Mountain Adventure Race Recap Part 4

Part 4: The Calm Before the Storm Before the Calm. Sorry, this is taking longer than the Harry Potter series to finish up.

Evening 3: The weather is perfect, it helps calm the nerves about the next trekking section, 45 miles with at least 30 miles of it at some of the race’s highest elevations of 9-10k feet. The last hour of the previous biking leg the team talked almost exclusively about pizza. We had all hoped that when we went through the outskirts of Big Sky that we would hit a fast food joint, but we only encountered farm land and were disappointed for it. When we arrived at the TA we immediately placed a pizza order with Andie, two large pizzas, ham with pineapple and chicken with mushrooms and basil. We confirmed our pizza order and headed out on the next leg.

We check out with the race directors and we see that another 4-person team is sleeping at the transition, it’s confirmed, we are in second place. Thankfully, we were allowed to ride our bikes the first 5 miles to the trailhead where we would start our trek at, but eggbeater pedals with trail running shoes on tore up feet isn’t exactly pleasurable. I pedaled along with my heaviest pack yet; awkwardly trying to pedal with the arches of my feet to save the balls of my feet for the trek. I thought I would’ve been able to streamline my gear and my pack would get lighter throughout the race, but it’s getting heavier with each new leg, I’m up to around 30 lbs. We get to the trailhead and see that the CP is not manned. We were under the impression that it would be and we could leave our bikes for our support crew to pick up later, wrong. We leave our bikes leaning up against the TH sign and say a little prayer that our bikes won’t be stolen and then head out.

Once again the mood is light. We know that we’ve got a long way to go so we ease into things, not pushing the pace. 2 miles in we make a stop to adjust some footwear and a two person team flies by us, we talk briefly, they are moving like their feet don’t hurt at all, I’m jealous. The trail is absolutely gorgeous, the most beautiful scenery yet. In the five mile approach to Hyalite lake we pass by seven waterfalls, not your typical “Colorado” waterfalls, these were at least 30 ft tall, some were triple falls, one was a thirty foot falls followed by a 200 foot natural water slide that went right under the bridge. When we reach the lake our pace has reached full speed, we’re really cruising; we filter water and eat food. Sundown is about 10 minutes away and we decide to take a 2-hour sleep prior to getting onto the ridge, we’d rather sleep in the trees. We bed down on some grass, the most comfortable grass I’ve ever laid on by the way, in a small group of trees just off the trail. I put on every piece of clothing I am carrying, I then remember the race directors advising us not to sleep in this section of the course because of the bear danger, I move my bear spray to by my head and then quickly fall asleep. An hour in I wake up to a light rain, it’s dark and we watch a 4 person team pass us before forming ourselves into a puppy pile and going to sleep for another hour; we will chase when we’re more rested.

We wake up from our slumber, in which I apparently snored, and start our chase. We knew one team had passed us, did both nearby teams pass us? We were unsure. We climb to the top of Hyalite Peak, the rain is now a drizzle and I wish I had my gloves, we can see at least three other teams scattered across the ridge. With no moon visible because of the clouds it is hard to tell who is closest. We continue on and soon I have an idea of which headlamps are in front of us. Every once in a while I would see a headlamp look back at us, I’d glance at my watch and then time how long it took to get to that point. We were 45 minutes behind the team in front of us at the first time check, within 30 minutes we’re only thirty minutes behind. We’re catching them fast, but I’m not realizing how fast we’re catching them in my condition. Finally, around 1:40 I see a headlamp looking our way, it’s not a short glance this time though, they’re staring. At 1:46 the headlamp disappears and I figure they turned around and continued on, 7 minutes later we come across the team in front of us sleeping on the ridge. They were snoring and sleeping out in the drizzle on the ridge, totally exposed. I give a fist pump and short celebratory dance as we go by, now we’re in 2^nd or 3^rd, not completely sure. We’re making good time, we talk about how stupid that team will feel when they walk 10 minutes down the trail and see a nice area to sleep protected from the wind and rain. Everything is going great and we’re moving fast, after racing for three days at least. Then we reach Crater Lake.

