Stoked at the Get Stoked Rogaine!

Frustrated and disappointed by a winter of training ruined by illness, I had to bail out on the team and the Rev3 Epic a few weeks ago due to pneumonia. Not only was I bummed not to do the first real AR of the season with the squad, but I was worried as I was relying on that 24hour+ event for training for Expedition Alaska which is now looming on the horizon. Shortly after the race, it came to my attention that friend, competitor and occasional teammate, Mark and his partner Teresa were running their first rogaine, the Get Stoked Rogaine, down in Stokesville, Virginia. I was unsure about whether I could do it considering I hadn’t been training for over a month, but I was desperate to get something long in for Alaska.

I signed up for the 24 hour solo, just in case I ended up dropping out and because I wanted to go at my own pace if I wasn’t feeling well. I finally started to train again on the weekend of the Rev3 while the team was racing, and it was evident I hadn’t been training much at all since the Snowgaine back at the beginning of March. A good week of training passed, and then…I got sick again.

Friday Morning:

So, the day before the race, I found myself in the doctor’s office for a follow up, my 143^rd since being diagnosed with pneumonia, and I awaited declaration of my doom. “You still have some fluid in there,” I expected the doctor to say, but amazingly, she declared me fine, though she warned me to take it easy over the weekend. I smiled, promised I would, and I bolted for Virginia.

8:30 PM, Saturday night:

I was rather dejected. I had planned to stop midway through the race, put on some warm, dry clothes for the evening, feast, and give Abby a ring to tell her I was OK, that I missed her, and to check on Zoe. I stripped off my sweat-soaked clothes and eased into something a little more comfortable, I grabbed a bite to eat, and I pulled out the phone. All day long I had been traversing high ridges and summits, but over the last couple of hours I had dropped into one of the only low sections of the course, and surely enough, I didn’t get reception.

My heart sank.

My lungs had held up surprisingly well, but the fact that I hadn’t run in 6+ weeks had become quite obvious and the hellish terrain had taken a toll on my body. I was tired, low, and with darkness setting in, I was getting lonely, the thought of racing for 12 more hours in this terrain on my own, a daunting reality.

Additionally, I had just done a thorough assessment of my situation, and I didn’t like it. As always, I had laid out a course before starting that had me visiting all the points. Unlike most races in which I start off thinking I’d take a shot at clearing the course, I knew this wouldn’t be happening. Not in my condition, and not when looking at the enormous terrain.

Nonetheless, I had started off on my route, figuring I’d adapt as necessary after several hours getting a sense of the land. Well, after 12 hours, I had dropped about seven of the 60 points, but I looked at the northern half hopelessly. The terrain was even harder up there, there were fewer points, and ultimately, I wasn’t sure I’d get back around to the finish. Not to mention that my relatively slow pace would diminish even further with the fall of night. I’d be able to bail out and just work my way back on trails, but I’d get nothing for the effort.

I’d come down to the rogaine simply to get in a training day and some nav practice. I felt like I had accomplished this, and no matter how much I looked at it, I wasn’t going to score massively higher considering how much work had to be done. I decided to take a shot at a nearby point, and after 30 minutes of painfully slow progress over relatively easy terrain, off-trail in the darkness, I decided I was not going to roam around in those woods by myself at night. I could have found the points, but I estimated it would take me an extraordinary amount of time to work through even these simple, closely-packed points at night, so I headed back out to the road.

Ultimately, I had really shot myself in the foot. By being so aggressive and mostly sticking to my plan, a long return to base from my current location would only allow me to net a handful of points. I had crisscrossed the road several times earlier on and had bagged most of the points accessible from the road already. I would be marching home with little opportunity to score more points. I had a couple of opportunities for some long out and backs for a handful of additional controls, but it just didn’t feel worth it.

