Agonically Challenged

A fleeting thought...

2009-07-13T20:24:00.002-04:00

6:30pm Saturday July 11th Grafton Notch Climbing Access Parking Lot.

Somewhere deep Inside Jonathan's mind. "Hmmm..It's nice and warm here. We've just finished the climb section and have a bike leg and a short trek left to complete this race and maybe finish on the podium. We've been awake for all but a few minutes of the last 60 hours. Maybe we should sleep for an hour now. Might avoid a complete meltdown and a long night of riding on the crazy train."

Out of Jon's mouth: "You guys about ready to go?"

Somewhere in the forest: "ALL ABOARD!!!!! HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I have some great stories about that last night. The laughs will be a good substitute for a what could have been a great result. A longer post later this week for sure.....

26 Hours to go....

2009-07-08T10:00:00.002-04:00

.....my gear box is packed and the 10-day weather forecast seems to have locked in on a sunny 1st half of Untamed New England. After that it's just a question of "how much" rain not "if".

Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I recall a never ending bike slog up a mountain haul road on a cool rainy night. Too cold to sleep more than a few minutes. Too late in the race to stop and sleep to end the assault of the sleepmonsters. Riders desperately sprinting ahead and collapsing on the ground for 60-second naps. Brief respites ended by the approaching wheels and lights of their teammates.

If you see some crazy motions on the live race tracking for the GOALS ARA team this Saturday night.....you'll know what's going on.... :)

But it's all worth how good you feel when you reach the finish line. That's pure joy and relief you see below.

Juuuust a bit outside!!

2009-06-30T13:11:00.011-04:00

I think that would have been the call by Bob Uecker if he had been broadcasting my paintball challenge shooting at this past weekend's Cradle of Liberty. Yeah, I missed the milk jug with 85% of my shots and the three that did hit barely made the thing wiggle.

Not knocking over the target resulted in ten minutes of penalty box time that dropped GOALS ARA (Bruce Wong, Tracey Robertson and me) from an early lead. GOALS ARA 2 (Chris Bartges, Tamela Lynch and Brent Freedland) were next to the firing line. They (Tamela) knocked their jug over and proceeded to lead out the remainder of the opening paddle section. Miraculously nobody else showed up to fire while we served the remaining sentence and we re-entered the water in 2nd place.

Does this sound fun? Paintball shooting in the middle of an adventure race? It sure was and was just a small touch on what amounted to a truly interesting and tough course laid out by Marc Bress, Steve Herzog and Bill Gibbons. I always thought a little summer biathlon would be a fun element for AR and they found a way to make it happen.

The day shaped up as a battle royale between four teams at the front, Nature's Cure, the two GOALS ARA squads and the Sith Lords of northeast adventure racing, Team EMS. Just kidding, they're awesome and fun part of the AR family too. EMS did do the group a little favor by capsizing in some decent whitewater during the opening canoe section. But their awesome team speed slowly pulled them back up to the front of the pack. 13 hours into the race they reached the orienteering course with a slight time lead over Nature's Cure and my crew.

GOALS ARA 2 made a fairly time consuming mistake on the way to the orienteering course by riding to a point that teams were supposed to approach on foot from a designated bike drop. They had to report to the bike drop and run back out to the manned CP in order to get back on course. To be honest, Jay Zech probably saved my ass from making the exact same mistake. The whole day had been plot-on-the-fly and I was planning the route from the ropes section to the orienteering course when he asked to compare route selection with me. Jay pointed out the note in the next CP description that indicated the mandatory bike drop. I hope I would have caught the note on my own but I'm giving Jay credit for saving my bacon on that one.

Navigation for most of the day was tough and the course was rugged. Rough trails and demanding control placement combined to take the challenge up a bit. The course was rogaine style with everything having point values and no points being mandatory so it felt OK to have tough placements. By tough I mean that many of the controls were set so that they were near but not in an obvious feature. You'd have to locate the obvious feature (without the big shiny orange and white flag confirming it for you) and then have plotted the point precisely from the UTMs in order to know how far away it was and in what direction. Generally speaking that was "behind a bush 30-50 meters thataway".

At night when things started to shake out a bit one thing became obvious too. Cutting distance by bushwhacking to a trail that you were intending to use as a handrail was a bit like playing Russian roulette. We attempted this twice and both times walked right over top the faded overgrown trails. I had been hoping to make serious hay in this section and ended up losing us time adapting to the realities of limited available handrails and hard bushwhacks that forced the nav towards running around on the bad trails in order to have hope of staying on them. Towards the end though we decided to bail out earlier than the suggested cutoff in order to attack the ensuing bike rogaine. It seemed like the time spent pedalling in the dark on easily navigable roads towards another pile of potential points was a more efficient use of time.

That was before visiting the scene of my biggest mistake on the foot orienteering. On the way back in to the TA we stopped to look for CP D along the main road in. Where I had misplotted it. I had laid the grid card one kilometer south of the correct box while trying to speed through the earlier transition. We looked around a bit (frustrated that it seemd so easy and close and unable to locate it just off road). We probably dumped 20 minutes. All told with my shooting and a misplot I had thrown 30 minutes away on the day. Not a recommendable strategy if you'd like to win a race against one of the best teams out there.

The move to attack the bike section and skipping a short foot section along the way to the bike orienteering zone paid off as we had exited the foot orienteering zone with only the fourth most points. (we didn't know that at the time but that's the blog update on CPTracker). We rallied substantially making good use of our extra biking time. But there weren't enough points available on the way in for us to pull out the win. We nearly cleared the bike orienteering leaving only one CP. And even with that one (CPW) we were "in the area" but didn't see it behind the row of hedges that obscured it from the nearby trail bend feature. I swear I must have been on top of it (I had the thorns in my forearms from the wade into the shrubs) but we bailed out in order to make certain we came in before the 12:30pm cutoff. Even if we had dug that one out it would have been EMS 855 and GOALS ARA 845. As it was we clocked in with 800 followed by Nature's cure at 750 and GOALS ARA 2 with 655. EMS had once again turned on the jets and flown through the final bike orienteering nabbing all but one CP as well.

Congrats to all. Cradle was an awesome warmup for Untamed New England for which I am now eagerly packing.....

Enjoy the live tracking and I hope to have a decent story to tell at the end.