We come down to a saddle and the trail disappears. We look around and see one trail, going the wrong way. We follow the trail anyways and it descends, and descends, and follows the wrong ridge. It’s 2 in the morning and we are not liking this trail, which is not on the map, so we turn around and go back up to the saddle. We search more, and search some more. Finally, we agree to bushwhack back up to the ridge and follow the ridge until the trail regained the ridge 1.5 kilometers later. There’s a reason that the trail doesn’t follow the ridge at this point. Progress is slow, and for the first time I start to get short with one of my teammates. Jim, who obviously is convinced that we don’t know where we are, keeps asking where the lake is for a reference; during one of his episodes in which he left us standing on the ridge in the middle of a storm of wind and rain/ice and walked back a ¼ mile to see the lake I lose patience and Angrily yell “Jim!”. Obviously sensing my patience is thin, he replies with a courteous “Yeah?”. I give another slightly irritated “Let’s get going!”, he quickly agrees and we continue. Soon we’re cliffed out on the ridge, we have to down climb and go around and then get back to the ridge. At sunrise we finally meet up with the trail again and we see that the trail had been re-routed and if we had stayed on the first trail we would’ve been fine, frustrating, 3.5 hours to go 1.5 kilometers.

As we continue over progressively higher peaks I am feeling stronger and stronger, the cooler weather and my ability to eat large quantities of food have given me strength, but my teammates are deteriorating around me. We reached the billionth summit of this trek and Rod and Jim need a sleep. They sleep, face down in the dirt, for thirty minutes while Sara and I tend to our feet; the sun is up and my solar power is working. The pass for the next CP is near and we’re excited. We get to the pass and decide to take our chance on a trail not on the map. It goes to an old cabin, and a stream. We soak our feet in the stream for 10 minutes while we filter more water. It is here I have my first encounter with a leech, the tiny little blood sucker latched onto my foot when I wasn’t looking, great now I’ll probably get some weird leech disease. I’m leading us along now and Sara is navigating. I don’t realize how out of it Sara is, after a while I stop and she just hands me the map and says, “Here, I can’t do this anymore.” I look it over and immediately conclude we are near the CP and send us off in the wrong direction. We quickly end up 2.5 miles past the CP, my bad. We turn around and march back. Now Rod and I are feeling stronger and Sara and Jim decide to stay at the trail while we look for the CP. We didn’t know this and soon we were separated. Great, now we’re in middle of bear country looking for two teammates that don’t have a map and are extremely sleep deprived. After an hour of yelling “Marco” and finally get a “Polo!” response we get back together and find the CP.

The CP is deserted, we see clothes and chairs, but no people, hmmmm, this is bear country. A cry comes from our left, we look, two girls are running towards us with bear spray and satellite phone in hand. They run up and ask us if we are ok, of course we were. They were worried about us as we were expected to be in 6 hours earlier (we spent about 6 hours being lost, coincidence). We looked at the check-in list and realized that we were indeed in 2^nd place, yippee, we had been convinced that our lost wanderings had cost us placement. Our wanderings had not cost us a ranking, but it did cost us money. While we were on this leg the race directors started instituting previously unknown time cutoffs throughout the course and we had missed the cutoff to continue on the full course here and ended our run at being in the money at the end of the race. We were to be shuttled to the next transition area and finish on a short course. We were pretty happy that we had second place pretty well locked up and we didn’t have to do the 9 mile downhill trod to the TA. We chatted a little with the CP girls as they asked us questions like “What do you guys talk about out there?” and told us “The last guys were eating a lot of Pringles, weird” to which I eagerly replied “What? You have Pringles! Where?” Before we left, they gave us one of the biggest compliments that we had received because apparently we were much more jovial than any other team so far “If I ever do one of these races, I want to race with you guys!” We then slowly and painfully hiked 45 minutes down to a parking lot to await the arrival of our shuttle.

We get to the parking lot and nobody is there yet, just two cars, the CP girls’ truck and a white Subaru. We lay down and eat a lot of the remaining food we were carrying. Then hallucinations round 2 began, my first moving one too. I looked at a pine tree and in the branches I could see an ogre playing a flute, not moving, I had a staring contest off and on with him for 15 minutes, he was good, better than me. Then out of the corner of my eye I see a guy about a hundred yards away walk a Weimaraner to a spot in the forest. The Weimaraner sat down and eagerly looked up at his master, and they stayed frozen like that for 20 minutes. I would’ve investigated the Weimaraner and man if my feet didn’t hurt so much, instead I fell asleep in middle of the dirt parking lot, the most comfortable dirt parking lot I’ve ever encountered by the way, and so did the rest of the team. When we woke up the Subaru was gone, we wondered what the person thought when they returned and saw us passed out in the dirt, it made us chuckle. It had now been 2 hours since our ride left the TA, which is 20-30 minutes away. The rain starts to come down and we are cursing things and we decide if it opens up any more we will get our stuff and crawl under the Toyota truck for shelter. Before the rain could get worse our ride shows up, he had been lost for the last 90 minutes or so. When he opened up his car doors he presented us with gifts, 2 pizzas and Gatorade for everyone, courtesy of Andie. I hadn’t been that excited about cold pizza since, well ever.

