Well I was at it again in W VA. This time I was a member of Berlin Bike for this "shorter" race. If any of you sat through my last race report,
I'm sorry. I'll make this one shorter as it only took 1 day and not 3.
The race started with a 12 mile white water raft race down the New River Gorge. Like I stated last time, this is a stunning trip and would love to do it sometime when not in a racing situation. They had 4 waves with 5 rafts per wave, sending each wave off every 5 minutes. They had one member from each team leave their boat and start on the shore to do a river swim. Ernie Lawas and myself had discussed this the previous night as far as who would be swimming. I did the swim last year and thought that Ernie could do it this year. But he was going to wear a wetsuit and have to change at the end, so decided to save a minute or two in transition, that I would do the swim. Well, the water temp was a little colder than it was a month ago when I did this. The reported temp was 58 degrees, so when I jumped in after running upriver on the trail, it took my breath away for a good 15 seconds. I had a much better swim this time, 3rd times a charm, and was the 2nd person back to the rafts. We headed out first but was soon passed by 2 other rafts. The river was running fast and furious and we hit many class IV and V rapids, so everyone in the rafts got soaked. We ended up finishing second in our wave and had a pretty fast transition time.
We left the riversided and started on a long hike up out of the gorge. Needless to say, W Va is very hilly, and they once again didn't disappoint in this race with the elevation. Kerri hooked onto the bungee and off we went up the hill. We were being followed by a team that we don't like very much, so I wanted to put some distance between us and pushed the pace a little going up. We ended up leaving them behind quickly and settled into a more manageable pace. Ben had us going in the right direction and after about 20-25 minutes of hiking came upon the next CP. Here we found that there was only 2 teams ahead of us from the previous wave, so we were excited. We started on a trail that hugged the Endless Wall climbing area (perfect name) and it seemed to go on forever. We had to scramble over boulders and hop over rocks and streams for a couple of hours while picking up a couple of other CP's for around 7 miles. We finally arrived at CP5 with 2 other teams tied for the lead and another team right on our tail.
We transitioned onto our bikes and started the bike course, when Ben's knee locked up on him. He had injured it skiing and was wearing a brace that he thought might had been on to tight. He worked out the problem and took the brace off and was able to continue on. We now got to enjoy a little downhill to start the bike, this was a bad omen, we knew we would quickly be going back up if there was downhill now. Joy, the race course designer, didn't disappoint. She seemed to find more hills for us to grind up with a couple of sections that I was struggling to keep my front tire on the road without popping up on me with every pedal stroke. We had 3 teams ahead of us on the bike and at every CP you had write down your team # and the time you arrived, so we had a good indicator how far teams were in front of us. Team EMS out of Boston, MA and Team CheckpointTracker were burning up the course and steadily pulled away. We kept on the tail of Team Calleva by a couple of minutes and could see them at the top of a lot of the hills. We finally came to a railtrail (not the niced paved ones we have here, gravel) that made for some decent riding and had caught Team Calleva. We were hammering to stay with them, but the trail had just a little incline that you didn't really notice, but made you wonder why you weren't going faster. After 3/4 - 1 hour of hammering, we had to stop and refuel. It was long day and we didn't want to get to far behind on nutrition and plus our legs were starting to feel the effects of a hard pace. After about a 5-6 minute break we headed back out and it hurt just as much, but our bellies felt a little better. We continued on for awhile longer alternating between fire roads and rail trails until we finally arrived at our end destination 50 miles later. It was 6:45 pm and now after 50 miles of biking, we had approx 24 miles of hiking to do.
The trail started off flat and easy, but we didn't have our walking legs yet so we walked for a little while, but daylight was running out fast. Ernie started to do a little jogging downhill as we all followed and that's when I noticed the sharp pain in my knee. I wasn't to excited about this new development, but I had my trekking poles out after what had happened at the last race with my ankle and was wearing a brace since the rafting section. The knee felt fine on the flats and even the uphills, but the downhills would just send jolts of stabbing pain into my knee. I was relieved after about 20 minutes when it started to disipated and finally feel normal (for me anyway). After a couple of miles, we kept up a steady slow jog on the trail to use as much of the daylight as we could. I had Kerri on tow and we were making good time. Ben had us right on track and we didn't seem to be haveing any problems, until about 5 miles into the trek. Kerri hadn't been eating or drinking all that much since our gorge on the bike, and it was starting to take effect on her. We slowed the pace down and she tried to drink and eat alittle, but at about 9:30 she boke down. This is the part of adventure racing that you hope never happens to you. You try to fight it, but your body just gives in to all the stress and emotions and everything just bursts out. We stopped and had her try to eat and drink alittle, but she just threw it back up as well as with the caffeine pills. We talked to her and encouraged her, Ernie did a really good job with getting her settled down and Kerri was quite the trooper. She didn't quite and managed to pull herself out of the rut and continue on. It takes a lot out of you to pull yourself back up and get going again. We took her pack from her and put her back on the tow line and kept the pace slow to let her recover. We had stopped for about 20-25 minutes to let her recover, it was made even harder after going so hard to just stop at nightfall with the falling temps. you started to get cold quick. I only had on biking shorts and jersey, but everyone else started to put on a couple of extra layers. I was so glad when Kerri started to walk on her own, I wasn't relishing the thought of having to carry her the rest of the way. She eventually made a pretty much full recovery and was back to her smiley self. Fast forward a couple of hours and Kerri is starting to stagger a little and get really tired. We've been haveing her sip water and nibble on food to get her energy back, now we start to talk about Lost and Desperate Housewives and all the plots and theories behinkd them to get her to stay awake. Ben is doing a great job with the navigation as there are multiple trails heading off in the wrong direction, but we back track a couple of times and always seem to find our way on the right trails. We get to the last CP on this leg and notice that one of the teams hadn't signed in, sweet. They must have made a wrong trail selection and were now hopefully lost (well not lost, but behind us). We quickly get away from the CP so that our lights won't attract anyone near it if they see us, but they are nowhere to be seen. The course is set up like a lollipop, and on the way to the out and back section, we see the other team heading toward us. They had taken the wrong trail and were heading back to get the last CP which is all uphill for them and about 2 hours back. We have a little over a hour hike out and see multiple teams just starting this section. I feel bad for them, because it's going to take them all night, it's just about 2am now. We get back to the transition area at 3am. Total of 8 hours of hiking over 24 miles in the dark.
