Berryman Adventure Race

Here it is, Team Seek Adventure's attempt at qualifying for the National Championships.

Thursday September 27th, evening. We all meet at my house before departing for Missouri. Jim there's with a nice surprise, our first sponsorship! Jim had been in contact with Crocs and had worked out a gear sponsorship through them. So, with our new footwear on (their socks are uber-comfy BTW, but if you're borderline on the sizing go with the larger) we loaded all of our gear in/on to Joe's suburban.

Joe, like he was possessed, drove entirely through the night and got maybe an hour of car sleep in the morning while I drove, maybe he didn't trust any of us to drive. ;) the drive to Missouri is long and pretty uneventful, 16 hours. I got to catch up on some movies I had never seen, but nobody would let me put in Deliverance until we were on the way out of Missouri, now I know why.

Of course we were short on time after we arrived and we scrambled to get our gear in order and then get some sleep before the race, too bad we couldn't have arrived a few hours earlier.

The race started at 5 a.m. on Friday with an orienteering leg. The race was all bunched up through the first 3 checkpoints. We had one glitch in going for the 4th CP that cost us about 15 minutes, but everything else went smoothly. We came out of the morning mist and into the first transition area in 18th place.

We quickly changed over to our bikes and headed out. We climbed up a hill and then bombed down the other side, that's when Sara told us we missed the turn at the top of the hill, dang. Back up we went and then shortly after getting back on course Sara's pedal fell off, we put it back on. Two minutes later, it comes off again. We investigate a little more and it seems as though her pedal bearings are seizing and her crankarm is starting to strip. We get some lube in there and swith out a pedal from Jim's bike and we're going again. 30 minutes later Jim flats, man, these delays come in bunches. Luckily, biking is our forte and we are passing teams all the time now. We arrive at the next manned CP in 14th place. Most of the route is on the Ozark Trail, an extremely beautiful singletrack that is actually hardly discernible at times, at least it was daylight.

We get to the TA in 9th place, heck yeah, we're in a groove. We fill up our bladders at a clear and cool natural spring and get going. It turns out we took the long way, but we still maintained our position and got to the canoes in 9th place, 1 hour before sunset.

Canoing is wonderful, I'm so used to paddling ridiculous inflatables that these feel extremely nimble. Jim and I are in one boat, while Sara and Joe are in another. I'm in the back, controlling the direction and Jim's just adding horsepower up front. We get into a rhythm and are making great time. We hit the first CP right at sunset, the next three would be done in the dark. This is when it gets fun. Jim and I come around a bend in the river and there is a local there running a generator and big lights on a section of the river. this is nice because we can see the rapids, what isn't nice is his advice. I was going to go straight down the middle, but he wasw frantically yelling "Go left!", now this might've been "Don't go left!", but none of us heard it that way. By the time we realized we shouldn't be on the left it was too late; we hit a tree and then quickly dumped the boat. Swimming at night sucks, we lost our high powered headlamp and about 50% of our food (the biggest problem). Soaking wet we finish out the river leg, very slowly though as our light situation was less than ideal.

We pulled out at 11 p.m. and I quickly changed into some dry clothes so I wouldn't freeze. The next leg was trekking so off we went. The first two CP's were in the middle of nowhere and were a challenge to find, but we got them. On the way to the next one I fell apart. I had a detached head feeling, I was stumbling a bit and I was going pee every 10-15 minutes. I was going through what it could be in my head and things like hyponatremia, caffeine overdose and just plain bonking kept coming up. Finally, I had to make the team stop and try to sleep for 1.5 hours, this only got me to a point where I could be towed. 5 or 6 teams passed us during this.

We get to the end of the trekking leg and by then I think I had figured out that it was the caffeine that screwed me up, I had taken the equivalent of 3 cups of coffee in 2.5 hours, but since I stay away from caffeine at all other times that was enough to do it for me. No more caffeine during races!

We transistion to the final bike leg in 14th place, ugh. Shortly after starting the bike I felt fully recovered, it only took 11 hours, and we were back to chasing down teams. We passed 2 teams during this last leg and finished in 35.5 hours. It looks like we were 15 minutes too slow to qualify for the National Championships, but we'll get the official word later.

~35 miles of Trekking
20 miles of Canoing
83 miles of Biking

Even if we don't qualify it was a good race and I learned even more about what my body will do when pushed in different ways, though I would really like a chance at redemption in Missouri at the USARA National Champs.