Cradle of Liberty

2009-06-24T13:58:00.002-04:00

I plan to work hard this weekend at the Cradle of Liberty which you can follow here. Now that it is in writing there's no going back. :)

Spring was relaxed I don't feel like I ever pushed overwhelmingly beyond my physical limit. Except one good brick where the prior day's stomach bug left me a little "empty" before the start. You can almost see the implosion after CP14 in my splits.

Anyhow, I've been doing most of my posting recently at the Untamed site in preparation for the big race. Drop by there if you are looking for an update, although I'll try to pump out a Cradle Race here next week or over July 4th weekend.

The Longest Day/Tubing Fail

2009-06-09T09:53:00.007-04:00

There's no video from this past weekend's "tubing incident" for Team GOALS ARA available to post to You Tube or fail.org. Too bad, I would have like to have seen it, unfortunately I was busy being swept down stream by the torrent.

It actually was kind of fun but tubing whitewater had a definite George Jetson feel. As in: "Jane!!! Get me off of this crazy thing!!!!" Bruce was yelling at me to stop shortly after the initial put-in and it took a good quarter mile to find placid enough water to eddy out.

There is no video but there is this photo:

Thanks for spelling it out for me Denise, I was a tiny bit of a loser for calling it a day after we skipped the tube section. There were some pressing family items that I felt my attending to outweighed finishing a short course. But.....

I'm a really big loser when I read this part of Abby's race report:

"....I would be racing with Bruce, Jon, and Keith, and Brent and Chris - the fastest on their feet - could attempt to take on national champions EMS. I knew that this wouldn't be quite the no-pressure day I'd anticipated, but I was excited for the opportunity to race with such seasoned pros..."

Does a "seasoned pro" (and team navigator) bail to let his teammates do a night bushwack on their own?

But earlier still I could have done a better job trying to coach up my teammate on how to succeed in the water from the outset. I launched without really giving a download of what I was going to do in the tube. The #1 thing being that I saw the hazards near the launch and intentionally drove hard up and across river with my paddle to clear the first strainers. It wasn't all that effective (round and 36 inches long isn't a great hull shape) but it was good enough to get into the relatively easy center channel.

Sure, I'll be fresh and raring to go for Cradle of Liberty in a couple weeks. My training has picked back up this week without skipping a beat. Something that wouldn't have happened if I slugged out the next 15 hours of race time. But sometimes the opportunity isn't obvious in the immediate moment of decision and I think I may have missed something this past weekend.

Nine months may tell though. :-)

May 31st Training event!!???

2009-05-27T12:58:00.005-04:00

First subject: I just looked at the DVOA schedule and realized this Sunday's event is at Fort Washington Park NOT Washington Crossing State Park.

Damn good thing I checked because I had been planning on driving over to NJ this weekend for a Red course run.

Now the implication of Fort Washington is that a brick from Casa Baby Momma becomes possible. With or without single track in the woods of Wissahickon Park. I'd guestimate the bike ride out there at ~12 miles just based on in being a hair past the top of Wissahickon Park.

Anybody in? Send e-mail.

Second subject: A week of "Mapsturbation" leads me to the conclusion that Mark and I didn't do the best job of route selection at the North American Rogaine Championships. In effect we set ourselves up to swim when we tried to make a big loop out of the west side. I think the following sequence would have been better:

32,31,53,77,86,57,75,85,76,58,87,88,79,59,89,78,66,43,Hash
followed by
40,71,30,51,90,50,61,60,80,90,81,62,82,64,46,72,42,41,33,20,35,Hash

Plus or minus a bit at the end to make deadline time. But I think that opening sequence would have been much better and would have eliminated the need to swim.

Get Wet!

2009-05-14T12:28:00.017-04:00

Just came back from another "casually inspired" rogaine. This time the North American Championships in Arizona. Beautiful and unexpected is my best description for the terrain on the Mogollon (mug-ee-own) plateau. Pine forests and subtle re-entrants weren't the first things that pop to my mind when Mark Lattanzi sent out an "anybody interested in a 24-hour rogaine in Arizona" e-mail a few months back. But sure enough that was what was there when we reached the race site on Saturday morning.

Rogaines have some natural benefits versus adventure racing in terms of attitude and preparation. Most noticable was the mandatory gear list:

Compass

Whistle

Check, had those in my carry-on bag. Along with shorts, two shirts, two pairs of socks, arm warmers, leg warmers, a map case, a small pack and a couple bladders. I wanted to bring my Petzl Absorbica, my snake bite extractor and bunch of other AR "mandatory items" collecting dust in my basement. These items and I have been doing our best over the years to keep the airline industry afloat by paying thousands in overweight baggage fees. (For my bags not me). Hauling tons of un- or barely-used gear to far flung destinations had become a right of summer. But no such stimulus this time. I felt almost guilty walking through security with my one small bag.

With no piles of gear to sort or dozens of points to plot the night before Mark and I focused on optimal preparation for the day ahead. We drank beer, ate mexican food and went to a 7:15 showing of Star Trek. "Casually inspired".

My review of the movie: Interesting science fiction modification of the time-space continuum. As a result: This Kirk isn't exactly the old Kirk (although he still can't get enough of the green space alien honeys). This Spock isn't exactly the old Spock (a little more Kirk in him so to speak). Captain Pike....once again....doomed to disfigurement but a little better off than the original TV series. And so the franchise may be set up for a revitalized future. As long as they don't run off and save the whale again.

Pre-race meeting lasted about 2-minutes. We did not have to prove that we knew how to take a bearing with a compass. We did not have to show our thermal undies. It's almost like we were responsible adults willing to assume the risks of going out into the woods to particpate in a sport. Very interesting concept.

Anyhow, I digress. Mark and I thought we had a decent plan heading out to what we felt was the more point dense NW corner of the map to accumulate controls. We decided to work one loop couterclockwise one the west side. Come back through the hash house for food a change of socks and then work clockwise on the east side until time dictated a return. Looked nice on paper and we started out executing decently enough but eventually we made a really fun mistake.

Working out the course we had discussed running around the North end of Chevelon Lake from CP90 to CP75. When we were out in the field and it was moderately hot we decided "what the hell, let's just swim across the lake". If we had dry bags this would have been fine but all we had were a bunch of ziplocs. I triple bagged my cellphone and Mark secured the punch card and off we went. Oddly my maps stayed bone dry in an unsealed plastic bag (standard orienteering map bag) that I rolled-up a buch of times. All of my chips and candies that were in ziplocs soaked through on the journey across. Even my breakfast bars (in commercial wrappers) managed to leak. The swim saved time but trashed most of my food and a good chunk of Mark's. As time pressed on I did managed to choke down the candies and bars but the chips were a lost cause.

