up tasks is efficient for a team. The only advice I gave him was that generally he should estimate about 10-15 minutes per CP. From what I saw I didn’t think we had time to get all the checkpoints because it looked like the 5-hour race comprised 80% of the 10-hour course, but with only 50% of the time meaning we needed to pick what parts of the course to get. I was curious to see what he came up with because with orienteering meets the order of CPs is usually prescribed, where in most adventure races you decide what order to go in.

I got to work on the bikes/packs and even took a detour to say hi to all my AR friends in the parking lot and chit chat with team BROR a little bit. When I got back to the truck Xander had already highlighted his route on the maps and had a strategy in mind that he wanted to ask me if I was ok with, a true stroke of genius.

The race was built in 2 legs. A Trek leg and a Bike Leg. To start: get as many trek points as you want, then at any time go bike out and back for Leg 2, when you are back continue getting whatever trek checkpoints remain. Two additional twists. First, varying point values for checkpoints some worth 1, 2, or 3 points, and also the trek had mystery “dogbone” checkpoint pairs, where you found checkpoint A, and instead of a punch it had a map showing you the location of a corresponding B checkpoint. You only got credit for the pair if you found both as the punch was on the B checkpoint. The reward however was that all the dogbone pairs seemed to be worth 4, 5 or 6 points as a pair, while the biking had several 1 point checkpoints. Xander did the math while I was gone on trekking vs. biking and here was his proposal: “let’s do the entire trek leg before doing any biking.”

He was right, there were roughly 80ish total points up for grabs, but 50+ of those points were in the trek leg. In addition the high value bike points required you to bike very far away while all these high value trek points were relatively close to start/finish so you could capitalize on them easier and also “call it” easily if you needed to get back to the finish. I love trying different strategies in a race and the logic made sense so I was sold, excited to try his idea out.

Just before the race started, RD Jesse added that there was a fun challenge teams could do anytime during the race for additional points. Silly stuff like weight carries, trivia, or riding tiny kid bikes. Xander turned to me excitedly: “I want to do that right away!” Hah, I said sounds good, but my only qualifier was that if a bunch of people tried the same, we wouldn’t wait in a line to do it, he agreed.

Race started, we went through the archway and immediately u-turned to the challenge and to my surprise we were all alone, all other racers had gone out onto the course. So RD Jesse explained the challenge: as a 2-person team we only had to pick 2 of the challenges, we decided riding the tiny bikes would be funny so we took turns trying that, it took us about 5 attempts and then did the weight carry and completed our challenge in about 5 total minutes, and we were off.

Xander immediately went to navigation work and took part in the AR tradition of overshooting the first checkpoint, hah. He caught it quickly because we came down to a river/dam that told us we went too far. I told him not to worry, that everyone overshoots the first checkpoint �� His strategy was simple, we get an A dogbone, then go get the corresponding B; then we just get whatever A is next closest to us, rinse repeat. There were also 4 CPs that were not part of the pairs we could get any time, so when one of the Bs was close to them we got those in quick succession and then right back to more A-B pairs.

Xander was the epitome of something I often tell new racers: “it doesn’t matter how fast you are if you run the wrong way.” We jogged for the first 1 or 2 checkpoints but after that he said he just wanted to do fast walking and that’s what we did the rest of the day minus jogging some downhills. We’d occasionally run into a team running through the woods going for the same CP as us, yet we’d exit before them because Xander would slow down when things didn’t feel right or to keep us on track, another proud dad moment.

16 checkpoints in and we had yet to miss a checkpoint at all. I was making sure I wasn’t navigating, I only went in the directions he asked me to, and maybe even occasionally would test him by going the wrong way to make sure he wasn’t just blindly following me, he caught every one, hah. Sorry future Xander who reads this �� There were a few times I spotted flags as he almost walked past them I didn't mess around there and always pointed the out cause that’s what any teammate would do. If he told me about a turn/feature that was next I would note it when we came upon it, but never did anything he didn’t tell me to do or look for (even when I had my own nav ideas, it was hard, hah).

I do worry with all youth racers that probably the biggest thing they all lack is hydration/calorie intake knowledge; kids generally feel invincible and never eat/drink until they crash; schools don’t exactly do endurance sports and so, much of the race is me reminding him to eat/drink, and even then it's getting the “ok fine” response, hah.

The hardest part to the dogbone CPs was not knowing where the B parts of the pair were going to be, I sensed Xander getting tired/frustrated when almost every B CP seemed to be located on the opposite side of where we were forcing us to cross back and forth across this section of the park repeatedly, but through it all Xander never asked us to stop moving and I channeled my inner Jeremy Johnson and struck up as many fun conversations as I could, Xander stayed in the navigation zone while chit chatting about video games, movies, and about weird noises we heard coming from the woods, hah.

About 3 hours into the race the end of the trek was in sight, we only had 2 dogbone pairs left but they were going to be the hardest ones. They were across the park from each other and also the lowest value pairs while also seemingly the hardest navigationally (one of them clearly was just thrown into the largest vegetation patch I could see on the map). Xander picked a very conservative approach angle from the trail for 56A. I’ve been teaching him how to set/shoot a bearing with a compass and so he gave me a degree bearing, I thought it would come up a little shallow but we went for it and hit a wall of the thickest vegetation I’ve seen in quite some time.

It was this moment I decided to test Xander to make sure he wasn’t just tired and going with any suggestion I had. I had a pretty good idea that we went too far east, so I turned even more east and said “I’m gonna look over here” and took off, and it was Xander who 30 seconds later yelled at me “Dad come back, it’s not that way!” another proud dad moment, hah, not just because he was definitely still navigating and caught me making an error, but because he took control of the situation and quickly told me to turn around. We went west just a short few steps around the thicket of nonsense and found the checkpoint moments later… in a slightly less dense thicket of nonsense.

Looking at our GPS track this in initial shallow bearing shoot was his only real bobble all day. After this we had one last dogbone pair to do and unfortunately it led us to the completely opposite end of the park… again… we finally cleared the trek and by the time we got back to the TA/bikes we had 45 minutes left. I told him the best tactic in this scenario is “lets get bike CPs for 20 minutes, and that gives us 25 minutes to get back.” I also told him lets transition quickly that being on the bikes would help get us off our feet and use different muscles. We’d hiked 10 miles by this point, definitely the longest distance I think he’s covered in one hike outing.

He agreed and we went out on the bikes, we got CP14 which was a 2-pointer and Xander smartly called it. I said I thought we could get more (I didn’t really) but he was definitely tired, a bit from lack of calorie intake but also at the same time he noted the next few bike points were even further away, off trail and all 1-pointers so if we were late back, we’d lose them anyway, a very solid point. So we agreed to head back and finished at 4 hours 39 minutes and got to relax and eat pizza while we watched all the other racers come in for the next 25 minutes.

13 total miles, 10 of it on foot, and then the results were in: we not only won the Family Division, we got 9th place overall, ahead of multiple AR regulars and definitely some fitter/faster individuals. Xander went from tired to excited when he got his 1st place division plaque to go along with post-race pizza.

Proud of this kid, he did awesome, and we go again next weekend at the Walnut Creek AR (this time with paddling); and then next up for him after that is racing Spring Bloom with his friend while my next outing after will be just slightly harder with Shenandoah EPIC 24hr which I’ve missed the last 2 years.

As much as I wanted to hang out and wait for the 10-hour race to finish, we needed to get back home so we watched updates online and learned the BROR team took the overall win in the 10-hour race, congrats guys that is awesome! I can’t wait to join the BROR team again soon, but for now I’m “settling” for having my kid tell me I’m going the wrong way… even if he doesn’t know I’m sometimes just doing it to make sure he’s paying attention ��

Introducing Youth Division at Broad Run Off Road 3-5 hour adventure races.

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 19:19:08 GMT

BROR is officially starting a Youth Division at our sprint-length races

Hello adventure racers, I hope you are having a great start to winter and the holiday season. The “off-season” is a great time for us to be planning logistics and scouting courses for our upcoming year, and truth be told for the last 2 months as we’ve been doing all that, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about 1 specific idea a lot, and trying to figure out how to bring it to fruition.

I’m a big advocate of having a Family Division, a No-Biking Division and beginner friendly options at our races to get more and more people introduced to this wonderful sport; and it’s been amazing seeing those divisions becoming some of our biggest. At the same time, we’ve tried to create some sort of “ladder system” of race options and it has been amazing watching racers of all ages graduate up to bigger/longer more ambitious races.

Part of the reason I’ve been passionate about this is because I have 3 kids of my own. All 3 have done adventure races with me over the years, my youngest “riding along” for his first race when he was 4. My kids are getting a little older now and while my oldest did his first adventure race when he was 7, he’s 13 now, time flies. A couple of years ago he wanted to know when he could do races on his own. So Kelly and I worked out a plan to work up to it: first we started by letting him navigate Quantico Orienteering Club courses with us shadowing him without a map in our hands. He quickly showed us he could navigate well on his own, and problem solve navigation mistakes. So then we started letting him do a few of the orienteering courses completely on his own with a phone in his pocket for safety (and having the phone send us his location track for mom’s sanity ��).

Now he's coming to me weekly asking if he can do Spring Bloom Adventure Race with just his friends (who have been joining him occasionally for orienteering), no parents on the team, cause parents aren’t cool anymore... He’s proven his navigation abilities are up to the standard of our shorter races, so my wheels have been spinning on how to make this happen safely, and within the comfort of Kelly and his teammate’s parents, not just mine.

One example we thought of: since Enabled Tracking is already on-site at our races GPS tracking teams in our larger races, we could give GPS trackers to a youth team in the shorter race so parents will always know where the team is.

But I quickly thought, there’s many of you who have been racing with us over the years, and I’ve watched your kids go from being passengers in the canoe, to the ones powering the boat cause mom/dad don’t go fast enough, hah.

So here we are, BROR is officially starting a Youth Division at our sprint-length races ! Historically our race policy has been that anyone 14-or-under had to be on a team with an adult, instead we are carving out an exception to that rule, to both enable some kids that are ready for the challenge, but also ensure their safety there will be requirements as laid out below.

BROR ‘Youth Division’ Requirements:

Teams only (no soloists, safety in numbers).
If your kiddo can’t make a team, we’re happy to put you in touch with other families with interested kids.
Minimum age = 11, Maximum age = 17, at the time of the race.
We’re gearing this toward “Middle-School-Aged” and “High-School-Aged” kids.
This means we could have a team age mix of both “High School / Middle School”
If anyone is 18 or older, then the team would go into our Family Division instead.

At least 1 adult/parent must be on-site throughout the entirety of the race.
Must have phone / ability to contact team and race staff.
Must be capable of going out onto the course to “rescue” lost team if needed.

Team / Parents must fill out application / questionnaire proving team has experience / capability.
Team’s Captain must have participated in at least 3 prior adventure races and/or orienteering events with demonstrated results.

Team must pass pre-race skills/knowledge check.
Basic First Aid knowledge (they know what’s in the kit and how to use it).
Paddling skills check – can they paddle a canoe?
Can team move a canoe to/from the water with little/no assistance?
Biking skills check (if race has biking).

Flatwater courses only, will not be offering this on courses with moving water (for now).

How to enter a team in the Youth division? Just sign up for the race like normal, but selection Youth Division when creating the team, and we will follow up with the application / questionnaire to get things rolling.

Maine Summer Adventure Race, 2025 edition.

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 19:49:32 GMT

24 Hours Around the Gorgeous Maine Mountains

These days I don’t get to do too much adventure racing myself, between kiddo sports/activities and scouting/putting on races, but also in particular, its been 9 months since hurting my ankle at USARA Nationals last year. Did nothing for 2 months to let things heal, then some physical therapy and stretching regimen and slowly working up to something usable. Tested it for real with a 6-hour race in May; was tight/tender but generally held up… and so with that Jeremy roped me into signing up for the 24-hour MSAR this year… Only then he dropped when he got roped into doing the 7-day Endless Mountains, hah. But thankfully BROR regular teammate and friend Bill told me he was game to join and then I found out Chris Ammon was planning on doing the race solo, so we joined forces and made a 3-person team.

The best teams are the ones that match on general mentality / goals because agreeing on what “having a good time” is, means being able to have a good time :) In that respect, this might have been one of the better teams I've had over the years. Having raced a few times with Bill before I know we are a good match; and knowing Chris over the years via BROR and EX2 races, we had a pretty good idea it’d fit even though it was our first time racing together. The guys were awesome and we all agreed on a general gameplan: I took lead navigation, Chris as backup, Bill got the passport and while I can bike and paddle just as fine as before, we would go at “enjoyable with purpose” pace on foot. Meaning brisk walking for treks (little to no running/jogging), and try to avoid any big crazy off-camber-off-trail scrambles to increase chances of not aggravating my ankle. Adjust as needed. Seeing as they announced the course this year was in the more mountainous part of Maine (opposed to the coast like last year), the ankle was my main concern and they were cool with that.

I will also note starting with the moment we arrived race morning and plenty times on the course we were running into adventure racing friends, but also even all the way up in Maine I'm getting occasional people coming up to chat with me because they've done BROR races and I am always so happy to chat and hang out with everyone, the AR community is the best.

Prologue (Trek) - the race started with us getting the map for the prologue trek. I loved it because it just felt like an orienteering meet. But also it took me a minute to adjust because all the race maps were 1:24,000 and this one was 1:7,500… and as a result I waaaaay overshot our 3rd checkpoint (H). That said, by doing so basically ended up at the next one I wanted (G). So quickly noted that H was close-ish to the TA/finish for this leg, so continued to clear the rest of the CPs and then just ran past TA/bikes at the end to go back out for H real quick. It only added 8 minutes to go back for H, and we finished the leg in just under an hour, exactly the time we wanted, and even included doing a small off-trail hill climb and the ankle felt ok, good start.

10/10 CPs

Stage 1 - Bike - This was the first of 3 big middle stages that were essentially the crux of the race. Our plan going into this race was to clear the Prologue (done), and also clear the final two stages (the paddle and the trek from the paddle take out to the finish) no question we were doing that. Barring anything crazy we also wanted to clear Stage 1 too and leave any course cutting to the big trek (Stage 2) and big bike (Stage 3). We planned as such in the morning, and thus we jumped on the bikes and quickly learned that a part of the “fun” this race was going to be questionable trail conditions. The race maps mostly used the 2016 US Forest Service map layer which I have enough experience with to know that not all the trails/gravel roads on it always exist. The RDs added solid black lines on the maps for some trails/gravel roads and told everyone that any they added they 100% confirmed exist…

Within 5 minutes of this leg we learned our definitions of “existing” differ a bit, hah. The first “black bolded” trail we got to was waist-high and sometimes head high tall grass almost 90% overgrown due to being peak summer… But we dove in, nabbed CPs 1, 2, 3 no problem, but then we managed to blow past the trail junction needed for CP4 and ended up back at the main road we eventually wanted to use after CP4… how did we completely miss it? Much like the prologue we decided to continue our normal plan and go get the next CP (5) and we’d retrieve CP4 afterwards as it was on the way back. CP5 was pretty standard, just long distance and very hilly. When we came back for CP4 we caught it much easier this time simply via what I like to call “late mover advantage” cause by now several other teams had smushed down enough high weeds, I mean “trail”, that it was much easier to see ;)

Navigationally we were fine, the only real problem with non-regularly-used condition trails like this is they do a real number on my ankle, and other muscles as I try to compensate/protect for the ankle. Pedaling a bike is fine with my ankle, I can do 30+ mile road rides just fine; but when you're constantly hitting so many janky ruts, bumps, boulders and stuff; your ankle tendons ARE the shock absorber. So I was thankful we were done with it for a little while after CP5 as we now hit the roads. After that, it was a ride through town and on to the Community Forest MTB trail system. Normally I’m all about MTB trail systems but the heat and humidity to this point had been relentless and after getting 5 more CPs in here (6-10) its now about 4 hours into the race and both Chris and I are particularly gassing on the climbs and we’re now walking our bikes on all the uphills. Especially the stupidly named “Phoenix” trail… very clever trail manager, we’re rising up the mountain like a phoenix, ba dum tiss :)

At the 5 hour mark we’re getting 2 more CPs on some intermediate trails, stuff I’d normally love on any given day but I’m now starting to recognize some early signs of issues/potential heat stroke. I’ve been sweating profusely but most of all can’t get my heart rate down and my reaction times are suffering... and just then blah, my handlebar clips a tree and I go up and over. I’m more annoyed than hurt cause I completely saw it coming, I just couldn’t react fast enough. Thankfully I do a quick check and no major cuts. I can feel a bunch of bruises, but am seemingly ok. We get that next CP but as we exit that trail Chris and I do a quick time check and this section is taking us waaaay longer than we’d like. There’s 2 CPs left in this trail system on a lower intermediate trail, but it requires going back down elevation and then climbing back up to where we are already standing… not to mention we still need to get up and out of this whole section using more potentially janky trails... and then up the mountain to the TA for the big trek. In hindsight we could have just walked for a bit to slow heartrates down and slowly get those CPs, but as Bill eloquently put it after the race, the state of the team dictated the best course of action was to get to the TA to recover. With time/physicality and running out of fluids in mind, we decide to drop those 2 remaining CPs. We stop at 1 stream along the way as well to start filtering water cause we’re all draining our fluids due to the heat, along with several other teams.