Jim, thinking he was giving some sort of a compliment said “Wow, your car really smells like a bowling alley!” Whether the car smelled like a bowling alley or not is irrelevant, we all stunk and a confined space made it obvious. We rode with the windows down and cranked up the radio when Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper” came on as it tied into our earlier reciting of the More Cowbell skit from SNL. Somewhere along the way back to the TA we passed one of the race directors going the other way and stopped to ask him what our course was going to be. He informed us we were done, but gave us the option of doing the final biking leg. I sarcastically said that I would actually prefer another trek and he replied, oh well there’s plenty of that on the biking leg. That’s what sealed the deal for us, we weren’t doing the biking leg! It was a good decision because the other teams said it was about 50/50 hike/bike and there were countless trees fallen across the trail.

We finally met up with Andie and Barb shortly thereafter and we all returned to the finish line. We enjoyed a nice cold shower and some food and then went to sleep. Surprisingly we only slept about 9 hours before we woke up and started packing everything away. In the afternoon we went to the post-race bbq and talked to the rest of the teams, it was nice to hear that a lot of other people ran into problems at Crater Lake. I found out how small a world it was when I talked to two other people from the CU aerospace program, on two other teams, and one of which I had already worked with on the MaCH-SR1 project (my senior project). Stupid rocket scientists, what do they think they are doing entering races like this.

Some stats:

Mileage: 200-225 miles

Elevation gain: ~37,000’

Jelly Belly Sport Beans Consumed: ~720 (about 4800 calories in Jelly Bellies alone)

Time racing: ~80 hours

Time sleeping: 4 hours 20 min

Time spent lost: ~12 hours (ouch! wish that was sleeping)

Caffeine pills consumed: 3 (all in the 2^nd night)

Dangerous wildlife seen: Leech (Timberland saw a mt. lion and 3 bears though)

Weight purposefully gained prior to the race: 5 lbs (ate like I was at peak training all through my taper)

Weight lost during the race: 4 lbs

Water consumed: ~3000 oz (21 gallons in 3.5 days!)

Thanks for following me on Checkpoint Tracker everyone and for reading my report, I had fun racing it, telling people about it and writing it out for everyone as well.

-Nick

p.s. I would like to thank my sponsors: Andie, she did the best support crew job ever and all for a free pedicure.

p.p.s. I should seriously try to get some sponsorship from Jelly Belly, I eat enough of their stuff.

Mountain Adventure Race Recap Part 3

Part 3: Hallucinations, Blisters and Other Delicious Treats

We all leave the TA in a great mood; we haven’t been this chatty and elated in a while. 37 hours without sleep and counting. Rod has taken over the navigation duties to give Sara a break, we wanted to make some good progress in the 3 hours of sunlight we had left. Rod convinces us to bushwhack to cut out roughly ½ a mile to get to the trail we want. Even though our feet were screaming at us to take the trail, we began to bushwhack. Rod had showed us all the map and what we were shooting for, it looked straight forward. We were to go until we hit the drainage and then the trail should be on the other side of the drainage. We get to the drainage, it’s stuffed full of dead fall. The other side of the drainage has a lot of deadfall too, but we see a faint trail. We assume the trail hasn’t been used in a long time and continue up the drainage, very slow going. We get further and further along, the trail is no longer there, but we’ve convinced ourselves that we are getting close to the saddle that we want and then hopefully the trail will be there. Climbing over logs, under logs, on top of logs, logs crumbling as we put weight on them. Finally, we decide the best way is to go up, we had to get out of this dead fall, on more than one occasion somebody said something to the effect of “Somebody just needs to throw a match in this damn tinder box”. Rod and I top out first, we take some compass bearings to nearby peaks and it seems to match up well, we even see a trail on the saddle below us, but the saddle is like 40 feet below us instead of 300 feet, and the trail was actually a rock band faking us out. Sara and Jim join us and we investigate things and we discuss things. The light bulb goes off and we realize that the slope we came up was running East-West, not North-South like we wanted. We all had missed it, we were on top of the wrong mountain. Lesson learned, trust the topography on the map, it doesn’t change. Using the last of the daylight we hurried back down the mountain and quickly found the beautiful wide highway of a trail that we should have been on. 3 hours blown because none of use realized we were looking for the 2^nd drainage, not the first.