We modified plan a little and started working the west side and floor of the canyon for points but opted out of a trip to Bar Draw. We knew we'd run out of food long before initially planned and thought this best. We could always attack the east side longer than planned. But the minor adaptations weren't going to be enough. When we reached CP89 I was out of food and getting a good dose of that over-hungry nausea feeling. Mark was running low on food too so we took the most direct return route we could identify. Unfortunately this required three hours a couple canyon climbs and descents and yielded only one checkpoint. Bummer too because I we had scored fairly well to that point (we had been generating 100+ points per hour through the first 10 or 11 hours).

Back at the hash house I slammed a couple bowls of beef stew, a banana, some cookies, coffee and hot chocolate. By the end of the feed frenzy I could have jumped back on my feet. Calories cure many ails. However, Mark was happy to sack out in the car for another 45 minutes so we did. We knew the return for food had crushed any possibility of a top result so we focused on getting good training out of it after the break.

Our morning loop was clockwise on the central portion of the east side of the map. Points on the Northeast and Southeast corners were a good haul away and we wanted to avoid any long runs to return on time. Instead we focused on nearby points in the center of the map only. With the pressure off we got a little sloppy (entering the wrong re-entrant a couple times, walking some sloppy bearings resulting in larger intentional errors to handrail into controls on). Nothing horrible and we sorted those mistakes quickly enough when terrain and map didn't match up. We hit every point we intended, it just took us a little longer at times. Coming into the finish we had ample time to spare (a good hour before cutoff), we easily could have grabbed a few more close by controls but a good breakfast of sandwiches, coffee and chicken chili was waiting at the hash house.

Post-game analysis: We probably should have run around the north rim of the canyon as initially planned. But the swim from CP90 to CP75 was way more fun. Possibly even brilliant if we had a good dry bag. My clothes were dry again two controls later. On the way from CP86 to CP77 we should have picked up CP53 as an in-and-out. It was on the floor of the macro canyon. We had planned to pick it up later but I think it would have made more sense then. We finished 11th out of 25 teams in the open division of the 24 hour event. Or 13th overall out of about 40 some teams as a couple vet teams (which technically we could have been) came in ahead of us. Nothing exciting. Could have easily been better. But we had a great time.

The map is below, click to expand. The start/finish/hash triangle is near the center.

Our route: 40,71,30,51,61,80,60,50,90,75,57,86,77,78,88,87,79,59,89,43,HASH
20,33,41,42,64,72,46,65,45,67,54,44,34,35,HASH

Maybe AR is Dead....

2009-03-30T15:56:00.008-04:00

....but on the plus side. Rogaines are alive and kicking.

Since my last post I've done two things: CNYO's Snowgaine and NYARA's Fool's Rogaine. And before I set foot onto an actual Adventure Race course this year I will have participated in yet another. Mark (Livin' Everybody's AR Slacker Lifestyle Dream/Fantasy Life) Lattanzi and I will be flying out to Arizona to run the North American Rogaining Championships. It's Northeast of Phoenix so hopefully none of those border patrolling volunteers will mistake us for interloping illegals and call us in to local law enforcement while we're running around in the dark. I'd hate to have to drop controls as a result of some quality "face in the dirt now!!!!" time. :)

Snowgaine Highlights:

1.) We played conservatively both days and dropped two controls. Bruce, Tracey and I really didn't want to chance a murderously difficult dash to the finish. All three of us sheepishly admitted to "less than midseason" fitness levels in the days before the race. OK, they were in "less than midseason" shape. I'm in my usual beer drinking, video game playing, two good workouts and two bad workouts per week shape. Whatever that is....

2.) It was good enough to hold off GOALS ARA II (aka Youth and Speed) with our "Age and Treachery" for first place in the Coed category and earn this sweet trophy.

3.) It was bad enough to get our butts kicked by the boys from EMS (shocker!!) and a whole herd of Canadian women (the Salomon Bobkittens). Who all cleared the full course both days. Congrats to all. I think we could have done it but I would have felt really, really awful afterwards from overstretching.

4.) Is it "Snowgaine" if one of the racers (Mr. Joe Brautigam) does both days in a pair of shorts? It was warm weekend that featured some rain at the tail end of day one but quite comfortable. Highly unusual for the event. Snow coverage ranged from none to post-holing hip deep. I forgot to ask if Joe had to break trail in any of those deep spots. I get a chill just thinking about the idea.

Fool's Rogaine Highlights:

1.) Baby Momma and I cleared the course to wion the team competition. A small assortment of solo guys did so too and came in faster than we did.

2.) We're still awaiting a sweet trophy from NYARA. Denise tells me it's going to be a long wait. NYARA really is a second rate organization that let's any old ass clown who thinks he can read a topo sit on it's Board. Sad.

3.) We were going to obey the same strategy of not murdering ourselves as previously adopted iat Snowgaine. Unfortunately, I did a really bad job of estimating Sue's foot speed through the woods late in the day and nearly blew it. She can bury me on pavement but somehow I float/lumber through the woods more readily. We literally finished with 20 seconds to spare after working having to work extra hard on the final ride into the finish line. Being a bad husband/teammate I failed to bring a tow system for my bike. But Sue now has the accomplished feeling of having it done all on her own. Author's Note: If I'm dead or missing in the next week or so this might be the clue the investigators need. ;)

4.) Alan Young designed a fiendishly interesting course. Hats off to him. Two sections of foot work joined by a 4-5 mile bike ride on road. The northern section near the start/finish had 14 controls of which you could only punch 5. The objective was to maximize your score but only learned the point value of a control by visiting it. If you punched more than 5 the additional control values were subtracted. South section was more of the same but with 6 controls and only 2 punches allowed.

Adventure Racing isn't dead

2009-02-11T10:54:00.009-05:00

Some good reading at National Geographic Adventure this month. Including some positive statements about the growth of the sport. If you pick up a copy from the news stand you'll even get a handy chart that outlines some of the big events of the year. Primal Quest Badlands is of course the big one but just a notch down the difficulty rating there's a little race in New York State.