As we’re exiting the MTB trail system I realize that in my crash I completely busted my bike computer… thankfully Bill and Chris both have theirs so we can still do some proper bike nav, but that is now my 3rd bike computer lost or busted in a 18 month span… We get the 5 remaining CPs on the way to TA1 no problem, and getting onto the roads helps us cool down a bit when you can now get some speed to put a breeze in your face.

18/20 CPs (28/30)

Stage 2 - Trek - Pre-race I was super thankful this course only had 1 big trek leg, and that it was an out-and back Orienteering-course style, meaning we could cut as needed if any ankle issues arose. Interestingly this leg ended up becoming a way to calm down the heart rates from the biking and sun and sweating because while there would be a lot of climbing; clouds finally came out… and also now so did mist, rain, mist again, fog, rain again, fog, mist… I genuinely welcomed the precipitation we got but interestingly it didn't bring as much temperature drop as everyone probably could have used, it was still HOT. The plan all along here was to stick to as much established road/trail as possible and pick off CPs with smaller “out and back” attacks, to reduce both the ankle stress, but also the possibility of wasting time in heavy off-trail vegetation “shortcuts”; this proved to be super effective in hindsight watching some other teams routes/times.

We quickly nabbed the 2 lowest points on the stream no problem, jumping right back onto the fire road/logging road and used that to go up into the mid-level section of the mountain where we picked off 3 more CPs from off the now abandoned but in decent condition road. It was the fun type of thing you do in AR/orienteering is find where you can tell there used to be a road, but then the bridges don't exist anymore but if you scramble to the other side the old clearing in the trees is sort of still visible there. Two of these CPs were in gorgeous stream/waterfall sections, one was sort of a slot canyon where the water was flowing 25+ feet down between a 5-10 foot gap in the boulders; and we hit this one just as the sun was finally setting. We decided to skip one CP labeled “reentrant junction” cause it just seemed like a time waster surrounded by at least 5 parallel reentrants I could make out on the map. Normally in any previous race we easily would have gone for it, but we agreed that one had all the potential to go wrong (we heard from several teams it was a pain in the ass too). As we weren’t planning to clear, we wanted to maximize time, plus all 3 members of the team were still feeling some regular amounts of exhaustion and nausea, so let’s not go mess around.

Instead we started coming back down the fire road but nabbed another stream/waterfall CP on the opposite west side this time. This one was further off but we attacked this from below using the stream making it easy to find but meaning we scrambled up 300 feet or so of slippery rock and in the process Bill took a spill. He was thankfully fine but broke his trekking poles, so that’s now 2 of us taking a spill this race and breaking gear… when we got this CP everyone sat/slouched for a rest. The course wasn’t crazy hard but it was pretty unrelenting. The crew was pretty sluggish and going through a lot of fluids again and now we’re all pretty beat up. I wanted to go bold and get at least 1 more CP; all options involving going totally off trail bushwhacking. We had 2 CPs in our vicinity, 1 was an out and back continuing up the stream but like 400 feet up the mountain. Chris/Bill unanimously said no to that one (I don’t blame them), but they agreed with me on a bearing/elevation shoot diagonal across the ridge about 250 feet up in elevation but no slippery rocks to a very likely non-existent trail (the RD’s didn’t even bold this one). So at best this trail last existed in 2016 when the map layer was made, so the plan was to hit the elevation of the CP and then contour at that elevation until we hit the flag… only we didn’t need to… cause we f’n nailed it, literally navigated right to the CP via the bearing/altimeter.

Confidence boost for us all… the only other 2 CPs in range were the one we already said no to, and another that involved bushwhacking down and up hundreds of feet, so we agreed it was time to get back to TA. As we were correct in that the trail in this vicinity basically didn’t exist, especially in the dark, so we had to bushwhack our way down, which would normally be fine, just set a bearing and go down; but we were clearly exhausted by this point and as a result it took us an hour to get all the way down a 1 mile (600ft descent) of thick woods to the TA.

This was definitely my emotional low point of the race, even though I was generally navigating very well, I was just internally mad at how long I felt it was taking to get us off the mountain, it all felt unnecessarily harder than it should be. But we eventually get back to the bottom, see TONS of teams filtering water at streams and recovering in TA (theme of this race). We all immediately went to work rehydrating, refilling/consolidating bottles/bladders… It was midnight, why is it so f’n hot/humid, but hey at least my heart is not pounding through my chest anymore.

7/13 CPs (35/43)

Stage 3 - Bike / Bike-whack

Every team member had hit lows physically during the last 2 stages, mostly battling heat/nausea. I did a 80% wardrobe change including new socks/shoes to try and get dry (thanks for letting us have gear bins this year Strong Machine). Bill got some food courtesy of volunteers and Chris got some much needed rest, Bill and I decided to give him a little time as he looked like he was really hurting. We spent a good 30 min in this TA as the next thing to do was the last big leg, the Bike-O and then getting all the way around to TA2 for the morning paddle. There was a much talked about bike-whack route mainly designed for top teams that was almost certain to be an insane time-suck and physically demanding (it was), but the reward was some CPs you couldn’t get otherwise. Then there was an alternate route with a lot of roads, but the give was no CPs and it would still take a couple hours but slightly shorter amount of time and much less energy. Before having to choose between those though were some CPs that I’d call a bike-O, a series of optional CPs you could find in a network maze of a gravel road/trail/non-existent-trail system. We planned on giving ourselves a time cutoff to do the alternate route and go get CPs in there until we hit our limit, then head to TA2.

I always try to tell people that keeping a clear head is one of the hardest parts of adventure racing and it's that middle of the night portion that is hardest. Our plan for this stage was made pre-race and is still a good plan, but in the rush of the pre-race morning I forgot to figure out and denote the distances/times for that alternate ride back… this translates to hours later into the race at midnight I didn’t have a clear-headed estimate for how long it would take to bike over to TA2 (paddle put in) using the alternate route. I could remember the RD estimated 2.5 hours for fast teams and 4 hours for slow teams but RD estimates can be finicky as you don’t always know their frame of reference… At midnight math is failing me and so that RD estimate is all I could reference in my head…

We were pretty exhausted and beat up to this point and while I know our team tends to bike faster than average, I just kept feeling like we were sluggish at this point so surely our remaining biking would be would be on the slower end of the RD estimate… Plus on top of that, all the questionable conditions of the “black line” trails to this point, and I’m wondering just how easy would the bike-o really be??? There was also some trails and climbing on the way back, not all roads… And thus in my energy/sleep deprived brain it made sense for some reason to become super conservative with how much time I thought we had to play around the bike-o course with. We knew from the pre-race briefing there was a paddling dark zone and they wouldn’t let anyone start the paddle until 5am/sunrise, but we also did actually estimate properly the timing for the final 2 legs and that we wanted to be on the water by 6am to finish in time. So bike-o and bike and try to hit the 5-6am window at TA2.

But in my sleep deprived/exhausted mind in order to hit a 5-6am paddle start window, my tired brain figured we gotta get out of the bike-o by 1:30am cause if we’re the 4-hour slow estimate then that makes it 5:30am arriving at the paddle…

I don’t know why I doubted our ability to bike back at a decent pace but for some reason I couldn’t shake it… and so we got 1 CP in the Bike-O and it took what felt to me like a very long time (45 min). But it should have been based on the distance, it was a long distance with multiple climbs to the first CP then the rest were closer but my brain wouldn't comprehend… for some reason I was missing that detail in my head. We were going according to plan but for some reason I was convinced we were super slow. It was now 1:15a, thankfully the guys pushed me to get 1 more CP, and Bill even made a point of saying to me “see that only took us 11 minutes to get”, that boosted my late night confidence in them, he was right. Had they pushed me to get another I’d likely have gone with it, but another part of me was relieved when they said ok lets get to the TA. We needed someone pushing the team in this moment to combat my pessimism... It sucked to leave sooo many CPs behind but I think we were all still feeling the pain of the trek leg and worried it would continue if we had more climbing to do with the bikes…

As bad as we felt… we still were biking faster than average and our "slow" was still better than "avg. slow" hah… and while there was some climbing here and there in the alternate route it was still 75% paved road. the end result is that bailing on the bike-o at around 1:25am meant we made it to TA2 in almost exactly 2.5hrs (the RD fast estimate) meaning we arrived just at 4am… 1 hour before the dark zone lifts and you’re allowed to paddle… Son of a…. at least 1 more hour we could have spent getting more bike-o CPs… I was gutted over the last 1/3rd of our ride mentally because once we got out of the climbing/trail section of the route I knew we’d left too early…

That said, my teammates were absolutely great about it, fully supportive, and also we all agreed that honestly 45 minutes of rest was sort of exactly what we needed. Bill was almost dozing off a few times on the long bike ride over and while Chris and I were feeling better than before, still not in top shape. Its all hindsight now with a clear head but probably 2-4 CPs left on the table… the reality after the fact is I just needed to do a proper time estimate pre-race or have one of the guys convince me my time estimates were wrong, but I was tired, we were tired.

Also apparently according to my Garmin I hit a top speed of 38.8mph during this stage... don't even remember that.

2/16 CPs :( (37/59)

Stage 4 - Paddle

If stage 3 was the low point, stage 4 was certainly a massive recovery. Because of the dark zone Bill was able to get a quick sleep, I laid down to rest my legs/back and Chris hung out by a campfire. At 4:55am as many teams were already waiting with their boats ready to put in, I woke Bill up, we let the initial rush of boats go to avoid some congestion, and at 5:10am we hit the water. We knew our abilities on the water and knew we had a big time cushion to finish the last 2 legs as we had an hour more time than we estimated needing (as we properly estimated these stages before the race), which honestly gave us a nice casual mood for the remainder of the race, a lot of pleasant conversation with each other and other teams. It was a 12 mile river paddle but with 5 CPs along the way on islands in the river. I love paddling, and even more love when RDs properly award paddling effort with similar CP per-capita to the other disciplines. I can’t stand when its “Paddle for 4+ hours, 1 CP.”

We pulled into the first island which was supposed to have a sort of inlet in its downstream end, and to our surprise pretty much every team that left before us was still there searching for the CP, no one could find it apparently. After getting back home and doing some quick research (maps above), this is because what is on maps differs significantly from real life. Thankfully Bill was willing to venture further inland/vegetation, spot it and we got out of there while maybe all of the other teams eventually gave up on it. The rest of the river paddle went according to plan: some CPs were a bit inland or in very high grass but nothing insane, we passed some boats on the way, and thankfully it was still engaging because of the whole CPs on islands thing. I think we all thoroughly enjoyed it, 12 great miles of morning river paddle.

5/5 CPs (42/64)

Stage 5 - Trek -

Getting out of the boat genuinely might have been the most ankle pain I had this race. Being in the boat for hours after doing so much it all tightens up, swells and refuses to move again, and when I got out of the boat I was hobbling in pain… blah. But I know we need to get to the finish, thankfully this stage was basically a nice trek through the little town of Bethel to some of their historic landmarks, covered bridge, old library, gem museum, and then 1 last CP on the Gould School System’s trails. You wrote down info on your passport you found around the landmarks as they were in public places instead of having flags placed, and it all ended back at the finish. We got to walk with a couple other teams we had caught, some we knew, some we got to know, and it was a nice friendly trek to the finish where I could then finally sit down and get off the ankle.

We moved with purpose for those last 2 stages but never ran or scrambled and we still managed to finish at 22 hrs 40 min. Sure having 80 min to play confirmed we should have at least stuck in the bike-o section for at least 40-50+ more minutes, but we were still super happy with the effort. We’re still waiting on results to be finalized, but it looks like we finished 4th (of 12) in the 3/4-male division and were 15th (of 48) overall. Solid effort all things considered, and there were plenty of very good teams in this one.

4/4 CPs (46/68)

All in all, it was a good solid race, dare I say above average all things considered, and I couldn’t have asked for better teammates for the endeavor of giving my ankle a full 24-hour race test. We stuck around hung out with fellow teams/racers and then once awards were over drove back to our AirBnB where we all passed out for a little bit. Then we woke up and went to Steam Mill Brewery for dinner and a drink, it was a spot we actually passed during the race; and the 3 of us all proceeded to devour our entire entrees in one bite.

Race (Director) Report - Spring Bloom 2025

Tue, 13 May 2025 20:37:40 GMT

What goes into putting on an adventure race weekend?

I want to try something a little new, as I always love reading race reports from my adventure racing friends: what they were doing pre-race, how they approached map/time planning, and all those details about their in-race challenges/strategy changes, what they were thinking and learning many details you may not have even known about them even if you saw them during/after a race.

Often times when people see me out at races they will ask: “what’s harder: participating in a race or putting on a race?” and my answer always comes without hesitation and I think surprises people; putting on a race is harder and it's not even remotely close.

I think it confuses some folks because they see you standing around a TA during a small window of time during a race, I get it, that looks relatively calm, hah. But I would say putting on a race, at least to the level we do, is more akin to doing a week-long stage race. So I thought it might be fun/interesting to do something a little different and take people through a Race (Director) Report for the 2025 Spring Bloom Adventure Race :)

As a quick background, this report is only going to include the on-site aspects of race week; I’m leaving out things like countless hours spent on scouting trips, permit meetings, walkthroughs, map creation/updating/iteration, packet stuffing, logistics calls, prep calls, and all that stuff that happens in the months/years before race day. This is just gonna be about what happens on a race week from setting the course to clearing the course.

For those who did not participate in the Spring Bloom Adventure Race in 2025 race, it was BROR’s 9th ever adventure race we have put on; and I think, our 20th total race/event we’ve ever put on in our 11-year history. We’re not rookies at this, and we’ve got it down pretty well at this point, but this one was by far the most ambitious from a logistical standpoint for the following reasons:

Race location in Williamsburg was 2.5hr minimum drive, one way, from where we live; meaning a 5-6 hour round trip driving depending on traffic any time I needed to go there.
York River State Park required us to limit parking to 100 cars maximum for a day, meaning we couldn’t do our normal 1-day setup with both 15-hour & 4-hour races on the same day, instead the approved plan was for the 15-hour race to be Saturday and 4-hour on Sunday.
The 15-hr course was designed with racer experience in mind, not logistical simplicity... and thus had multiple paddle legs and required multiple in-race time-dependent paddle bag/gear transports, multiple parks/TAs to be manned at the same time and also a satellite start location to move racers to in the morning.
It also had a linear paddle leg in it, meaning if any racers no-showed, then we had to somehow get those unused boats to the point B of that leg.
That first paddle leg also had a weather dependency, we had to make the call before boat delivery if we needed to switch to a less-cool “Plan B.”
415 registered racers across both days, 150 Saturday and 260 on Sunday, that’s a LOT of people to take care of, and it could have been more, we had 50+ on the waitlist for the 4-hour.
175 boats rented… (300+ paddles and PFDs) 2 different boat outfitters plus an additional 15 boats rented from one of the parks.
Multiple parks/agencies for whom this was our first time working together for a race.
57 total checkpoints to set and clear; 53 for the 15-hour race + 4 unique to the 4-hour race.
and…
3 people who normally help me put on races over the years, I'm letting participate in this race as a thank you for helping me put on previous races, but that means 3 people who I know/trust won't be available.
The hardest logistic always to this day… BROR race directing for me/us is still a hobby; I still have a day job, so does my wife, and we also have 3 kids in elementary/middle school, all of whom have at least 1 after school sport/activity. Same goes for many (all?) of the volunteers.

Normally for our races, Mark Harris gets me the control boxes (we use Enabled Tracking for e-punching in addition to GPS trackers) the weekend ahead of the race. When our races are within an hour of my house, I can have a plan to go out a few different days on race week (afternoon/evening) and tackle setting different portions of the course on each day without much impact to work/kids/school schedules, usually by taking some half days off at work and squeezing things between kiddo schedules. I like to be done CP setting by Friday morning, doing start/finish/TA setup on Friday afternoon; then race Saturday and course clearing hopefully done on Sunday. As per the above complicated logistics, much of this “standard plan” was not possible.

Setting the course is one of the most time-consuming things, I generally estimate that it takes 1.5-hours to set every 1-hour of course; there are some exceptions like being able to drive gravel roads to speed things up, but this specific course didn’t have much of that. If you are wondering, the reason it is slower is because you carry a large pack full of controls/flags, and when you get to a spot for a flag/control you have to stop to verify its 100% the correct location, you scout the perfect thing to hang the flag on, you make doubly sure its secured and no one will mess with it, and if you’re OCD like me... you triple check that this is 100% the right placement… Then in the middle of all that a park ranger calls and asks to do a walkthrough meeting or the boat outfitter shows up early/late and needs to know where to put the boats, so you interrupt course setting and do inconvenient “fun” back and forths, etc.

I’d say the first 6 of BROR’s adventure races I set 100% of the checkpoints, partially via lack of volunteers, but also because of my OCD nature and trust/quality concerns. Someone saying they’ll help you set CPs sounds nice until you remember that having a CP set in the wrong place is the absolute worst thing you can have happen for an adventure race. As I’ve raced with more people and more people have volunteered with me over the years I’ve gained some very good teammates who I trust with setting now. One of those who came in for this year’s Spring Bloom is Justin Mann. The previous 8 BROR races were 100% designed/scouted by me, but for Bloom 2025, Justin helped me plan and scout much of this year’s race as he lives closer to the area, and he also scouts and sets orienteering courses for CVOC, which meant he fully understands the mission/process of course design/setting, he was absolutely the best person to work with on these aspects (more on this later).

