ARWC 2017 Cowboy tough- 23rd

They say one of the hardest things to do in adventure racing is to get 4 people to the start line of a race. This race would prove that statement true. After months of searching, finally securing a 3^rd team mate, almost securing a 4^th team mate, losing the 3^rd team mate, finding a replacement 3^rd team mate (Chad Spence), and sending out countless emails to almost all of the Canadian and international racers we know (and many we don’t know personally), Nathalie and I (James) found ourselves literally hours away from cancelling our trip to the Adventure Racing World Championships two weeks before the race. But with a little luck, we were finally able to secure a 4^th team mate – Ben Brewer - a newcomer to expedition racing, but an experienced navigator and strong racer at shorter distances.

This was not only a new team configuration, each of us was walking into the race with our own challenges and unknowns: Ben was racing his first race beyond 36 hours, Chad was facing his longest expedition race to date and the challenge of navigating at a World Championship, Nathalie was in the best shape of her life and ready to challenge herself to be a leader in pushing the team forward on the course, and I was dealing with a knee injury sustained in a mountain bike crash 5 weeks before the race. So we knew going in that the race ahead of us would really be a test for each of us as individuals, and as a team.

Our race preparations went relatively smoothly, despite the usual difficulties of gear bin logistics and the opening ceremony went well with lots of little fun challenges.

 

 

 

        

 

 But we got everything organized relatively quickly and had the evening before the race start to relax, unwind, and get to know each other a little better. We got the maps as we stepped onto our busses at 5:30am on August 10^th for a 5 hour bus ride to start of the race in Jackson Hole, WY. Once arrived, it wasn’t long until the race was underway.

We started with an orienteering course prologue on the side of the ski hill, followed by a 12km run (Leg 1) on a paved trail. As usual, our team agreed that we would not start out too fast and burn ourselves out in the first legs of the race… and as usual we completely ignored this agreement and ran like idiots trying to keep up with all the other teams in the mid-day heat! 

We arrived at the transition to pack rafts about mid-pack, ready to start Leg 3 of the race. This was a nice, rather uneventful paddle down a moving river as we prepared ourselves for the major hiking and biking that lay ahead.

Leg 4 was our first step into the long, challenging middle portion of the race course. This 62km hiking leg featured over 10,000ft of climbing, with no checkpoints. While this leg was mainly on trails, one concern was the lack of access to water on the trail and the possible need to come down off the ridge early to gain access to water sources below. While we were not as quick as we would have liked to be, we managed to maintain a steady pace and manage our water supply enough to avoid having to come down early from the ridge. The trek offered many stunning views as we trekked on into the first night.  

Leg 5 featured our first bike section – a 133km ride mainly on roads. The challenge here was to move as quickly as possible on the good road surfaces and keep a hard, steady pace moving forward. Early in this section we tried to work with a few teams to move more quickly together, but had to eventually slow our pace down to avoid burning anyone out.

Leg 6 of the race was an even longer trek than the previous one with about two thirds of the elevation. This trek generally followed the continental divide – an imaginary line through the mountains that separates East and West flowing rivers. For the most part there was an actual trail along the continental divide, but at points it disappeared and made for some challenging navigation. One of the most difficult off-trail navigation sections was on this leg as well and consisted of a hilly area littered with fallen trees, which made travel very slow and difficult. Most teams struggled here, including us, losing about 5 hours looking for CP9.

At this point, it’s worth mentioning that our sleep strategy was fairly poorly executed in this race. We opted to not sleep on the first night and only sleep 45 minutes on the second night. The sleep details after day 2 are pretty blurry to all of us, with many random stops for a short rest and too much wandering along while mostly asleep. This is an area where we certainly needed to be more proactive, as the lack of sleep really caught up to us late in the race.

After completing the two major treks in the race, it was time to turn our focus to the massive bike leg(s) ahead – a 58km ride followed by a mind-boggling 264km more of biking, with a short trek and ropes/caving section in between the two. Leg 7 had a bunch of gravel road and paved roads, but ended with a spectacular cliff-edge trail that we rode in the middle of the night, followed be an excellent single track section to get us down the mountain. We quickly got transitioned and off to the caving section and then up to the ropes. There was about an hour backup at the ropes so we were able to get a little bit of rest here. After the rappel in the dark, we headed back to the TA and opted for a little bit of sleep before heading off on the big bike ride. 