You'd never know it by the tone of the discussion on the Trailblazer board though. Jeez, one little race gets cancelled and it's all falling apart. ;)

Here's a hint (or at least my two cents) as to why CPZero's race died this year. It might be the economy too. But that has nothing to do with why I didn't sign up. And maybe a little something to do with the motivations of some other AR vagabonds.

Also, don't confuse matters though. This isn't schadenfreude. I'm solidly in the "Long live the CPTracker Series" camp. It's a kick ass idea to have merit-based not attendance-based rankings. And it is definitely a factor in choosing events to fill a schedule.

Why I think it died:

Counting back to NGAR in 2003 and including 2008 USARA Nationals the same relatively small geographical location has hosted a half-dozen large scale 30-hour races. The course isn't always the same. But there has been some looping over the years. And even if it had shifted every year there's just so many times I want to go to the same general area: Move it to North Carolina, move it to Alabama, just move it far enough that it feels new and interesting. Thanks to NGAR I now know who Benton MacKaye is and why the eponymous trail is there near the head of the AT. Maybe there's something just as interesting 300 or 400 miles away. :)
Diminished Calendar advantage. NGAR was a January race. For those from colder climates this represented the opportunity to stretch the legs in warmer weather during the off months. Sure it was -4F at the start line in 2003 but hey, it was -13F when I strapped the canoe on top of my truck to start the drive down from NJ. :) By the time you get to March there are a sprinkle of northern events (including my all time favorite Snowgaine) available. Same weekend this year GMARA has the Frigid Infliction, Infiterra Sports has March Madness, etc...

Swamp Stomp is great example of how to do this well. I've flown to Florida 3 or 4 times (it's sad, I lost track) and probably will again when it comes back as a full event. The event is in February and that's a huge calendar advatage to Florida. The event moves around and has some unique navigation challenges (aerial/satellite photo based maps versus standard topo hill, valley, spur and re-entrant fun).

This will sound pissy but there are better course designers. The gang at Swamp Stomp, The guys at Infiterra, the Planet Adventure crew, Chris Caul, Rodney and Amy at NYARA, etc... I've seen a good number of people do a better job of planning the timelines and giving interesting fare without demanding more precision than the maps permit. NGAR 2005 was won almost by accident when most of the front of the field blundered off into a foot orienteering section that was too long and missed a cutoff later in the race. You can say it was the racers' fault for not estimating times well. But then again they had heard a winning time quoted at the prerace for a full course finish that was significantly shorter than the total time. You either know that people will have to make strategic choices or you don't. But if you communicate something then you should be accurate in that regard. I think that's an important section of the report card. It's not as important as having CPs in the right location but it's a fine point (at least for me). Call it a B+ but it's definitely not an A (nor is it an F).

And, revisiting the design, it's only a 30-hour race. Solve the logistics and eliminate the need for a support crew. There's only so many times a vet racer can beg, bribe or sucker friends, family and others into chasing their smelly butt around. And I, for one, am saving it for longer events.

Anyhow, racing season is coming soon. I'm looking forward to seeing the tribe out there again. Yes, I am officially unretiring. Brett Favre, eat your heart out.

Nouveau Broke as Hell

2009-01-27T15:51:00.007-05:00

My latest AR posting is over at the Untamed New England site.

Meanwhile here's my other musings.....

You just can't help but read a new story every day about the recent wave of Ponzi Schemers and TARP receivers struggling with their abrupt status change. Their companies used to be blue chips with solid balance sheets and steady earnings to fund questionable purchases. Individually some have plummeted from being ultra wealthy to flat broke and (occasionally) really bad at faking their own suicide in order to avoid prosecution.

Nouveau Broke as Hell is the New Nouveau Riche. And isn't it funny how they are struggling with it?

A few facts for the Nouveau Broke as Hell as they struggle to adapt:

Broke as hell doesn't fly in corporate jets (exception: Donald Trump)

Broke as hell doesn't hire fancy attorneys (hey Mr. Forte, I'm sure your clients and the boys in the cell block have lots of ideas about how you can earn some $$$ for attorney fees)

Broke as hell doesn't deserve a bonus with my tax dollars. (Hey SEC, there's this thing called fiduciary responsibility and somehow I don't think that includes handing a company's last dollars, or first bailout dollars, to the management team. Then again the SEC couldn't figure out that Bernie Madoff wasn't actually investing any money. Why would anyone hope they could pursue something less concrete?)

Broke as hell is happy just to have a roof and a pot to piss in (hint: the toilet doesn't need to cost $35 G's).

Secret no more.....

2009-01-13T10:05:00.002-05:00

Sheesh.... I've been ready to explode ever since Grant let me know that the following was in the works. But finally, the announcement is ready and without further delay here's his press release...

I'm excited to share this news with you . . . the Untamed New England Adventure Race is now an AR World Series event and a qualifier for the Adventure Race World Championship!

The AR World Series is a circuit of nine premiere adventure races creating a 12 month calendar of exceptional events around the world. A world champion will be crowned at the 2009 Adventure Racing World Championship in Portugal in December, and podium finishers at Untamed New England will qualify for this Championship race.

It's been years since a race in the the United States has earned this honour, and for 2009 our race will be the only qualifier in all of North America. This is a testament to the hard work of our staff and volunteers, the support of our sponsors through the years, and the dedication of our racers. We are excited to take Untamed New England to the next level of adventure racing . . . as a qualifier for the World Championships! Let me share a few additional facts with you about Untamed New England:

4-person coed teams will be in contention for three World Championship qualifying slots and over $10,000 in prizes relating to the World Championship and travel expenses in getting to/from Portugal for the race.
Every registered team will get a free room on Wednesday night, July 8th, at the Balsams Grand Resort Hotel in beautiful northern New Hampshire. As part of their "Elegance on the Edge" initiative, Untamed New England will be a showcase for the resort and the wild appeal of the region -- the resort is excited to host all the teams the night prior to the race.
The window for early registration will close on March 1st, 2009. After March 1st, the Untamed New England entrance fees will increase; I encourage you to register your team before March to get the best value.

There are press releases in the works and additional details to share, so stay tuned to the Untamed New England website for full details. You may also want to visit the Adventure Racing World Series website.

This is the culmination of lots of hard work, but there is still much to do. If you aren't able to race this event, but are interested in volunteering, come join us as we make this race a reality. Contact us for more information. Make the most of these Winter months and, of course, may your maps always be dry!

