When we decided to race somewhere warm to start the season in 2010, we debated between Kando’s Palmetto Swamp Fox and Start 2 Finish’s Natchez Trace. In 2010, Kando won out, and it immediately became one of our favorite races. This year, since the stars aligned and my spring break finally lined up with Abby’s, we decided to make a week of it down south, bracketing a week of road-tripping in North Carolina and Tennessee with the Swamp Fox and the Natchez Trace.
After a hard fought victory in the swamps of South Carolina with Chris, Abby and I meandered through western North Carolina, bagging Mount Mitchell and then settling in for a leisurely three days of recovery. We hiked a bit in the Great Smoky Mountains, ate good food in Asheville, North Carolina and Nashville Tennessee, and meandered along the paths of Andrew Jackson’s home, the Hermitage. On Friday we jumped in the car for our final leg of the trip (not including the torturous drive back east starting Saturday night after the race), a trip even further west from Nashville to Natchez Trace State Park. We had been unable to find much online about the race other than that it was sometimes a rather quick one for a twelve hour event. Still, we were eager for a new race, and we were excited to race with J.P. Bordeleau who would be meeting us from Illinois.
Abby had the pleasure of racing with JP when she raced with ARMD at Untamed New England a couple years back, and she was sure he would be a good fit as our third. Indeed, he was a rockstar, proving himself to be an excellent teammate, a physical monster and a regular voice of reason…though I was at my stubborn worst for some reason this past weekend. If only I had been quicker to listen…
The race was notable as much of it was off map; a huge network of trails crisscrosses the park, but the race directors send you out without any sense of what these trails do, where they are or what terrain they cross. It was truly an adventure and a mental exercise for those of us unfamiliar with park. When a race director tells you bluntly that you are probably at a notable disadvantage because you haven’t done the race before, you know you’re in for a long day, especially when most of the competition seems to have raced the event at least once in the past.
From the beginning we were flying blind as we ended up bikewhacking for the first checkpoint, falling to sixth or seventh place out of fifteen teams by our estimate.
Had we known better, we would have likely ridden the roads the long way around to the correct trailhead, but we had no idea where the George Trail was, so after spending some time exploring, we decided to just whack for it. We finally made it to the first checkpoint, thinking we would now be set and oriented. We biked out to the main road to travel toward the first significant part of the course, and we took note of the trails as we traveled, realizing they were organized alphabetically. We passed a few teams before realizing that most of them had turned off on an unmarked trail behind us heading to the fifth checkpoint. After looking for the control, we managed to find it though it was then we noted the unmarked trail right beside it.
We set off for the first TA, having lost a few spots again.
The next section was a challenging foot-O in the mazelike terrain. Four points were scattered among endless reentrants and spurs lining the side of the lake upon which we would later be paddling. We made quick work of the first two points, but the third one turned out to be our undoing. Having gone back to look at the maps several times since, I still cannot say for sure what I did wrong. All I know is it’s been years since I botched a point as badly as I did the third point on the loop; it may be the single worst moment of navigation in my seven year AR career. Once again I was thrown off by trails and roads that went unmarked on the map, but even then, we should have found the point an hour or so faster than we did. I think we all knew we had lost the race on that one point, and while we were still in sixth or seventh place coming off the leg, the leaders had come in nearly two hours ahead of us. Abby had also torn up one of her eyes in the thorns during one of numerous bushwhacks and her eye was swollen, flaming red and weeping. We prepared our bikes only to find a flat tire on JPs. Finally we set off on the bike rogaine which would take us back to the paddle at the start, our energy and momentum significantly lower because of the last two hours.
We passed one team during the first hour and a half of the leg, though we moved efficiently through the section, finally getting a handle on the trails and mindset of the race directors. As we neared the final control on the way back, we found ourselves finally catching teams. As we rolled into the TA we had caught and passed all teams except the leaders. We had shaved a half hour or so off their lead but they had still gone out on the paddle an hour ahead. At this point, we knew we would not be able to clear the course, so we took the only risk we could, skipping two paddle points and heading out on the bike rogaine. Another blundered checkpoint aside (here I should have listened to JP who said we should stick to the trails in looking for the third control) we made good time on the leg despite two more flat tires. We ultimately had to drop two more controls due to the botched checkpoint, but we were confident we had done enough to secure second place, and indeed, we had.
While we were disappointed with our errors (mine to be honest) we were happy with the comeback. We made up significant time on the leaders when we weren’t wandering around in circles in the woods, and considering the facts that Abby and I were not feeling up to speed with tired legs from our race the weekend before, Abby should have been wearing an eyepatch for most of the race, and JP rode the final ten miles on a flat tire, we were very happy with the end result.
Considering that we had few expectations going in, we were all incredulous at how great of a race this was. The directors put together an amazing course that felt incredibly diverse for being in a relatively contained area. While we would like to take another shot at the race having seen the park once, we had a terrific time navigating the park as it felt like a giant puzzle as we stitched together the terrain and trails with nothing more than a basic and relatively blank US topo map. Western Tennessee is a bit far away for us to make the journey regularly, but I’d be lining up every year if we lived near the Mississippi.
Finally, a big congratulations to Los Locos, the ultimate winners. They were fast and clearly the best team on the course this weekend as they nailed the nav and then kept on moving. Even had we cleared the final bike section, they did too, which meant they were alone on top having cleared all 47 points to our 43. And congrats to Slipstream and everyone else who was out in the woods. While the Swamp Fox became a favorite two years ago, the Natchez Trace 12 hour joined it this spring.
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