Unlucky 13th

A cold, rainy morning greeted me at the start-line of my thirteenth race of 2012. The season began in the dark, frigid hours of an early March day in the deep snow of upstate Vermont. Over the course of the year, I raced in nine different states including Vermont, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Maine, Maryland, and North Carolina. Somewhere in there I very well may have crossed into New Jersey; I really don’t remember. In addition to our four day race in Maine, Abby and I flew across the pond for an incredible five day race in Scotland. We tied for second at the East Coast Adventure Racing Championship, good enough for second in the series, and we entered the USARA National Championship last week in second place in the USARA point series. Regardless of how we would finish, the long season had been a wonderful, if trying and exhausting, one.

From the beginning of the season, GOALS ARA had been racing head to head with Rev3 for the USARA point series, and we went into Nationals in striking distance. Considering the large and geographically dispersed team Rev3 has and the sheer number of times their team raced, we felt fortunate to simply have a chance. The scenario was simple: we had to place in the top 10, and they had to be out of it for us to take the series, no easy task in a loaded field. With prior USARA National Champions MOAT, Wedali, SOG, Untamed New England (who had TWO teams racing, and who worked together), and Checkpoint Zero (with Joe and Jeff of EMS lore) not to mention the prior Masters Champs and one time Checkpoint Tracker National Champion Odyssey/IMONPoint, the top ten was already filled up on paper. Throw into the mix Tecnu, arguably the strongest team in the nation right now, Bushwhacker, Alpine Shop, a strong GOALS Masters team, two teams from Rev3, NYARA, ATP, Halfway There, Dark Horse and several other strong teams, and the race was sure to be a good one.

The morning dawned wet and cold with a steady rain and low temps waiting for us on the Pepacton Reservoir. The gun went off, and 55 boats sped off across the quiet waters. NYARA Course Directors extraordinaire Amy Bartoletti and Rodney Villella had outdone themselves from the start, designing a brilliant separator for the initial paddle. At first, it seemed the paddle was a straightforward trip across the reservoir with seven optional points along the way, most of which were on the wooded ridgelines above the reservoir. Five minutes before we floated our boats out to the start line, however, they dropped in a final wrinkle, telling us we were allowed to separate on this section and this one only. After a frantic scramble into the boats, Brian, Abby, and I sorted our strategy and set off. Brian and Abby remained in the boat, dropping me three different times. On each occasion, I left them at the water’s edge to bag one or two checkpoints by foot, meeting them at a predetermined location.

We made good time on the water, coming off the reservoir along with most of the top teams, though SOG and Odyssey had outsmarted us all and had teamed up in their two boats to maximize the drops, finishing the paddle approximately half an hour before the fastest of teams. After a wet transition, we set off on the King of the Mountain ride, a steady uphill climb to the second mandatory point. My legs were fatigued a bit from the running, not to mention the fact that it is taking me longer and longer to warm up these days. While my legs wouldn’t kick in for a while longer, we made it to the top and headed down the other side, the cold air biting into our hands and faces as the rain turned to stinging, pelting hail.

For the next several hours we raced well through a mountain bike leg, crossing paths with Bushwhacker, Checkpoint Zero, Rev3 Untamed and Tecnu. All went smoothly except for my bent derailleur an hour into the leg. We managed to salvage the derailleur and our race for a while, bending it back into place, but as we neared the end of the leg, the derailleur caught another branch and sheared in half. This has been the year of broken bikes for me with flats, broken hangers, a sheared derailleur, sheared chain-ring bolts and more, and I cursed my luck as I took the chain and derailleur off the bike and ran it into the transition area.

We set off to utilize the remaining daylight on Leg 3, an orienteering challenge in which there were six pairs of lettered checkpoints. Teams could score a maximum of eight points, two per pair, so we had to decide which four pairs to go for. As I stared at the maps, unable to come up with an optimal plan, Abby pointed out the two to drop, and we set off, making good time through the section and returning in the dark. We periodically ruminated about my broken bike, expecting to rig it as a single speed, something none of us had ever actually done. Low and behold, however, our stellar teammates Bruce and Jon (racing with Jen Shultis as GOALS Masters) had sacrificed an hour or so of their race, setting up Bruce’s bike for me before taking my hobbled wheels for themselves. Amazing teammates and luck that they were behind us at this point of the race.