The 264km bike leg was all about covering terrain to get ourselves all the way back to the Casper area and near the finish line. As we were progressing on the mammoth bike leg a pretty big storm was brewing just behind us which kept us motivated to move forward.

We did most of the ride in the daytime and then had another quick sleep the following night before heading into a sandy section of trail (“The Dunes”). We had heard a few teams pass us while we slept so when we woke up, we pushed to catch back up to them.  We traveled with them for a while until they appeared to head in a direction we weren’t sure we wanted to go to get to the next checkpoint. We spend the next couple hours trying to figure out where we were at on the confusing network of trails, only to discover that earlier we had passed right by the checkpoint we were looking for. So we had to backtrack quite a ways to find the CP. We then tried unsuccessfully a few times to find a way out of the area that was less sandy, which cost us even more time.

We finally got ourselves to the back-to-back packraft legs of the race. The first of these (Leg 10) was a flat water paddle on a reservoir after a 10km hike from the TA. This was a rather uneventful paddle, until we set out to cross the dam to begin the whitewater portion of the paddling. Just as we were crossing the dam, a storm blew in very quickly. We were lucky enough to be able to use the buildings at the dam to shelter ourselves from the strong winds and pounding rain. We waited out the storm for about 20 minutes and then headed down to the bottom of the dam as soon as we felt it was safe. We put our packrafts in the water and paddled another 15 minutes before a second, even larger storm blew in. This time we didn’t have the luxury of any buildings nearby to protect ourselves, so we pulled over to the shore and created a lean-to shelter with our 2 rafts to protect ourselves from the storm. We all huddled under our makeshift shelter while observing the massive thunder, lightning, high winds, and heavy rain all around us. The tension was relieved by the sound of Chad frequently trying to slurp up the rainwater that was leaking overhead directly into the hood of his zipped up rain jacket and right past his mouth.

Once the storm passed, we finally got back onto the river and into the canyon portion of the rapids. This would be the most challenging whitewater section of the race. We were greeted at the biggest rapid by a rescue person (Brad – a fellow Canadian volunteering at the race) who informed us of our options: River right was less of a drop but required a tight turn mid-way through, while river left had a steep drop and water pushing up against a rock wall at the bottom of the rapid. We all agreed that river right would be the best/safest way to go. Chad and Nat took the lead and headed down the rapid, just out of sight from where Ben and I waited. Once we got the signal from Brad that they were through, I steered our packraft toward the rapid but could not see the river right option that Brad had described… So down the steep left side we went, luckily without incident.  The remainder of the rapids seemed much more tame and we thought we were relatively home free for the whitewater section. However as Chad and Nat passed through what seemed like an innocuous rapid, their boat was punctured and sank very quickly. We could hear Nat screaming something (which we found out soon after was that her paddle was floating away) as she and Chad tried to gather themselves and their gear in the rapids. We got pulled into the flow as well and as we approached, Chad warned us about a sharp rock in the rapid that had popped their boat. I identified what looked like the sharp rock and proceeded to work around it (and them) to head off to retrieve Nat’s paddle. I quickly found out that the rock I identified was not the right one! So there we were, 4 people, 2 punctured boats, gear floating away everywhere, and everyone scrambling to minimize the carnage. (Sidenote – we discovered later that this sharp rock had been identified by the organizers in our race notes, but because of the heavy rains from the storms just before we got there, this rock was now underwater when we got there and appeared to just be another smooth boulder in the rapid). We managed to get everyone to shore and gather our wits as we figured out what to do. Just then we spotted a photographer just below the next rapid on the shoreline and what appeared to be a reasonable climb out of the canyon. So we each grabbed a handful of gear and swam the next rapid then quickly got to the shore and worked our way up the steep canyon wall and out to the road above. This took a considerable amount of time and during the climb Chad slipped while trying to move some of the heavier gear up the canyon wall and fell quite painfully on his hip and knee.

Once we got to the road, we were soon met by a medic and a race referee (they must have been tracking us!). This was very fortunate for us because with the race referee present, we were able to get minimal help from the medic without breaking any rules about assistance, and the referee was able to inform us of our options for moving forward in order to stay ranked in the race. We were able to work out 2 possible options: borrow packrafts from a team who had finished the paddling section but were still in the race, or take a time penalty for taking roads instead of paddling a particular section that was ahead (where the rules stated that we needed to stay in the riverbed). The referee offered to help facilitate trying to get other packrafts for us, for which we were very grateful. As such, we were able to trek (as planned) along the road and a set of rafts were lent (thank you Journey Racing!!!!) and delivered to us before the next paddling section. This allowed us to continue the race (with a 4-hour penalty) and get to the finish line. We set off in our new boats and paddled into the late night. Everyone was getting very sleepy and cold, so when we got to another dam, we decided to sleep in a washroom at the campground just below the dam. We all huddled in there and tried our best to keep warm and get some rest. When we got up in the morning, we discovered that the lone dry bag (mainly full of wet clothes) we had left outside while we slept was gone. We looked everywhere for it but couldn’t find it. It was never recovered but we figure it was either stolen by someone at the campground, or taken by an animal who could smell the remnants of food on/in the bag.

