USARA Nationals 2007
Based out of Potosi, Missouri, the 2007 version of AR Nationals was being hosted by Jason and Laura of Bonk Hard Racing. The last two years, the race was held in California and Florida, so this year was going to be a bit colder, although the Florida race I remember being as cold as I could ever imagine since we trekked thru miles and miles of waist deep water from the lingering remants of Hurricane Wilma. That race was as brutal as any, teams dropping with hypothermia, numerous blisters, cuts, abrasions from the Saw Palmetto and dense vegetation, some of the toughest nav around since our map was wet oatmeal, and Leptospirosis found it's way into some racers legs. This year, despite the cold, it was fairly benign in most everyone's opinion.
For 2007, we had a reworking of team and teammates. Never an easy task, but by midyear, after tons of effort, emails, and races, we had a new team, qualified 5 times to nationals, and with the combination of Tamela, Joe, and myself, we were shooting for top 5 finish. We were at least hoping for a masters win, if all else failed, although EMS masters is as competitive as any team racing. We did know we would have to execute the race well to achieve that goal, and it wouldn't be easy. There were also at least 10 teams capable of doing the same thing. As AR goes, it was gonna come down to who is better prepared, willing to deliver that day, work together, and who could nav well in that terrain.
AR Nationals is always the one time of year where we get to see old friends, race against top teams, and measure ourselves. No other race in the country seems to attract the same number of 24hr racers in the US. As the weeks got closer, my year of training was focused on one thing, Nationals. Joe was new to AR this year, but was rapidly sharpening his skills, strong in all disciplines, and learning the true essence of AR. As a team we felt a collective spirit and a ease with working together. We were transitioning fast, dialing in distances well, naving well together (well, sometimes), and having a good time in the process. We knew Tamela would be faultless on race day, as always.
However, the serenity and dreams of our wishes and goals all evaporated with a simple email. On an easy training run, Joe stepped off the side of the road and rolled his ankle badly, describing it as rolling completely upside down and popping. The pop likely meant a small foot joint dislocation. That didn't sound pretty. A jones fracture was ruled out after a few xrays, but that did little to stifle our fears and frustration. The injury wasn't just a mild one, and we waited for word on how it was coming around. After a few days and no significant recovery, he had to pull the plug since we had a few potential teammates who were able to go but we had a thin timeline left. For Joe, it was likely very frustrating. He had recently received a new bike thru our sponsorship with Capital Bicycle www.capitalbicycle.com, worked hard at finalizing other new sponsorship, organized all his gear, received delivery of our bikes to his bike shop, and was physically and mentally ready to lead us around. He had no choice but to soldier up all the gear and our bikes and head to Missouri, with a 15 hr round trip drive. As I always say, there is a golden window within AR racing, where if a teammate is injured and pulls out within a week of a race, achieving success is statistically unlikely. For a newer and smaller team like us, it's even more difficult. However, our bikes were already shipped, we had plane tickets, and race fees and hotel paid for. We were going, despite our worries. The smart decision may have been to let Joe race, but as a physician, I can never warrant that. However, by race day, he could of raced and would of, if we didn't recommend for him not to go. I know Joe well from years in college gymnastics, and he would of raced on a broken ankle if he had to. If he had raced, we will never know how he faired, but he was back running on it the days before the race, although it was sore.
This year, Nationals was being hosted by Bonk Hard Racing in the Midwest. Despite some peoples misgivings about USARA as a parent organization, the event this year proved to be well run and hosted on enjoyable terrain. USARA and Bonk Hard Racing did an exemplary job and that's not debatable.
The midwest is fast becoming the hot spot of AR racing in the US. With promoters like infiterra sports, high profile adventure racing, and bonk hard racing, a strong contingent of racers and teams are sprouting faster than the corn grows on the rich Midwest soil. It's only natural that the Nationals come to the Midwest, as more than a third of the teams were hailing from the Midwest. Next year alone, I count more than 20 AR races being held in the midwest.
