The Yough Extreme

The 2009 season is off and running, literally…
Friday was one of those days at work: it seemed endless, the anxiety for the weekend’s race causing every minute to slow, every second to click on by with me taking notice of every one. Unless my schedule allows me to leave early on Race Weekend Fridays, these days are simply brutal as I wait for the final bell. When school finally did close, Tracey and I set off for a long drive to Ohiopyle, PA, though our escape from Philly made the nearly 5 hours of driving west seem relatively painless.
For me, it was the first and long anticipated race of the season. I also was quite aware as I packed the car that this might be the last race my good old Cannondale, and after this race I’m hoping that it is and that it can retire peacefully to a corner of the basement where it will stand ready for any future emergencies. But I digress…I am hoping I will be blogging about bikes new and old shortly…
We met our third teammate, Chris, and the other Goals gang out there: Mark, Steve and Jim would be racing in the all male category, and as usual, Jim kindly allowed us all to crash at his nearby cabin. This year, we were given the luxury of pre-plotted maps, so no late nights with the UTM grid. That said, as it was an adventure race, I still only nabbed about four hours of sleep.
The race began with a loop run that would serve as a separator. We started on a nice, level, river-side trail before hitting the trails for some steep climbs and then a descent back to the start. From there, teams could choose whether to head up Mt. Sugarloaf by foot or by bike. We would be making a second ascent of the mountain later in the race, so there were some interesting decisions to make before the race even began as we tried to foresee how our bodies would feel hours into the race. Ultimately we elected to run first, and an hour or so later, we reached the CP and volunteers awaiting us on the top of the mountain. From there, we descended the other side, a long, quad and knee-crying run down several miles of dirt road, taking us to the boat launch where we were given a double inflatable kayak and a single.
Last year at American Adventures Sports’ 24 hour Lionheart, we had the same arrangement. I had volunteered to go solo during that race despite the rain swollen river (the race had been delayed due to some SERIOUS storms, and the river, which is normally class 2 and sometimes flirts with class 3 was quite a bit faster and quite a bit more intimidating…to me). Not to toot my own horn here; I didn’t go solo last year because of my paddling ability. I actually like paddling a lot and am very comfortable handling a boat, but my white water experience in a solo boat at the time was zero. I took the solo, because if I couldn’t handle the water, I wanted to keep Tracey and her gear out of the water. And yes, I did lose it once, only to find myself submerged in the freezing river, separated from boat and paddle, and lucky that my helmet stayed on as I later realized I had somehow forgotten to clip it!
So here we were at the same launch. The river was its normal self so I felt a little more at ease, but once again I took the solo kayak to spare Tracey if I got into trouble. We had just run over 16 miles of trails and mountains, and we had taken the lead by several minutes. We launched our boats, followed shortly thereafter by Nature’s Cure with several other teams close behind. Chris and Tracey quickly paddled away thanks to the added power two people lend to one boat, not to mention I have done nothing to prep for paddling or the fact that I will never be the fastest paddler. Then the cramps hit: calves, thighs, even the groin. Then I realized Nature’s Cure was closing the gap on me. We wanted to hold the lead to get to the rappel first. Ropes are a blast, but if you get there after other teams, it often means a painful and frustrating wait. We were far enough ahead of the majority of teams that the wait would have been minimal had we coughed up the lead (if you’re not at the front you might end up waiting as much as an hour or more for your turn, which can completely change the rest of your race), but still: we wanted to get there first. So, I frantically tried to will the boat forward as Nature’s Cure gained on me.
When the winds picked up and I nearly started moving backward in a swiftly moving river, I thought it was all over, and sure enough, about halfway down the 8+ mile stretch of river, Nature’s Cure’s solo guy had pulled even with me. Their 2 person kayak was still behind, but my heart dropped as I was sure this was it. But the 2 person boat never caught me, and after 10 minutes or so, they actually fell back. They did mount one last charge, but thankfully we held our lead, rappelled 100 feet off an old rail bridge to the river bank, picked up our bikes and set off for the climb back up Sugarloaf.
The climb was far more tedious and difficult than we expected; I had done the climb several times last year during the Yough and the Lionheart with little problem, but yesterday I just couldn’t ride those hills. Part of it was the grueling run, during which I had towed a bit, and part of it was the paddle, which had taken a lot out of me and had prevented me from eating and drinking for over an hour. But the killer was the heat. I’ve raced in hotter, but this weekend, winter left giving way to summer. Spring has been entirely bypassed in the mid Atlantic, and by body just couldn’t handle it. I could feel the heat in my face; I stripped off all the clothes I could, including my bike gloves. If I was pushing my beast of a bike, which was the story for most of the ascent, I had my helmet off, and through it all, I was sweating far faster than I could drink…But we made it back to the CP on the top of good Old Sugarloaf, though we had lost our lead by this point and had slowed considerably.
From there, the remainder of the race was rogaine style, meaning there were a number of CPs, all were optional, and each had a different point value. The goal was obviously to bag as many as possible, but considering the time restraints, and different potential routes, these sections are much more about strategy: assessing point values and deciding what to go for and what to skip while figuring out the optimal route. In general, we ran a clean course during the rogaine, nailing four out of eight CPs. We liked our route choice, and were moving well until our final CP. With still well over an hour to go, we set off for the finish and looking to hit a fifth CP on the other side of the river, and here we took a gamble that all racers take. The map suggested a nice short exit from CP 12 that would involve 2 short bike-whacks, and if it had worked we would have had plenty of time for the fifth CP. Unfortunately, after the first whack went cleanly, the creek we wanted to cross for the second one welcomed us with a sheer cliff on the other side. With bikes in tow, it was impossible to ascend. So we set off on a trail that prohibited us from biking and slowed us down to such a point that we began to consider the fact that we wouldn’t even make it back to the finish in time.
Yet we did, and while we felt that we must have fallen out of contention for top three in the premier division, we smiled and reveled in how good it felt to be racing again after a long “off season”. We packed our gear, showered at the rafting company’s facilities and mingled with other racers, waiting for the award ceremonies. By the time they rolled around, we had realized that we had done far better than we expected, so the question was, how well did we do? Well, we didn’t feel like we necessarily deserved it, but we took home first. Tracey and I both felt out of shape, we suffered from two flat tires on the final biking rogaine, and our final gamble had prevented us from at least one more CP we were sure others would get to. And yet, this is adventure racing: you never know what other teams are going through, so you keep moving as steadily and quickly as possible because you might just find a diamond in the rough when you finish. To top it all off, our second GOALS team managed a win in the male 3 division; it was a good day for the team to say the least.
So, if we could only win every race at the start of the season! It was a great day in general, and we would have been happy even in the middle of the pack. We’re looking ahead to the Untamed New England after all, so I’m approaching my early races this year more from a training perspective anyway. I do know that I have work to do if I’m going to do a 72 hour race, however. My bike legs were not where I wanted them to be, and I need to get in some paddling. But all in all, it was a terrific day in the woods. Now I need to stretch.