The morning was cold an windy and we were struggling to stay warm after a cold night and no dry clothes. Luckily the sun was shining bright and helped to warm us up somewhat. Nat still struggled to get warm as we worked our way through the remaining 20km of paddling. At one point she was getting dangerously cold in her wet clothes. I was able to dry my clothes just from the inside from the warmth I was creating while paddling, while Chad and Ben were just barely keeping warm enough. But none of us had any extra clothes to offer Nat. Since I was feeling warm enough at that point (and the day was beginning to warm up), I had us pull over onto the shore and proceeded to swap upper body clothes with Nat. I gave her my dry fleece and dry rain jacket and put on her wet fleece. It was a bit of a tight fit for me in her little tiny fleece, but we made it work and it got us to the end of the paddling section.

The final bike section was basically a very long climb to the top of Casper Mountain. At this point I think we all felt that we would be able to make it to the finish line even though it would be a struggle to do all the remaining climbing. The views were incredible and we were very lucky to have the clay roads dry enough for us to bike without all the clay sticking to our tires (which was not the case for many teams ahead and behind us). The final reward was a 10km paved road descent down Casper Mountain and into the finish. But of course we had one last hurdle to clear before getting there – a fitting conclusion to our race. We got to within about 500m of the finish line when another massive storm hit, forcing us to take shelter for 15 minutes under a bridge while we waited out the heavy rain and winds and took shelter from the lightning. After sitting there frozen, waiting for the storm to pass, we finally were able to get ourselves to the finish line – cold, wet, but happy that we were able to overcome all of the hurdles we faced as a team

Looking back at all of the challenges we faced coming into the race, as well as the unforeseen mishaps we faced during the race, I would say that we managed pretty well. Ben faced a major challenge in racing more than 3 times longer than he’d ever raced before. While he certainly struggled at times, he also persevered and kept a positive attitude, accepted help from his team mates, and every time he felt strong was ready to help out where he could, including helping Chad with the navigation. Chad did a great job of leading the navigation in his first ARWC. At times he felt like he was making too many mistakes, but looking back at our track, it’s clear that many other teams (including top teams) struggled in many of the same places. Nat pushed her limits by putting herself at the front of the paceline whenever she was feeling strong, and even doing some towing during the race. I went into the race unsure if my knee injury would slow me down. I had a few scares during the race, but overall I felt like my body (and mind) adequately met the challenges as they surfaced. And overall, considering that Nat and I had only ever raced against Chad and none of us had ever even met Ben before the race, I would say that we all worked well together and managed to have a good time as well. It appears we finished 23^rd after incurring the 4 hour penalty, which we feel is a quite respectable placing. It was a pleasure to see Cowboy Tough host the AR World Championships and they pulled it off flawlessly. And as always, it was great to see so many familiar faces and a bunch of new ones as well at the race. Now on to making plans for 2018!

   

Raid In France 2017-8th mixed team

It has been a while but as everybody else sometimes we get caught up with life and we prioritize what to do. Writing the RIF race report unfortunately didn't make it to the top of the list until..well, Now.
As we are boarding our flight in direction to worlds in Wyoming!!!

So here is a flashback to our race back in June in the beautiful region of Ardeche, France.
We were very fortunate to have Dave Schloss from Australia joining us as our main navigator. We also had Wouter joining us a little bit at the last moment before the race.
Although it isn't ideal to race with two people we didn't know we were well decided to give the race a good shot.
Dave met James and I (Nat) in the south of France a few days prior to the race and we drove up to lac Devesset, HQ of the race where we met Wouter
The gear list was rather exhaustive, more specifically the first aid. It took us a while to gather everything. I think we could have been wounded for weeks without medical help and we would have been fine. We had enough to open a little mobile hospital.
 