Grant Killian & the Untamed Adventure Staff

PS: Special bonus prize to anybody that can name the last qualifying race in North America and qualifying teams from that event.

Old School at Noon....

2008-12-04T20:54:00.003-05:00

Occasionally I miss small aspects of my life in New Jersey and working at AT&T.

Lunch time road trips to Pop's Barbecue Express were a major highlight. And they were made just that much better by competing classic rap and r&b shows on Hot 97 and whatever 105.1 was calling itself that week. Big Daddy Kane, some new jack swing and belly full of ribs. mmmmmBoy!

I was missing that as I ventured forth this lunch time from the Endo campus to grab some cold medicine at the local Acme. Just not the same thing.

A long time ago I promised to throw some classic tales of racing onto this blog. Nostalgia for some but perhaps something never read for others and worth the 15 minutes.

Today's fare: The 2003 Beast of the East.

Come on. Sing it with me peoples!

"D-N-F'd and it and feels so gooood!"

Why the hell am I so happy about a DNF you ask?

Because it was the best damn DNF ever. Just came back from Odyssey Adventure Racing's Beast of Transylvania. 3.5 days of mind bending pain, heat, rain, lightning, climbing, stench, sleep deprivation, bushwhacking and bike whacking asbsurdium. It just doesn't get ANY better. Don and his dedicated army put on the best damn events anywhere. The location was beautiful, the full course next to impossible and the event was staffed as always by the nicest buncharound.

The full challenge was "275" miles. 2 out of fifty teams managed to "do it all". 3 more managed to do all but a couple optional punchpoints, taking the prescribed time penalties but saving some miles on the feet and thorns in the ass (literally and figuratively). One other pair of hearty racers (good looking, strapping young lads) had a chance but to do it all but succumbed to a pair of bad feet and one of the best race hallucinations of all time.

Day One:

Start and finish was on the beautiful Schenk Job Corps campus just outside Brevard, NC. 7pm Thursday came. A couple quick laps on bike around the soccer pitch and the race was on. A ten mile ride that featured a mile of warmup. 7 miles to climb 1000 feet and do a little ridge riding then 2 miles of too short, too sweet descent. Dump the bikes, put on the running shoes, grab your poles and start trekking. 8 miles later and another 1500 feet higher was CP2 that signaled the start of Orienteering near "Graveyard Fields". Named after the dying hopes of AR teams that hoped to get all three optional points. Not an easy task. Night orienteering, in the fog, off trail. Ever try to find a narrow ridge in the dark? Better be able to walk a mean bearing if you want to. Ever pat a 40 foot tall tree on the head? You can if you try to bushwhack down a cliff. Once out of the punch point thorn eating contest it was time to run past the fish hatchery to the far side of Looking Glass Rock. Climb another 1500 feet and rappel 450 feet into the beautiful dawn. Looking Glass rock is that lovely dome-shaped rock featured on the Beast website. Kind of cool to walk up through the trees and suddenly be staring at such a large chunk of bald rock. Fun moment#1. Running back down the exact same road to the fish hatchery. But this time being able to mooch water and sausages from the now awake campers. I mooched the water. I was doubly impressed by the gang from Litespeed beng able to acquire some sort of cooked meat tube. Being locals they knew to send a runner towards the fish hatchery to pick up a cold can of coke. Breakfast of champions. Trek, run and climb another 800 feet. Jump on your bikes and jet off for a 12 mile screaming downhill (ok, mostly downhill) ride to your awaiting canoe. Pro cutoff for this point was originally 2pm. We were there and in the water by 12:30pm after running nearly every flat and down the past 18 hours. This was not going to be easy. Not wanting the majority of teams out of the PRO catergory before 24 hours was up race mangement relented a bit and extended the cutoff to 4pm. Fog had slowed the orienteering considerably for some so it was a fair decision to open the deadline a bit.

If you got in the water early though you had fun waiting ahead. Beast thunderstorm #1 featured hail, lightning and pouring rain. Some teams sought shelter other teams (consisting of good looking, strapping young lads who laugh in the face of danger) keep right on paddling. Besides, as I learned earlier this summer from a river sage everybody knows that the water is the low point and the safest place is the low point.

Now, if you're from Brevard or Rosman or some other place near the headwaters of the French Broad River, please don't be offended as I mean this in the nicest possible way. CLEAN UP THAT ABSOLUTE SHIT-HOLE OF A RIVER! Nasty peoples, I'm telling ya. It was like somebody went to Walmart, bought one of everything and then threw it in the river. Except for the chainsaw which they handed to their evil-bastard of a son who proceeded to fell every 5th tree into the 36mile stretch of river that we paddled. "More strainers junior! We need something big enough to catch the futon when I throw it in the river!" Everything but the chainsaw and the 6000 pound box of exlax used as cattle feed for the cows that had unfettered access to crap their brains out in the river. My condolences to the teams that turned boats over while paddling at night. I'm sure nothing you own will ever smell the same.

Six and a half hours was enough of this olfactory joy. Jeremy and Iexited the water happily. Ate a nice bowl of chicken and rice soup. Set the maps and prepared to ride off into night and over Jeter Mountain at the start of day 2 of racing.

Day Two:

When racing in the south there are a few things I accept as a given. One is that there will be dogs on the loose. And generally speaking they will appear at inopportune moments. You're always on bike. And they'll appear in front of you when you're going downhill, very fast in the middle of the night. Or they'll come charging toward your ankle from behind when you are grinding very slowly up some impossibly steep section. It's never good. So off we rode, the climb up Jeter Mountain was pleasant. The dogs were waiting at the top of the hill. Must have been out-of-towners because just as the little monster reached the edge of the property he stopped dead as if leashed. My faith was temporarily restored. Jeter Mountain Terrace gave us a beautiful moonlit night. It was easy to follow the land features as we rode. We bombed downhill into the fog bank. I heard 'em charging and barking but none of them made it in front. Another climb up CCC Camp Road led to some high excitement downhill riding. 20+ mph through fog on washed out road. We we're going for broke (-n shoulders) it seemed. I was doing my best to scream out the clear sides as we rocketed down. I ended up sounding like a drill-sergeant for a platoon of tripods "Left! Right! Middle! Right! Left! Stop!" I'm sure somebody in a nearby cabin was hiding their loved ones behind the couch and fetching a shotgun to fend off what could only be a Martian invasion.