Joe's replacement ended up being my good friend and old neighbor, Dave Petty. Dave is more of a sprint racer, mainly based on training time constraints, but claimed to be ready and willing. Unfortunately, we were all on a different page on how we were gonna race the most important race of the year, but that was mostly because we had spent a few months working with the other three of us and our dynamic together. Now we had someone else, and we didn't have time to work the roles and dynamic. So, I was gradually changing my goal to enjoying the race and experiencing the race. The only notable thing we did was change me to carrying most of the gear weight (which was not much, thank you), but we could of planned better.
After an uneventful flight to St Louis, Tamela offered for us to get to the hotel early. She found a ride from the airport with her local New Englanders of Cogg Wild racing. Otherwise we would have had to wait for a few hours at the airport. This allowed Dave and I time to experience the midwest"s best in fast food, Steak and Shake.
Joe had arrived early with the bikes and had all our stuff ready to go. He ended up being an invaluable support person, allowing us to rest and sleep a little more before the race since he was there to help with last minute things. He assembled our bike carriers and harnesses, threw together gear, ran to the grocery store, all the while making our lives easier.
It's always a fun time of year running into old friends and teammates. Nothing better than being in a room full of such fit and hard core athletes as adventure racers who work and do this for fun. After an uneventful race checkin and briefing, we were all off to sleep, or at least trying.
Race maps were handed out at 5am, so we got up 30 minutes before then and were showered and ready by 5am. It was gonna be a hectic morning.
We had the plotting and basic routing done by 6:45am, with not enough time for me to pack and thrown on warm enough clothes for the start.
The basic course after plotting: a one mile run/paddle 2:1 with one teammate doing a separate 1.8 mile run prologue, paddle 1.5 miles, o-course 6-8 miles, bike 20 miles of fun singletrack and roads, trek 10-12 mi, paddle 12ish miles, trek 14-16 mi, bike 20 miles with a mix of trail/roads. Or something like that. Because of the lack of time, I went without gloves, hat, or shell pants. It's always fun being the navigator.... Dave did the prologue run while Tamela and I ran to the canoes. Since we were tight on time, we arrived to the canoe put in the absolute mayhem of racers and boats after we realized I forgot my backpack at the bike drop off, luckily Tamela realized that before we got more than 20 ft away. No matter, we needed that extra minute of routing, knowing it would come in handy at some point. Hectic start, but I was hoping the extra map preparation would pay off.
With 100 plus racers fighting for boats and gear, I proceeded to the water edge and just grabbed the bow of the nearest canoe I could find, which was stacked 3 high on the other canoes. For me, that shoulder level, but it made it easy to slide the boat down to the water. Tamela grabbed the rest of the gear without me even asking. Unfortunately, do to the mayhem, we started without a third pfd. It was complete chaos, but fun. Immediately, we noticed that the gunwales had ice on them. Got to love AR!
I met Tamela at the dock and we started paddling to the point where we would meet Dave and all the other racers. Since all the racers were bunch up with 77 teams, it was an interesting paddle to the pick up point. When we arrived at the point, there were so many racers that we had trouble finding Dave. We eventually did, but he wasn't happy with us. We forgot his pfd. That single pfd mistake didn't help our team dynamic, since Tamela and I took the torrent of Dave's understandable unhappiness. Since we had a difficult time finding Dave on the shore at the pickup point and figuring out what to do about the pfd, we were off to a 10+ minute time loss only minutes into the race. Things weren't going well yet, oh well!! Following all the canoes, we were getting caught on numerous uphill wakes, all the while i was trying to explain to Dave on how not to paddle uphill and use those bumps to our advantage. While I was doing draw strokes to get off a wave train, Dave was doing the opposite in back. I regretted not being in the back or having time to explain boat positioning. Being up front, I was trying to give the others a rest with the passport punch and be able to navigate from the front of boat. Not all plans work out well, but we were racing together last minute. The only reason we cared was our paddling ability in the right combination was very strong. We could honestly erase a few minute advantage in a hurry. Mild frustrations aside, it was turning out to be a wonderful morning, with clouds of mist coming off the water. Teams would appear and disappear in the mist.