We made it to the top of the saddle a little after sunset. It was getting dark fast, our conversation had died down and I was realizing how solar-powered I really am. At 9:45 I’m starting to get the “blinkies”, I’m fighting to stay awake and it’s only been dark for 15 minutes! I abruptly start a loud conversation with the rest of the team, I don’t really remember about what, but I burned up the only joke I could remember, “How many A.D.D. kids does it take to screw in a light bulb?” Nobody is being very chatty back to me, this makes it difficult to stay awake via conversation. Finally, at 10:30 I give in, time to grab the hammer and break the glass in case of emergency; I opened up the caffeine pills. Each pill is equal to 1 cup of coffee and since I don’t ever have any caffeine I take one. The sleep monsters are tugging on my eyelids pretty heavily now and the hallucinations are beginning. Every white rock I see is either a discarded Styrofoam coffee cup or a baggie full of electrolyte drink mix, I test them all with my trekking poles. Look! A giant lizard! Nope just a stick, wait that’s a lizard! Nope, damn sticks. Then the oddest hallucination yet, in the leaves of a plant I see, plain as day, the face of my white cat, sticking his tongue out at me. When will this caffeine ever kick in! Jim needs to fill his water bladder, he lost half of it to a leak earlier in the trek, so we stop to fill it at a stream and I take the opportunity to try and rest a little. I didn’t fall asleep, but I think lying on the ground for 5 minutes, on the most comfortable decomposing log I’ve ever encountered by the way, helped the caffeine work into my system. We continue and I’m now awake and chatty as ever, it’s my goal to get everyone as awake as I am. I ask questions to each individual, not allowing a one or two word answer to suffice. Soon, we’re to the first CP of the leg, sweet. We continue on and my caffeine is wearing off, now whenever anyone has to take a nature break the other three of us take the chance to lie down. Pop another pill, it has been 3 hours since the last one. This pill doesn’t perk me up as much as the other, the trail keeps climbing and we’re all fighting to stay awake, Jim and Rod both give in too “Fine, give me a damn evil caffeine pill.” About 2/3^rd of the way to the next CP Jim has to “build a cairn” (nature was calling), the other three of us lay down in middle of the trail , the most comfortable trail I’ve ever encountered by the way, and I’m out instantly. I don’t remember it but apparently Jim came back and said he wanted a little rest and I said “You better set an alarm if you want any rest.” Jim set his watch alarm and ten minutes later we were all up and going again after a weird 15-20 minute pseudo sleep.

Trudging along, dodging downed trees, and then the trail disappears, we look all over and a two person team catches us while we’re looking. With all of us looking we find it again after about 45 mintues. The two person team is feeling stronger and they go ahead, we trod along eventually topping out a little over 10,000’ a little before sunrise. We descend and this is when our feet begin to really hurt, but the foot pain cannot help me stay awake, where’s the sun!? The sun mercifully rises and after about 45 minutes of sunlight in my face I’m back awake. We roll into the TA at 7 something in the morning. We all drink and eat a little and decide to take a nap. I took care of my feet before going to sleep and had my “pro” moment; I was draining my left little toe (80% of the toe was a blister) and when I punctured it, it squirted out several feet, jut like on TV! I lay down, wide awake, it takes at least 15 minutes for me to fall asleep, ridiculous. It was our first real sleep in 51 hours. I wake up after 45 minutes of sleep in an incredible sweat, the sun is blazing and the tent is an oven; Andie hands me a cold wet towel and I go outside to sleep. A little over an hour later Andie wakes me up, the team is up, the other 4-person team is in, we have to get going. I’m in bad shape the hot sweaty sleep has left me low on water and electrolytes. I hop on the bike, I’m now belching once or twice every minute, my stomach is complaining about something. Andie would later tell me that she was just about crying when she saw me leave; I looked like I was in really bad shape.