Floodlights and a barking dog (what else) welcomed us to ACP4. A death march lay in wait. Estimates straight from the horse's mouth (co-course designer Joe Moerschbaecher) put the next leg at 15 to 20hours. "We'll do it in 12!" I pronounced. Clearly this moment of stupidity was the first indication of sleep deprivation and pending insanity. But we were blazing and this whole section was supposed to be on trail. How hard could that be?

CP personnel told us we were the 14th team to check out (unbeknownst to me 7 of those teams had been moved ahead after missing the paddle put in so we were really the 7th team out on the full course). We set off and quickly found the glow stick marking the first trailhead an unexpected and unique moment of kindness bestowed upon us by the race directors. Ascend to the ridge, find the Pink trail and enter "Satan's Gorge of Wet, Slimy 60 degree Slopes Full of PointyRocks State Park". Our task (in the dead of night) was to follow theLichen Color Blazed Trail to the Tree Bark Color Blazed Trail. Both trails were exceptional fun as they made random illogical turns up and down the sides of Standingstone(?) and Little Pinnacle Mountains. The game was this: I would barrel ahead until I rammed into an insurmountable object. "Hey Jeremy, is the trail back there?" Occassionally, the answer was yes. More often the answer was: "No,that must be the way". This system worked. We passed several clusters of teams heading down the Lichen Color trail. And then blew past several more teams looking for the head of the Tree Bark Color trail in the bottom of hell's pit.

We chugged on into the wee hours of the morning. Stopping for a couple sixty second power-nap/drool-festivals. The blazing improved and I'll admit to not thumbing the map. Don Mann heard that I wasn't paying attention to the map and quickly rushed his volunteer army into the woods to build a new trail. (I am not delusional!) Sure as the sun was rising in the east, we reached an intersection. No blazing. Crap! The catching feature (route 276) was west so we chose the west bound trail. This was not the trail that led to the CP but it was more direct to the road. But first, we had to wander through a development with cartoonishly large houses. I'm pretty sure they weren't hallucinations but they had me in doubt. Double-decker eight-car garage anybody? Nice thing was the State Park Boundary markers were clear and we were able to skirt the properties and get out to the road. We hiked down and in bend #1 there was a fellow setting up a roadside Apple Cider stand. Why we didn't stop to spend $$ is beyond me. The next bend had a fresh water spring (nice one that hada little stone grotto built around it and a nice pipe to dispense the water). We stopped, refilled and wagered as to what would be in the next bend (masseuse? pancake house?). Nope, just a minivan with sleeping CP personnel. They wrote our team name in the fourth space on the sheet. The first team had passed through only two hours ahead. I scratched my head a moment and asked "do you know if these teams are all official and if they got all the orienteering points?"Their response was that one team had skipped the paddle and that another team had missed two punch points (10 hours of penalty time we didn't have). It took a moment but my brain released a bolus feedingof adrenalin to my weary body. "Holy cow, we're in 2nd place! Let's get moving."

We scrambled off towards Raven Cliff Falls. Along the route we crossed Matthews Creek on a "bridge" consisting of two cables strung between two big trees. One for walking on. The other about chest high for hanging onto. That was fun. Raven Cliff Falls was beautiful in the mid-morning sunshine. The water cascading down acted like a giant cooling unit. I took a moment, stripped my clothes off and frolicked naked in the comforting mist. (OK, that's not true but if Team Gung Ho had been there then I would have, I promise.) Just after a cable bridge we stopped to refill water bottles in and as we did soloist Eric Turk passed by, producing a sonic boom.

Really the morning couldn't have been more fun. All this pleasantry was about to end. The Foot Hills Trail lay ahead. 16.5 million miles of Blue Blazed switchback induced nothingness. After several hours Jeremy became convinced we were travelling in a circle (I wrote a note in the dirt and suggested that we'd see it again if we were travelling in a circle. I began watching my compass obsessively (North, West, South, Southwest, North, West,Southeast, West). It was adding up to general Southwest movement but the meandering manner made me ponder a "damn it all, I'm going on a bearing" approach. Then I'd see the occasional cliff that we were skirting and resolve to continue the march. Midafternoon rolled in. Jeremy's feet (a blistered mess after the first trek section) were killing him. My dogs had started to burn a bit too (bruised but not blistered). Later they would be informally voted the prettiest feet in the competition by the good medical personnel at ACP5. We slowed a bit and reached an intersection of about seven trails (five of which had been hurriedly constructed by Don and his army of volunteers when he again heard that I wasn't thumbing the map). The direction of FHT was not immediately obvious. Salomon footprints in the dirt wandered here there and everywhere. But admittedly, with a little sleep this would have been far less confusing (as in, not confusing at all). We poked our way down a fewof the trails looking to pick up the blazing. Finally we sat to take a moment and see if the supplemental maps could be of any use. We had passed a USGS Mark for Dolves Mountain 25 minutes prior so I had a rough idea of where we were. Jeremy (who had been seeing lots of "people" on thetrail) informed me that there were hikers approaching. I asked him to have one of the "hikers" talk (believing them to be hallucinations). It was then I found out that Jeremy has damn powerful hallucinations. Because along came the most realistic Litespeed and Lost World Adventures hallucinations ever. They walked, talked and even had a corporal presence. Hey wait, they're real. With the power of many the correct trailhead was located. My moment on the map made me realize just how much further we had to go. Knowing how bad Jeremy's feet were I went into defensive mode on distance estimations. I was hoping that phrases like "it's going to be awhile" and "we're getting there" would go over better than "I know your feet are totally blown apart but I'm going to have to go ahead and ask you to march for another four hours". Go to Topozone.com and punch in Dolves Mountain in North Carolina. Locate Raven Cliff Falls a little North of due East and Rocky Bottom to the Southwest and note that it took 3hours or so to cover Raven Cliff to Dolves. Yeah.

Off marched the newly formed peloton. I was bonking pretty hard and struggled to stay near the back of the column but some gummi bears from Jeremy brought my blood sugar back up. Soon the front of the peloton absorbed Leatherman (sleeping trailside). And so there wewere. Saturday afternoon in a dead heat for first with Leatherman and LostWorld. V-max and Eric Turk were off the front but with significant time penalties in hand. Litespeed was in the column but with penalties too. How this had happened I have no idea.....

Day Three:

So far this story makes it seem like the race went pretty well. What gives? OK, so I haven't gotten to the DNF part yet. But hey, it was three days. And I had to justify why it was the best DNF ever.