We now have to get back on our bikes and ride 1/4 mile to the hilltop and the finish line/start of the orienteering course. To place high in the standings you have to do the orienteering course for the extra points. There was no doubt what we were going to be doing. We had until 11am to be back, so we could be out there over 7 hours looking for the CP's. Once at the transition area, Team EMS and CheckpointTracker came by, they had been out on the course for awhile and EMS couldn't find 2 of the CP's but were going out to check again. We thought that if we could find all the CP's and be back before them, we could beat them, so the challenge was on. Ben already plotted all the points, we got water, had a bit to eat and took off into the woods. We got to the first CP without any problem but ran into Team CheckpointTracker and the this is where the race began. We would get to the CP's and turn off our headlamps so they couldn't see us, but they would still manage to catch up to us at every CP. We finally lost them after the 3rd one and thought we might be able to beat them in, but after a long night of bushwacking and trailfinding, we could only stay one step ahead of them. Finally we met up with them at their last CP, we still had 2 to go. Ben did a great job nailing them, but we still fell 1/2 short of them for 2nd place overall in 24 1/2 hrs. Team EMS didn't go back out after we had seen them, so we beat them which was a great feeling since they are one of the best teams out there. Great race, great people, made even better with a great result.
Now I have to march my clothes into the washing maching before they decide to go off into the woods on there own.
The race started with a 12 mile white water raft race down the New River Gorge. Like I stated last time, this is a stunning trip and would love to do it sometime when not in a racing situation. They had 4 waves with 5 rafts per wave, sending each wave off every 5 minutes. They had one member from each team leave their boat and start on the shore to do a river swim. Ernie Lawas and myself had discussed this the previous night as far as who would be swimming. I did the swim last year and thought that Ernie could do it this year. But he was going to wear a wetsuit and have to change at the end, so decided to save a minute or two in transition, that I would do the swim. Well, the water temp was a little colder than it was a month ago when I did this. The reported temp was 58 degrees, so when I jumped in after running upriver on the trail, it took my breath away for a good 15 seconds. I had a much better swim this time, 3rd times a charm, and was the 2nd person back to the rafts. We headed out first but was soon passed by 2 other rafts. The river was running fast and furious and we hit many class IV and V rapids, so everyone in the rafts got soaked. We ended up finishing second in our wave and had a pretty fast transition time.
We left the riversided and started on a long hike up out of the gorge. Needless to say, W Va is very hilly, and they once again didn't disappoint in this race with the elevation. Kerri hooked onto the bungee and off we went up the hill. We were being followed by a team that we don't like very much, so I wanted to put some distance between us and pushed the pace a little going up. We ended up leaving them behind quickly and settled into a more manageable pace. Ben had us going in the right direction and after about 20-25 minutes of hiking came upon the next CP. Here we found that there was only 2 teams ahead of us from the previous wave, so we were excited. We started on a trail that hugged the Endless Wall climbing area (perfect name) and it seemed to go on forever. We had to scramble over boulders and hop over rocks and streams for a couple of hours while picking up a couple of other CP's for around 7 miles. We finally arrived at CP5 with 2 other teams tied for the lead and another team right on our tail.