My hands were frozen by now, all adding to the essence of the morning, but we knew we would warm up shortly with the ensuing run. We got gapped by all the top teams, and were positioned midpack when we started the 0-course. Not to worry, we were looking at 18+ hrs of racing ahead of us. We were still warming up in the paddle/o-course TA, so got off slowly. By now, I was wet from head to toe from nabbing the cp on the island, so was loving that we were gonna be running. After 2 minutes running, our legs began to warm up, but the wip wouldn't be cracked till late in the race, hoping to save our energy till then. Unfortunately, as we eventually discovered, that energy never got tapped.
The starting prologue did sufficiently break up some of the teams to prohibit the game of follow the leader. The o-course had a simple choice, clockwise or counterclockwise. For the top teams off the course, neither direction proved to be much of an advantage. Once we ran into two of the trail signs present, the attack points appeared more defined in the counterclockwise direction, but you would have to be more accurate in pacing estimates on the trails. We chose the clockwise route. It was a split second decision, since there wasn't much time to think or route the course with much thought. I chose the clockwise route based on the backstop feature behind the toughest cp, going with what looked to be more conservative. Regardless, the choice didn't seem to make much difference as long as you executed well. I actually made the decision sometime during the first paddle while looking at the map. Luckily, we hit all the points without any delay. We had to slow to a walk for the dense underrgrowth going up the spur to cp F, and that was unfortunate. It really slowed us down only for a bit. We possibly could of taken the longer road around and shaved some time, but that was hindsight. Must of the woods were other wise runnable. Given that it was an on the fly distance estimate and we were going thru dense vegetation, our pace count came out short at cpf, but walking another 100 meters North, we found the cp. That 2-5 minute bobble was surprisingly our only slow down. We had passed several teams, but most of the top teams had done similar. We still had taken some time out of the top teams, and all the top teams were bunched ahead of us or had just left the transition. Team ATP came into cp1 first, but team cp0 jv looked like they had the fastest 0-course time of the time by the fact that they gained more on the leaders. They had left the first paddle near us, also well down in the field.
We had a somewhat slow transition, partly due to the cold and restocking our backpacks with extra food that we were able to leave behind. When Dave got up and left the TA without us, we were wondering what was up. We guess he was still frustrated with our pfd mistake. It was Robyn Benincasa who commented on his leaving us, so I let Dave know we still needed help with maps and gear. Robyn was encouraging us on and saying, you guys will be top 5 soon, but our slow transition took away her enthusiasm. She was pretty funny!
We started the bike with unsettled emotions, unable to get our computers working, and trying to unfold maps for the routes ahead. The day was looking up though, as it was sunny and starting to warmup. Our distances were unknown, going across folds in the map, but Dave kept insisting on knowing the mileage to the next cp. We didn't have the luxury of writing down every distance to the next cp's this race. He seemed frustrated and biked away from us, missing the turnoff. That's how things were transpiring and it was time to move on since we had alot of potential. Then it got worse. In an attempt to lighten the situation, I rode up to Dave and slapped him on the shoulder, attempting to break the tension. He followed by shoving me down, all the while breaking my bar end, compass, and embedding a little gravel into my hand and knee. I think he got his anger out though:-)
We started to move on and started working well together, but we showed up at cp4 with a replot. From cp3-4, the instructions stated to stay on trails. At the replot of cp4, we arrived in a handful of teams, two of which went on to place in the top 5. I jotted down the UTM's mentally since it was quicker than finding a pen, and plotted. Unfortunately, do to what we think were rattled nerves and the commotion at the plotting area, we missed the final line that said we could now use roads or trails to cp4. Ouch! We proceeded to cp4, even following some tire marks along the way, but the trail ended, and we gradually realized that we didn't have to stay on the trail. At least we got to enjoy some more sweet singletrack, and probably racked up more trail riding than any other team. We had that going for us!! We got more for our money! When the trail ended, I spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out how to stay on the trail to cp4, and just didn't find another trail in the area heading North. We were still focused on staying on what we thought was the mandatory route. Eventually, passing by teams noted to us that we didn't have to stay on trails. We still didn't believe this, but had no choice, making our way to cp6 and to see what this was all about. We eventually backtracked to cp4 thru6, and were able to motor long cp5-6 with one of the fastest times. We got to do that twice, so on the second run, we were warmed up. However, by now we were almost 2 hrs out of the lead with that mistake. At one point, we had moved into the top 5 teams, only to drop back to 27th place. We were getting good at yoyo, but from here on out, we figured out how to race together.
