Waterworld

With Zoe’s birth at the end of April and a significant chunk of time devoted to designing and directing the Cradle of Liberty adventure race in June, I’ve done far less racing than normal this year. With this in mind, racing the 24 hour CNYO rogaine this year was a critical part of training for the impending five day adventure race in Wales I’m about to do with TeamOdyssey. I was therefore a bit panicked when my teammate had to (totally understandably) draw out of the event, and I was still without a teammate 48 hours before the start of the race.

Enter Russell Nordquist, longtime friend from the AR and rogaining scene. We’ve crossed paths with Russ and his cousin Val (a good friend of ours here in Philadelphia as a result of our mutual wanderings in the woods) many times in the wilds of New England and in the deep snows of upstate New York, and thankfully Russ was able to shuffle his schedule and make the trip up to Edwards, New York for the noon start on Saturday.

Considering that we’ve never raced together before, that Russ hadn’t been training for much, and that I have been slowly recovering from a rather bad ankle sprain while he had his own hamstring issues, I reset my personal goals a bit going in. I had wanted to race hard and finish right near the top of the field, ideally building on Brian and my top five finish at the North American Championship last year. But with these new question marks, I decided to really just look at this as my final tune-up for Wales: 24 hours of foot travel with a whole lot of navigation. Perfect way to wrap up before the big one, and results be-damned for this one.

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When we were given our first look at the maps, we were struck by two things: 1) Coming back to base wasn’t much of an option, and 2) water, water everywhere. I’d never seen an area like this and it was going to be a whole lot of fun. The base was located down near the southern end of the map, with one small pocket of points to the southeast. The remaining points were located in three different state forests, essentially all to the north. Working our way up north and then coming back to base during the night only to have to retrace our path north was not much of an option.

Maps: Eastern Half; Western Half

So, with that in mind, we worked out what we felt was a fine strategy: the southeast corner, while there was only a handful of controls, was worth 380 points, and we could access it quickly using roads, while also picking up a couple more early points. We figured that we could go very light at the start, leaving our primary packs at the TA, knock out a nice quick loop of points and use our fresh legs to do this in good time. If we left this pocket for later, we figured we’d likely be hobbling out along those roads at best, though more likely we’d decide to skip it altogether if pressed for time. Ultimately, this plan worked well for us, and we had bagged almost 500 points approximately 3 ½ hours into the race. At that rate we’d be able to clear the 2500+ total points in roughly 15 hours…right…

After transitioning to our full packs and dry clothes, and after refueling a bit, we set off once more, this time for the duration of the event. The sun beat down upon the firm blacktop as we worked our way out to the southwestern corner of the course and our entrance to Wolf Lake State Forest. Our plan was to the work our way up through what appeared to be the extremely technical western half of the course. We’d then reassess our time as we crossed over into the second of the two state forests to the north of the TA, Fire-Fall State Forest, and at that point we’d finalize our plans for Fire-Fall and the third and final loop in Trout Lake State Forest.

While things went well in Wolf Lake, it only took a few hours to realize that we would by no means be able to move fast enough to clear the course. While there were some trails in Wolf-Lake, we rarely used them, generally speaking, and the terrain was extremely slow. For such a “flat” course, we were constantly scrambling up and down. The woods, while not horrible, were constantly challenging us with steep pitches, thorns, thickets of ferns masking constant obstacles, rocky cliffs and crags, and a veritable maze of water, for Wolf Lake is really a giant maze of beaver ponds, connected to and by a spider-web of marshes and marshy creeks. This entire labyrinth of water was navigable using myriad beaver dams, but even with these dams serving as our personal bridges, our feet were essentially wet for the entire day. Add to this the fact that even with the beavers’ constant help, we were regularly crossing water as high as waist deep (a bit higher on me compared to Russ), and our bodies took a beating: Russ’ feet suffered a fair bit as the event went on while I suffered…elsewhere…

It wasn’t long after darkness had fallen on this watery wonderland that we realized we would have to revisit our strategy. In retrospect we committed too much time to four points that took us on a long loop of off-trail navigation over rough terrain for relatively little gain. I don’t necessarily regret the decision as we began this loop with plenty of daylight left, had been moving well, and we actually worked through almost all four points before having to rely on headlamps. It was early in the race, and skipping these four points didn’t seem like the best idea. That said, with some hindsight, we should have left these four interior points and continued north, picking off points that were closer together. As it was, when we completed these four points we elected to skip a big chunk of the northwest portion of the map and use a stretch of trails to make faster progress to the top of the map. This would allow us to safely devote time to the remaining two state forests. As it was, the terrain was too slow to stay on our course, and with our pace slowing as the event went on, not to mention the added challenge of darkness in the relatively thick woods, we felt more comfortable making this call.

So we headed north and worked our way east into Fire-Fall. We knocked off a few points here and then swept into Trout Lake State Forest for a final loop. Earlier on, we hadn’t anticipated doing much in there, but we ultimately knocked out all but one CP in Trout Lake before heading back to the finish along roads.