So, I nabbed one more point and then traveled (for the first time all day) with another racer, a solo racer, Kevin, from North Carolina. We chatted for half an hour or so and then went our different ways, he looking to score a few more points I had found, and I deciding to trek back to the finish with two or three more points available to me. I rolled into camp five hours early, another reason for my decision as I worried that if I stayed out, the five-six hour drive home to Philly without any sleep would be a nightmare to say the least. This way, I was able to rest for several hours before driving north, and indeed I made it home for dinner with Abby and Zoe.

8:20 AM, Saturday morning:

The map was impressive. The terrain relentless. The checkpoints challenging. I set off at a trot, made quick work of my first point and then ran into a bear, 20 minutes into the race. Not a bad start, I thought! I worked out a brief bobble (always good to get them over early), and then I took off, working through a number of points cleanly with a large owl sighting a bonus for the morning. The woods were beautiful, the ridgelines and summits majestic with sweeping views of the grand hills and mountains of the Blue Ridge, the creeks singing and cascading down steep reentrants and along serene valley floors.

Course directors Mark and Teresa had outdone themselves, setting a sprawl of points while also hiding welcome treats at random controls. Additionally, they had hung five “gold” coins out on the course, and racers who found one could turn it in for 20 dollars at the end of the event. Both were brilliant ideas that added just a bit more fun to the race. I wanted to get out early that morning in part to maximize daylight, but also to beat the crowds out for a chance at a gold coin. My plan worked for the latter goal. I guess it worked for the first one too, though I didn’t feel like it got me much.

I was in heaven for the first four or five hours, knocking points off and loving being out in these beautiful woods. But that terrain was also chewing my under-prepared legs up, and as I passed hour six, the climbs, often ranging from 500-1000 feet, were becoming more and more daunting. I had started to drop points, thinking I’d make up ground and time, but instead I continued to find myself unable to catch up to the course. I expected that by the halfway point, I would have put myself in a position to head to the northern half of the course. I had originally set out hoping to clear 50-55 of the 60 controls. I had since downgraded that estimate to 50, then to 45.

After deciding to beeline back to the car and my sleeping bag, I knew I wouldn’t even come close to hitting that final estimate, but I surprisingly enjoyed the long return trek. I had four or five points to break it up, but still, I was alone on a long stretch of rolling roads. Normally, I would have struggled to stay awake on such a trek, my feet aching, my muscles tired. But tonight, the moon was full, or nearly so, and one of my absolute favorite things to do in an overnight event is to go without light if possible. So, while I turned the light on when bagging points off the road or trail, I spent much of the night, hiking in nothing more than the pale moonlight, listening to the night sounds in the dark trees around me, and happy with the day’s effort.

Sunday:

The drive home went better than had I stayed out for the entire 24 hours. Despite coming in 5 hours early, I still managed to finish third. Considering my goals and the condition I was in, I was satisfied. Though knowing one more point would have landed me in second and five more hours would have probably allowed for the win was certainly a reminder that anything can happen in such a race.

I also was happy with the fact that I felt better than I expected considering my recent health issues and the long stretch without much activity. I know I won’t be where I ideally would like to be for Alaska, but I feel more confident about at least surviving it.

And two new practices will hopefully become standard operating procedure for me in future events: Abby had suggested I try Nuun. Always resistant to anything but water on the course, I forgot to use it during my first refill (I started with water). By the time I first used it, I was fatigued and on a slow decline physically. I was surprised to find the Nuun refreshing (I hadn’t enjoyed it much during my taste test the day before the race), and I also noticed that the decline seemed to stop, if not revert to some degree. My second new trick was the use of my stopwatch. I set it for 30 minutes, and while I didn’t eat on every single 30 minute increment, I ate more consistently than I probably ever have. Took a bit of effort to remember to reset it every time I ate, but it seemed to also work wonders.

So, overall, a successful day of training. Mark and Teresa certainly had put together quite the challenge. I ultimately reached 30 of the 60 points, and I believe the winners, friends Marcy and John Beard from Vignette, bagged 40 or so. I guess that just means there are many more points to visit next year!