We certainly had a collective pause, and realized that this team wasn't quiet ready for a 24hr together. We then proceeded thru cp6-19 without a single mistake. We didn't race hard, but still somehow managed to step up thru the field, passing teams at every TA, cp, and leg. We didn't have a single nav bobble along the way. It was sort of nav nirvana for awhile. The nav was mildly challenging, but only so in that the reentrants and topo were incomplete in several areas of the map. Just part of the challenge of 1:24,000 7.5 min maps. At least they were waterproof mytopo maps with some trails included. There wasn't a thing I could fault about the race.
We entered the water with our friends of Enduraventure. It was nice to see them, since both teams weren't having a good race. At least they helped boost us along since we were running like zombies by then and slow as glue.
We entered the water with the glory of a few nice paddle strokes, this time I was in back. I didn't even have to ask Dave to switch, he knew better. We proved wickedly fast in that position, with him doing draw strokes from the front. Unfortunately, after a few strokes, we got to our first of many portages. The whole paddle was a drag a fest or sprinting in shallow conditions. Dave did awesome searching for the deep channels and pulling us side ways thru the twisty turns, downed trees, and shallows. In reality, i love that kind of suffering. We hit the two cp's without a problem, but knew we were lucky to see cp13 strung high on the wire bridge. It was getting dark, so it would prove to be more difficult for the following teams. I started to hammer since I was getting worried about what the ensuing darkness and lower temps would bring, and it was time for me to put some paddle training to work. Tamela took the brunt of the suffering, stuck in the middle, banging her hands on the flange of canoe seat, getting water thrown on her, and stuck with feeding us and refilling bottles when we had a chance. At one point, we ran across a cow meandering thru the creek, reminding us that two Iodine tablets might be a good idea. I saw a few snakes on the banks, but wasn't sure if I was seeing things in my headlamp.
We entered cp14 a tad bit after dark. It wasn't too cold as of yet, but the wet clothes were definitely a risk. We got to the new plotting table for cp16 and 17. I had no shell on or hat, so knew I would be in trouble quick. I asked Tamela for my shell and hat when she was finished. By the time I finished with the plot, I was shaking like a leaf, and she came over with my shell and hat just as I stood up from the table. I remember wanting to her hug and kiss her for that. Since I had to sit and plot, I was at the greatest risk of getting hypothermic, so I pushed us all into the trek while we were still tucking away items. There were so many teams by the fire that there wasn't room anyhow. We ended up passing 4 teams who were glued to the fire, including our good friends of cp0. That TA, we worked together so well, which was the happiest moment of the race for me Despite all our setbacks, we were doing some things very well. At first, our legs were like frozen popsicles, but after awhile, we were back to running smoothly and eating, once our frozen legs finally thawing out.