With perhaps the exception of the first loop in Stammer State Forest, the rest of the course was absolutely stunning. The endless pockets of water were constantly mesmerizing in their remote beauty as they were often lined with bare rock cliffs, ledges, or shorelines, and they were full of trees, reeds, beaver lodges and various species of floating plants. Between the water features, the woods were full of rocky ridges. While not long and unbroken like those in southeastern New York, countless bald patches of rock provided moments of mossy, serene relief from the thick and slow-going surrounding woods. The rugged trails and the two back-country lean-tos we encountered left us both pondering coming back for hiking trips with families and friends. And then there was the wildlife…

While we only saw dams and lodges by day, at night, the beavers came out in force to circle in the open water as we crossed their dams, slapping the water with booming tails in warning as we crossed their watery domains. At one point, sometime in the depths of the night, my headlamp swept across a small bird at chest level in a thicket of pine trees, and when I looked back I found myself face-to-face with a small owl. Miraculously, the owl remained perched on its tree until Russell could get a look at it, and it even allowed me to take a picture of it before we continued on. Our travels also brought us into contact with several different species of snakes, a turtle, one small fawn hiding in the reeds of a particularly fine marsh, and countless other birds. Our nighttime encounter with a tree-climbing porcupine was the icing on the cake. If counting the sad sight of the dead black bear on the side of the road when Abby and I drove in on Saturday morning, there’s not much more we could have hoped to see in 24 hours in the woods.

As for the navigation: simply put, it was excellent. I’ve never had as much fun on a course, and we both remarked afterwards that we were really forced to be on from start to finish due to the nature of the course. Considering the endless ridges, knolls, ponds and streams, one had to be on guard every hundred meters or so as the terrain was constantly changing. I found this to be exhilarating, and I don’t think I’ve ever done a 24 hour course that went by so quickly. I also found that I didn’t tire at any point in the race until the final 8 km of roads that took us back to the finish. At this point, we had bagged all there was to find, and so we were finally able to shut down a bit mentally. But otherwise, it was a ceaseless exercise in navigation: if only every race could be this good.

And as for my last minute teammate and I? We got on brilliantly. I knew we’d have fun and do relatively well, and we did have our physical challenges: Russ’ feet, my chafing. We may have walked a fair bit more on the brief stretches of roads and runnable trails we encountered due to Russ’ last-minute entry without much training or racing, but we also moved a fair bit slower off trails due to the fact that I was nursing my bad ankle and was being extra careful every step I took (I wanted to finish the race and get in the time and nav without setting myself back for the Itera in Wales).

So, in short, we didn’t move particularly fast. With that in mind, we were surprised to find that we had won the race come awards-time. This was in part due to the fact that the field wasn’t as deep as it sometimes is, but there were still some very good orienteers that came out. Ultimately, I think we succeeded for several reasons:

1)      Our pace was relatively steady

2)      Our nav was very good as a unit. We hadn’t spoken ahead of time, but we each took lead at times on our own. That said, we each were navving the whole time as well, and on several occasions we caught each other before a mistake became significant. Ultimately we had one considerable bobble, on which we both made the wrong call, but otherwise, the nav was sharp the whole time.

3)      Our opening strategy: Last year Brian and I left a far-out patch of CPs until the end. When it came time to get them, we were running short of time, and we ultimately decided it was too risky to go that far out for the cluster, knowing we wouldn’t be able to get more than a couple of points for a lot of time, and the potential of missing the cutoff was significant. This year, we took that into account, banking those points early.

And to cap off the weekend, Abby and HER last-minute teammate Tracey Robertson (filling in for the recently broken Denise Mast) took second overall in the twelve hour division!

It’s now onto the big one of the year. I think I’ve been signed onto Wales for eight months or so, and I’ve been itching to go back to the UK since our amazing trip and race in Scotland in 2012. There have been a lot of question marks with Zoe’s arrival, but I feel good (ankle aside) going in. This course was far less road pounding than last year, but I feel remarkably stronger than I did after last year’s rogaine and don’t feel much after-effects 2-3 days after completing the event. Unlike the disaster of last year (a year in which every race was a nightmare of poor navigation and strategy decisions) this year has been the complete opposite with the exception of the Odyssey race in March, which I was still relatively happy with. I’ve been training better and more efficiently than ever before even with Zoe’s arrival, and I think doing fewer races has had a beneficial impact on my mental state after years of averaging something close to double-digits concerning the number of races I was doing.

So, now it’s time to get in one final long-ride and one final paddle while I pack and re-pack gear for the big race in Wales. And now I know I have a lucky charm: Zoe has now been to two races in which I’ve competed since she was born, and we’ve won both. Something tells me this probably won’t be happening again with two teams of World Champions and several other very strong teams racing in Wales, but hopefully it’ll be another great race in 2014.

**Upon quick review, it appears we crossed beaver dams 24 times in 24 hours. Seems fitting...