So with all the preface:

Saturday (1 week before race / Spring Break / Easter Saturday) :

Wake up at 7am, check weather, this day is ok for setting CPs, but the current race forecast is 90% chance of rain and possibility of 25+mph wind gusts… far too much for the first paddle leg, Plan B is a real possibility at this point.. blah…

Drive down to York River State Park (YRSP) 2.5 hours, arrive at Croaker Landing location around 9:45am to set the leg 1 trek leg, and it is hot already. I didn’t bring a ton of liquids so I need to get this done before the real heat comes out midday, plus I need to be back home by 3pm because kiddo sports/activity stuff. Croaker Landing is an entirely “abandoned” woods section of the park with no trails or active roads, meaning I could set these checkpoints the soonest with no concerns about people finding/messing with flags during the week. I brought my bike so I could ride the old abandoned road to the different attack points and “out and back” to set the points from the “road.” This went mostly great, I set CPs 1-6 no problem.

Side note, I always listen to podcasts while setting courses, and I have a weird phonographic memory; meaning when/if I return to an area I can always hear/remember what I was listening to. Ask me about any of our courses over the years and I’ll tell you what I was listening to during setup. Leg 1 setup of this race was the USARA Checkpoint Podcast with Brent interviewing Cliff from Strong Machine ;)

After CP 6 (the massive hole) I decided to see if I could set CP 8 (a paddle CP) on foot. We scouted this one by boat but it was at the bottom of an eroded cliffside/beach on the river. If possible, then it would save me a lot of time by reducing needed paddling. I dropped the bike in the woods and initially kept finding the dangerous top of the eroded cliffside... after a few more attempts I was able to bushwhack my way down some nasty vegetation via a reentrant to the beach, scrambled my way over driftwood and downfall to the spot, success! That meant 1-2 less miles of paddling needed to set the course.

Then, as many racers who did this race will appreciate, I set CP 7 perfectly easy but made the mistake many racers did in the race by trying to shortcut my way directly back to the parking lot from CP 7… with my bike… and I literally got stuck in mountain laurel for a good 20-30 minutes… it was so thick I couldn’t see 10 feet in front of me… so eventually I had to just call it, turn around, go all the way back to my last known open woods, then go the long way around to the abandoned road and ride that all the way back.

I finished just after noon as a Search and Rescue K9 team arrived in the parking lot, apparently they go there most weekends to do practice. I struck up a conversation and told them to come back next weekend and I’d give them a race map so they could go find the CPs. Because traffic is stupid it took me 3h 20 min to drive back home, but I made it just in time to take our oldest to his match while Kelly took the 2 other kiddos for their thing.

8 hours of time spent, 8 CPs set, 49 more to go.

Monday/Tuesday I worked… but after work went to pick up race shirts, socks (awards for this race) and also made the fun trip to buy all the post-race drinks/snacks. Remember I mentioned Justin Mann being awesome before, normally I’d set CPs after work on Mon/Tue but because of this long drive that wasn’t doable, however Justin Mann volunteered to take Thursday off work and said he’d help me set CPs all day that day. So I planned accordingly. I took off work Wed-Fri, figuring we should be able to set the majority of the course Wed-Thu if we devoted the entire days to it and teamed up and that left me a buffer on Friday for anything that was left.

Race weeks also get very hectic and time disappears the closer it gets so my awesome mother-in-law has a tradition now of flying in (from Idaho) to help with the kiddos as I go deeper into full RD race-week mode; honestly without her help with the kiddos races don’t happen, she’s awesome. She says its an excuse to come see the family, but its also just so insanely helpful.

Also, because this race was so far from home, I rented an AirBnB within 10 min. of the parks for this race, this was to become HQ for me and the volunteers. The main benefit with a AirBnb is I can bring lots of things you can’t bring to a hotel or a campground leading up to the race, like a kayak, my bike, or… 18 bike racks and tons and tons of boxes…. As BROR is a hobby, we don’t own a fancy trailer or anything, all the stuff lives in my garage or basement until it gets used 2 times a year on race days. So we rented the AirBnB for Wednesday-Sunday which allowed me to make multiple trips to get all the stuff down there. So on Tuesday night I swapped cars with Kelly (she has an SUV with a kayak rack) and packed it to the last inch with as much stuff as I could fit including a kayak on the roof and the aforementioned 18 10-foot 2x4 pieces of lumber that make up the bike racks. The plan was to drop these at the AirBnB the next day once I could check in as it would be impossible to get all this stuff down on race day alone and some of it is needed to be set up on Friday.

It's also worth noting with just about every race setup week, there’s a day that goes off the rails, I get way out of schedule its usually a day when I’m doing everything by myself, and I profess to Kelly “I’m done with this”... hah. I can honestly say it never came to that for this race, but if any day was closest for this race, it was Wednesday...

Wednesday (3 days to race) - The weather forecast for this day was overcast/cloudy but warm. Race forecast was still 88% chance of rain but thankfully all of the wind has disappeared from the forecast, woohoo course looks like it can run as designed.

The plan this day was very ambitious, wake up at 6am, drive down to Waller-Mill Park, location of a small trek leg and a very large paddle leg and set all those checkpoints. If I have enough time, I will also go back to YRSP and set the remainder of the Leg 2 paddle CPs there, this way I can get all the paddling checked off. Also I knew at some point this day the park would want to meet and do a walkthrough, and I needed to pick up the disc golf discs from them as we had an in-race hole of disc golf for racers to do, it was a lot of fun to see.

I arrive at the park roughly around 9am and immediately go right into the Leg 4 trek leg. 2 CPs are in the woods and I set them first, but the third of them is on a VERY public scenic overlook, the park told me I definitely need to secure that one… crap I forgot to bring the steel wire locks for that control…

A 30 minute round trip to the car and back to the overlook and now I’ve set that one very securely, no one is stealing it... Now its time for the Waller-Mill Paddle leg, if paddled its 11+ miles on flatwater, thankfully I know I can reach 2 of the CPs (20 & 21) on foot without coming near private property, it doesn’t save too much time but does save my arms a little energy.

Most interestingly CP 21 is set in a section of park property we were told used to have a MTB trail system until Hurricane Isabelle knocked so many trees down that the park just abandoned it. Justin scouted this area for me and found an old abandoned trail arrow sign that we turned into the checkpoint, but interestingly as I walked out there to set the point I managed to not only find the old trail itself… but found multiple perfectly in-working-order bridges to cross the stream in the area. I really hope they bring back that trail system some day because it's a beautiful section of secluded woods, perfect for some mountain biking.

Now around 11:52am its time to hit the water. I knew this would be a very long paddle, even with setting 2 CPs on foot I still had a minimum of 10 miles I needed to paddle to set the others. There are a few spots out there where I could portage the boat but because I’m not in “race mode” I tend to take the easy way when setting so the plan was to paddle it all. Side note: It wasn’t until race day that I witnessed one very insanely efficient portage I never even thought of. Team BROR (made up of the guys who all volunteered to help me put on last year’s Fall Foliage race) did a portage during the race no one thought of and I think it may have cut 30-40 minutes out of their paddling time, I was and still am just so impressed by their idea. But I never thought of it so I was paddling it all.

I estimated this paddle leg would take racers a minimum of 3 hours to clear, so I had at least that much time ahead of me. The first couple of CPs I felt great and relaxed. I was listening to the “Stuff you Should Know” podcast, episode was about the Pinkertons, fun history lesson. But then it happened… the same thing that unfortunately happened to racers in the race… the clouds completely disappeared and somehow it was now 90 degrees. I keep sunscreen and bug spray in my truck for any time I go on an adventure, but I had to use my wife’s car to transport the racks and kayak, so I forgot sunscreen… So now I’m baking in the sun, I’m pulling my hoodie over my head and sleeves on arms as a sun protection but sweating my ass off.

As I float in to CP 22’s location “shrubbery in water” in a quiet secluded inlet, I start hanging the flag when out of nowhere a goose screams at me from within the shrubbery and flies at my face from about 5 feet away, I didn’t even see it when I floated in. It is PISSED at me. Anyone who did Spring Bloom 2021 might see the resemblance… some time between when I scouted this location and now, a goose has made a nest full of fresh eggs literally 5-10 feet from where I planned to put this flag… the goose is screaming at me endlessly and swimming around me giving me evil eye...

So I decide to float about 100 feet further down this finger of the reservoir and hang the flag there, technically its still within the circle on the race map, but not dead centered, if racers got to the dead center of the circle they’d still see the flag, thus hopefully sparing racers from angry momma-goose on race day. To top it off the control for this one is not beeping when I test it, so I have to switch to one of the extra controls buried in my pack all while waiting for the goose to attack me…

The north half of the reservoir is done, only 4 more CPs and 5 more miles of paddling to go on the south half… but I am cooked both sunburned and sweating buckets/tired. I keep saying to myself “It wasn’t near this hard when I scouted this, what is going on?” The sun and now the wind is what’s going on as I now have a massive headwind hitting me in the face so hard its creating whitecaps on the water and the boat is bouncing… wtf!? Too bad though because a lesson you learn with race directing, is unlike participating in a race or a personal day out adventuring, I can’t quit, I HAVE to set the course. So I try to paddle as close to the shore as I can to be in the shade and get off the choppiest water but its burning my arms.

Just keep getting through it… when very randomly tons of gunfire starts going off on the south shoreside, it scares the shit out of me… and at this point I remember the park is up against Camp Peary… a military base where they train CIA and many other things… thankfully I have no CPs anywhere near the border with the base…

With 1 CP to go on the water my skin is now bright red… not great, tonight is going to hurt… but I gut through it and FINALLY I’m off the water… its now past 4pm… it took me almost 5 hours to set this paddle, a paddle I distinctly remember scouting in just over 3 hours… My arms are cooked both literally and figuratively, I can’t possibly go do the other paddle today. But the good news is Waller-Mill Park is effectively done for CP setup.

I go have my walkthrough meeting with the park manager, and get the disc-golf discs, which takes about 30-40 minutes to chit chat and all that and at this point I can now check in to the AirBnB so I head straight there and just unload all the boxes and bike rack lumber.

The problem is I can’t lay down on the couch or bed to rest, because I’ve got another full carload of stuff to get down here from my house… so I jump in the car and drive this time 3.5 hours back home due to traffic… arriving around 9:30pm. I get a quick bite to eat, catch up with Kelly and my mother-in-law and then start loading up my truck with everything I possibly can, shirts, socks, temporary fencing, ice chests, etc. cause I really don’t want to have to make this round trip drive again, I’d like to stay down in Williamsburg if possible for the remainder of the week. Kelly asks me if I’m in “hate the world” mode (see above) and I genuinely tell her “no”, I’m physically exhausted, but I’m still on schedule, and things are generally going according to plan, I’m not behind, just tired and sunburned.

I pack my truck with my bike and to the point where there is not an inch of space left in the truck bed, cab or passenger seat and by 11:15pm I hit the road back to Williamsburg (so I can start the next day from there without needing to drive in the morning). I unfortunately always forget to take a picture of how comically overstuffed my truck is for these trips... but I drive back 2.5hrs to the AirBnB… I stay awake fine on the drive but my body just hurts from everything at this point. I finally arrive at the AirBnB around 1:40am… I unload all the boxes and stuff into the basement of the AirBnB, take a quick shower and I literally pass out on the bed, as in I genuinely don’t even remember laying down to go to sleep…

This became a 20-hour day... 28 hours of work in, 21 total CPs, all the boxes, lumber, fencing etc are down in Williamsburg, and arguably the hardest CPs to set are done, 36 CPs to go.

Thursday (2 days to race day) - As I mentioned above Justin Mann is the best. The previous 8 BROR adventure races I scouted 100% of the checkpoints and probably set 90% of them, and then awesome volunteers have helped clear flags post-race.

For this race though, Justin helped me scout a great deal of the course. We’d look at maps on video calls, and then he’d go out scout it, take pictures, send me GPX tracks and all that, he was my OCD RD’s best friend, hah. He also offered to take off work Thursday of race week and help me set checkpoints. Originally he said he’d show up at the AirBnB at 8am… but when he texted me to say he was running about an hour late I was sooo happy… and I passed back out in the bed.

Justin arrived at the AirBnB around 9am, we looked at the map for YRSP and made a plan: I’d start on the Leg 2 paddle setting the remaining 4 CPs on Taskinas Creek (CPs 9-12), once done then I’d jump on my bike and head out to the Leg 6 Marl Ravine MTB single track that had to be done on bike, no trekking allowed in this section, plus its just super fun MTB trails. Meanwhile he’d take his bike and tackle as much of the north end both Leg 6/7 CPs as he could, his section was very spread out but mostly bikeable at least to the attack points. We both figured I’d get my two sections done sooner than his so when I was done I’d call him and see what he had left and we’d divvy that up.

Since I switched back to my truck though I didn’t have a way to properly transport my kayak so I just went to YRSP with a little hope that they’d be open to letting me rent one of their kayaks or canoes. They informed me they are not renting boats yet for the season… but because I was with the race they’d happily unlock one for me and just let me use it at no charge, I’ll say it forever, the staff at YRSP are the absolute best!

The only bad thing is they only had sit-on-top kayaks.. I had no way of covering my burnt legs, so I make sure to put on plenty of sunscreen go do the paddle CPs as quick as I can. They take me an hour and done around 11ish, no problem. Then I jump on my bike to go do the Marl Ravine Loop (CPs 36-40). I will confess I volunteered to take this on because I love MTB’ing and this loop of singletrack is so dang fun, its “blue/intermediate” flowy fun. I’m flying through it without another soul in the park/on the trails it feels like while listening to a few Smartless podcast episodes, they’re interviewing John Lithgow and then a second episode with Jeff Goldblum.

While I’m in the middle of setting this leg, Charlie (YRSP Park Manager) calls me and says he wants to do a full walkthrough of the event and asks if I can meet him before 2pm… Its 1:15…and I’m in the middle to far end of the park… “sure” I say, and so I proceed to set the final CP in that MTB loop speeding on my bike and haul ass back to the park office huffing, puffing and all sweaty.

I get to the park office and the park manager is not there… I ask the front desk and they say oh he just left to go do blah blah at the park maintenance shed and will be right back… so I take this great opportunity to refill my bottles and buy a few sports drinks from the park store cause its another very hot cloudless day. Park manager comes back and we walk through the logistics and then he tells me the best thing ever: “we’ll handle all the parking/parking direction on race morning.” thank heavens cause that is always the worst thing on race morning, hah. He seemed very concerned about making sure where we park racers cause he wants to allow the general public to still come in and use the park, so happy to let them take it on.

That meeting is over around 2ish so I hop back on the bike and text Justin that I’ll meet him at the location of the CP 14 (I know there’s a park bench there) and we can split up the rest of the CPs. After a few minutes Justin shows up, he’s looking as sweaty and gross as me but all smiles and enjoying the day. He has about 11ish CPs left in completely different sections of the park, so we divide it up he takes the 6 on the furthest out section of the park near the river and I’ll take 5 CPs that are for the trek-only sections of the park figuring I can get away withy riding my bike in these areas on a midday Thursday when hopefully no one else is in the park, at least take my bike to some convenient attack points and trek from there.

I set T5 which is only a CP in the 4-hour race, its an old abandoned car in the woods. I’ve actually never seen it before today it was a spot Justin knew well from a previous CVOC event/scouting trip, its amazing, and its been there for quite some time because a tree is growing up through the engine block.

From here I’ve got CPs 42-44 & 47. 47 was totally bikeable out and back via a closed off park service road, but 42-44 are very interesting cause they are normally horse/trek only trails but also because it appears no one has even used these trails yet this year and they are totally covered in leaves and sketchy on the bike anyways. I mostly walk the bike to CP 44 and decide to bike-whack from it directly to 43… this was a bad idea… this takes me almost 35 minutes through the worst/thickest mountain laurel I’ve seen in the park yet, to an extent I’m almost wondering about the validity of this CP. It finally opens up as I hit the CP and then the path from the CP to the trail (which is the expected route for racers to take) isn’t too bad… but I decide I’m warning the 4-hour race about this one, that was some thick stuff if you get the route wrong.

I set CP 42 and I’m done, I head back to the truck Justin says he has a few more CPs to go so I get a start on setting up the Transition Area fencing. Right as I’m finishing this up, Justin shows up he got all his CPs done… its around 5pm and 55 CPs are set, the only 2 CPs that are left are ones we purposefully are holding due to their somewhat public locations.

Justin and I agree that we are doing great on schedule, all that is left is Start/Finish/TA setups so lets maybe “sleep in” tomorrow and not start until 10am the next morning. I get back to the AirBnB and load up all the bins, fencing, lights, and bike racks we’ll need on Friday for TA/Start/Finish setup, take a shower and once again pass out the moment I touch the bed.

I'm 37 hours of work-time in at this point, plus Justin's 8 hours, 55 CPs set, 2 to go.

Friday (day before race) : I wake up at 7:30am… that’s apparently as much sleeping in as I can do. The weather looks to be overcast this day... of course now that we’re all done setting CPs. Most thankfully the rain chances have turned to only spotty storms for race day on Saturday, and Sunday still looks perfect. That means we’re locking it in, the boats are being delivered as per Plan A at Croaker Landing.

So rather than sit around and wait to get started I recognize I have to make multiple trips to get all the bike racks over to the park (they don’t all fit in the truck at once), so I message Justin, and additional racer and friend Joe Hall who has volunteered to help for this day, that I’m going ahead and getting started and they can just meet me at YRSP.

