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.