The start of the bike was 7 kilometers of downhill, just what I needed. I had warned the team that I may need a tow during this leg, but by the time the descent was done I had cooled back down, and had taken in a lot of food, water and electrolytes, though the belching persisted for another hour or so. We climbed up a small hill and a few people exclaimed at how hard the climb was, I thought it wasn’t bad, a good sign that I had recovered from my funk, though I wasn’t going to press my luck by towing someone just yet. The first CP was a little tricky, but we figured that we got it in the average time of the other teams, as we were approaching it we saw the 4 person team that had passed us leaving it, we were closing. I had familiarized myself with the map and I felt like I was a General directing an army on the move, giving loud commands to the rest of the team and descriptions detailed enough that nobody had questions. A little more climbing and then a beautiful fast singletrack descent. This descent was loose so once again Jim was a little slow, nobody cared though. I let Sara pass as she was following closely and I didn’t want the crasher to crash because of something I do, big mistake. Sara shoots off ahead and I wait to see Rod and Jim and then continue. I descend past a few people that were hiking up and meet Sara at the bottom at the next CP. “Did that woman back there have her top on when you went by? she asked. “Yeah, why?” I said, slightly confused. “She was topless when I went by, and she asked if there were any guys coming down behind me.” Missed opportunity, I knew I should’ve stayed in the lead.

Now we were on the road, a quick ride through some farm country and then we turned up the canyon again. Sara was feeling fine, but couldn’t keep up with the pace we were all cranking out so I hooked up a tow. Rod and I traded off on towing Sara while Jim stayed at the front of the paceline. Soon we were passing a campground and I suggested that we go in and soak our legs in the river, the heat was picking up now. Reluctantly they all agreed and we took a 10 minute siesta in the river. BT, I thank you for teaching me the benefits of cold river water on tired legs. I was the only one to sit fully in the river, everyone else were just feet soakers, but everybody loved it. We considered a soaking at every stream crossing from then on. This was the best TA yet, we roll in and Andie is dumbfounded. We told her it would be 7 hours, 4 hours later we show up! She’s really excited for us, the other 4 person team is nowhere to be seen yet. I love it when she’s this excited, it happened before in the Moab race when I rolled by her in 3^rd place with 2^nd just seconds in front of me, her excitement really pumps me up. Everyone was stunned at how fast we did it, we were 2 hours faster than Team Timberland, the pro team that was in the lead; we were the fastest team through that segment, even with our river leg soak.

We transitioned while the other team’s support crew talked to us and fed us lies about there teams whereabouts (those guys were always trying to slow us down, trickery). Sometime during the transistion, I heard that our next leg was 45 miles of trekking. I was secretly panicking, not wanting to show it to my team though. 45 miles, that would be the longest trek I’ve ever done, and my feet hurt already. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure Sara would make it, I had seen her feet, they were the worst of the bunch. Jim now had both ankles hurting, he had them both taped and was wearing three braces between the 2 ankles.

Stay tuned for the finale Part 4: The Calm Before the Storm Before the Calm.

Mountain Adventure Race Recap Part 2

Part 2: Biking and Hiking and Bears, oh my!

Sunset 1 (My new race time telling method, it’s too tiring to look at my watch) Transition Area – We arrived at the TA and were elated; the death march was over, and there were two other teams at the TA with us. We go over to our support crew, and I’m completely stunned; Andie must’ve been on Pimp my TA or something, because we were definitely hooked up. Andie had been taking notes from some pro-team TA’s and had set us up a tarp with a chair in every corner and each of us had our 2 gear boxes next to our chairs. The stove was going and before we even got our shoes off we heard “Who wants pasta?”, four enthusiastic “I do” replies quickly followed. Andie and Barb hurried around filling our water bottles and hydration bladders, asking us questions and keeping us excited about the race. We were all checking out the condition of our feet, nobody was doing exceptionally well, but nobody was too bad off either. I drained the blister on the side of my heel and then re-taped my feet. I went to put on my bike shoes, and they weren’t even close to fitting. I had heard of this happening before, I just expected it days into the race, not hours. My feet had swollen a full size larger, they weren’t so much longer as they were wider. Luckily, I had a second pair of bike shoes with me that were larger, my normal bike shoes were just dead weight in my gear box, there was no way my feet were going to get smaller during the race.

We left the TA after about an hour, not exactly competitive-pro pace, but the comforts of the TA and our support crew were tough to leave. It was now completely dark and we all departed wearing multiple layers and bike lights blazing. The start of the ride was wonderful; it was a climb, of course, but it was the perfect gradient that our weary legs never forced us to walk, we just kept on grinding away and enjoyed not having to walk or run. As we got deeper into the trees and further away from the low lying areas with water the temperature rose, so we stripped off our extra layers pretty quickly. While taking our layers off I statused everyone, all felt good, though we were all sucking down large amounts of water, we think the pasta was making us thirsty. We kept up our charge along the course, knowing that there were two teams within 30 minutes of us, and Andie had let us know that the 4-person right in front of us were having girl problems. The Yoga Slackers’ girl teammate had been sick, only being able to eat half a power bar all day long, and I don’t think that even stayed down very long. We topped out on the climb and even though the 25 year old race maps weren’t showing all the details of the trail (hello switchbacks!), we were confident in our position on the map and our direction. After a short fast descent we came around a bend and went past the 4 person team immediately in front of us while they were studying the map. We were excited and then quickly after that we passed two other teams consulting maps. We were on fire!, no wait, we were lost and just didn’t know it yet.