I was a little disappointed to not have a copy of the road book in French. Being a French race I knew the translation in the English book would be missing a few nuances that would be very helpful during the race. The navigators being anglophone there was no way we would take the French version and we couldn't have both.
The gear check went pretty smooth and before we knew it the start of the race was there. 

The race started at midnight with a swim run. I must admit I thought I was going to drown about a thousand times but we made it alive, got our maps at the end, looked at them semi quickly and shot off on our bikes. We started at a decent pace...we were finally racing. Unfortunately that was short lived. About 30km in the race Wouter's derailleur failed. He replaced the derailleur hanger, jumped back on the bike but another part failed resulting in many stops and Wouter having to walk all the up hills during this first leg. With not much hope to fix the derailleur and having lost a few hours our chances to make the dark zone with the lead teams later in the race became a no go.
The next leg involved a nice trek with rock hopping in the river bed followed by a paddle. We had some fun paddling. We then saw the bikes again. After some James Magic Wouter's bike was working although he had still to push occasionally uphill or to put the chain back on. We spent most of that leg in the dark with a few teams around. On one of the steep descent in the dark I managed to face plant in the gravel dislocating (again) my wrist and damaging my knee a bit. After a good scrub we finished that leg.
We ended that leg at the start of the big paddle where we slept for a couple hours. A medic tried to put the wrist in place and off we went. That was a lot of fun with some slides, Rapids (with the two other guys shouting yyyeeewwww every time they went down a rapid before hitting a rock). Lots of laugher there. My favourite part was the second part when we had to go up river for a few hours and we kept on passing teams after teams.t
The next leg was a big trek with a caving section soon after the start of it. That leg was very nice, mostly in gorges. The caving was pretty quick and not as challenging as last year in Australia :). We knew as we progressed in the trek that we would miss the dark zone and would have to stop for a while so the urgency was gone. We got 5h sleep at a CP where the dark zone was and started hiking to the rappel as soon as it was lifted. The rappel was amazing. Two length hanging from the rope that was going away from the cliff making us spin and forced us to look at the gorges from an angle you would never otherwise. It got a little too much for me and I had to close my eyes to do part of the descent as I wasn't feeling great.
The rest of the trek went well with a few river crossings.
Followed was a bike that went pretty uneventfully except for Dave going over the bars and breaking his shifters and a couple flats (not our race for biking I'm telling you)
At the end of the bike was our last short paddle. James by then had kind of managed to fix Wouter's bike but we managed to get a new derailleur then that we ended up not using.
The last paddle went well and we finished it in the dark.
The next trek went well although mostly in the dark. I was sleeping for part of it. We ended up trekking up to the end of that trek with the all male French team. For the last few legs we kept on passing each other.
The bike that followed was a lot of climbing which I kind of liked a lot. We ended up riding along the guys team the entire way. Half way was a little via ferrata that was pretty cool.
The last trek was pretty long. We took it fairly easy even indulging for ice cream in the small village.
The last bike was supposed to be a couple hours but for some reason the night demons played with Dave's mind and he thought we weren't where we were supposed to be. That little bike ended up being an 8h+ bike ride with lots of back and forth on the same road but hey at least we got our money worth.

The last leg was sailing across lake Devesset which I ended up being pretty good at :D
 
All up we didn't get very lucky with the bikes but we were still happy to make it to the end with lots of laughters along the way. That's ended up being more an expedition than a race for us but we made it.
The organization was really good and very helpful. Can't wait for Reunion island next year :)

James' 2016 Cowboy Tough Race Re-Cap - Racing With Team Adventure Medical Kits

[This is James’ personal recount of his race with Team Adventure Medical Kits at the 2016 Cameco Cowboy Tough Adventure Race. For a full 3-video recap of Team AMK’s race, please see the Team Adventure Medical Kits Facebook page].

About a year before the 2016 Cowboy Tough Adventure Race, I had approached Kyle Peter, the captain of Team Adventure Medical Kits (AMK), about the possibility of racing with their team. Having been an adventure racer for over 12 years, I have slowly honed my AR skills and worked my way up to racing with stronger and faster teams. Feeling as though I am getting into my best AR racing years, I wanted to see if there was an opportunity for me to test and push the limits of my skillset by racing with the top North American team (and also one of the best AR teams in the world). When Kyle approached me about racing the 2016 Cowboy Tough AR, I was game.