I make 2 trips and unload all the 18 rack beams and the 36 leg setups and start to plant/hang flags and all that stuff. Just as I start, boat outfitter #1 tells me they’re running early and will be at Croaker Landing in 20 minutes… yikes that’s about how long it’ll take me to get there. So I lay out tools as best as I can, I trust park goers to not steal anything so the guys can start building bike racks if they get there before I get back. I head over to Croaker, the park ranger (co-manager) meets me there.

We chat real quick, one of the things I ask him about is if my medical and timing folks can camp/sleep on-site. Saleena/Dave (Emergency Medical training) have always covered medical for our races, Dave does the medical while Saleena races, and Mark (Enabled Tracking) always does my timing and both usually just camp in their trailers/vans. This park doesn’t have camping but figured they’d be ok with it, he says they are not… doh… more on this later, but for the time I email Mark and let him know no camping on-site, he’ll have to go with his Plan B.

About 15 min. later the awesome folks from Virginia Outdoor Center show up with their 128 boats, I love the VOC crew, they’ve been supporting our races since 2022 and are always up for whatever locations I ask them to go to. We work out where the ranger wants us to put everything, it is a perfect drivable location just within the old fire road so away from the public boat launch, and once they are situated I head back 20 min. to the main park area to rejoin Joe/Justin for setup, I tell the outfitter to call me when they are done (they also have boats to deliver to Waller Mill Park as well).

I get back to the race finish area and Joe’s practically built all the bike racks already. So while he’s finishing that up I get back to work on flags, tables, and we all start setting up lights for nighttime. The outfitter calls me back way quicker than I’m anticipating, they’re done at Croaker Landing and headed to Waller-Mill and need me to show them where stuff goes… crap... I need to abandon Joe/Justin again, I tell them what else needs to be set up and they tell me to leave and “we got it.” That is always the #1 thing you want to hear, best friends/volunteer crew ever.

So I head to Waller-Mill, meet the outfitter there and we quickly agree we can best put the majority of the boats in 2 of the trailer parking spots. But the park ranger isn’t sure, he’s worried about blocking people from using the spots if the park is full… this park has 100+ parking spots… but ok sure we let him call it in to his boss and finally he agrees to let us put boats in that spot, which is good cause we didn’t really have a Plan B, this was where we previously agreed to do this.

So while VOC outfitter is unloading boats I decide to get started on setting up the Waller-Mill TA, Justin and Joe eventually arrive too, they finished the whole YRSP setup, freaking amazing. As They help me setup the remainder of TA here, we hang 1 of the last 2 CPs left (the one on the disc golf course), and now we’re done!? Its maybe 3pm… That can’t be right, I’m usually scrambling through Friday, thank heavens for Justin/Joe this is officially the soonest I’ve been ready for the race, so now at this point we just need outfitter #2 to arrive (they have an additional 34 boats for us). We also need to preload the truck with everything needed for race morning but otherwise we’re set and good to go. So we head back to the AirBnB and start packing things up when outfitter #2 calls and says they are on their way just 30 min. out.

While I’m there Charlie (YRSP Park Manager) calls me to tell me things are all set for the morning and also that he talked to my medical folks and is allowing them to camp on site so long as they know the park locks the gate (locks them in) at night. Apparently Saleena/Dave just went right to the park when they got there and worked their magic, so they get to camp on-site, great. I jokingly mention to Charlie that his co-manager said no, and he says that guy is just trying to do the right things by the book, hah, I totally get it.

So I go back to Waller-Mill park to meet outfitter #2 and quickly realize I need Justin and Joe to come help me asap. Outfitter #2 is new to us, they are from the Richmond area and have never done anything like this before, they arrive with 40 boats stacked on truck beds/racks and only 2 people… VOC in comparison had 9+ people working like an assembly line in their crew. So in order to make sure it didn’t take all night me, Justin and Joe help them unload all their boats and gear for about an hour… now we’re “done” for the day. We head back to the AirBnB, Kelly arrives in town with mother-in-law. Normally the kids stay home with grandma during races, but because of the close proximity for this race they’re staying at the nearby Great Wolf Lodge so the kids can play at the waterpark with grandma while Kelly comes to help out with the race.

Remember how I said we were “done” in quotes… so Justin and I are back at the AirBnB waiting for our food delivery to arrive when I get a call from Saleena. I mentioned earlier that Saleena participates in our races while her husband is our medical coverage. David is great about keeping any course logistics secret from Saleena, and she’s great about not even trying to learn any details like that, this is not uncommon as I often have people volunteer while their spouses, significant others, family members participate; I’ve never had an issue with people sharing logistics ahead of time; adventure racers are upstanding people.

So with that context, Salenna calls and just says, “hey the park ranger here needs to talk to you about something” and she just hands the phone over to this guy. Its a park ranger I’ve not talked to yet this weekend, he sounds like a very older gentleman, and in short he basically says: “I’m not sure you want to leave all your life jackets and paddles where you have them at Croaker Landing, we sometimes get kids/teens/ruffians in that area at night, and I’d hate to see anything happen to all your nice gear…”

While all the kayaks and canoes are on the fire road behind a 2nd gate, the lifejackets and paddles are more out in the open in front of the gate. We assumed because the road to the launch gets locked at night it’d all be fine… and to this day I still think it would have. So I go back and forth with "old timer" a bit, but I don’t want to argue with him, as he is genuinely calling me out of concern. He tells me he locks the road gate at 8pm so I should go move the stuff before then. I tell him I’ll head out there and move the gear… so at 6:45 our food arrives, I eat super fast and jump in the truck to drive 20 minutes back out to Croaker Landing by myself arriving around 7:25ish and I scramble to move 180 paddles and PFDs about 200 meters behind the gate and slightly off to the side in the woods. I finish at literally 7:58pm and I’m worried old-timer is gonna lock the gate with me inside, hah. I leave just as the last 2 cars are leaving the fishing pier so definitely no one in the area overnight and the ranger is arriving to lock the gate just as I drive out… now we’re done for the night…

A few more volunteers arrive to the AirBnB through the evening (Jesse & Bethany Hagberg) and we all eat and chit-chat and a few more (Dawn Savage & Parker Nevenglosky) arrive super late at midnight driving down after their work day ended, we’re packed and ready for the morning. As is my tradition every time I put on a race, this night I can’t fall asleep at all… I don’t think I truly fall asleep until maybe 2am, I’m just up thinking about everything that still needs to be done, adding things to the checklist on my phone, trying to remember if I told somebody about something, hah.

This is a lot of stuff I’ve written and we haven’t even gotten to race day yet, hah. Like I said, its a multi-day stage race �� But I'm 49 hours of work in at this point plus Justin's on 15+ and Joe's got 6-7+...

Saturday (Race Day #1 - 15-hour race). I wake up at 5am and as always I’m already pumped with adrenaline so I’m out the door first :) Off to YRSP and my first task is to start a big group text message with all the volunteers + Dave DeVore from Emergency Response Training (medical coverage) and Doug Silk (ARDotWatch) and Nic Wynia (photographer). We can’t always do this but sometimes we do races where there is excellent cell-coverage, and this was one of those cases, this entire course had cell coverage so our best method to relay info through the day is a big group text and I kick it off so everyone can share their names and we start relaying info.

Next is to just start unloading everything left in my truck (shirts, awards, race packets/maps, and also the PA system for sound/music. Since BROR’s first ever race Kelly (and Janine when she’s there) has always “owned” packet pickup, its her jam, so my first job is just to get all those boxes on tables and they take care of actual organizing the shirts and stuff while I do other setups and RD things, they’ve got it down so much at this point that they open packet pickup at 5:45, 30 minutes ahead of schedule.

Just as the rest of the volunteer crew is about to arrive, the park rangers let me know they have 4-5 rangers ready to direct traffic/parking, full on with blinking lights like a airport runway, amazing, since I immediately realize I don’t need any people for that I direct everyone to Kelly to all help with packet pickup.

While we’re all doing these things Justin is setting the final checkpoint (CP 14 along a public road and popular fishing spot), along with setting up “Caution: race in progress” signs along the main road we expect racers to utilize. Once he’s done with that he then heads over to Croaker Landing to own that spot for the morning (be there when racers arrive), he sets up a pop-up tent out there and meets the park ranger there to open the gate to the fire road so racers don’t have to hop the gate and can easily get boats out.

Back at pickup/finish I’m setting up the PA system to play music, racers are coming in for packets, Doug (ARDotWatch) arrives, and he and I do a quick logistics walkthrough so he knows good spots to cover race action, and just as we finish that I get my first big “sigh of relief” of the morning: the charter buses call as they have arrived 30 minutes early and are ready to start transporting racers to Croaker Landing (where the race will start). So I walk over and meet these super nice guys who are dressed in suits, confirm the logistics with them of where to bring racers and in the process learn that one of the drivers lives a few blocks away from Croaker Landing, so he definitely knows where to go. So with that all set, I walk over to where all the racers are parked and make the first announcement for them to start loading on the buses when ready.

At 7:30ish the first bus leaves with our first group of racers, so we send volunteers Dawn, Parker (volunteering both days), Jon Thiel (who is racing the 4hr Sunday with his son) and Laura Linville (also racing the 4-hour and husband racing in the 15hr) out to Croaker as they will also be helping that station in the morning. As the 2nd bus leaves, I head back over to the parking lot to remind racers to not wait as many are still milling about and I want to be sure they don’t miss the scheduled start of the race, or end up in a situation where I have to delay the start of the race if too many are behind.

At 7:50ish the 2nd round of buses is loading up to head out and I know I have to do a racer briefing at 8:30 so I pack up a few things in my truck, and test out the bullhorn which isn’t working, its dead and takes “C” batteries, doh. If this is the only real issue for the day I’ll take it, knowing my truck can be a generator if needed, I unplug part of the PA system and take the music from the packet pickup folks, throw that in my truck and that’ll become what I need to do the race briefing and race start (always have a Plan B). I head out to Croaker and get there around 8:00am with 2 buses loading behind me as I left, I believe we’ll need 1 or 2 more but it looks like it's running on schedule nicely.

I arrive and it is an absolutely gorgeous overcast morning at the riverside, and the water is as smooth as ice, couldn’t ask for better paddle conditions on the river. Racers are spread about doing their final map planning, so I just pull my truck up and plug in the PA system and play some music while I meet with volunteers. At this point I talk to Justin/Parker/Dawn about the prologue and hand them a giant tub of rubber ducks and tell them to go put the ducks out at the old campground area. Jesse/Bethany arrive and I ask them to man the poker chips at the pier. So we’re all set to race, the only problem is we’re still waiting on racers, some have really dragged their feet getting over to the charter buses. Its 8:30, I gotta get through the race briefing so I start, briefing goes quick and easy, all the standard questions including a curiously pointed one from the BROR team asking if portaging a boat is allowed.

I say yes and quite a few racers have smiles on their faces. I genuinely am excited to see what everyone has in mind with that info. The last bus arrives as I’m mid-briefing so I cover some points again but all-in-all we finish the briefing early, so I give folks a minute for last minute prep and we continue a BROR tradition… we start the race 5 min early if we get the briefing done in time.

At 8:55am the race begins, racers have to run to an info board to find out where the ducks and poker chips are located, while Dawn and I get ready to take down all the team numbers they’ll shout at us as they come back from that challenge. Only 1 team seriously inquired before race start about what their penalty would be if they didn’t complete the challenge (-1 point), but to our surprise that team shows up, we go through all the numbers and everyone is accounted for everyone completed the prologue, everyone got a rubber ducky to take along for the race :)

By 9:05 all teams have completed the prologue challenge and are out on Leg 1 which is a decent sized orienteering leg. I estimated it would take the fastest teams roughly 80+ minutes to clear all 7 checkpoints in it. This was going to be the one time that genuinely most volunteers got a minute to relax. The race just started, 100% of the racers are all on the same leg in the same area out in the woods, we start to chit chat a little.

One logistic we discuss is we had 2 soloists no-show, 1 team no-show and another team that downsized from 4 to 3-person. This means we’re going to have 2 extra solo kayaks and 2 extra canoes that we have to get from Croaker Landing over to Taskinas Creek (TA2) because that is where the 4-hour race is the next day and where VOC is going to pick up all their boats. Parker plans to use 1 solo kayak for the safety boat, Bethany volunteers to paddle another over there since she’ll be manning TA2, and Justin says he’ll take care of the canoe (more on this later).

So the race has just begun, we watch some interesting routes taken on the LIVE-Tracking site… and holy crap we have a team back already and skipping ahead to Leg 2!!

For this race, all the checkpoints were optional but teams had to get a minimum of 1 checkpoint from each leg to be considered official. This team’s strategy was to do that right out of the gate, they elected to get the closest checkpoint on Leg 1 and immediately headed right back to the pier at 9:28 to launch their boat and start leg 2. We were not expecting this at all. As part of our event permit, the park required us to have 2 safety boats on the 1-mile stretch of paddling on the York River (because the river is a mile wide and a wayward team could be a big issue), so we scramble to get Justin & Parker, our safety boats, on the water along with the first team. This team EPICNav (Shana and C.J.) aren’t in a rush, and they are super friendly AR vets, they just wanted to take it easy today, but be official so they take their time carrying their boat down to the water and methodically getting all set, and put into the water around 9:40ish.

On the flip side, around 10:01am we can see the race leader, Glen Lewis, running back on the fire road to the boats, that’s the signal that we all have to get to work. This is because Jesse/Joe need to man TA2 (where leg 2 paddle ends), I have to get over there as I’ll be one of the trucks moving paddle gear mid-race, and once I signal them Jon/Laura will have to get over to Waller-Mill to own that TA/park all day.

Adventure Source Racing (Mike Chaney and his 9yr old son Jameson) also come in having gotten 4 of 7 CPs in the first leg, Jameson has been doing our races since he was 5 and this is his first race longer than 8 hours; 15 hours is a lot for a 9 year old so great strategy by Mike to get to the boats early, Jameson is all smiles, dad is carrying a canoe all by himself, wow. So Glen Lewis hits the water at 10:04 as I start the truck up to leave for TA2, but quickly we see that we’ve got a tight race up top as Stephen Pepe hits the water at 10:10 right on his heels and all of the Top 10-15 teams/solos hit the water within 10-15 minutes of Glen. I’ve got a little time to get over to TA2 but not much.

Leg 2 was estimated as 80+ minutes of paddling for everyone getting all the checkpoints, but EPICNav gets only the 2 required CPs and is off the water by 10am, they jump right on their bikes for Leg 3 at 10:14 and are off, way ahead of any schedule we had. Thankfully they didn’t bring any personal paddle gear so we don’t have to transport anything to try and beat them to Waller-Mill Park, but we do need to get the disc golf discs over there. So I set up shop in TA2 at YRSP main area and await a few of the leaders while keeping an eye on EPICNav.

Adventure Source, Glen and Stephen come in to TA2 about 25 min apart from each other and all have personal paddle gear, so at this point my job is to get their gear to Waller-Mill before they get there (this is a theme for the next 6 hours). Teams have a 9-mile bike and a 3-mile trek before they need their paddle gear again, so we have a little buffer built in but this is where our well oiled machine of volunteers nails it.

So I head to Waller-Mill not only to drop off gear but to also check-in and do a walkthrough with Liv and Girl Scout Troop 90088 as I’m seeing them for the first time today. They are “owning” Waller-Mill today along with Jon/Laura and all of them at Waller-Mill are racing in the 4hour race tomorrow. We intentionally stationed them at Croaker first and then Waller-Mill as neither area is being used in the 4-hour race.

The Troop is always awesome, I walk them through the hole of disc golf, they will get score sheets so they can track all the racers’ scores and they have to run the discs back up to the tee after each is done. They know where all the gear is/goes and I trust them with it, the most important part of having people own a transition area.

Jon/Laura arrive there with all the discs and sheets they are all set. Joe is now at TA2 with his truck parked/receiving paddle gear and he & I are in rotation making gear runs, Kelly/Janine are working rotations watching kids back at Great Wolf Lodge while the other mans TA2/Finish area, Bethany is paddling a kayak over as her way to get over to TA2 and own that with Jesse for the next big stretch of the day. Justin and Parker are still on the water as safety boats, Dawn is manning TA1 at Croaker, we are fully spread across this course with racers all over it from Leg 1 to Leg 4.Dawn/Justin/Parker can shut the Croaker Landing TA down once the last racers leave Leg 1 and hits the water, but on this day we have some racers who get pretty lost but determined to get all the checkpoints.

Kelly returns from Great Wolf Lodge around this time for her shift manning the Bike TA2 with my oldest son Xander who wanted to come see the race and also has shown an affinity for taking pictures/photography. So I give him one of the DSLR cameras sitting around and tell him to go down to the boat ramp and shoot away, I kid you not we had 900 pictures we eventually posted after the race, 300+ of them came from Xander… I may need to start paying him for his services.

So this is the hardest part of any adventure race if you ask any RD, to understand the logistics of putting on a race like this at this point you just need to see the field spread on the map. We have the last 2 solos and a team still finishing up Leg 1 while the race leaders, and a few teams who skipped checkpoints, are already finishing Leg 4. How fast are Glen/Stephen going at the front of the field btw? They passed all of the teams that skipped checkpoints and are now in front of everyone by Leg 5.