We reach what looked like the road we should intersect, hang a left and then start looking for our next turn, it’s not there. That’s ok, 25 year old maps, let’s go a little further, the trail turns North, definitely wrong. We go back to where we think the trail should be, nothing there, except now there are about 4 teams riding all around the area trying to figure this out. We ride down a fast little descent and then a sound comes from my rear tire at about 20 mph, BANG, Hisssssssss, BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGABANG. We stop to check out what that was all about, obviously I had a flat. I flip my bike over and spin the wheel, clang clang clang, sounds like a broken spoke hitting my frame, crap. I get out my headlamp and we are relieved to see that I had hit a 4 inch rusty nail that was protruding out of my tire and hitting my frame. A quick change out of the tube and pump up from a CO2 cartridge and we’re going again; I’ve heard that Team Nike (current AR World Champs) can change a tube out in 1.5 minutes flat, I was a bit slower at around 5 minutes. Back at the turn where we think we should see the trail, Sara and Rod look over the map and I take the opportunity to answer the call of nature. As I go through about 10 feet of brush I pop out onto a road, eureka! I quickly tell the others and we investigate after I take care of business. We think we hit the jackpot as no other team has found this and we are currently out of sight of the others. We descend on the road and it gets rougher as we go, then about ¾ of a mile into it the road dies. We slog our bikes back up the hill as this is not rideable in the up direction. Time to go back further.

We backtrack to a place were we were certain of our location, coincidentally it is the same location were we passed several teams looking at maps. While Rod and Sara look over the map again Jim and I lay in the dirt to try and rest a little. No sleep came, but lying down felt nice. Finally, after ten minutes we all get up and go off in a new direction, woohoo the trail we want, we think. We go along for a while and then finally see a sign, yes we were in fact on the correct trail now, just three hours lost, that’s all. When you’re lost and it’s in that 1-4 a.m. time block you definitely start thinking about how stupid it is to not be sleeping if you’re not making progress anyways. The trail is very fun through this part, small climbs, smooth swooping descents, we’re making good time. At one point I was leading and noticing that we had all been quiet for a while and all of our bikes were running pretty silent so I yelled out a “Hey Bear” to let any wildlife know that we are there and we’re coming; of course, yelling “Hey Bear!” at 3 a.m. without any warnings to your team mates will freak them out a little bit. Lesson learned, don’t yell any phrase with “bear” in it while traveling in bear country, I changed over to “Hidey-Ho” and “Marco”, no bear ever replied with “Polo”.

At some point I started to smell smoke, a little odd I thought the fires were far away. The smoke kept getting thicker, we could see it in our light beams, and soon I had to pull over to eat and drink something as the smoke was making me a little nauseous. We weren’t near the fires, but the lack of winds made the smoke from the Yellowstone fires settle right upon us. The rest of the night time was filled with nice smooth riding through the smoke and the cursing of map inaccuracies.

Sunrise 2 – We stop to double check the map, we’re on course, and I force the team to not dawdle as a cow near us had a case of diarrhea and I swear if I had to stand there any longer I’m puking. We roll into the next CP while the sun was still low in the sky, there are other teams there, we’re all still clumped together. We dawdle a bit on purpose as some of the teams left in a direction we thought stupid, and we did not want to encourage anyone to follow us to the better route. We were going to take a risk and assume that the road that the map said wasn’t complete in 1983 would be complete by now. We head out with only one team at the CP with us, and they evidently did not want to follow the only team that went the other way. We go down and we want to try and cut across some country to catch some descending switchbacks. We dive off onto a cow trail that might take us there, after riding along that for a while it’s obvious that cows are dumb and don’t know the fastest way to get down from this mountain. Lesson learned, you’ll get nowhere following a cow trail, and don’t ride with your mouth open when on them. We haul our bikes back up to the road and just follow it. The jumble of roads the map shows is non-existent, it’s a beautiful road that goes right where we want it too. On the descent we encountered the genius cow trail builders hanging out on the road, I found out that they can easily run 20 mph when they want and with four people you can use mountain bikes to herd cattle. Soon enough we found out that the road was complete, good, that’ll help make up for being lost for 3 hours.