My preparation for this race was anything but usual. There were a number of mitigating circumstances (as I think there are for just about every adventure racer) that made things challenging in the final moth leading up to the race: Work commitments that took me out of the country for a few weeks and limited my capacity to train, an illness in the family that shifted the remaining free weekends into road trips to help care for the family member, and trying to recover properly from my first 120km ultra a little over a month before Cowboy Tough. But considering these and other circumstances, I went into the race feeling strong and ready for the challenges that lay ahead.

Oh, and this was the first time in the 3+ years since my girlfriend (and regular teammate) Nathalie and I started dating that we would be racing head-to-head in an adventure race ;-)

ARRIVAL IN CASPER

I was the first on my team to arrive in Casper, Wyoming for the race. I was greeted at the airport by Ted – the father of our “host” family. I’ve never been “hosted” for a race before, and this turned out to be an amazing experience for my team and I. Ted and his family were incredible hosts and went far above and beyond simple hospitality. They became instant fans of AR and of our team – going as far as making posters and meeting us out at various points on the course to cheer us on.

Pre-race organization was, as usual, nearly as challenging as parts of the race. It’s such an exhausting mental exercise to think through the entire race and make sure that you have the right amount of food, clothing, batteries, lights, equipment, and personal items you need for every section of the race – and then to make sure they all end up in the right gear bin (since you will not see them all in every transition area). THEN try to organize these things in the absolute most efficient and minimalistic way possible so that as little time as possible time is wasted in transitions! I knew that racing with AMK was going to be a step up in speed and efficiency for me, so I wanted to make extra sure that I was dialled in and wouldn’t  lag behind in the TAs.

RACE DAY

I woke up at around 4am on race morning feeling a little short on sleep (not surprising or unusual), but excited to get to racing. Finally it was time to put all the preparation to the test. We knew our team would have some stiff competition for this race – no less than 6 teams had a legitimate shot at a podium finish – and because the race was relatively short by expedition racing standards (winning team expected to finish in under 3 days), we also knew that we would have to race it more like a sprint than an expedition race.

One of my favourite moments in adventure racing is the few minutes just before race start. The nervous tension, contrasted with the excitement and anticipation, make for such an incredible feeling; you can’t wait to take on the challenge ahead, knowing full-well (and ever-so-slightly dreading) the amount of physical effort and sheer willpower that will be required to achieve both personal and team goals.

THE RACE IS ON!

I was very happy that the race started with a 7 mile controlled (escorted) lead-out on the bike. This gave me a chance to get my legs warmed up and to just ease into race mode (as opposed to the usual hammer-dropping at the start of most races, no matter how long they are). We started near the middle of the pack and slowly worked our way up near the front before we were set free and the racing started. 

 

We finished the first 50km bike with I believe 4 or 5 other teams all in the lead pack. Our transition was the quickest and put us on the water first – only to take what turned out to be a slower channel right near the start that allowed a couple teams to get ahead of us. The paddling turned out to be quite a challenge for our team; we couldn’t quite keep pace with the leaders (although we weren’t losing major time) no matter what we tried. We attempted to tow early on, but didn’t find much success mainly due to the currents and occasional rapids that made it difficult to keep the boats in-line. I actually ended up paddling in the bow and stern of each of our two boats at one point or another in the paddling sections as we tried to find the best configuration.  it’s extremely hard to get in proper nutrition and hydration when you are in the “chase” boat – the minute you stop for 1 or 2 strokes, you are too far behind to catch back up. 

Mid-way through the paddle, I knew we would be getting out of the boats soon for a short trekking section, so I decided to push hard to try and minimize the gap between us and the lead teams. I suffered quite a bit on the ensuing trek, as it was mainly climbing and running (so again not much time to take in food or water), but was luckily able to recover on the next paddle when I swapped into the faster boat. The next 1/2 hour was probably the most I’ve ever eaten or drank in a 30-minute period on a paddle in a race! It felt good to feel the energy slowly return to my body…

My first low point in the race came from pushing a little too hard in one section to try and stay in the draft of our other boat. As Kyle aptly pointed out at one point in the paddle:

Our next bike was a nighttime singletrack ride. This was a highlight of the race for me, as it’s rare that we get nice singletrack riding in an adventure race, I don’t often get the chance to ride singletrack at night (but I really enjoy it), and all 4 of us were quite strong technical riders. So it was a fun, fast ride for the most part (with the occasional bike pushing sections) and a nice way to break up the long paddling sections. 