At this point I notice we have a team well off course on the Leg 2 paddle. For leg 2, you had to paddle 1 mile down the York River but then turn into and paddle Taskinas Creek. I say its a fairly obvious inlet from the river, but as this team was running a little behind, they didn’t have a trail of boats to follow in and also were likely in a “we gotta move!” heads down mode. As an RD I don’t mind teams being lost, but I do keep an eye on things where I may need to rescue someone or when private property issues are involved. The basic potential issue here is the team managed to paddle past the entrance to Taskinas Creek as the tide was moving out, meaning fixing their error required paddling against a strong tide pull, and if they went too far without fixing the error they would have gotten to the shores of the Camp Peary military base… do I go send someone to stop them before we have an issue with the base? Thankfully Betsy and Dinah figured out their mistake and turned around, they paddled a full 1.5 miles past the entrance to Taskinas Creek, 3 bonus miles of paddling as we say in AR :) this was not the end of their very eventful day of racing, but thankfully they gutted it all out and still got 27 CPs on the day.

So the last 2 solos hit the water just after noon so Dawn/Justin/Parker can now close down Croaker Landing TA, Parker just paddles his safety kayak the rest of the way to Taskinas and gets out there, Justin/Dawn and Jesse heads over there to load all the unused PFDs and paddles in a car and drive them over to YRSP Taskinas Creek launch, and then one of the most masterful ingenuity moments, I hear via text that Justin is getting the extra 2 canoes to Taskinas by trying them in a train to his personal kayak and paddling a train of canoes down the river... amazing, and thankful Dawn got pictures/video.

With Justin off to paddle the canoes to Taskinas, Dawn gets to participate in the course a little and goes out to clear the flags/controls from the Leg 1 trek. Only she gets out to the first CP to learn that I secure all flags/controls with zip-ties or locks… doh, forgot to give her the cutting pliers. She comes back to YRSP to get those then heads back out to clear, thanks for being a good sport Dawn :)

Parker hitches a ride with me on my next turn shuttling paddle gear to Waller-Mill, he’ll be there taking pictures now and helping out. On this drive down we pass so many racers on the road trying to cheer them all on as they do the 9 mile bike down to Waller-Mill. When we arrive though we’ve got a very unexpected issue… the weather has gone from partly cloudy with 88% chance of rain to a completely cloudless sky, 90% humidity and it's nearing 90 degrees.

Liv says one of the two 5 gallon coolers at TA is already empty, so I hatch a quick plan, our AirBnB is just up the road, I’ll go up there, fill it with nice filtered water, and also grab 2 of our giant packs of water that were meant for the 4-hour the next day. You can watch this on the GPS tracker as I had a tracker in my truck, hah. I ask Joe/Jesse to cover for me on paddle transport while I do this.

I return with a fresh jug of water and a 48 bottle multipack. Then I head over to the disc golf to see a hole being played and also talk to Parker and Nick who are both in the park taking pictures now, telling them good spots and where to go etc.. I spend maybe 5-10 minutes over there and Liv messages me, “we’re running out of water again!” At this point we’ve reached 90 degrees, and we’re only 4-5 hours into the race, but the 9 mile bike on pavement with the heat has everyone sweating buckets; so when racers are arriving at Waller-Mill TA what they packed in their paddle bags is not enough.

For context, we had two 5-gallon coolers and some packs of bottled water at our Fall Foliage race TAs 5 months ago and had water left over after the race was done… So wanting to be absolutely sure no racers heat stroke, I take 1 empty 5-gallon cooler to the AirBnB again and fill it up, but this time I then head over to the nearby Wal-Mart and proceed to buy as much water as I can fit in a basket (roughly 35 gallons for any interested). I get back to Waller-Mill just as tons of teams are arriving off their bikes or arriving back from the trek leg before the big paddle leg on the reservoir.

So its now 3pm, we’re “only” 6 hours into a 15-hour race… the moment I arrive the remaining 5-gallon cooler is just about to run out, so bringing 40+ fresh gallons of water is perfectly timed. By the time we finish unloading this stuff from my truck all but 4-5 teams are now in Waller Mill Park for Legs 4-5. This is another “calm” moment for us, Justin/Dawn are done down at Croaker so they are taking turns at other spots and because all the racers are in the same park and will be accessing the same TA for the next few hours… except just kidding, we have multiple teams just after 3pm who decide they’re done with Waller-Mill and they’re heading back to YRSP for the final 2 legs of the race!!!

So this move was a little more expected. The design for the race this year was 7 legs. Legs 1-4 were estimated to take top teams 80min + 80min + 60min. + 50min. While Legs 5-6 were estimated at 175min + 190min + 215min. Basically the first 4 legs were more of quick sprints whereas the last 3 legs were more endurance pace legs that would really test racers. So that is to say, teams heading back to YRSP at 3pm was not that crazy of an idea, if the last 2 legs were going to take upwards of 7 hours for the top teams, then leaving at 3pm meant having 9 hours left to race those legs. Smart decision by a lot of these teams especially considering Leg 5 was a 10-mile paddle on the water when the clouds had disappeared.

The top teams were all still on the water at this point as they were all trying to clear the course and we started to see some of those portaging moves play out. We saw a few solos who left their boat ashore and got some CPs on foot, that saved a little time, but THE navigational move of the race came from the BROR team, who if you remember were the ones who asked if portaging was ok in the pre-race brief. Interestingly we (volunteers/designers) had a few thoughts on where we thought people might try to portage their boats, and I saw a few of those moves, but I don’t think any of us expected what team BROR did.

Team BROR paddled up the southwestern inlet in the reservoir to a CP all out on its lonesome “out and back.” Getting this CP meant an additional maybe 2 miles of paddling back from, instead they paddled all the way into the inlet further after getting the CP, then they portaged the boats roughly 1500 feet north to a paved trail and portaged the boats maybe another half mile on the paved trail and dropped the boats back into the reservoir from there. I believe everyone watching considered that the move of the race, we estimate it may have saved them 30-40 minutes in time, but also got them off the water and in the shade while they portaged the boat. 2 miles of paddling vs maybe 1 mile of carrying boats, mostly on a paved/shaded trail.

Around 4:30pm it was time to start packing paddle gear from teams to bring back to YRSP as some teams expected to have access to it between Legs 6 and 7. The good news is Leg 6 should take teams 3 hours if they wanted to clear it, 1 hour just to do the mandatory portions so we had plenty of buffer built in for gear transport.

However, I was also worried that the day was continuing to be blazing hot/humid and we pretty much moved all the water to Waller-Mill. So Joe went off to Wal-Mart for our 2nd run there for the day while I packed up my truck with paddle gear. Joe bought another 40+ gallons of water , plus ice for the finish line ice chests to bring over to YRSP so racers had plenty water/fluids there between legs 6/7 and also at the finish.

At 5:30 my truck was full so I headed back to YRSP, got there and I unpacked everybody’s stuff and looked up at the LIVE-Tracking TV and quickly realized one of our teams had made the mistake of leaving their GPS Tracker in their paddle bag because it was saying they were back at TA5/Finish with me but no teams were there.

This has happened a few times in our races and incurs a 1-point penalty for missing mandatory gear. I mention this for a second just to talk about why we do this. It's not about making a rule just so we can enforce penalties, it's really about racer safety. I have a team of volunteers and medical folks and park staff who are all ready, willing, and able to go rescue a team if they are in trouble, but if you don’t have a GPS tracker then we don’t know where you are to go rescue/assist you. The particular team in this instance (Women of AR) is super experienced and competent team so I’m not too concerned about their safety, until I get a call from them about 20 minutes later, oh no. Thankfully it just turns out that they figured out they left their tracker attached to one of their PFDs and they were just calling in because they thought the penalty could be a total DQ from the race. I inform them its just a 1-point penalty, tell them to be safe but to keep racing and be sure to get their tracker back when they finish this leg its waiting for them in their bag.

Right after this at 6:15ish EPICNav arrives at TA5, having completed their mandatory 1 CP on each leg so far, they’re up to 13 total at this point and they’re having a blast, a great reminder that we’re all out here to have a good time. At this point we have half the teams still on the water at Waller-Mill, maybe 25% on the road back to YRSP and the other 25%, including all the leaders, on the single track trails within YRSP. Joe says he can handle the remaining paddle gear transports so I can take over TA5/Finish YRSP shelter and relieve Kelly/Janine for a little while and I will just stay there for the rest of the evening/night.

Around then I get two rapid fire calls from racers who did the same thing, left their GPS tracker behind, one in their paddle bag and the other left their GPS tracker attached to the outfitter supplied PFD and so I call that to the TA4 crew so they can at least get that tracker so the outfitter doesn’t take it, thankfully they quickly find it and also thankfully both teams go back to get their trackers. From a safety standpoint I know where they are and since they self-penalized by having to bike backwards and lose time, decided not need to take a point off.

At 7pm EPICNav is finished the race! Hah, 15CPs and they had a great time, finished in the daylight, Shana will return in the morning to race the 4-hour. Then right behind them finishing, the 2M team “Blitz” arrives to TA5 to transition to the final trek leg.

I’m super happy to see Blitz, the Bolton brothers had done a few of our races before, but back in 2022 during our Spring Bloom race at Lake Anna they were legit contending in the Top 10 when they dropped their e-punch into the water while punching a paddle point. They apparently got waist deep in the water/marsh and searched forever for it to no success. They came straight to the finish line and just called it a day, I honestly have never seen a team so dejected before, and then we didn’t see them at all in 2023 or 2024, I was worried they were done with adventure racing. So I was so happy to see them back racing again and they were racing very well again super calm/collected and with a specific gameplan; they were strategically skipping a bunch of paddling points but clearing all the trek and bike (which turned out to be a super smart idea). While I was chatting with Andrew/Ben though, we heard thunder off in the distance… s**t…

We knew spotty thunderstorms were a possibility with the crazy high humidity/heat, to that point we’d avoided it almost all day but now when we opened up the weather apps we saw this tiny little storm, maybe 10-mile wide in diameter, moving super quickly but it was RED on weather apps, and it was triggering lightning detections.

Knowing this was a possibility we covered pre-race that we would be doing a “stop and hold” in any TAs if we detected lightning and that any racers should shelter in place with whatever was nearest by. We looked at the weather apps 2 more times in 5 minutes and it was clear what was about to happen so while I was talking on the phone to a person down at Waller-Mill at 7:07pm (verified time by looking back at text group) I asked Janine to text the race group that we were on official stop-and-hold at any TAs, lighting was detected just 3 miles away at this point and the sky was turning dark. Maybe 1 minute later the skies opened up and it POURED.

YRSP is about 10 miles east of Waller-Mill so we were a little ahead of them on the weather but not by much, they said we had 6 boats still on the reservoir when the skies opened up, thankfully 3 of them were just a few hundred feet away and scrambled back in to the nearest shoreside and got right off the water. Within 10-15 minutes the other 3 boats were off the water, but they paddled through some insanity for about 4-5 minutes. The final team off the water you ask??? It was Betsy and Dina who already had the fun paddling excursion down the York River…

So now with the storm going fully downpour Glen Lewis our race leader rides into TA5 and comes directly into the shelter out of the weather, then soloists Jeff Seaton and Doug Sevon as well. I tell them (plus Blitz) that I’m holding them in TA and none of them even question it or pretend they want to go back out amidst this downpour… This thankfully lasts for maybe 10 minutes… and then I kid you not… someone flips a switch and it’s back to blue skies, birds singing…

I look at the radar, it confirms that’s all there is, everything is past us and we’re clear for the rest of the evening/night.. I look up and tell the racers in TA5 “blue skies you’re free to go back and race.” Because it was all but 16 minutes of a stop and hold, no one seriously asks us for time credits or anything like that, plus most of them were transitioning in the shelter during it so they got the “advantage” of staying mostly dry while other racers were out in the elements. So all-in-all, at 7:07 we had a stop and hold and then we released everyone at 7:23 according to the group text chat, I’d say we got really lucky with that and I’m super thankful.

So at 7:23 stop and hold lifted, by 7:50 the last team leaves Waller-Mill on their bikes, the crew there begins breaking down TA4 and outfitter #2 is there to get their boats and paddles, our crew tears down the fence, coolers, flags, etc.

I do a quick live-stream interview/race update with Doug (ARDotWatch) and then just a short while later by 8:50 we now have all the teams fully within York River State Park. The final team to get back into the park is Team Encik, who are on their first ever adventure race, sort of. We/BROR got asked to put on an AR clinic over the winter for a University of Pennsylvania leadership lentures program. In February, in the midst of a snow storm, we designed a 4 hour course around Rocky Gap State Park, did a 101 clinic on AR and then raced in the crazy blizzard conditions. One of their students loved it so much he put together a team of his friends for this 15-hour race, kudos to them for jumping straight into the deep end, love the ambition.

So with them all teams in the park, while we’ve still got things to do, this is the most relief moment of a race that involves multiple locations for a race director and volunteers. At this point all that’s left is for teams to come into the picnic shelter location to either transition from bike to the final out-n-back trek leg, or to come in from the final trek and finish the race. At this point we’re cheering teams in, taking their pictures at the finish line, and also watching the TV screen with LIVE-Tracking as the overall Top 10 really starts to flesh out as we’ve got roughly 7-8 potential teams/solos who can still clear the course after clearing through Leg 6.

Around this time I get an unexpected text from the Waller-Mill park manager that they are wanting to leave for the day but Outfitter #2 is still there loading up their boats cause again he only has 2 pepole in his crew and are taking a long time. I only mention this because this is one of those things where I know I told them this was the plan, but they seem to have forgot, I tell him I’ll pay the hour of overtime for his rangers to be there, and by 9:05 the outfitter is all done and out, we’re all good, crisis averted.

Mission BBQ arrives around 9:50pm to setup post race food, the only unfortunate thing here is they park while I’m talking to someone and then park right in a terrible spot partially blocking the TA entrance, but we make it work and they’re done pretty quickly and out. A very welcome change from our Fall Foliage race last year when they arrived super late and took forever to set up with 100 starving racers waiting; we love using Mission BBQ because racers love the food good variety, and its something we don’t have to set up, but because its becoming a larger chain its a different store servicing each race depending on where we are, so service varies I guess. We’ve had great service from them for multiple other races so they’re batting .750 now.

Its now 10:25pm and our race winner is officially in, Glen Lewis kept his lead and clears the course with roughly 90 minutes to spare. Glen has won our races before but always as part of a team, he definitely had some navigation bobbles through this race but overcame them with his outright speed. At this point we can see tracking that 2nd place should be Stephen Pepe as he is going to clear and is heading back in. But but the rest of those 8ish who could clear are starting to flinch as they’re running out of time. Stephen Pepe comes in 2nd having cleared it at 11:06pm. What an awesome result for him, Pepe’s done a lot of orienteering including beating known top adventure racer Jesse Spangler at OUSA Nationals, but this race was apparently his first real foray into adventure racing and first time doing any real paddling, craziness.

We’d quickly learn Stephen and Glen would be the only ones to clear this course as we watch LIVE-Tracking and go from 8 clearing to 6 to 5 to 4, 3, as we see all of them eventually skip their first CP. The most heartbreaking is watching soloist Drew Snead who makes 2 attempts for CP 52, but he misses it both times being just to the west on both attempts; but he’s smart enough to know time is ticking, so he starts to head in, he doesn’t know it until he gets in but he’s 3rd overall. The next 2 making our Top 5 are OA Support and Team BROR who both skip 1 and 2 points due to time concerns, but finishing with 30 minutes on the clock. Good enough for 4th and 5th place.

We eventually hit midnight with steady streams of racers coming in, but we still have 1 team out on the course after the midnight deadline. "This Way, That Way" was clearing the course with 3 CPs to go when they hit a navigation snag, they tried to cut across a stream that we later found out they said was large enough to require swimming and they didn’t want to do that. Their route back was super conservative, we did the math and knew they were losing a point every 5 minutes. Several teams kept bugging “when are you doing awards?” Some of this was because at least 20 of the racers were doing the 4-hour race with their families/friends the next morning and were trying to get whatever sleep they could.

So at 12:20 we decided to go ahead and get awards started, we did the math in our heads that the last team should be out of contention and may not even make it to the finish on time. (We were wrong on both accounts...) So we started awards. I told the volunteers to let me know when the team were coming in so I could announce it and we could cheer them in. This Way That Way arrived at 12:24, and 40 seconds. 5 minutes before the disqualification deadline, so while they lost 5 points in late penalties they scored enough to make the Top 3 in the 2-Male division, as soon as we figured that out we quickly announced to who we could and quickly put it in the post-race results announcement and mailed them their awards. Matt and Dennis are great guys and I’ll definitely not be starting another awards presentation before we hit the DQ deadline again.

So now it is 12:35ish, awards are done, we’ve cleaned up all the garbage/food stuff, the amazing YRSP staff/rangers stuck around late at night to help us clean up. We pack up any electronics but leave everything else… cause we have another race to do the next morning…

Who thought this was a good idea?

Then as we’re all leaving the park Doug messages on the volunteer group text that there is a big accident blocking us all from getting to the AirBnB… some of us further behind are able to quickly reroute a longer way around, but when we get back I realize we’re all dead and no one is gonna want to pack vehicles in the morning. So I start packing the truck up with all the shirts, awards, drinks, etc. in my truck so all I have to do the next morning is wake up. Dave (from team BROr staying at the AirBnB) and Dawn help cause they are awesome :)

I recognize that not everything is going to fit in the truck so I ask Dave if he can take my bike home with him (we live in the same town) and I’ll pick it up later, because one logistic I forgot until now is we only rented the AirBnB until Sunday so we have to be fully out when we leave in the morning… blah… so we finish packing things up around 1:30am

And then we finally sleep… around 2:10am for me…

While this one was planned, this was a 21-hour day, now up to 70 total hours of work this race week...

