Untamed New England Expedition race-10th overall

Back at another Untamed with James (Relentless) and John (threeputt) with new addition to the team Natalie (Frenchie). Check in, maps, all went fast with minimal checks, pre-plotted maps. A++ for Grant and team making this part of the race lead-up pain free. 

 

Race start was using some iffy maps for a prologue rogaine foot section. Kept a good pace with the lead teams and got off around 7th onto the boats. With Nat being a strong paddler we were able to get ahead of a few teams catching up to Columbia tied for 3rd into the run to Little Kineo. This was key as getting to the ropes was crucial since the backlog kept teams waiting hours. Even though we were fourth team in, we still waited near 20mins as only a few ropes were being used. Not sure why RD’s still put these things in races?!?!? 

 

Of the rappel we navigated to the closest road and ran back down to the canoes, paddled to Kineo Island obtaining two more CP’s, the last of which was a little tricky. Raidlight passed us during the run but then missed the last CP, asking us if we found it after we already had nabbed it… ughhh… uncomfortable… I played the ‘I don’t speak French’ card but unfortunately on this team that card doesn’t play well since Nat had already spoken French with them at the ropes and we eventually told them we found it back where it was. They shouldn’t have asked us but what can you do when asked… 

 

Back in the boats we paddled to the first TA which we reached in good time and were given some nice chili by Good To-Go sponsors. Transition out and onto the bikes where eventually Sweco catches and passes us through the night. The nav goes well but our pace isn’t very fast; perhaps we are still recovering from hammering the run/paddle for the first 8 hours. We hit the bike bushwhack and aren’t one of the fortunate ones who find a trail; we just whack for an hour or some; pretty miserable going. 

Eventually we pop out to see Clinique has also passed us as they found a good trail. We continue to move on the bike, albeit fairly slow and by the time we get near the Orienteering section at Gorman Chairback lodge John’s feeling rough. We re-strategize our order slightly so John can get some rest while Nat does the short/hard, James the long/easy, me the long/hard and pass over to John for short/easy at which point he’s feeling tip top again. We try to get some sleep but no one gets anything more than a few mins – we are still only 24 hours into the race. Pancakes and Kool-Aid are awesome. After we all finish our o-sections we make short order of the wood stacking and are off on the ‘monster’ bike again. 

 

We continue to ride along without any nav issues and make it to the (dreaded) Abenaki Lost World. We inflate our packrafts and immediately it’s apparent that John and I have not practiced our layout in our newly purchased $800US Alpacka. While we’re stumbling along the shore, we’re passed by Clinique and MadAthlete teams who blaze along with their $1500 Alpackas that have about twice the hull speed of ours. Eventually we settle into our uncomfortable positions while trying to manage the high winds on Third Roach Pond. The winds are brutal and we have to paddle straight into them at maybe 2km/hr. It’s painfully slow and sucks. We deflate and bushwhack after looking with no avail for the stream connecting Second and Third Roach Ponds. Back on water at Second Roach Pond and even more headwind. By the time we hit the CP on the lake Nat is near hypothermic and we make the decision to abandon the packrafts as we don’t feel safe in the high winds, cold water and no signs of a safety boat. We make for the south shore where we deflate and pack up while hiking the trail around the lake. It’s nice to be warm and hiking again but the time it takes transition isn’t pretty and we soon realize we probably should have just sucked it up and paddled the lake. We lose a lot of time here I suspect and we even flub the peninsula CP on Second Roach Pond as I assumed it was on the very end instead of the middle. O-store.ca passes us here and told us they just decided to run most of it vs packraft. 

We trek on and arrive at the final CP before the First Roach Pond crossing. It’s night and the wind is back up, it feels extremely unsafe again with no safety boats and us crashing into high waves. We eventually make the crossing and are happy to be done with the packrafting (for now). 

After taking a little while to change and eat we head out to start the big trek. It’s night number two so we decide we should take our first rest of the race. The temperature is cold, we can see our breath, feels like 5C or so. We cram into the ‘cozy’ tent, set the alarm for 1:45 time of sleep and roll around cold and uncomfortable. I think we all maybe got 20 minutes? Maybe an hour? Who knows but it wasn’t quality sleep. 