After a little bit of time for a sleep due to a dark zone just before the dawn of Day 2, we hit the water with 3 other teams for an early morning re-start on the paddle. This was an uneventful paddle on a beautiful morning… that is, until Garrett and I managed to send ourselves for a little swim on the only really threatening rapid of the race. Technically we made it through the rapid, but we had taken on so much water that we eventually did the “slow roll” into the water. As we floated down the river, Garrett and I were slightly comforted by the sight of other teams ahead of us salvaging their own overturned boats. Nevertheless, it took a fair bit of time and energy to get ourselves to shore – we were however very lucky that when we overturned, everything in our boat got “vacuum-sealed” under the boat and stayed with us until we could flip the boat back over on the shoreline. As luck would have it, the next section of the river consisted mainly of high canyon walls that blocked out the morning sun – and any heat that it could have provided us. So we shivered away for a while until we could finally take advantage of the day’s increasing heat. 

Once off the paddle, we hopped on the bikes for about 70 kilometres of riding, mainly gravel and paved roads. Early on we worked with the Swedish Armed Forces team to try to catch up with Tecnu (who were in the lead), but eventually we pulled away from them and proceeded on our own. I was struggling a little during this bike section. I just felt like my energy output was more than it should be, just to keep pace with my teammates. Something didn’t feel right, but I was unable to identify it at the time. My nutrition and hydration felt fine and my output was steady, but I just felt like I was working harder than I should be. I pushed on, trying to be cautious of not red-lining, while at the same time making sure I wasn’t slowing the team down.

Our first “real” trek of the race was next – a section that started out with a nice clear trail which eventually disappeared and then seemingly randomly (and momentarily) reappeared - but always on the opposite side of a stream that we were following. Needless to say, we did a lot of stream-hopping – which turned out to be my worst discipline of the race! I think I slipped off rocks and stumbled into the stream more times than I successfully crossed it – A great way to make wet feet an issue in a desert-like region!

THE CRUX

Next up could be described as the “crux” of the race – in general for its difficulty for all teams in the middle of the race, but particularly for its role as a turning point in our team’s race. This climb up to Laramie Peak - the highest point of the racecourse (above 10,000 feet) – and back, started out with Tecnu in the lead, about 25 minutes ahead of us. The section was also billed as a “King of the Mountain” section with the team boasting the fastest time from the TA to the summit and back to the TA winning the KOM title and $250. It became apparent to me very early on in this section that our team felt it was time for us to make a move. We held a pretty steady pace on the roads leading up to the trailhead. I then mistakenly assumed that since we would be steadily climbing from the start of the trail to the peak, that we would not likely be doing much running from that point on… Boy was I wrong! Not only did we run anything that was relatively flat, but I found out later that Garrett was encouraging Kyle at the front to run a few extra strides every time the trail dictated that it was time to start walking again. 

Mentally I had to work to get re-focused to push a little harder than anticipated to get to the peak, but I managed to hang on. I was expecting that as we got closer to the top we would see Tecnu on their way back down from the peak and this would give us an idea of the time gap. But about 2/3 of the way up, we spotted them ahead of us on the trail, also on their way up. As you can imagine, this gave me (and the entire team) a much needed boost of energy. After catching and chatting with Tecnu for a little bit, we pushed on to the peak while they gave chase and held on. Both teams arrived at the summit together – a great feeling to reach the top of such a tough and fast climb, and to have caught the lead team! 

We quickly started back down the mountain, trying to get as close to the end of the trail as possible before we would run out of daylight. My renewed energy and enjoyment of technical downhill running made this section quite fun, albeit still quite challenging. There were plenty of loose rocks to make things dicey at high speed.   As it turned out, we were able to put another 15 minutes on Tecnu on the way down the mountain.  

The ensuing bike leg into the night was another low point for me. I was still finding myself working a little too hard for my liking just to keep up. The nighttime riding on long straight-ish roads also caused me to lose focus a bit and revert to a pattern of falling off the pace for a bit and then catching back up, which I think was concerning my team mates a bit. Mari asked me a few times if I was alright, which I took as a polite hint that I needed to get re-focused and get my butt back into the formation or ask for help ;-). Also, I was developing some lower back pain that would force me to try and stretch often as I rode along, again causing me to slow down and then catch back up. I think we were all (as a team) a little unfocused on this section and we didn’t move as efficiently on this ride as we could have. But this isn’t unusual for the second night of an expedition race with little sleep…

After the bike we started into another trek section. As we expected to arrive at the ropes before the dark zone would be lifted (at 5:20am), we opted to do this looped section of checkpoints in a way that would have us ending at the ropes (as these CPs could be gotten in any order). We struggled for about 30 minutes longer than we should have on one CP early in this section which was really our only navigational bobble in the race. But we made some smart decisions in difficult terrain and Kyle quickly got us back on track. We arrived at the ropes about 40 minutes before they were to open, allowing us to get a little more sleep off the clock… You know you are on a team that means business when your captain goes to sleep wearing his harness so that he can be on the ropes less than 5 minutes after being woken up! Once we’d all ascended and rappelled down the ropes, we completed the trek and hopped back on the bikes.