Sunday (Race Day #2 - 4-hour race with a 8am pickup and 10am start).

Blegh… this is how we all feel as we’re waking up at 6:30-7ish, I know I have an absolutely pounding headache from the complete lack of sleep. Thankfully we had some foresight and moved the start time for the 4hr race back to 10am so we didn’t have to open packet pickup until 8am.

The other big thing, is we have enough volunteers who signed up for just today for the 4-hour race that I’m able to split the crew up and tackle many things. Matt Larson and Aaron Linville who raced the 15-hr volunteered for this day, and 2 guys named Dave & Michael signed up online, they are stationed at one of the nearby military bases and just saw about us and signed up to volunteer via our website. Liv and the girl scout troop, Jon and Laura who volunteered yesterday are racing today.

When I arrive and once I'm set, Mark lets me know that we have a small correction on the 15-hr results (in addition to us missing the late team the night before), turns out 2 of the controls were malfunctioning and not registering punches for everyone. So Mark went out early this morning and replaced those 2 control boxes, and then he used GPS tracks to confirm all the teams that found those 2 controls. Its a small update but it does swap 1 team (He Was a Navigator Once) into a podium spot in our Mixed-2 division, thankfully Morgan Cheatham from that team is racing the 4-hour with her kids, so I can rectify giving her her award when she finishes, and I know Matt Wilson well enough I can mail him his or see him at a future race.

Also thankfully today for the 4-hour race, the logistics of the race itself are much more simple as it only has 3 legs and all 3 legs are out-and-back from the centralized start/finish location, which means we really only have 2 stations to run: the start/finish/packet pickup location, and the boat launch which is about 200 yards down the hill.

So with this in mind, the plan we had for this day was for any new folks to man the stations for the 4-hour race, while anyone who volunteered yesterday gets to go experience the course and clear all the flags/controls from the 15-hour race that we don’t need today. Then after the 4-hour race is over whoever is left will divide and conquer any flags/controls used by the 4-hour race.

So in the morning, we do a quick walkthrough, the plan is for Jesse/Bethany to take my kayak down to Waller-Mill and they’ll clear the 13 CPs down there. Justin will clear the CP on the road and the “caution” signs we have on that road, and after that he’ll divide and conquer CPs only for the 15hr race with Parker and whoever else is around.

So I leave off to YRSP and as I arrive around 7:30am the “new guys” David/Michael are already there waiting for me, already the best volunteers, hah. They help me unload the truck and Kelly/Janine show up and they take over setup and all that for packet pickup, and once again we’ve got packet pickup open 20 minutes before advertised time.

With that done, the most notable thing about Sunday morning vs Saturday is that it is about 15-20 degrees colder (we’re all putting hoodies on), but also there are very consistent strong wind gusts blowing; so I take a quick walk down to the river’s edge overlook. The paddle leg for the 4-hour race is actually the same “Leg 2” from the 15-hour race except they start/finish from Taskinas Creek, but that means we have 1 checkpoint for the 4-hour race that is out on the York River itself, I knew going in that this CP would be a game-day decision pending weather as 4-hour race involves a lot of families and beginners, and it takes me all of 2-seconds to decide to cut that checkpoint out of the 4-hour race. The winds are so strong I can see whitecaps on the river. As expected Taskinas Creek is totally fine though, flat as ice, so we still have a nice 3 miles of paddling.

Head back to packet-pickup make signs informing folks that “P5 removed from course” and add that to my list of notes to cover in the pre-race brief. Right around this point Justin texts and says he’s already picked up CP 14 and the caution signs and asks if we need anything. I tell him we pulled P5 (CP 8 from 15-hour) and if he wants he can go ahead and get that one by walking/biking from Croaker like I did to set it, so he heads out there for that one.

I take David/Michael/Aaron/Matt down to the boat launch to show them what they need to do this day. The problem with the Taskinas Creek boat launch is its only about big enough to launch 2-3 boats at a time, and also for the 4-hour race we’ll have people launching and returning to take out at the same time, so I’m putting as many volunteers as I can here to help racers and families get their boats to the launch, launch the boat and prevent backups/funneling.

Other than that, the 4-hour race start is “according to plan,” we have pizza/sandwiches ordered for this race and both places call me in the morning to confirm the orders, everything is at ease. Interestingly enough even though the course is way smaller than the 15 hour and less complicated, its twice the # of racers and the vast majority or new to adventure racing so my morning is filled up with tons of questions from racers, which is great I’m happy to help.

For today’s prologue challenge, I still have about 300 rubber ducks leftover (originally bought a 400 pack) and the plan is simply to find a spot and make all the racers run to go get 1 each. Parker and Joe arrive ready to help for the morning so I immediately ask them 2 things, #1 if they have any Advil or Tylenol (Parker does thankfully) and then I task them with finding a place for the ducks. They go take a walk and tell me they found a perfect spot with a covered shelter about 200 yards away from where we’re starting the race, so the plan is Joe will stand halfway between me and the ducks and wave his hands at the start and point people to where they need to go, simple, easy to explain, perfect. Again the purpose of this is just to get racers to spread out a little before they all mass start on the same leg, can’t have 50 boats trying to put into the water at the same time.

9:30 race briefing time and all going great, I warn family teams about T2 (CP 43 from the 15-hour) with the heavy mountain laurel / vegetation, and then I decide to make a special call out to name the 20 racers who are racing again today after having just done the 15-hour race yesterday… and they all look like zombies too, hah. Some of them had family members planning to be competitive today too, hopefully their bodies could keep up with that.

So at 9:55am we start the race with 5 bonus minutes and Dawn and I again do “writing down numbers being shouted at us” duty. One of my favorite things is coming up with silly prologue challenge ideas, as I said above its really just about getting separation in the field, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be boring. I’ve done a ton of adventure racers where the prologue, is “go run a mile and come back” and I hate that, we’re already going to be doing a ton of running, lets have some fun so in past years we’ve made people build Legos, solve clues to open a lock, etc. And I’d say genuinely the prologue challenges have always been 99% well received and loved, so many people talk to me about them when we run into each other. (I’ll touch on the 1% in a second… cause it’s amusing to me).

This race start goes perfectly and everyone, especially the 40+ kids are having the times of their lives and love that they get to keep the rubber ducks, I genuinely don’t know that I’ve seen this many smiles before, and all the park rangers are there and they absolutely are loving watching it too. Parker got an amazing video of a herd of adventure racers running toward him so they can all get their rubber ducks. So what is funny though is when people return to show us their ducks some ask “what do I do with it” and we just yell “keep it, its yours” and people are often surprised, happy “That’s awesome” and it becomes a part of their race. But there’s always 1-2 very specific racers who have done our races over the years who look like the grumpiest guys in the world, hah. Every time we’ve come up with some fun/silly prologue challenge, they take it seriously and are burdened by the fun. This race its one of our regular soloists, he returns and the following sequence happens:

Solo racer: “I’m #999”

Me: “got it you’re good to go”

Solo: “what do I do with the duck?”

Me: “you keep it”

Solo: “what if I don’t want it?”

Me: (slightly laughing): “you must keep it”

Solo: makes angry face at me and begrudgingly runs off into the woods with his rubber duck

The funny part is I would later find out he gave his duck to one of the park rangers… haha, that's how much he didn’t want to have to carry his tiny rubber duck around.

Again Dawn and I go through all our numbers and we’ve got a complete list, everyone got one no penalties needed to be given. This race then proceeds to go so quietly which is exactly what we all need, and my Advil kicks in so my head finally isn’t pounding anymore. The volunteer crew down at the boat launch is a machine, they spend the next 4 hours hauling boats back and forth up/down the hill and helping teams onto/off of the water, its like they lifted weights for 4 hours straight.

Outfitter #1 VOC calls me and says they’re on their way to Waller-Mill and will get al their boats and stuff from there and then they’ll come to YRSP and wait for the end of the race, perfect.

At the same time I send Justin, Dawn, Parker out to go have some fun and clear 15-hour checkpoints within YRSP that we don’t need anymore and they are off. Kelly, Janine and Myself take shifts owning the start/finish area, and I’m getting updates through the race from the CP clearing crews, apparently good thing I brought my personal kayak down because Jesse/Bethany were not allowed to rent a kayak from the park due to the high winds, they planned on doing both sides of the reservoir at the same time, instead they take turns in the boat each doing a half. Once they are done they head to YRSP and we get this amazing picture showing us how they are even transporting my kayak, I didn’t realize they didn’t have a rack… doh but thankful adventure racers are resourceful people.

By 1pm all of the volunteers clearing the 15-hour race checkpoints are back and done... This is insane/awesome, don’t know that we’ve ever been that ahead of schedule on clearing before. So all that is left is the 4-hour checkpoints and the plan is for Justin, Jesse, Joe and I to clear those the moment the race is done.

So everyone is sort of either at the boat launch or at start/finish as teams are now already coming in for the finish and I’m on finish line photo duty. We send Joe to go pick up all the pizzas and the sandwiches are actually delivery so all the food is setup, and it looks like a LOT of food, everyone is concerned we’ll have a lot of leftovers (we don’t, racers be hungry people).

As the race is 30 min from the finish I get a panicked text from VOC, says they are starting to pick up boats but they desperately need help because the didn’t realize all the boats are at the bottom of a steep embankment with a switchback trail, and we have 80+ boats to bring up and load. Bringing 1 boat up is fine but 80 would take them all night for their crew who also then have to pick up vertically and load the boats onto trailers. I tell him I’ll get support crew the moment we get through race end/awards…

So as the final 30 minutes of the race are closing in, we’ve got nothing but smiling faces, but now racers who have finished are milling about and stacking up in the way of other finishers, so Joe and Jesse get into action and create a tunnel for finishing racers to run through and they are directing traffic like on an airport runway. We technically had more people in the 2024 Spring Bloom with 300+ in that race but that doesn’t mean 250 is a small number of racers to get to the finish.

The good news is while we have a handful of teams that come in late beyond the 2:00pm deadline, everyone is in by 2:12pm which is awesome. But I catch Justin, Jesse, Joe getting ready to go out and start clearing checkpoints, and I run over to ask the biggest favor ever which I felt so bad about cause they’ve already done so much.

I go to the group of volunteers around the finish line and ask if any of them would be able to help us get the 80+ canoes/kayaks up the hill for VOC, and because they are awesome Justin, Jesse, Joe and Matt jump into action, and I tell them the moment I’m done with awards I’m coming over too.

So I go over to Mark who has the results ready, no issues this time. Also I was very pleased to know that racers genuinely loved the custom socks as the awards. We always try to make awards be “something useful” so we’ve done hydration packs, bike gloves, mugs and this time went with socks and they were very well received, phew. So I rip through the awards presentation at 2:20 and I’m done by 2:30, did thank yous for everyone and kid you not I immediately drop the mic, tell Kelly to just keep an eye on things and that I’m going to transport boats and I’ll take care of everything when I’m back.

So I run over to the boat launch and Jesse/Justin are already a machine taking up 2 canoes at a time, they aren’t even using the paved switchback trail but instead taking it up the stairs, so I jump in to follow suit going after the solo kayaks, Joe and Matt join too and now we’re making some serious progress. The first 2-3 boats I feel good, but by boats 4, 5, 10, 12 I’m dying, hah, my body is mad at me, but everyone is helping so I’m not stopping. We bring the boats up to the top and the VOC guys have their trailers there and they start roping the boats up to the racks, its a good system and within an hour or so around 4pm we get the last ones to the top. None of our arms work anymore… but we’re still not done, there are checkpoint flags to clear and everything back at start finish still needs to be torn down and cleaned up…

So we walk back over to that area to discover that Kelly, Janine, and a bunch of racers apparently jumped into action while we were over lugging boats up the hill. All the boxes are packed, the bike racks are disassembled and the fencing rolled up, holy crap I love the AR community!

So Jesse, Joe, Justin and I hatch a plan. 2 hours delayed but Justin will now finally use my kayak and go retrieve the last 3 paddle controls/flags on the Creek, Jesse/Joe will go after all the checkpoints to the east of the main road, and I’ll work on packing up start/finish into our cars and once I’m done I’ll text them to see what is left and join in.

So time to play Tetris with packing the truck with enough space for Kelly, the kids and grandma, and then pack Kelly’s Subaru up so I can drive it home (with the kayak on the roof). Again all these racers jump into action and I practically just say where stuff goes and I load maybe 3 of the bike rack 2x4s while there’s enough racers to get the rest, we jump the truck and the car full, it seems as though we’re going t run out of space so I ask Dawn/Parker if they can bring a few of the bins home with them, I’ll meet up with them later to retrieve it.

So within 25 minutes around 4:30pm the cars are all packed, I say bye to Kelly and family and they head off for the 3-hour drive home, I do one last quick discussion with park manager Charlie, he’s super happy with our event and says he wants us back in the future (the feeling is mutual). So now I text the guys to see how I can help with checkpoint retrieval, and they tell me to go get CPs 42-44 and CP 47. I realize two things at this point, #1 I don’t have any of my normal bottles/backpacks nor access to any liquids and it is getting HOT again… also I see Justin’s bike is just sitting in what used to be our start/finish area, and I don’t want to just leave it randomly sitting around so I ask Justin if he’s cool with me using it to speed up flag retrieval to which he says yes… Justin is shorter than me so he doesn’t ride an XL bike like I do but I make it work, hah.

So much like setting this section of checkpoints I ride out to the attack points on the bike and jump off quick to out-n-back getting the flags. Retrieving flags after a race is always interesting cause you can see the slight foot pathing created by racers the last few days leading you right to the flags in many instances.

I get flags 42 and 43 pretty quick and as I’m getting 44 Justin messages me in a concern, because he started clearing the paddle points 2 hours later than expected, the tide has now fully gone out and he can’t paddle to checkpoints 10 and 11 anymore, as in not even close. He asks if I’m able to get 11 on foot. Unfortunately I distinctly remember setting CP11 in a manner that it was a tree overhanging the water, no way to do it on foot, and that's assuming you could get there through all the potential vegetation blocking the bushwhack route.

The problem with the Creek is its not just tidal, but its marsh so you can’t just walk the shoreline, you go waist deep in mud within a second. Justin says he’s going to make another attempt at it, but I tell him not to kill himself as those 2 CPs are far away from places the general public would go, so we can get them later if needed… :(

He then instructs me that T5 and T7 from the 4-hour course still need retrieving so I head for T5 first which is this cool old abandoned car up on a hill, and then I head to CP45 which is in close proximity to T7. As I’m going through this area I use some trails I’ve never used before and I’m once again struck by this awesome park, so many vast different experiences out here, such a great place to race. I get CP45 and on my way to T7 I run into Jesse, who has like 10 controls hanging around his pack, he’s been a machine out there. I tell him I’m getting T7, he says he has one more so we go on our different ways, and about 15 minutes later we’re meeting up back at our cars in the parking lot around 6:20pm. Within 20 minutes Justin and Joe also arrive. Unfortunately Justin was not able to get those last 2 checkpoints, so that last bit is left…

It is at this point that I collapse to the ground… All the guys unpack their controls/flags, I dump them all in a bin to be sorted later, I know 2 checkpoints are still out there and its going to be a pain in the ass to get them but we’re 99% done and its time to take a second to lay down in the grass. I go ahead and mount the kayak on the roof of the car and that's everything packed as much as we can be.

At this point Jesse, Joe, Justin and I have a big group hug, literally the best group of friends/"volunteers" I’ve ever had for putting on a race. It was the most ambitious race plan and the racers have had nothing but glowing things to say about it ever since, everyone I mentioned above is amazing and the race doesn’t happen without them. So Jesse, Joe, Justin and I say our goodbyes and at 6:41 I hit the road for the 2.3-3hr drive back home…

Around 9:30 I arrive at home and Kelly has already unloaded what was in the truck because she's amazing as well, I start unloading the Subaru and at least by 10:30pm everything is in the house… I’ll organize it later…

A little longer than planned but a 12 hour day today, making now 82 hours total worked (plus all the hours of the volunteers).

Monday (day after 4-hour race) - So one thing I sort of assumed ahead of race weekend is that I would need the Monday after this weekend to decompress and organize everything… so thankfully I had already taken Monday off work (that’s 4 days of PTO for those counting).

Not a big rush so I woke up around 8am (“slept in”), brought the kids to the bus stop and then headed back home to start doing some initial organizing. The first thing I do is go through all the controls/flags all in one bin to take inventory. One thing I’ve learned is the best way to make sure you have all the flags is to collect the CP tags as you clear them, if I’m missing any I can go get them today along with the paddle ones. I lay the CP tags all out and 4 are missing... 1 is for the main TA (probably in a bin somewhere), another is the 2-08 paddle point Justin got, and the other 2 are the Taskinas Creek ones still out there.

I quickly message the group and within a minute Dawn and Justin produce pictures of those tags, they have them, so only 2 CPs left to go get in Williamsburg. So I load up a kayak on the roof of the Subaru and make the drive 2.5 hours back down to Williamsburg. Its a pleasant and quiet drive and gives me a lot of time to think. When I arrive its almost surreal as the park is totally empty except for a few park rangers. I quietly take the kayak down to the boat launch, hit the water at 12:13pm, no podcast or music this time, I just want the peace and quiet to relax and get to the final 2 checkpoints. Both are no problem as I’m doing this at peak high tide, then paddle back and I’m done in 56 minutes. I load the kayak back on the car, and then I go over to the Taskinas Creek overlook to just rest and reflect for a minute, what an amazing week/weekend.