Rejuvenated, we sped off into the night, making decent time on the way to the first significant foot section of the race. Abby unfortunately struggled mightily as the cold and busy months left her drained and half-asleep come nightfall, and while she normally bounces back from sleepiness, she would go on to struggle for nearly eight hours, our second significant hurdle of the race.

Unfortunately, I chose to forget how to navigate at this very moment. We had finished the bike section and worked our way through a thick stretch of mountain laurel to attack the first of four rugged, optional foot points only accessible through bushwhacking. We made good time, reaching the creek where we would find the first point, but after a long frustrating hour or so of searching and coming up empty, we decided to bail on the point. Abby was struggling, we had slowed considerably, and we also had managed to convince ourselves that the ten AM cutoff was quite a bit further along the course than it really was. Anxious about our ability to spend time searching and reach the cutoff, we headed up onto a high ridge where we had the opportunity for two more points, but once again we were thwarted, unable to find either point.

We were likely within 50 to 100 meters of two of the points, and it was frustrating to abandon the points and later realize that we had plenty of time to figure it out. Had we done so, our final results would have likely been different. Ultimately we lost several hours and had nothing to show for it, and while we were relieved to learn that the cutoff was easy to reach from the end of the section, we had skipped seven optional points due to my nav errors and our collective blunder with the race rules (which were crystal clear, by the way). With the night’s frustration behind us, we elected to bypass the mountain biking leg and head straight into the second and final foot section. In retrospect we had time for the bike, but after our debacle on the first foot section, we wanted to give ourselves more time since there were thirteen points on the foot section to six on the bike. It didn’t help that our bikes and bike shoes were frozen solid by the time we reached them.

We started our trek as the sun began to rise, an immediate advantage over the nighttime foot section, and as night slipped away, our fortunes changed; we made “quick” work of the epic leg, bagging all but one of the points. We actually attacked the final point, but unsure about how long the final three points would take and how long the rappel down to the bikes would last, we bailed out to be safe. The section was unbelievable with open rocks scattered across the mountains, incredible rocky gorges deep in the woods and a spectacular creek with three points leading us down to the rappel. The creek was a long ribbon of rock and cascades, and we loved every moment of the descent to the rappel, splashing through cold mountain pools, climbing around small falls, and forgetting our night’s misfortunes in the beauty of the Minnewaska wilderness.

After bagging the final three points, we decided to bypass the rappel, a dramatic drop beside long tendrils of falling water. Seven teams sat waiting, and the time penalty to skip the ropes was less than the time it would take to wait, gear up and descend . After climbing down the wet rocks and punching the final control, we hopped on our bikes, thawed out now after having been frozen overnight, and descended the four miles of roads to the finish line at the host resort.

Ultimately, lucky 13 proved to be rather unlucky for me, and our nighttime issues meant that one of the biggest races of the year proved to be our worst. We had major mechanicals, nav issues and significant physical issues to boot, and while we had a great first third and a terrific final foot section, the nighttime killed us. We still managed to finish tenth in our division and thirteenth overall, but it wasn’t enough to overcome Rev3 who had a better race than we did, finishing eight in the division. While it was disappointing, it helped us to realize that even if we had finished higher it wouldn’t have mattered in the final rankings.

As always, the finish line was wonderful as we cheered for good friends from other teams as they rolled into the finish. We laughed and grimaced as we listened to each other’s stories and hardships from the past thirty hours and then drifted off to pack up gear and nap before the awards and banquet later that evening. Team Wedali won the championship for the second time with Tecnu shortly behind in second and SOG in third. Eleven year old Hunter Leininger won the Dave Boyd award for his impressive efforts finishing the race. While we expected great things from our friends at NYARA, we were still absolutely amazed by the outstanding course they had designed. Though Kentucky’s championship last year was the best of five I had done at that time, NYARA set the bar at an entirely new level, one I suspect the folks with DINO racing will have a hard time pushing any higher next year in Indiana. Ultimately, looking back on 2012, I will remember Nationals as the worst race of the year for our performance, but I will also remember it as one of the best day-long courses I have ever done.