Shortly after staring this bike section, I FINALLY figured out why I had been feeling like I was working so hard (on top of the fact that my teammates are very fast!)… my seat was a fair bit lower than it should be. I felt like a bit of an idiot for not having figured out the problem much earlier in the race, but once I fixed it, I felt SOOOOO much better and stronger… It’s amazing how much difference a few millimetres can make on a bike! While this bike section (and the next) were by no means easy, I felt so much better as my output matched that of my teammates much more closely. This renewed my energy levels for the next relatively short trek in a large, wide-open area strewn with tons of small brush to trip us up. 

We were able to move quite well in this terrain and it felt good to be keeping a solid pace later in the race. Back on the bike again for more long gravel road riding and headwind-fighting, we were beginning to feel the heat of the day catching up to us. We didn’t quite calculate our water needs correctly on this bike section and it caused us to suffer a little on the way up to Muddy Mountain.  But we finally made it and shifted our focus to the last orienteering section of the race. Kyle made quick work of the navigation on this section and we continued to move at a good pace as our thoughts started shifting to getting ourselves across the finish line. The final ride down Muddy Mountain was a little sketchy with plenty of loose gravel, and the ride up and over Casper Mountain was full of anticipation. 

As we headed up Casper Mountain, we were very surprised to see Tecnu coming toward us down the hill. Confusion gave way to empathy as we figured out that they had climbed the wrong mountain first (likely due to a race map that originally had the last TA plotted on Casper Mountain, but for which teams were notified in the briefing of the change). Knowing how hard all the teams (including ourselves) are pushing in any adventure race, it’s easy to imagine (or remember!) the frustration that comes with making a big navigation error and the extra effort that’s needed to correct it – particularly when it involves going up and down two mountains…

THE FINISH

The ride down from Casper Mountain and into the city was generally relaxed. It was nice to not have to race all the way to the finish line and even better to be finishing in daylight! We crossed the line just before 8pm (a little over 2.5 days of racing) and congratulated each other for a great effort on a tough race course against some strong teams. All in all I think we raced a clean, efficient, and fast race. I was not at the top of my game at certain points in the race, but I felt like I did the right things to get myself back on track when needed, and I knew I had the help and support of my teammates available at all times if I needed it. It was a real pleasure to race with such a dialed-in team that does all the little things to be the best they can be. What impressed me most is the attitude and actions of each team member to establish the team as a single unit at all times. There was this constant vigilance within the team about staying close and connected, and doing things together as much as possible. Having studied sport psychology/team dynamics and having been a part of many sports teams over the years, it was great to see the difference this makes both from a performance and personal/psychological standpoint.  

 I felt like I was able to fit in well with the team’s mix of passion, dedication and abilities, along with their calm-but-driven attitude. At the same time, I learned some great lessons about how to be a more efficient and effective racer. I have come away with a clearer picture of what it takes to race at the highest level in AR and I am even more determined to keep getting stronger and smarter in my racing. Without revealing any secrets ;-), I hope to bring back some of this wisdom to my teammates on Team Canada AR when we race at the 2016 AR World Championships in Australia in November.        

             

  

    

Team Canada AR Takes 3rd Place Co-Ed at the Shenandoah Epic Adventure Race in Virginia

On April 14^th, Nathalie, James and Jason joined up with Kevin Poirier, a fellow adventure racer from the Ottawa area, to head down to Front Royal, Virginia for the Rev 3 Shenandoah Epic adventure race. The race was billed as being 26-hours long, but after seeing the maps and having the race briefing, it became apparent that the race would be won in under 18 hours, partly due to having to cut the paddle short because of low water levels. The race format was quite straightforward – paddle, trek, then combination bike/trek to get the remaining checkpoints.