The next CP came and the two guys there were stunned to see us, they expected there own team to be there, we whooped them by taking the fast way, they left the last CP 3 minutes ahead of us, but got to this CP 1 hour 23 minutes behind us. We all used the toilet there, which was pleasantly stocked with TP , wet wipes and hand sanitizer; a luxury outhouse if I’ve ever seen one. We left the CP after a short chat with the guys there, it turns out they were trying to distract us to slow us down and let their team catch up, trickery! We were now in 4^th place and spirits were high. We rode the roads over to the next CP where we caught Yoga Slackers as they were just leaving, their girl had just had to throw in the towel and the guys were now continuing as a three person team; we had just moved up to 3^rd in our division, podium baby!

The next stretch was awful, a hike-a-bike that was relentless and we were in the midday heat. When we finally reached the top we were relieved, we continued on to find the next trail, it was worse. It took us 1.5 hours to go ¾ of a mile, oh yeah and gained about 1200’ in elevation and the trail was only about 8 inches wide, had some serious exposure on one side and had trees fallen across the trail all over the place, hardest “biking” of the race by far. Rod and I were both nearly out of water, again (we were drinking like we were in college again), so we stop at a stream and fill up, cold water is yummy. We keep on rolling through some nice flowing meadows and then the crashes begin. Sara was the first to go, standard over the bars for her, really it wouldn’t be racing if she didn’t crash a couple of times. Next crash, Sara again, not sure how, just heard it. Third crash, Jim, the roadie was getting a quick lesson on descending on tight steep loose terrain. 4^th crash, Sara again, this time I was laughing, she was still clipped in and landed in a creek, painful, but funny. 5^th crash (pseudo), Rod was trying to get through a short mud hole and didn’t notice the giant wheel sucking mud hole beyond it, came to a dead halt, managed to clip out, but placed his right foot directly into the stinky mud up to mid-calf, I laughed again. 6^th crash, Jim again. 7^th crash, Sara. 8^th crash, Jim again and the swearing has begun, words were flowing for a minute or two. I don’t know how I came through the Bermuda Triangle of bike crashes that we just went through unscathed, but I was glad for it. Last route decision for this section and I convinced everyone to go a different way than we had planned (I think not crashing gave me a little trail cred there), smooth sailing to the TA, and the race director told us that the route we took was about 30 minutes faster than the other, hooray me, I’ll make up for that time savings later though. About 80 miles covered, 9000’ of vertical, and another 400 oz of water or so.

The TA was once again beautiful, this time we were on waterfront property. We took our time, nobody really wanting to put on their running shoes again. We had some food, talked to Andie and the race director, cleaned up in the lake. Finally, after Andie had fed and watered all of us, we headed out on the course again, we had about 3.5 hours of sunlight left and we wanted to make good use of it. As were were leaving we saw that the 2^nd place team had just finished the trekking leg and were heading out on their bikes again, 3 strong. The Mergeo.com team lost their female to illness as well, we were in 2^nd if we finished this leg and left on the bikes as a foursome.

Stay tuned for Part 3: Hallucinations, Blisters and Other Delicious Treats

Mountain Adventure Race Recap Part 1

I wake up. I’m cold and I brush my hands against my pants and feel that they are wet, the sounds of rain hitting my waterproof jacket and pants then register in my head. “Hey guys, wake up, it’s raining” I say in a loud whisper. Immediately Sara shoots up and starts to get ready to leave, but then stops, “What do you guys want to do?” Before any of us could answer we see a headlamp pop up over the horizon, then another, then two more; the four-person team behind us has caught us while we were sleeping. “Cover everything reflective, don’t let them see you.” I say in a firm whisper. Jim, wearing the most reflective, brightest yellow jacket ever known to man immediately flops onto the ground on his back, hoping he’s covered enough. We watch them go by like walking zombies, no conversations between them, just silent marching; I think we could’ve been having a kegger 30 feet off the trail and they wouldn’t have noticed us. After they pass we agree to huddle together for more warmth and sleep another hour in the cold rain, as I fall asleep I’m amazed at how much has happened in such a short time to get me here.