We are now on the big trek and hike up the first mountain taking all roads/trails to play it safe and manage the first one without any issues. Had a terrible route to the next CP taking the ridegeline instead of descending to the parallel trail, I have no idea why I marked that; stupid. It’s now daylight of Day 3 and we take the ridgeline to the trail and make our way to the second mountain top which ends up OK. One final mountain and we’re done, right? We are thinking about our free sleep at the rafting already, however, the last trek CP is ABSOLUTE SHIT, the worst I’ve experienced. About 4? 5? 6? Hours of painfully slow whacking through tightly packed spruce trees, ripping away at our skin, packs and clothing. We lose an hour trying to make sense of a flagged trail near the saddle near the summit praying to the Abenaki gods that this trail will take us to our CP but it just meanders around. When we finally are near the summit we run into a cameraman who was about to turn around to his car, frustrated and beaten by the bushwhack but he follows us up to the mountain CP (see us on the Untamed Youtube at 5mins into the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-yWb0lrLYM&list=U...) with John highlighting how lovely the last CP was. Like most teams we were without water for all of this section from the last mountain (maybe 8 hours). 

Thankfully there was a trail leading down out of the CP (it was glorious not to have to bushwhack down) and we slowly made our way back to the TA. We moved slow on this easy (but buggy) road trek, a section we probably should have ran but were feeling pretty beat down by the trek and very dehydrated and hungry. My feet were starting to blister as per usual even though I felt like I took good care of them. On the plus side we actually didn’t think many other teams would have fought that hard for the last CP; alas we underestimated our AR colleagues and learned we just maintained our position near 10th spot. Was demoralizing to hear how fast Benoit on o-store.ca did the trek in, less than half our time although we did sleep. 

When we got to the TA we learned the paddle was cancelled. Even though it seemed to be our strongest discipline I was happy to hear we’d be biking to the next CP. My chafed butt wasn’t enjoying though. Perhaps I should mtn bike a few times before doing an expedition race to get my ‘body’ adapted... Regardless it was much quicker and we arrived at the urban o-section in Greenville quickly. We did a run/walk for most of the section and were able to order a delicious meat-lovers pizza just before the shop closed. We washed it down with coke and ice-cream sandwiches are were off again to start the ascent up Moose Mountain range. We took a 5 minute nap on good trail then found a nice buggy marsh to do another 20-min nap; not very well executed. The climb up went well for us and eventually we made it down the other side to the ski area where the long descent was painful on our sore feet. 

At the ski lodge TA we plotted a few more CPs. I knew one these would not be as easy as it seemed because the last Untamed we did in 2010 Grant threw a knuckleball in for the last bike where the trails weren’t on the map or were not matching. After our best nap of the race - 20 mins on the side of the road in the glorious hot sun - we got the first CP on Indian Pond with ease so I figured the next one would be the tricky one, which it was. However, we played it relatively safe and didn’t try to force any routes, stuck to our bearings and make sure I knew exactly where we were on the map. It proved successful as we nailed the CP with relative ease and finally picked up our bike speed pacelining to the rafting put-in. 

 

The rafting was fun, a lot of big water and eventually some lesser class rapids which we guided on our own. At The Forks we transitioned to the final trek/packraft section. Like many others have reported, this section was a slog; the bugs were bad and the little trek just seemed to go on and on. Eventually we made it to the area where the CP was, descended down to the river and inflated our packrafts. Earlier we made the decision John and I would packraft on our own because fitting the both of us in the Alpacka just didn’t work well so John braved his $80 Canadian Tire Sevylor while I took the pimped Alpacka. Nat and James stayed in their NRS. We pushed off and were thrown into the rapids immediately. It was a white knuckle ride and we were trying to navigate while staying afloat. John was a rockstar in the Sevylor where he had to pull over after each rapid and dump his boat but was having a lot of fun. Meanwhile on the river it was carnage with hypothermic teams littered along the shoreline. We pulled over with MadAthlete to help ActiveSteve get warm at one point but had to leave (him with his able team) as fear of our teammates getting hypothermic was also a concern. As for the checkpoints - for some reason the CPs were hidden in the forest; personally not sure why as this was a packraft section and along the water would have been more appropriate. Each CP took several times getting out checking, etc as there wasn’t any distinguishable features to go off on the map. 
There was a portage featured along the map which we planned to take but no sign and apparently we went down the rapids of concern. No safety guides along the river either pointing out appropriate lines or helping stranded packrafters. Maybe I’m not as comfortable in whitewater as many but it just didn’t seem very safe and I was very happy to get out luckily just before sunset. I couldn’t believe while taking out I saw teams trekking up to the packraft put-in – at night!!?!? We took out a few kms from the take-out as we hoped to get warm running it in to the TA, however, I just got eaten alive by bugs by the side of the road while trying to change into warm clothes and fend off yet another bout of shivering and hyperthermia in the race. 