Jason got the race started at 9am on Saturday morning with a ~1 mile prologue, which only required one team member to complete. He came back tied for the lead and off we went on the paddle. There were a number of CPs along the way that could be gotten any time during the race, so we opted to grab the ones closest to shore as we paddled by. We could see that teams adopted different strategies here, so right from the start it became nearly impossible to tell who was in the lead during the race.

We were one of the first teams off the 12km paddle section which ended with teams having to designate one or more team members to traverse the boats to the opposite shore of the transition area and them swim back across the river (about 50 metres). James was “voluntold” for this task and paddled the attached canoes across and swam back in the very cold water and the team headed on the trek section.

The first portion of the trek was mainly uphill, ending at a 100 foot rappel site. The team was the second to arrive at the ropes, seconds behind one of the Rev 3 teams. A quick rappel had them regain the lead as they headed back up to the ridge and then worked their way down to the river below. The chosen route down turned somewhat sketchy and made for slow travel. Once down at the riverbed, the team expected easier travel, but due to being prohibited from crossing the river, we were forced to traverse along the steep rocky edge of the river for about a kilometre before finally getting to some flatter ground. The slow trekking along the river and difficulty finding a CP in this area allowed couple teams to get ahead of us at this point.

Once arrived at the next TA, we transitioned onto the bikes, opting to carry our running shoes for a 15+ km section that we planned to cover on foot. The first half of the bike/trek section had some roads, as well as a fair bit of technical trail riding. Again we worked our way up to a high point in the mountains where the trail seemed to get more technical. The plan was to ride in as far as we could and then begin trekking from there, since this section was basically one big loop from the start of the ridge. We rode a few hundred metres along the ridge and then decided to drop our bikes there and put on our running shoes. However, as we progressed further along the ridge on foot, we realized that the trail was rideable quite a bit further than where we had dropped our bikes. We saw bikes from the teams ahead of us further up the trail as we went along, which confirmed our thoughts about being able to ride further in. We arrived in the vicinity where we expected to find CP 16, only to spend about 30 minutes looking for it to no avail. We finally decided to move on and look for this CP while on the way back to our bikes at the end of the loop, since these CPs could be gotten in any order. We had little trouble finding the rest of the CPs to complete the loop, however it was a long steep climb back up to the ridge from the lowest CP in the section. Once back at the top and headed back to our bikes, we once again struggled to find CP 16, wasting another 15 minutes before stumbling upon it. After the race, we confirmed that, in fact, the CP was not in the right location – but all teams did manage to find it eventually.

From here we worked our way back to the start/finish, which acted as the final TA in the race. There was a word puzzle challenge to do here, which we guessed correctly on our first attempt.  We quickly refuelled and headed out on a final bike/trek o-course in the surrounding hills. The singletrack trails were flowy and relatively non-technical, however there was quite a bit of climbing to do in the area. We did a combination of biking, trekking, bushwhacking, and bikewhacking in this section. For the most part things went well, but we struggled to find a few CPs quickly and the bikewhacking and bushwhacking up hills was slow and difficult. There was a bonus CP in this section for which clues were given at 3 unspecified CPs in the section. After getting the 3 clues we made our way to where we expected to find the CP but couldn’t find it initially. Assuming we had incorrectly plotted the bonus CP, we searched the obvious features in the area, eventually finding the CP at a nearby high point. From here it was a quick ride to the finish line, crossing the line in under 16 hours. This was good enough for a 3^rd place finish in the co-ed 4-person division.

Overall the race went well, but the places where we struggled to find CPs cost us a fair bit of time. Combine this with the fact that it was an early season race (there’s still snow on the trails in Nat, James, and Kevin’s training grounds!) and the team (particularly Nat) is better-suited to multi-day expedition racing, we are pleased with our 3^rd place finish. The best part about finishing in 16 hours instead of 26 hours was that we were able to get some sleep before having to drive the 10 hours back home in time to work on Monday morning!

A huge thanks to our sponsors, whose gear and nutritional products were an immense help in the race. Our Osprey Rev18 and Rev24 packs were perfect for this style of racing, and the 2XU compression gear and Pearl Izumi cycling gear were excellent in these conditions.  We relied heavily on NUUN, StrongBars, and the Pacific Health Labs line of products (Accel Gels, Accelerade, and Endurox R4) for our nutrition during the race. James at not one, not two, but 3 Strongbars at once near the end of the race, after going a little too long without eating anything. Finally, since there’s still ice on our rivers and lakes at the moment, it was great to have a PaddleOne kayak ergometer to be able to get the paddling muscles ready to perform in this race.