6 a.m. July 29^th, I wake up to pack for my first ever expedition-length adventure race. I really should’ve done this much sooner, but 60-70 hour work weeks and a bachelor party that lasted until 3 a.m. made for barely enough time to get some sleep, let alone pack gear. I frantically pack things, making sure I have all of the “required” gear and my nutritional stuff. I haven’t really figured out what clothes I’m going to need and I know that the weather can fluctuate wildly so I just decided to throw all of the technical clothing I own in my gear box. At 8 a.m. Rod and Sara (team mates) show up to my place and we load my bike and two gear boxes into the truck/trailer rig and head out. We go pick up Rod’s mom, Barb, she’s going to be helping Andie with support crew. We then make one more stop on our way out to Montana; we stop in Ft. Collins to pick up our 4^th teammate, Jim. Jim was the x-factor, we had no idea if his personality would work with us and if he was at the same fitness level as us, on paper it looked like a good match. Jim and Barb rode with Andie and me; 12 hours in a car together is a good time to find out how personalities match up.

We arrive at the race start late and set up camp and get some rest. The next morning is running around getting the rest of the required gear, the most important of which is the bear spray, basically a super-sized pepper spray. The afternoon is filled with check-in, gear checks, and trying to stay out of the sun, the upper 90-degree temperatures were not welcome. We’re all in high spirits and there doesn’t seem like we will have any personality conflicts in the team, thank goodness, the nightmares of Jim being some former military die-hard are gone, he’s just a former triathlete that doesn’t like running on pavement anymore.

4:30 a.m. Tuesday July 31^st, I wake up to a watch alarm; little did I know that this would be the last time in several days in which I would be sure about the day of the week and time. We all rustle out of bed and eat a breakfast burrito, delicious and bland all at the same time. Somewhere around 6:30 we all get into the cars and caravan down with the rest of the teams (10 total) and the race directors to the start of the race. As we wait for the start we discuss a few things and decide that we should go hard at the start to try and get out of the hustle and bustle of the pack and get into a groove. At 7 a.m. the race officially begins and we start racing, uphill, trekking is our first leg. We quickly gain the ridge and can see that we are in 4^th place, we wanted to be on a lower trail that we missed, but the ridge will also work for us. We continue along, a cold front has moved in so we have clouds and a high in the upper-80’s so we all feel good. We eventually come to Saddle Peak and are faced with a decision, climb the peak(s) for another 1000’ of elevation gain or traverse a scree field over to a saddle where the lower trail is. We decide to traverse the scree field, first lesson learned, traversing a scree field is slow and tears up your feet. At the end of the 1 kilometer traverse I have to stop to address a few hot-spots on my feet before they become blisters, duct tape to the rescue. We start up again, realizing we’ve lost at least one place during our traverse, we pick up the pace and are running on the flats and downhills. At one point we missed a turn and ended up in Turner Gulch. After talking to a local who I believe had a GPS implanted in her brain we shot up a drainage and were once again back on the correct trail. Another 4-person team was hot on our heels so we kept up the pace, but we definitely wanted to start implementing a “Smarter, Not Harder” strategy, our Turner Gulch detour had lost us about 45 minutes in time, and who knows what in energy. We arrive at the Ross Pass checkpoint (CP) at 1:20 p.m. and find out we’re in seventh place. We’re a little disappointed, but we know we’re moving faster than the people in front of us, we just have to stop making mistakes; easier said than done.

After another 10 kilometers on the same trail we reach a trail junction that marks our launching point for the next CP. The race instructions state that we have to go within ½ a mile of the summit of Hardscrabble Peak and the race director said that the north drainages are easily passable, which is nice, but we are approaching from the south. With a name like Hardscrabble I wasn’t expecting an easy little jaunt, but kilometer after kilometer of side-hilling in loose slate scree fields takes its toll. We checked out the drainages as we went, all were only passable if you had a death wish (which apparently Team Timberland did because they took one and were knocking rocks down the gully the entire way), until we got to the north side. We descended down a drainage and checked in at the CP, 6^th place now, we had passed a 2 person team since the last CP. The lake that was on the map was dried up, so we filtered water out of the only source available, a 10-foot wide muddy puddle. Mmmmmm silty.

The rest of the trek was uneventful other than our feet slowly turning into instruments of torture. At one point I made the mistake of singing the song “This is the trek that never ends…”; I had this stuck in my head for the next 72 hours. Finally after 14 hours, around 35 miles, and over 10,000’ of elevation gain we awkwardly shuffled into the transition area where Andie and Barb were waiting with the most professional looking TA I’ve ever seen and hot pasta! I had drank 360 oz of fluid during this leg of the race, yet I was still thirsty upon arriving; it was time to refuel.

Stay tuned for Part 2: Biking, Hiking and Bears, Oh My!