Adventure Racing

This past Saturday I decided to attempt my first adventure race. One of my co-workers asked if I would be interested and I foolishly replied with a yes. The race consisted of three disciplines including canoing, biking, and trail running. You were allowed to do any order with the goal being to grab checkpoints, 20 or so for beginners, along the way. The weather was a beautifully overcast 36 degree at the start of the race and 41 when we finished. The canoe section was 3 miles downstream, collecting four checkpoints, and three upstream. The trick here was that you had to take your canoe to the bike drop, 1 more mile upstream, in order to take your bikes and start riding. We carried our canoe a good bit of that mile through mud, overgrown brush and very cold water. FYI, canoes are heavy. The biking was 4 miles on gravel/paved roads and 2.5 miles of singletrack. While this distance is not of concern, the terrain we had to traverse was quite steep. The first gravel road was .4 miles and very steep, there was then a brief reprieve as we took a paved road downhill almost a mile to the trailhead. The singletrack trail was very steep with switchbacks in order to climb to the summit of Pine Mountain. The summit of Pine Mountain is 1562 feet, I don't know the elevation at the trailhead but I felt like we earned every foot. One of my teammates seemed to have not trouble with this steep terrain and pedaled almost everything except the switchback sections, truly amazing. I mostly sat and cried beside the trail and rode when I could, running the rest while pushing my bike. My other teammate reminded me to eat during this portion which helped tremendously. If you haven;t done this stuff it may be hard to understand that you must eat and drink even though you will likely not feel hungry or thirsty. Your body will push all of your blood to the muscles you're using and not completely shut down but "hibernate" some functions. So, you need the food/water but don't feel like you do. After the summit we had a nice ride downhill that was super fun with some equally killer switchbacks over alternating muddy and rocky terrain. Then a quick bike back uphill on the paved road, which felt like nothing after the singletrack, and down that brutal fire road. We went about one mile past the bike/canoe transition zone to grab a checkpoint, that had a one hour penalty if you missed it, which gave us about a one mile trail run in bike shoes. Running in bike shoes feels goofy. After this we got back in the canoe, for two more water checkpoints, and spent a good bit of time struggling back to the canoe drop. This was some paddling but mostly wading and portaging the canoe through the cold water since the river was quite shallow. The reason for this is as follows, Your bike and canoe must be back where they started when you finish the race or you are disqualified. Once the canoe was back we headed for the run with one hour left, you have six hours to complete the course. As soon as we began running my legs started to cramp badly but I felt the pain was manageable. Once we hit the trailhead for the run and began the very steep climb I knew I was in trouble. My left quadriceps stopped hurting completely and I knew then that I was dehydrated badly. I started to drink and eat another PowerBar in between trying to get my lungs to quit burning. At one point I rested against a tree and that leg locked completely stiff. Since there was no pain I decided to push the back of my knee against the tree I was leaning on to unlock that muscle and just make the leg work on muscle memory at that point. We obtained one checkpoint on that portion and my body was definitely finished. I think one of my teammates could have continued on but not me. We ran back and checked in 15 minutes prior to the race finish.

I don't know how we did, but it sure was fun. I will update this post with details as they become available.