At 1:30pm I hop back in the car for the final 2.5hr ride home and I’m back at 4:00pm. I spent roughly 7 hours of this day to clear the final 2 checkpoints, but it’s done…just in time to get the kids off the school bus… the race is officially cleared, some things/bins/boxes need to be organized but I’d call this race officially done, thanks to all the amazing friends and family who made it happen.

That's 89 total hours worked for me over 5 days this week, for a 15-hour and 4-hour race + all the hours the volunteers put in... and this is why I will always tell people putting on a race is always without a doubt harder than participating in a race.

I always learn things each time we put a race on, maybe we won’t do back to back days again until I forget just how bad the sleep deprivation was, this was also the 3rd race in a row that I had to pre-plan and be conscious of tide times, this was also the 3rd time having a race with multiple paddle legs requiring paddle gear transport… this was our third time doing a late night finish for race… maybe we take a break from that some of these ideas for a while…

... or maybe we do more… next week I already have a meeting with a permitting agency about next year’s Spring Bloom Adventure Race to finalize that date/approval… and Justin and I have already been throwing around design ideas for a future races from 10 to 15 to 30-hour courses…

Plenty of fun ideas to get to, but maybe let’s rest for a day first :)

10 Years of Putting on Races :)

Tue, 26 Nov 2024 16:55:36 GMT

Reflecting on the 10 Year Anniversary for BROR

Well hello, and welcome to a first ever entry for a Broad Run Off Road diary of musings. First a little introduction I suppose . I decided to start this tiny new “blog” simply as a way to share some occasional thoughts and experiences on things about racing; both from the side of race directing but also as a racer as well. I don’t know how regularly I’ll post here, but figure if I at least create the space, then maybe it’ll at least motivate me to use it.

Back before I got into race directing and forming BROR, I actually used to have a website/blog (“ Putting Pins in a Map” ) to document my experiences trying different outdoor sports/racing, from my first 5K, to eventually my first triathlon, adventure race, tough mudder, trail running, etc. While that website is no more, I believe one of my last posts on that site was actually my first ever adventure race. Life got busy and I just stopped posting on it and the site eventually went away when I let the domain lapse but the purpose for it was really just meant to share my own experiences in the hope that if anyone else stumbled upon it, they could read and maybe learn something from my experiences trying, failing, learning and trying things again; and maybe it’d inspire them to go out and try things too. And that’s sort of all I’m going for here.

So yeah… it's been 10 years of putting on races now with the first ever Leopold’s Trail 5k happening 10 years ago on a chilly November morning in 2014.10 years have gone by real fast and I’m blown away that to date through races we've been able to raise over $70,000 donated across 16 different local community non-profits, and best of all gotten 2,500 different racers out over the years for some fun outdoor adventures. But I genuinely didn’t start with any of this scale in mind.

For those who know me or see me out at races, 10 years ago was a very different time in my life. These days I put on multiple adventure races and a mountain bike race each year, I’ve become the trail builder/manager for a local park and also put on a very successful annual trail race for about a decade; on any given week you're 95% likely to find me on the trails riding, hiking, running, building just about every week, but it's worth noting that none of this was even remotely in my sphere until much later in life.

I grew up in New Orleans playing baseball almost exclusively from age 6 all the way into high-school until a bad arm injury derailed that plan. I finished out high school on the golf team and some track & field but the reality is I didn’t really have another sport after baseball. My college years were basically void of sports outside of some occasional intramural flag-football/softball type stuff, this was partly because I spent those years playing in a band (story for another day). I graduated, then I met a girl, we got married, and then a few years later we moved to Virginia. That's a lot of life crammed into a few sentences, but all this is to say that running, cycling, climbing, paddling, orienteering, etc. were completely nowhere remotely in my life until after turning 30.

When we moved to Virginia (for work) we effectively moved away from all of our family/friends, and when you’re no longer playing pick-up sports or playing tons of shows in a band in hot/sweaty bars/clubs in New Orleans, then you’re no longer burning calories, and when you’re from New Orleans you also like to eat food… While I did some occasional hiking as I love a good destination/waterfall hike, they were mostly infrequent, only happening on vacations or on occasional weekend trips, so I quickly found myself at the heaviest weight of my life…

While moving to Virginia did mean moving away from 99% of the friends/family we had, Kelly and I did have 1 friend in Virginia at the time; it was a co-worker of hers (Zac) who was roughly the same age as us. Zac was super into running having run his whole life including winning high-school state level, etc. He was now getting into marathons and triathlon, and asked us one weekend to come out and cheer for him as he tried his first big triathlon, the DC triathlon in 2010. I distinctly remember being on the sidelines watching all the athletes go by and just thinking about how fat I was getting and realizing I needed to do something with myself.

So in 2010 I finally signed up for my first ever race, a 5K :) A story I’m sure is so similar to many others, I started by thinking I could never run a 5K; but then 5K turned into 10K, which turned into a 10-miler which turned into a half-marathon… but honestly once I hit my first half-marathon I just lost the itch, I was bored… Running on pavement has sort of always been that way for me, it's a chore for me, it was a chore to try to stay healthy, I never “wanted” to go for a run on pavement, I just knew I should. It also wasn’t like any of these races were in exciting locations or anything, just running up and down streets you see all the time anyway, and because they have to close the streets down all the races are stupid early in the morning, which is especially hard for young 20-somethings with no kids who sleep in half the day, hah.

But then in 2013 our buddy Zac got married in Asheville, NC. He, his groomsmen and family were all generally runners or at least game for a run, cause they found a 5K/10K to do on the morning of his wedding as a fun group outing and I got asked to join. What I didn’t learn until literally minutes into the race was that it was 95% on trails. While I had done some regular hiking in Shenandoah National Park for waterfalls, I’d never even considered running on a trail before... By the end of the 1st mile I was hooked, it finally made running fun for me, it was taking this somewhat mindless fitness activity of running but matching it up with something I loved: the great outdoors. I loved that I had to always consciously be watching/planning my steps/stride instead of mindlessly maintaining a pace on flat pavement, and loved all the sights and sounds that came with being on trails. I finally wanted to find running races, more trail races.

In probably one of the most consequential coincidences in my life, it was within months of that trail race in Asheville that I learned a brand new nature preserve ( Leopold’s Nature Preserve ) was being created near our home and it would have 7+ miles of brand new trails. The moment those trails opened up my fitness/training running became almost exclusive to those trails because they were so close/accessible. Because the nature preserve was brand new, there was almost a 12 month stretch where I literally may have been the only person who knew any of it existed, it was like my own private getaway. In that first year I probably ran/biked on the trails over 100 times and never saw another person on them.

The only bike I’d ever owned at this point was a Schwinn “hybrid” bike with a fat cushy cruiser seat on it. Regardless I rode the shit out of those trails on that bike for many years, multiple times a week too. I genuinely knew (and probably still know) those trails better than anyone including the people who built and manage them. I was on those trails almost every day running or biking (this was before having 3 kids). As I met other runners in the community I’d try to introduce them to it and so many people would say “I had no idea this was here.” So in 2014, I decided to reach out the nature preserve managers to ask if it was ok if I organized a big group run on their trails the weekend before Thanksgiving, and they were super into the idea because they wanted more and more people to be introduced to their trails/preserve too and thus kicked off what became the first ever annual Leopold’s Trail 5K. 100 people showed up the first year and this “little” group run quickly in subsequent years added a 1-mile fun run for the kids and then a 10K for the more serious runners and soon we were having to cap the event because we were getting 300+ runners…

Nowadays 10 years later, I’ll go out to the trails, or when I bike the nearby gravel roads by the preserve’s entrance, and it is a totally different story, I can’t tell you the last time I’ve been out there and don’t see at least 1-2 other people, even mid-day on a weekday. I’m so happy for the nature preserve, it's an amazing thing they did for the area and it's also a bird-watcher’s top visit these days. Due to the popularity they now no longer allow biking on the trails due to safety concerns, but it remains a great place for a run, walk, hike.

A few years into producing that trail race, the timing company we were using got bought out by a competitor, and the new owners were not only annoying/incompetent to work with, we had a particular issue where one of their folks on-site stole one of our very nice cameras (he claimed he mistook it for his camera… only except he had his camera too, I’ll leave it at that). Then on top of that they suddenly wanted to increase their price, a lot… I had just recently participated in a cool trail race in my area from another race organization called Adventure Enablers (run by Mark & Margo Harris), so I decided to reach out to them and ask them who they used for timing only to learn they had their own timing equipment/were doing their own timing. So in short order they became the new timing company for the Leopold’s Trail 10k/5k race. As they were on site for the next race, Margo saw me using my bike to get into and around the trails during the event, and she mentioned that if I liked mountain biking that they had a mountain bike race I should try, and also that I should try out adventure racing as it was a combo of running and mountain biking with paddling...

I asked when their next adventure race was and signed up knowing absolutely nothing of what I was getting into, hah. I mean that literally I did not research one bit, but on April 13, 2019 I did my first ever adventure race, the Shenandoah Aquablaze ; a “no biking” race ;)

2 weeks after that I also did my first ever triathlon (a sprint triathlon) and shortly after did my first ever OCR/Tough Mudder that year too. But adventure racing really struck the chord for me, especially the navigation element. So when I finished that first adventure race, I immediately signed up for my next one just 1 month later in May, I also signed up for my first ever MTB race. These 2 registrations led to me buying my first actual mountain bike; and then shortly after I did my 3rd adventure race later that year in October (a race that went sooo bad that I still talk about it to this day as an example of what not to do, hah), so needless to say I was hooked on adventure racing.

On the RD side of things, I had actually by now announced plans for BROR to expand to a trail racing series in the next year and I had worked out all those permits when COVID put a halt on everything. While activities mostly went dormant, my mind kept going to producing an adventure race. As a racer, I was having a hard time getting other people to join in when every race was 8+ hours + I had a perfect spot for a short/beginner race and I just wanted to introduce the sport to people.

So as COVID restrictions started lifting, I reached out and the park was willing to let me put on a socially distanced adventure race… and thus the Spring Bloom Adventure Race was born. I’m sure in part due to the success of “ World’s Toughest Race Eco-Challenge Fiji ” Spring Bloom sold out months ahead of race day with tons on a waiting list. By popular demand we added Fall Foliage later that year as a “no biking” option for Girl Scout Troop 90088. We’ve expanded those adventure races and set new attendance records every year since then. In 2022 after 8 great years with it, I decided to hand the reins of the Leopold’s Trail race off to another race org; it was partially due being tired of continued permitting issues/jumping through hoops unrelated to the nature preserve, but moreso it was just because of falling in love not just with adventure racing, but also the adventure racing community.

In 8 years of putting on the Leopold’s Trail race I genuinely cannot think of a many/any instances in which a racer stuck around after getting their finish medal and said a word to me unless it was something to complain about... People ran the race and then immediately went home, volunteer interest decreased each year too. Outside of RD’ing, just as a runner, I ran with various local community running groups/outings over the years and I can’t say any of those folks stay in touch or remember my name when I run into them. I know its not everyone and I am trying not to make a sweeping generalization but to me it just seems for the large majority to be much more of a personal sport/activity.

With adventure racing and more outdoorsy based racing/endurance racing, both in participating and race directing it was and still continues to be this genuinely amazing community: we all get to know each other, we share our stories and discuss our route choices, we love talking about our bad decisions, people we race against in one race become teammates in another, and also it has this great element where generally it's everyone against the course.

With race directing for adventure races, it scratches this real big itch for me too because I get to exercise my creative side all the time and create a new “work of art” each race with the courses and get to see everyone experience them. I find some cool park/area and get to use a race to introduce everyone to it, and then we chat about it after too. It feels much more like sharing an experience, and less of a rigamarole of putting on another forgettable event. Adventure racing has truly been one of the best things to be introduced to my life well beyond keeping me in an active lifestyle because I have made so many great friends through it.

I’d also take a moment to shout out the MTB community too. After seeing some of the trails we used for that first Spring Bloom go into disrepair, I volunteered to take on the role of managing/maintaining them; but it wasn’t alone, the MTB community shows up every time we do a trail work day; so much so that we have now built miles of new trails which then led to BROR’s first ever MTB race. It's almost like the more niche an activity/sport, the more connected and protective the participants are with it and with each other.

So, why am I rambling on and telling you this story? Well firstly it just felt nice to recount how in the heck we got here to the 10th anniversary of Broad Run Off Road ; but also because the rest is not just history from there… It’ll be nice to share some stories along the way in the future.

Progress isn’t a straight line and it's nice sometimes to reflect and look back on it and remember how we got here. Surely producing the races have all gone perfectly, right? Hah, no way. And if you’ve seen Team BROR on a podium at an adventure race, just know there’s less than stellar results in our history too, including most recently DNF’ing the National Championship. I have raced in a LOT of adventure races, triathlons, cycling races and OCR stuff, done countless orienteering meets and produced a lot of races in this recent timespan, but it would be an understatement to say it's been without its lessons learned; and that’s partly the point of creating this space, to repeat what I said at the beginning. I’ll be writing this stuff down for anyone who is wanting to get into any of these sports, to let you know that it's all about trying, failing, learning and trying again.

For now I’ll just cap this entry off by saying as a Race Director I am super thankful that having some acumen for events/logistics and some great friends/volunteers and vendors/partners has meant the production of races that has largely gone 10 years without any major issues.

Thankfully one major thing is different than 10 years ago: I am not fond of how hard it was in the early days to convince people to come out and volunteer for a race they never heard of by an organization they never heard of. I have also learned to check, recheck and recheck trail run intersection markings because someone might decide they own the trail and hate your race or think it’s funny to go out there and remove that stuff… I have also learned that just because the forecast says no rain doesn’t mean you can’t get a torrential downpour mid-event…

But if you realize all this stuff is part of a larger journey and take it in as experience, learn lessons and try again, you end up with so many many more ups than downs. Also you get a heck of a lot of amusing stories (after the fact). 10 years into putting on races I’ve had the pleasure of getting great volunteers to come help me put on these events, many of whom have become racing teammates and even more that I consider to be close friends now.

This caps the 10th year for Broad Run Off Road as an organization putting on race events, but I genuinely feel like it's only just gaining momentum. I’m already giddy to show everyone the courses for Spring Bloom and Fall Foliage next year; and fingers crossed we’ll be MTB racing at Long Park again too with a brand new trail to add to that course. Believe it or not we’re already scouting about 5+ more courses for future races too I might be hooked on racing AR, but I’m more in love with putting on adventure races; I truly cannot wait to bring racers to all these awesome courses/places… and just think of all the prologue challenges we’ll get to have too ;)

What does Adventure Racing have to do with someone punching a horse?

183:812303032 (Allen Wagner) — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 14:22:47 GMT

These words are mine and mine alone, but it felt like there is a very important need to help connect the dots for everyone in the adventure racing community in "Plain English" in relation to: Modern Pentathlon / Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne (UIPM) / World Obstacle (WO) / Fédération Internationale de Sports d’Obstacles (FISO) / International Adventure Racing Association (IARA) / Adventure 1 (A1) / Obstacle Course Racing (OCR) / Olympics (IOC) and more…

What is going on? The shortest short version: UIPM & WO/FISO are trying to claim they are the global governing/sanctioning body for adventure racing.

Why are people mad/angry about that ? None of these organizations have any history with adventure racing whatsoever.

Why are they doing this? You’d have to ask them directly to get their version of why; but the most likely educated guess would lead you to money, personal gain/standing, or both; see detailed section for much more.

How does it affect Adventure Racing / Adventure Racers right now? In reality, it doesn’t. If no one recognizes them as the managing/sanctioning body then they simply aren’t the managing body and their statement is rendered moot. Example: I can declare myself the king of Earth, if no one pays attention to me then it's meaningless/doesn’t matter what I claim. -OR- more plainly, if your race is not sanctioned by them as an RD you owe them nothing and they can’t do anything to you, you can just keep operating as you do, and if you are a racer and don’t do races associated with them, then nothing changes for you.

Can it affect Adventure Racing in the long term though? Absolutely. If UIPM/WO/FISO gain traction/momentum you could end up with competing governing/sanctioning bodies claiming to represent the same sport and that will create a ton of confusion at the least, and actual divide in the sport at the most.

Many other sports have examples of these sanctioning/governing-body battles. In every case you can find: fans and competitors get confused and the athletes/fans in every case are the ones who truly suffer the consequences in addition to stifled growth of the sport.

A similar thing could happen to adventure racing where you could end up with different governing bodies and different rules/variations and conflicting big events forcing athletes to choose an alliance. Another big issue here is many in AR are worried about a seeming outsider with no background in the sport trying to take control of the sport and make potential changes that don’t align with what the community has established/agrees on.

Ok so now the more detailed version:

Who is UIPM? UIPM is the Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne , also called World Pentathlon. They are essentially the governing/sanctioning body for the sport of Modern Pentathlon ; a sport that has been in the Olympics since 1912. Since 1912 it has involved competitors competing in 5 different sports with scores/times applied to each and the highest scorer after all 5 is the winner. Since 1912, those 5 sports were: Fencing, Swimming, Shooting, Running & Equestrian Show Jumping.