So, we were alive on the pro course but starting approximately six hours after the originally designed cutoff, on zero sleep and a pair of bad feet. Off Jeremy and I rode into the fading light. Laurel Fork Gap was our target and where, according to the 1946 (photo revised in 1969) usgs quad we should find a four-way intersection and a virtual spider web of roads there after. Our instructions suggested travel over Diana Mtn and an eventual destination of route 100. Prior to the race I highlighted a westbound road out of Laurel Fork Gap that eventually met a road headed southeast up over the back of Diana Mtn. This road would eventually follow a ridge line, synch up with Laurel Creek and then spill onto 100.

Easy enough. Except when we arrived in Laurel Fork we found two roads instead of three. If there was a third it sure was hidden well. Or at least well enough that my addled senses didn't see it.

My guess is that in full daylight with some sleep it probably is there. So, which two roads were these? And more importantly can I fall asleep on a gravel road for 10 minutes? Yup, I can fall asleep on a gravel road for ten minutes. Probably the most comfortable gravel bed I've ever slept on.

It could have been longer but we were in a race. Unsure of what two roads we were looking at and unable to do any substantial terrain association at night in the fog we resolved to do a little recon work and then make a decision. Up thefirst hill we went trying to pedal on a road surface of three or four deep fist-sized rocks. Great surface if you're driving a truckin the winter. Lousy surface for pedaling a bike uphill. Road #1started west but shortly there after turned North. Not right. Rats! Back to the intersection and up the other road (same lovely to pedalroad surface). This one started out west but then turned more to the south. South was good. If I wasn't sure about which road I was on I at least knew that South was good. Route 100 ran into another paved road forming a funnel that we were inside. Hopefully it wouldn't come to walking due south through whatever but if it had to.....Snap!

Oh shit, the cleat plate in my shoe broke! Leaving my foot still clipped into my pedal. But unable to release because the cleat was still held in by one screw. Untie the shoe, extract the foot, breakout the tools, piss away valuable minutes. Undo the pedal so we can remove the shoe, effect a field repair, begin pedaling again. As we start off Jeremy said something to the effect: "Man, my waterbladder still tastes like the sports drink I was using on the last leg and it's making me sick." But he was good to go and so off we went. The road wound a bit and generally headed south and east (as much as I could watch my compass riding in the dark and fog on a gravel road). That's uh, not much.

Suddenly our road, the only road unless all the intersecting roads on the maps were disguised as trees, bends to the west and a gate pops up on the left. I scoured the map for a gated, south-bound road. Not a gate to be found on the map. What sat behind the gate didn't appear to be much. A couple tire tracks worn somewhat into the grassy bed of an old forest road. But the main road was now going west. We rode up the main road just a bit further. It began to climb and then I decided that rather than following the main road to some hoped-for eventual intersection with pavement that we should go back to the gated whisper of a road, ride it as south as it would take us and then bushwhack if we had to. I don't think I mentioned that bushwhack part while explaining my thesis to Jeremy. We were headed the right way and even if I had no clue about our precise location I was comfortable with our general direction. I am also, and I can't stress this enough, stupid.

Back to the gate and down the whisper of a road. South and down. Both good things but then....weeds. Big weeds, six feet tall if they were an inch. The whole way across the road..I could see the old tire track so into the bush I rode. The thorns hurt but there weren't many and I emerged into some clear space after a short ride-whack. Pedal a little more and then, more weeds. Repeat, over and over and over and over and over. Pull thorns from: face, forearm, shin, earlobe etc.... but continue riding. I am very stupid. Behind me I hear what sounds like Godzilla screeching at some other guy dressed in a ridiculous rubber outfit. Fortunately it turns out that it is only Jeremy dry-heaving. "Jer, you OK?" "Oh, yeah, it's just that sports drink taste." So, I gave Jeremy some fresh water and off we went. The weed riding continued and so did the occasional dry-heave. Then, full-scale puking arrived, at which point we decided it might be OK to take a break.

So this was bad. We're pretty wrung-out, Jeremy is puking and about all I know is: we went through a gate and are heading south on a weed infested road somewhere in South Carolina. Try radioing that in if you have to. So we decided now would be a good time for Jeremy to drink some clean water and sleep a bit. And I should figure out where on earth we were. I was pretty sure that we were on a small drainage leading to Laurel Creek at this point. But again. No definite evidence.

The following should convince you of my stupidity. Also, I can't stress this enough, don't try it the next time you're lost in the woods and sleep deprived. Down the trail I headed by myself leaving Jeremy with the packs and the radio. The little stream joined a bigger stream and the trail turned east. Down I went, bashing through more weeds, climbing over downed trees and then.....a gate. Followed by a house in a flat area, a right turn onto slightly better road with a big flat area on the left side of the road. Bingo, you're on route 100 at precisely the point you traced 60 hours earlier. I don't know exactly how but we were. OK, so if Jeremy needed help I could actually get it. So back up the trail Iwent. Over the downed trees. Through the weeds etc..."

Good news Jeremy! You slept for two hours! Bad news Jeremy! I know where we are, so you have to keep going on this stupid trail (much laughter)!" Jeremy felt much better though and so off we went. Until I fell asleep, while riding single track. Falling asleep while riding a bike on single track gives an appreciation for those really small time units known as nanoseconds. There really isn't anything that a person can get done start to finish in a nanosecond. Except that, that is how long you get to ride before crashing into a heap if you fall asleep while riding single track. But the ground felt good if only that I knew that I couldn't fall any further. And I was laying on my side, so cozy, ahhhhh. A laugh and off we went. More humor ensued when I briefly lost the trail that I had gone down once already. But we escape to the road just in time for the rain to show up. It started as a sprinkle. We tossed on our rain gear and pedaled off. We stopped to change maps and then we heard it.

It was a dull roar like a train approaching. But this train was a wall of water. A massive downpour that quickly rendered our lights useless. Pedaling at 4:30am with 1 foot of visibility was not high on my list of must do things. And I was losing the battle with the sleep demons. So I decided to take another 15 minute nap. Just off the side of the road I found a really big pine tree that broke up the rain and provided a high quality bed of pine needles. It was beautiful. I'm not kidding. Jeremy woke me up and we were off. The rain had just reduced from "open hydrant" to "biblical" when....HOLYCRAP.......loosedog!!! I slammed on my brakes and yanked the bike to the right. Narrowly missing a collision with 80 pounds of brown and white canine sogginess. And there he stood, no barking, snarling or frenzied chasing, our new sidekick, Dog.