We transitioned onto our bikes and started the bike course, when Ben's knee locked up on him. He had injured it skiing and was wearing a brace that he thought might had been on to tight. He worked out the problem and took the brace off and was able to continue on. We now got to enjoy a little downhill to start the bike, this was a bad omen, we knew we would quickly be going back up if there was downhill now. Joy, the race course designer, didn't disappoint. She seemed to find more hills for us to grind up with a couple of sections that I was struggling to keep my front tire on the road without popping up on me with every pedal stroke. We had 3 teams ahead of us on the bike and at every CP you had write down your team # and the time you arrived, so we had a good indicator how far teams were in front of us. Team EMS out of Boston, MA and Team CheckpointTracker were burning up the course and steadily pulled away. We kept on the tail of Team Calleva by a couple of minutes and could see them at the top of a lot of the hills. We finally came to a railtrail (not the niced paved ones we have here, gravel) that made for some decent riding and had caught Team Calleva. We were hammering to stay with them, but the trail had just a little incline that you didn't really notice, but made you wonder why you weren't going faster. After 3/4 - 1 hour of hammering, we had to stop and refuel. It was long day and we didn't want to get to far behind on nutrition and plus our legs were starting to feel the effects of a hard pace. After about a 5-6 minute break we headed back out and it hurt just as much, but our bellies felt a little better. We continued on for awhile longer alternating between fire roads and rail trails until we finally arrived at our end destination 50 miles later. It was 6:45 pm and now after 50 miles of biking, we had approx 24 miles of hiking to do.
The trail started off flat and easy, but we didn't have our walking legs yet so we walked for a little while, but daylight was running out fast. Ernie started to do a little jogging downhill as we all followed and that's when I noticed the sharp pain in my knee. I wasn't to excited about this new development, but I had my trekking poles out after what had happened at the last race with my ankle and was wearing a brace since the rafting section. The knee felt fine on the flats and even the uphills, but the downhills would just send jolts of stabbing pain into my knee. I was relieved after about 20 minutes when it started to disipated and finally feel normal (for me anyway). After a couple of miles, we kept up a steady slow jog on the trail to use as much of the daylight as we could. I had Kerri on tow and we were making good time. Ben had us right on track and we didn't seem to be haveing any problems, until about 5 miles into the trek. Kerri hadn't been eating or drinking all that much since our gorge on the bike, and it was starting to take effect on her. We slowed the pace down and she tried to drink and eat alittle, but at about 9:30 she boke down. This is the part of adventure racing that you hope never happens to you. You try to fight it, but your body just gives in to all the stress and emotions and everything just bursts out. We stopped and had her try to eat and drink alittle, but she just threw it back up as well as with the caffeine pills. We talked to her and encouraged her, Ernie did a really good job with getting her settled down and Kerri was quite the trooper. She didn't quite and managed to pull herself out of the rut and continue on. It takes a lot out of you to pull yourself back up and get going again. We took her pack from her and put her back on the tow line and kept the pace slow to let her recover. We had stopped for about 20-25 minutes to let her recover, it was made even harder after going so hard to just stop at nightfall with the falling temps. you started to get cold quick. I only had on biking shorts and jersey, but everyone else started to put on a couple of extra layers. I was so glad when Kerri started to walk on her own, I wasn't relishing the thought of having to carry her the rest of the way. She eventually made a pretty much full recovery and was back to her smiley self. Fast forward a couple of hours and Kerri is starting to stagger a little and get really tired. We've been haveing her sip water and nibble on food to get her energy back, now we start to talk about Lost and Desperate Housewives and all the plots and theories behinkd them to get her to stay awake. Ben is doing a great job with the navigation as there are multiple trails heading off in the wrong direction, but we back track a couple of times and always seem to find our way on the right trails. We get to the last CP on this leg and notice that one of the teams hadn't signed in, sweet. They must have made a wrong trail selection and were now hopefully lost (well not lost, but behind us). We quickly get away from the CP so that our lights won't attract anyone near it if they see us, but they are nowhere to be seen. The course is set up like a lollipop, and on the way to the out and back section, we see the other team heading toward us. They had taken the wrong trail and were heading back to get the last CP which is all uphill for them and about 2 hours back. We have a little over a hour hike out and see multiple teams just starting this section. I feel bad for them, because it's going to take them all night, it's just about 2am now. We get back to the transition area at 3am. Total of 8 hours of hiking over 24 miles in the dark.
We now have to get back on our bikes and ride 1/4 mile to the hilltop and the finish line/start of the orienteering course. To place high in the standings you have to do the orienteering course for the extra points. There was no doubt what we were going to be doing. We had until 11am to be back, so we could be out there over 7 hours looking for the CP's. Once at the transition area, Team EMS and CheckpointTracker came by, they had been out on the course for awhile and EMS couldn't find 2 of the CP's but were going out to check again. We thought that if we could find all the CP's and be back before them, we could beat them, so the challenge was on. Ben already plotted all the points, we got water, had a bit to eat and took off into the woods. We got to the first CP without any problem but ran into Team CheckpointTracker and the this is where the race began. We would get to the CP's and turn off our headlamps so they couldn't see us, but they would still manage to catch up to us at every CP. We finally lost them after the 3rd one and thought we might be able to beat them in, but after a long night of bushwacking and trailfinding, we could only stay one step ahead of them. Finally we met up with them at their last CP, we still had 2 to go. Ben did a great job nailing them, but we still fell 1/2 short of them for 2nd place overall in 24 1/2 hrs. Team EMS didn't go back out after we had seen them, so we beat them which was a great feeling since they are one of the best teams out there. Great race, great people, made even better with a great result.
Now I have to march my clothes into the washing maching before they decide to go off into the woods on there own.