Very important note though, after a series of controversies, the IOC (Olympics governing body) announced they would be dropping Modern Pentathlon from the Olympics in 2028, and it was not listed on the original slate of sports announced for Los Angeles 2028 .

Why are these 5 sports even together in modern pentathlon anyway ? Back in 1912, the sport was modeled after Track & Field’s multi-sport competitions like the decathlon; but Modern Pentathlon was designed to model skills needed by a soldier of that time. This means they can’t just pick any sport to be in the list of 5, to hold the theme they picked disciplines akin to “soldier’s skills.” And it stuck with those 5 sports/disciplines for a century.

So what was the controversy, and why was Modern Pentathlon getting dropped from the Olympics? Modern Pentathlon has long had a highly debated place in the Olympics, specifically in regards to the equestrian/horse-riding component. Equestrian itself has long faced arguments about whether equestrian/horse riding should be considered a competitive sport at all in the Olympics; but additionally in Modern Pentathlon (vs. other equestrian sports in the Olympics), horses are randomly assigned to athletes at the competition. This causes a lot of problems when athletes want to win a sporting event with a horse they just met, especially if the horse might have other ideas. Over the years there have been claims of animal abuse and danger to the athletes; but the arguments/controversy all culminated at the 2020 Olympics (technically took place in 2021) when there were a series of incidents where multiple athletes were unable to control their randomly assigned horses…and then a very news-covered incident specifically, a coach punched a horse that was refusing to jump the course…

That was the last straw for the IOC (Olympics governing body), because there was so much bad press already, and now video proof of animal abuse, and the Olympics are supposed to be all good and earthly. The Olympics are planned almost a decade ahead so Paris 2024 was already set, but when the IOC initially announced the list of sports for the 2028 Olympics, it did not include Modern Pentathlon. UIPM went into a full-on panic mode. They needed to decide how they could get back in the IOC’s good graces and back in the Olympics. I’ll cover the “why be an Olympic sport?” part below, but the important detail for now is that UIPM quickly decided the solution was to figure out what sport they could replace equestrian with to appease the masses/criticism.

So what did they go with ? Basically in quick order they asked for new discipline/sport submissions/ideas, and then without much consulting with their own athletes, in 2022 UIPM decided to replace equestrian with Obstacle Course Racing (OCR) , partnering up with World Obstacle (WO) who at the time was making the most claim to being the global Obstacle Course Racing governing body.

Did it work? Yes, but also To-Be-Determined. At the 141st IOC Session in Mumbai, India in 2023, the IOC voted to approve the inclusion of the sport back for 2028 with its new format where obstacle course racing replaces equestrian. Therefore the Paris 2024 Olympics would be the last time Modern Pentathlon included horse riding.

HOWEVER it is not all sunshine and rainbows, this insanely quick changeover absolutely pissed off almost all modern pentathlon athletes because suddenly they are being told they need to learn a completely new sport than the one they trained their whole careers with; the 2 sports (equestrian and OCR) are not even remotely similar. At the same time many in the obstacle course racing community hated this news as well, because they rightly feel that obstacle course racing is its own sport; and while OCR is finally getting some sort of inclusion/recognition by the Olympics, its only getting in as a ⅕ component of Modern Pentathlon. This means if an obstacle course athlete wants to go to the Olympics they now need to also learn and get good at fencing, shooting and swimming… so to be clear this has not been all sunshine and rainbows. Most modern pentathletes are annoyed with many Olympians saying they are done with the sport after Paris-2024, many in the OCR community are unhappy, but for WO/FISO it feels like a win cause now they now have their foot in the door to the Olympics for OCR; and UIPM is happy cause Modern Pentathlon is back in the Olympics… and you know, it’s also likely much cheaper to not have to transport horses around the globe anymore…

Wait a second, what does any of this have to do with Adventure Racing? The connection point is World Obstacle (WO / FISO). World Obstacle , institutional name Fédération Internationale de Sports d’Obstacles (FISO), is an international governing body for obstacle sports (e.g. Ninja Warrior, Spartan Race, etc. type stuff). It was only formally founded recently in 2016 and pretty much its primary goals since inception have been growth via getting obstacle course racing into the Olympics. So what’s the connection to AR? Well, in October 2020, World OCR changed its name to World Obstacle claiming this provided a more inclusive name so they could manage a more broad-scope of “obstacle” related sports thus claiming anything “Ninja”, OCR and then randomly over the next few years trying to include Adventure Racing.

Very specifically in December 2021 WO/FISO blindsided the AR community by announcing themselves as the governing body for Adventure Racing and that they had selected Adventure-1 (A1) to be the new official World Series for adventure racing. This type of stuff went on/off through the next few years and would eventually include surprise invitations to all the national federations and race directors for meetings not remotely previously explained like the following:

Countless people in the AR community were blindsided by all of this and tried to get more information in this time. Rushed meetings sometimes happened at times when most couldn’t attend so everyone rightly complained and basically said WTF? Very publicly people complained about WO/FISO's tactics. Seemingly ignoring all of this input, they continued and in 2023 announced the following meeting to really start trying to codify everything for WO/FISO and get buy-in:

By now more of the AR community made a point to attend the “meeting” but it lacked any real discussion and the result was about the same, WO/FISO just moved forward with whatever they wanted, basically ignoring everyone’s concerns, and the AR community was understandably livid at this point.

An entity that no one in AR heard of before, and an entity everyone felt strongly had no business being associated with AR just announced itself king and was now trying to bulldoze over anyone else… and they always made sure to tell people their big selling point: they were somehow going to get Adventure Racing into the Olympics (will get into this more later).

So what happened? One very good thing came out of all this. Adventure racers and race directors got together, in a very public fashion at the end of 2023 and discussed and then voted in a very public forum with global representation to officially form the International Adventure Racing Association (IARA) with the stated goal: “To support the development and growth of Adventure Racing representation in countries throughout the world, define and elevate global standards in terms of fairplay, safety, quality, sustainability and protect the ‘spirit of adventure’ in Adventure Racing.”

12 National AR Associations have formally stated support for IARA as the global governing body for AR, representatives from 9 additional countries who do not yet have national associations also formally stated their support for IARA as well. To be clear, that is pretty much all of the major countries that have active adventure racing representation right now.

After that happened in late 2023 honestly WO/FISO went quiet, and UIPM did too (but they likely went quiet mostly due to the fact they had an Olympics to get through in Paris). Then cut to present day, in October 2024 it was discovered that UIPM added wording to its own UIPM Congress documents that it intends to encompass “standalone disciplines of Obstacle sport not limited to ninja, obstacle course racing (OCR), and adventure racing.” This wording appears as part of a nomination at their next Congress to a potential merger of UIPM and WO/FISO.

...so now we’re back at it again…

But these sports have nothing to do with each other, why is World Obstacle and UIPM repeatedly trying to claim ownership of Adventure Racing ? Believe it or not, this is hardly the first or hundredth time there has been a fight over who the official governing/sanctioning body is for a sport. No sport has a king, no one is THE only organizer of a sport. As noted a bit above, for decades boxing has had multiple sanctioning bodies and thus why you hear about multiple different champions of the same weight class (IBF, WBO, WBA, WBC) and so-called “unification fights” where champions of different sanctioning bodies match up. Cycling has had UCI vs USAC. American football once had the NFL vs the USFL , Basketball had the NBA vs ABA, IndyCar racing had IRL vs CART , and the list goes on.

In fact, see if you can find the irony here… Obstacle Course Racing is no different, there are currently competing organizations who claim to put on the "OCR World Championship," and in addition to that The International Gymnastics Federation ( FIG ) actually tried to stake a claim to be obstacle course racing/parkour’s governing body in 2017. The irony here is insanely rich, because back then everyone in obstacle course racing was mad and/or absolutely flipped out and it fell apart , with athletes rightly proclaiming: Gymnastics has no basis at all in coming out of nowhere and trying to take ownership of their sport …

Why did FIG try to take over OCR and why is WO/FISO trying to claim adventure racing? Why are there all these competing sanctioning bodies for sports? If you are the governing body of a sport, you get control, money/support, and a sort of certified “legitimacy.” While some sports have surely outgrown the Olympics and don’t need the Olympics (see: NFL, NBA, Soccer/futbol), for other sports like Modern Pentathlon, OCR & AR it sort of all comes back to the Olympics.

Disregard the World-Coming-Together aspects of the Olympics for a second; the Olympics is a MASSIVE commercial endeavor that is seen by billions around the world; it also makes billions of dollars $. If your sport is included in the Olympics then it not only gets the marketing via eyeballs around the globe watching the sport, falling in love with the sport, people deciding they want to try the sport and can help the sport grow; but straight up it also gets financial support from not only the IOC, but in the form of sponsors, partners, etc.

So of course any sport would want to be included in all of that. But they can't all be included... I’m sure you’ve noticed there are TONS of sports that are not in the Olympics. Why? Simple: logistical capacity.

The IOC awards hosting of the Olympics to a city/region, and The Olympic Games needs to happen across a 2-week window, and there is no city/region on this planet that could handle having ALL the sports of the world going on in the same 2 week period. So the IOC limits the number of athletes/sports for each Olympics. Forget sporting venue availability, it's just impossible to find lodging/housing/transportation for all of the athletes, coaches and fans for all of the world's sports due to infrastructure constraints. So the Olympics has to limit how many sports/athletes it has at each iteration. It’s fairly structured these days, there are 28 sports that are considered “core sports” the IOC has deemed these will be a part of the Olympics. They are not set in stone forever however, some sports can lose their standing and new ones can come in. Boxing is actually being dropped in 2028 after a full century of inclusion since 1920.

Oh yeah, didn’t break dancing just get dropped by the Olympics after only just getting added in 2024, RayGun ruined it for everyone!!

Actually not quite, breaking was already not gonna be in L.A. 2028 before Paris 2024 even happened . This is because breaking was never technically dropped, it wasn’t a core sport. While the IOC established 28 “Core” sports for the Olympics, the host nation gets to pick 4 additional sports to add (so long as those sports meet the IOC criteria).

Paris/France 2024 chose skateboarding, sport climbing, surfing and breaking (break dancing) as their 4 non-core sports to add. L.A. 2028 simply didn’t pick breaking to add it for theirs. Similarly Tokyo/Japan 2020 added Karate and Baseball/Softball but Paris didn’t. Los Angeles/USA has actually chosen Baseball/Softball, Lacrosse, Squash, Cricket, and Flag-Football. Why did L.A. get to choose 5? Cause Boxing has been dropped as a core sport because it is embroiled in an insane amount of corruption and controversy these days, and none of the boxing governing bodies have been deemed acceptable by the IOC.

OMG this all so fascinating, I never knew so much about the Olympics, but can we get back to Adventure Racing? Yes, let’s connect the pieces.

What do the Olympics have to do with why UIPM/WO/FISO, etc. are trying to claim Adventure Racing? Well, the IOC has very specific rules about which sports it will and won’t allow in the Olympics, and the process goes roughly like this:

The IOC requires that the activity have administration by an international non-governmental organization that oversees the sport.
Once a sport is recognized to have a governing body, it moves to International Sports Federation (IF) status with the IOC.
The sport’s IF must then apply for admittance by filing a petition establishing its criteria of eligibility to the IOC.
The IOC may then admit an activity into the Olympic program in one of three different ways: as a sport; as a discipline, which is a branch of a sport; or as an event, which is a competition within a discipline.

Step 1 is what WO/FISO was trying to steamroll everyone with back in 2023, and I guess why not try because until then Adventure Racing did not have an "international non-governmental organization that oversees the sport." It’s worth noting there are TONS of sports where the IOC recognizes an international federation/sport, but they simply have not attempted or passed all the way through the steps. Bowling and Chess are both recognized by the IOC as sports, but they do not compete at the Games because they’ve never made it through all the steps.

So if WO/FISO/UIPM essentially just got over-ruled by the AR community's recognition of IARA as the international governing body for Adventure Racing, why are they continuing to do this nonsense in 2024? Well, let’s look further at steps 2-4 in the IOC process; it has caveats in how sports can get added: standalone, as part of another, etc.; and they not only have to sort that out, but there are actually 35+ criteria that go into moving through steps 2-4; I won’t go through all 35 criteria , but they can be grouped into main categories like so:

Literal Logistics
# of athletes/coaches, days needed for competition / can it fit in a 2 week window, coordinating schedules/getting participation of best athletes, etc.
Value added to Olympic Movement
Does it play well on TV / is it watchable on TV? Youth Movement - Is it predominantly competed by younger participants (remember at every Olympics they announce it as the “Youth of the World” coming together), does it appeal to younger people (e.g. future spectators/participants).
Institutional Matters
The sport’s IF must adhere to World Doping (WADA) standards and test its athletes as such. # of National Federations who recognize the IF, # of World Championships held to date, # of federations that recognize the World Championship, other sports/disciplines the IF governs not part of its Olympic proposal, finances/health of the sport, health safety record, code of ethics / fairness issues, etc.
Popularity
Number of registered athletes, ticket sales, media attention, TV coverage, host country popularity, digital media. Parity: the # of countries/federations that have won the World Championship previously, (translation: is 1 country dominating / winning all of them?). And lastly, diversity: many will quote this formerly published rule: "must be widely practiced by men in at least 75 countries and on four continents and by women in no fewer than 40 countries and on three continents."
Business Model
Costs to host/venues, costs to broadcast, revenue potential from sponsors, licensing etc.

And if you read through that it all starts to make sense now. Specifically the Institutional Matters section about # of athletes, countries, federations, disciplines under a governing body.

If you are a governing body trying to get one of your sports included in the Olympics, (like say you are WO/FISO/UIPM trying to get obstacle course racing added); then it is incredibly beneficial for you to claim Adventure Racing to try and look more legitimate because it looks like you govern more sports/disciplines/athletes.

So Adventure Racing isn’t on the road to getting into the Olympics? No, and this is where it gets mostly annoying.

WO/FISO has long made claims that they are going to legitimize adventure racing and put it on the path to the Olympics, but this has always been complete nonsense, and this is the part that truly annoys many of us who know the details, because its “snake oil salesman” type stuff. It's either intentionally misleading or just being wrong via unintentional stupidity; and it sort of doesn’t matter which, because at this level neither is acceptable. To be very clear: it's important to recognize that adventure racing in its current most commonly known and accepted form will NEVER be in the Olympics.

I LOVE adventure racing, it’s why I race and why I’m an Adventure Race race director who is constantly working to break down the barriers to entry and get more and more people into the sport; but let me be very clear: There is a 0.0% chance that adventure racing is going to be included in the Olympics. There is also nothing wrong with that, there are countless sports that are not in the Olympics, and they are doing just fine. But for any of us who have ever actually read through the 35+ criteria the IOC uses, Adventure Racing has big problems with more than half of them.

To pick off just some of the biggest hurdles: It’s near impossible to broadcast adventure racing on live television for both logistical and competitive reasons; it’s also near-impossible to sell spectator tickets in any form of the current sport. If TV coverage and ticket sales = $0 for adventure racing, then that means $0 in revenue for the IOC, which = no adventure racing in the Olympics.

Those 2 biggest roadblocks alone will keep adventure racing from the Olympics, but to be clear if you go through the other 33+ criteria, AR doesn't meet the criteria for many of the others too, and they can’t be solved without massive changes that would end with almost a different sport altogether. In essence, AR can be recognized as a sport with an international federation, but it’s near impossible for it to become an Olympic sport.

Surely UIPM / WO / FISO all have to know this, so why do they keep claiming they’re going to make it an Olympic Sport and why do they keep claiming AR under their governance? Without knowing directly, you can still surmise that they must know the above details; so then the motivation appears to be an effort to boost numbers/influence/standing: # of sports they manage, # of athletes/federations under their sanctioning/governance, # of nations they represent, # of sponsors and venues they can claim are part of their sport, etc. all in the eye of making things look better for the IOC. Even if you know AR isn't making it to the Olympics, if you claim adventure racing is part of your governance you can point to plenty history, and to a major motion picture about your sport starring A-list actors, a recent long-form show on Amazon Prime, etc. So of course someone might try to appear as though AR is under their governance.

So what should adventure racers and AR race directors do?

Well its sort of up to you. Its important to recognize there are some that don't mind UIPM/FISO/WO and don't see a problem. People can have differing opinions, sure, but the tact and tactics of UIPM/FISO/WO to date have not gone over well. Coming from experience watching some other sports tear themselves apart in the past... I would say AR needs to avoid wasteful division.

Adventure racers and RDs can just say no if they don't want to participate with UIPM/FISO/WO, a governing body that at the very least seems to be completely ignoring the requests of the majority in the AR community. If you feel that way then you don’t have to do races that get associated with them. Put your support behind the adventure races, race directors, and organizing bodies you trust. Hopefully good sense can prevail and AR can avoid any more time/effort wasted on all this, and instead work together so a rising tide can lift all boats.

At the end of the day, most in the AR community would like to go back to what we do, which is adventure racing.

UIPM and WO/FISO can get back to their own sports. If OCR could get into the Olympics as a stand-alone sport, I actually think it would be very cool, it's definitely a great sport, and a great made-for-TV sport, just look at the success of the Ninja-Warrior franchise; but again, it just has nothing to do and no history with adventure racing.

I wish UIPM luck with Modern Pentathlon; they have a hard road in front of them after making such a massive change to their 100+ year old sport. Only time will tell if it survives in the Olympics… and hopefully none of the athletes/coaches try to punch a stubborn obstacle ;)