Savage Swimming

It’s been a while since Abby and I have done a sprint race (not including this year’s Meltdown), and I was not looking forward to the exercise as I typically don’t like short and fast. Concerns and rogaine-fatigued legs aside, Abby and I lined up for the start of GOALS ARA’s Savage Adventure Race with 50 or 60 other teams last weekend, excited for a new park. Jeff Bell had spent the winter and spring designing a new course for GOALS in Bethlehem, PA, and he took the rare approach of not releasing maps or details until the prologue of the race. Ultimately, it turned out to be a great event with a lot of route-options for a sprint, and it was one of the most enjoyable sprints I’ve done.

When the gun went off, I took off for a long 1.5 mile run for the clues and the map. Finishing was a relief, and we were lucky enough to draw canoeing first; I was thankful for a break already! We set off along the Lehigh River Canal, paralleling the river for a couple of miles upriver. We bagged the first point, along a short portage around an old lock, and then we continued up toward the northernmost point.

At this point we decided to have some fun, which became our strategy for the entire day. Instead of paddling all the way up to the furthest control, we pulled out, dropped out boat and ran for the second point. We sighed as we saw it hanging on the opposite side of the canal, so I jumped in and swam over to it before returning to the tow path. A third point was down on the river, slightly further upstream, so after exploring for a moment, we found a good place to cross and waded across to an island for the control.

Jim and his sister were the only ones ahead of us and we saw them disappearing down river as we knocked out this third control. It was a good move overall, but pecking around for a good place to descend to the river and cross, not to mention the short swim, probably cost us the time savings we made. Still, it was a great way to start the race and a nice cool down from the humid weather.

The rest of the paddle went well enough, as did the special challenges which we completed thereafter. Next up was a few miles of biking to a remote TA up river and on the opposite side of it from the start line. Jeff had printed a bike map that would have us leaving the start/finish, biking away from the TA, crossing the river and then biking up along roads and trails to the TA. Again, we rolled the dice, electing to ride north immediately along the tow trail.

We rode all the way back to the canoe point along the canal and then dropped into the river. As we had paddled down, we noticed that the vast majority of the Lehigh was little more than waist deep, if that, and we had crossed to P3 without even going that deep. It was a risk since P3 was on an island and we didn’t know what was on the other side, but the TA was just across the river from this point. We made quick work of the first channel, crossed the island and entered the second channel, Brian and another volunteer in kayaks watching as we hefted our bikes above our heads.

The bottom was slippery, and the water swift, but it seemed plenty shallow enough. Until we made it three-quarters of the way across. At that point, I hit a channel that submerged all but my head in a fast-moving channel. I realized at that moment that a slip would obviously submerge my bike, bad enough in itself, but it would also submerge the map on the map board, which wasn’t waterproofed…I took it very easy…

When I reached the other side, I leaned my bike against the tall, steep bank and went back to help Abby who was practically underwater, already wondering if we’d be able to get our bikes out of the river now that we were here. I grabbed her bike and we reached the other shore. Unfortunately, the bank was not helpful, and while we managed to get our bikes up and out of the river to the TA, it took a fair bit of effort and time. Once again, we had a blast, and had the banks been kinder, we surely would have made up 5-10 minutes of time. But as it was we had lost a couple of minutes overall. Alas! It was probably one of the more memorable, enjoyable race-moves we’ve made in some time.

From the TA, we set off on a foot loop, still hoping to clear the course. Overall, we made fine progress, but we managed to lose a bunch of time on one of the points. On the map, it was plotted along a small loop of mapped trails. I found a stretch of thick, overgrown trail, thorny and lined with dead trees. It lined up well, so we followed it, only to wander for 10-15 minutes, finally emerging onto finer, cleaner trails that led us to the CP. The better ones, of course, were the ones we wanted…sigh…

We finally made it back to the TA and set off on our bikes. We had been warned of the tough biking conditions, and we had been scoping out the trails as much as we could while out on foot. We had devised a plan that would see us knocking out a handful of lower points on bike. We would then drop our bikes and trek up into the higher, more technical part of the bike course before returning to our bikes for the final handful of points.  The plan worked perfectly as we quickly found ourselves catching and passing bikers who had decided to bring their bikes up into those more technical trails. We returned to our bikes with an hour or so left, still thinking we had a chance to clear.

Unfortunately, we botched B13, popping up to the powerline too early. The maps were quite vague, the trails not that detailed. The powerline was not on the map at all, and had it been I would have figured it out quickly since there were actually two different lines. We had popped onto the wrong one, not knowing there was another. True, we had popped up from the trail too early, but had we been able to see which direction the lines ran on the map, we would have immediately known we were on the wrong one. We searched, finally bailing out just before finding our way to the second line and the control.

Ultimately, once back to our bikes, I figured it out, we found the control and continued on. We nailed one more point but by then, time was wasting away and I called it, abandoning the final two controls, unfortunately high value ones. We biked back, unsure if we had screwed ourselves and relieved when we did make it back with less than four minutes to spare. Jim and his sister were the only team to clear it, and no doubt our two mistakes cost us an opportunity to truly duke it out in the last 15 minutes of the race. Still, we were happy with our race and managed to finish 3^rd overall, having a ton of fun along the way.

Onto the Inferno, final preparation for directing the Cradleof Liberty and then the long awaited flight to Alaska. I’ve come to accept that all my sick time this winter has prevented me from being where I want to be physically, but I don’t know that that I’ve ever been quite so excited for a race as I am for Expedition Alaska. The preview photographs are stunning and the chatter is building; the race will either be impossibly hard or the greatest adventure to date, I think, and either way, I think it’s going to be a memorable one. Glad we practiced fording creeks with our bikes…maybe we should practice packrafting with them too…