We moved thru the next cp's well, not missing a step. Passed two more teams on the way who were confusingly in the woods when we were jogging past on the trail to cp7. By now, Dave was slowing more and lagging behind everytime we picked up the pace. His 10k training wasn't holding up, but the nav was spot on (or possibly lucky), so we kept moving up through the field. We still wonder what would of been possible if we could of amped up the pace. The nice volunteers at cp18 had a fire going which we could smell about a mile away, leading me to realize it was about to get really cold later in the race, since their was a temperature inversion going on. Once that temp inversion dissipated, the cold would really settle in. The great volunteers cheered us on and said we were in the low teens now. From 27th to low teens, WOW, we were happy with our progress. The next few cp's were uneventful as the cold started settling in.
We entered cp19, running into a handful of teams that we searching for the cp. Our first attack took us 30ish meters too South on the spur, as we were confused by all the teams playing hide and seek and playing the game of "who's got it." I turned about face, fired up to high power on the headlamp and saw the cp only paces back on the spur, and we escaped, passing several more teams. Mentally, I figured we might actually be back in top ten now. I was starting to wonder if we would indeed crack the top 5. Or maybe it was the caffeine gu I had just taken.
But then, we hit the slows again. Dave had not been eating much, occasionally refusing our delicious food during the race. Apparently he doesn't like peanut butter. We got to cp20, unable to run away from the friendly team wanting to search for cp20 with us. At this point, I was wondering if I could keep pushing our team to race. We were doing so well considering, but there comes a point when ya don't want to push the team anymore. Despite our incredible precision from cp6-19, I was now wrestling with the fact that Dave was sleepy and depleted, which was understandable. After attacking cp20 and standing on the ridge above it, then contemplating an attack from the reentrant from the South, we decided to bail. We were barely walking now, teams were catching back up, and Dave was repeatedly sitting down. The other team with us was having similar issues and they cleverly hooked up a tow line together so they could all keep moving as a team. During that period, the eventual 8th place nabbed cp20 in the reentrant, as we watched them hike by. Little did we know that we were in 8th place and we saw a few teams leaving the area, putting us close to that top 5 after spending the first 10 minutes looking for cp20. As a team, we made the decision, so no turning back. Dave was finally talking and seemed relieved to be heading home. For us, time slowed down, and it became very cold as we hiked the 800 or so meters to any trail that would get us to the cp21 TA and our bikes.
It was a fridged bike trip back to the lodge, probably only shaving an hour or two off our time to the lodge, since there only 25 total cp's. At least we had made a virtually flawless come back, and got to eat, sleep, and rest before a nice postrace banquest. The last part of the race was really enjoyable and layed out well, and we were left with that feeling "if only."
The banquest was well attended by all the racers. I rarely drink Bourbon, but found Bulleit Bourbon to be surprisingly enjoyable after racing. Of course we chased a few beers with recover-ease beforehand.
As usual, every team had their story and there were some good ones. The most interesting stories were the tales of the teams searching the river during the night, the interesting wildlife that popped up along the river, and many teams deciding to start fires along the way to warm up.
It was a different Nationals, with teams coming all the way from Alaska and Florida. The Florida teams must of been chilly in those temps. We enjoyed the format with multiple TA's, broken up legs, singletrack biking, epunching, and separate o-course. It wasn't as brutal as some races, and if the temps remained above 40, it would of felt like a 10 mile warmup. Really enjoyable though.
Dave Boyd and his team proved worthy again after a 2nd National title. Of note, Dave is a physician and a 45 yr old, if I have my facts straight. He also happens to be a gifted navigator and mountain biker with a gifted, cohesive and exciting team behind him. After a troubled showing at the Berryman race, they pulled it together to win Nationals again, but the race for the top 6 was contested for most of the race with Timberland, EMS, ATP, and Dart all battling it out. We didn't achieve our goal, but had a great time trying.
During the race, Joe was back to running, but still taking it easy and allowing his ankle to heal for our upcoming trail running/beer drinking race in Iowa. He was watching on the course with other volunteers and got to experience the other side of things for once. He actually experienced alot by spectating, took alot of these pictures, and encouraged us and others along.