The last TA featured us biking up to a mountain top CP before going to the finish line. I set up a conservative route using a ‘black-line’ which at this point of the race could have been a trail, doubletrack or road; it didn’t seem consistent. But this one had a road name so I thought it was a safe bet for us. It wasn’t too bad although I think it was slower than the obvious recommended route on a brown line but I didn’t want to take any chances. Once at the final CP we descended down the brown trail line directly to the finish line which thankfully went the way marked on the map. We made it after 4 long tough days! 

It was just before midnight, I was praying the kitchen was still open – it was – apparently all night!!! BEST FINISH LINE SPOT EVER. We immediately ordered chili nachos, 4 lbs of wings and burger/fries for everyone while drinking awesome free beer and chatting with our fellow competitors. Eventually our eyes wouldn’t stay open any longer and we crashed to our cabin. 

Final results have us marked as 10th which is fair given the level of competition. We could have done a bit better had we managed the packrafting/big trek a bit better but also could have fared worse had we made any big nav mistakes. The team worked well together although the dynamic and usual strengths of our team changed; racing with a ‘couple’ (Nat and James) and not being as fast on our feet as usual (but being better paddlers was nice). 

Next up is Wilderness Traverse - can’t wait for such a short race!

Harper 

Racing Solo at the Raid Pulse 8 Hour Adventure Race

On May 17th, Nathalie, Steve and I (James) headed to Camp Air Eau Bois, near Lac-Ste-Marie, Quebec for the Raid Pulse 8 hour adventure race. We all chose to race solo for this race, giving each of us the chance to test our mettle and navigation skills. Nathalie and I had acquired new Spirit surfskis late in the fall, so this would be our first chance to test them out in a race. With the lingering cold through April and early May, we didn’t have as much practice as we had hoped for on the boats, and quite nervous about the risk of dumping into the very cold water - particularly once we found out the race would be starting on the water.

James on the first trek section

Once we saw the maps, Nathalie and I (and a few other teams) chose the unconventional option of portaging our boats a few hundred metres across a point of land to the first CP, while Steve chose to paddle to the CP with the rest of the teams. It was a tough climb to get up from the shoreline, so Nathalie and I agreed to help each other portage the kayaks to the other side. It seemed like a great plan, as we arrived on the other shoreline to see a bunch of teams still off in the distance approaching the CP we were heading to. Nathalie hopped into her boat and sped off, and I hopped in mine, ready to give chase. Unfortunately, I hadn’t realized that when I slipped on a mossy rock while portaging the boats, I had actually cracked the blade of my paddle at the heel. So when I took my first full paddle stroke on the right side, the blade of the paddle gave way, and I promptly rolled into the water - not the start I was hoping for... soaking wet and with a broken paddle! My only option was to hop back in the boat and paddle exclusively on the left side, using the rudder to keep me straight. 

As I arrived at the next CP, I was extremely lucky to see a familiar face - a fellow athlete who wasn’t racing and had paddled in to the next CP - who saved my race by offering me his paddle. What a relief! The rest of the paddling, which included both mandatory and optional “advanced” trekking CPs, went relatively smoothly. I arrived on shore to see a number of boats, but since not all of the CPs were mandatory, it was tough to know one’s actual ranking in the race. After a quick transition and a slightly tricky “marked trail” section over a big hill, I was off on the first bike leg. Overall, the biking was a lot of fun, particularly thanks to our new Cannondale F29 Carbon 3 bikes, which both Nathalie and I are loving! There was a great mix of gravel roads, trails, mud, and even a fair bit of bike whacking too! I had a few struggles with the navigation at a few points, but eventually managed to find my way. I was really doubting my navigation when I lost the overgrown trail as we approached the first bike drop, but after a couple hundred metres of bike whacking, I came out on the road - very relieved!

