What goes into putting on an adventure race weekend?

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 likewhile 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 fromVirginia Outdoor Centershow 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 :)