Steve hammering toward the finish line

The next trek was the crux of the race for me. I figured it would be some of the tougher navigation and, as such, would be my biggest test of the day. I wasn’t sure if the course was clearable at this point, but I decided I would try to get all of the CPs in this trek section and deal with the potential fallout afterwards. I opted to start with the simplest navigation - straight up to summit of a huge hill - the highest CP of the day, and what looked like the highest peak in the area. This was a real grind for me, as I was trying to push the pace, knowing that if my navigation was poor on the rest of this section, at least I could make up some time here. The view from the top was amazing! Back down I went and off to try and find the rest of the CPs. I was very happy with my navigation through this section, not having made any major errors and having corrected my mistakes fairly quickly. 

I transitioned back onto the last bike section as quickly as I could and tried to put down the hammer. Around this time, it occurred to me that I had forgotten to do something very important up to this point in the race... eat! I had chugged a Boost and gulped as much Nuun as I could at the 2 transitions, but otherwise was so focused on the map and not making big mistakes, that it hadn’t occurred to me to eat. Now I was starting to feel the effects. So I began the challenging task of trying to eat while biking on some pretty gnarly trails. I managed to finally get a Fruit2 and a granola bar into me and chased it with as much Nuun as I could ingest. Again, I enjoyed the trails and the different challenges, but clearly the lack of nutrition was catching up to me. At this point I wasn’t sure what position I was in, but from the information I had, it appeared to be 2nd place, so I pushed as hard as I could to try and catch the leaders, with no clue how far they were ahead of me. At one intersection, I stopped to look at my map and saw a team about 50 metres down what I suspected was the wrong trail. But I didn’t know if this was the lead team or if it was a team that had skipped some CPs. I assumed it was the latter and tried to keep up the pace as much as I could.

James discussing the race with race director Thierry Raymond

I rolled into the manned marshaling point where we could either head for the finish line, or be shown a map with 2 additional advanced CPs to get on the bike before finishing. I opted for the advanced CPs after being told that I was in the lead at that point. I headed off, nearly out of water and feeling really wiped. Not far up the road, I made an error that had me climbing for about 500m in the wrong direction. Coming back to the intersection, I now had no idea if I had been passed by any teams, which meant having to assume I was once again chasing a team in front of me. I chomped on a Fruit3 bar (the new "revved up" version of the Fruit2 bars) and drank the last of my water and headed down what I hoped was the right trail to the final 2 CPs and the Finish. The Fruit3 bar made a huge difference and I finally started to get some energy back. The navigation was a little tricky in a few spots, so I was extremely relieved upon seeing each of the 2 remaining CPs. The final downhill section of trail was sketchy, but super fun. I crossed the finish line and received confirmation that I had indeed won the race. What a great surprise!

Speaking with Nathalie and Steve after the race, it sounds like they both had a great day, with a few challenges mixed in as well. Steve finished in 3rd place of the solo male category. Nathalie was the lone solo female in the race, and therefore got to race against the boys. Even still, she managed to finish in 4th place of all of the solos. She says that she found the bushwhacking tough - and there was a lot of it! But the one time I did see her in the bushwhacking, she was chest deep crossing a swamp - now that’s hardcore!

Once again, we all agreed that the Osprey Rev18 backpacks, Swiftwick socks, and 2XU clothing were awesome! It was also great to sport our new North Face clothing branded with the X:act Nutrition and Endurance Aventure logos. Thanks to all of our sponsors for their support!

Nathalie celebrating her 4th place solo finish

Steve relishing his 3rd place solo finish

James at the finish line - happy to be done!

Osprey Sponsorship!

We will be ready to go and well-equipped thanks to Osprey, who have graciously provided us with 18L Rev backpacks, 33L Talon backpacks, Tempest (Women's) 20L and 30L packs for Nathalie, large travel duffels, pack covers, and extra water bladders. Can't wait to put these to good use!