He never introduced himself so I just named him Dog. Hey, you see if you can come up with something better after 30 minutes of sleep in 70 hours. I patted him on the head, told him he was a good dog and suggested he to go home. Dog enjoyed being scratched behind the ears but just wished that the scratcher would stop babbling at him in a foreign language. Jeremy informed me that Dog appeared to be a hunting dog let loose to find game. Dog had on some sort of radio collar that would help the owner locate him later. There would be no "sending Dog home". Dog was out working and as far as he was concerned we were a good catch.

So we took off again and Dog joined us keeping a nice 13 mph cadence through the flats. Dog fell behind as first light broke and a slight downhill appeared. But once we slowed on the ensuing climb Dog reeled us back in at his steady 13mph clip. How Dog had lived to meet us was beyond me though. First light brought traffic. Traffic of which Dog was blissfully unaware. He wove in front of a passing car. He played chicken with an oncoming truck. As sure as Jeremy was puking earlier I knew I'd be joining him if I had to watch Dog get turned into a pile of meat by an oncoming truck. Another descent appeared and we put the hammer down. Dog picked up his pace but couldn't match as we went past 20 and up to 30mph. The ensuing climb was completed out of the saddle in a big gear. And then it was down fast again. Doggone!

The rest of the ride to Lake Jocassee was uneventful. We arrived many hours after we were expected and many hours after the other teams that had squeezed through the Pro cutoff. But there was cold fried chicken. A whole bucket of the Colonel's finest. Courtesy of our excellent support crew (Jeremy's Mom, Dad and wife Dana had all signed on to follow our smelly butts around for the weekend). They did an awesome job and this was the crown jewel. Homer Simpson loves donuts. When I stop racing I will become the Homer Simpson of fried chicken. MMMMMMM....fried chicken. I plowed a half dozen pieces andwas psyched to paddle. The mission was to hit a couple of canoe-orienteering punch points on the shore of the lake and then exit the far side of the lake for a trek to the next acp. I love trekking with my kayak paddle and pfd. So much so that I would be singing about it later.

Orienteering in the daylight on a lake isn't all that hard. Whenthere's a solid headwind pushing chop at your canoe it gets a little harder. When a well-intentioned recreational boater takes the first punch point because it looks like "garbage" it's a little harder. Maybe it was a mean-spirited jerk but I was in a good mood. So that's what we assumed when we arrived at the very obvious first location and it was barren. We paddled up and down a bit and memorized everything in the area and decided to carry on. As we approached the second point the course officials for the lake showed up and asked us if we had taken the first punch point (we were the last team in this section so they thought we might be doing them a favor by cleaning up as we went). We all agreed that somebody else must have taken the point and since they had seen us in the general area that we would get credit. Punch point #2 was in-place. We turned about and paddled hard to the exit point. 5 hours on thewater in total. Best time to date. Too bad the rest of the race wasn't a fifty mile paddle. Then again, with the afternoon thunderstorm clouds approaching, out of the water seemed a goodplace to be.

Speedy paddle or not we had done quite a bit of damage to our pace the night before and were still trailing the rest of the Pro field by 5 hours. I looked ahead at the trek and estimated 8-10 hours on the route (which zigged and zagged) if we just trekked. Follow that with an ACP and then another 12 hours of biking, trekking and climbing to get to the finish line. The 8am Monday cutoff was 17 hours away so we had to improvise or miss the finish line.

Improvise it was. The route to the final ACP was supposed to head north on the Foot Hills Trail from Lake Jocassee near Laurel Fork Falls until you reached the Toxaway River. From there it was west to Bear Gap and then northeast on the Auger Hole trail. Why go west to head north and east? We weren't trying to win anymore. We thought it would be cool to get to the finish before everybody went to lunch the next day. We'd self-report any improvisation and leave it in the judge's hands. But first. FLASH!CRACK! BOOOOOM!!!!!!!!

This lightning storm was square on top of us. And yes we had hiked up from the lake onto a ridge line. Jeremy and I hunkered under a rock ledge for a moment and I gave him the low down of our precise location. We were in the middle of nowhere so moving seemed better than standing. And moving at a full 100 meter spread seemed the smartest thing to do. Why get two perfectly good people ruined by one lightning bolt? We'd get back together when it died down. Now the pre-Dog shower was something else. This was even harder and it sustained for a about an hour. I took my hat off. Let it fill with rain water over and over and drank that until sated. Why drain my water bladder when I'll just end up filling in a stream later?

We reached Toxaway Creek in just under two hours. Shortly after the lightning had pushed on. The rest of the scheduled trek would probably take about six more. Plan B went into effect. And it worked. We were by no means the first team to do this. Fresh Salomon shoe prints and trekking pole marks gave it away in the muddy spots. Three hours later we entered ACP7 much to surprise of the CP personnel and Dana (Jeremy's wife and the only member of our crew that was there). All had been informed that we were several more hours in the arriving. I explained just how to the CP folks. They nodded and we headed for our transition area. Oops, what transition area. The crew for Trek/NADS offered us some chairs though and soon after other support crews were handing us assorted food and other goodies. Night was falling but a few minutes later Jeremy's Mom and Dad pulled up and our transition was on......

The Big Finish:

I like writing multi-part stories. Particularly because it allows readers to make suggestions like the following e-mail:

"Um, Jon. You guys worked hard enough. I'm getting tired just reading the story. I'm gonna need you to go ahead and just drive back to the hotel, take a shower and go to sleep in the final part."

Thanks for the suggestion but despite the length of course in front of us and the lack of time on the clock Jeremy and I decided to press on. Jeremy had bounced back really well after the previous night's technicolor yawn session. Heck, he was giving me shoves as we pedaled uphill no more than two hours after waking up. And I'm stupid enoughto try 84 hours of racing without a REM cycle.

We left the ACP near Frozen Knob, taking SR 1139 north to Route 64 for my favorite adventure racing discipline. The hairy scary falling asleep on the bike while pedaling on a major road at night with traffic that thinks all roads should have nothing but high-banked left hand turns leg. It was only a couple miles but it couldn't end fast enough. One truck whizzed past and I heard "You guys rock!"shouted from the window. Jeremy, a little further ahead, interpreted the phrase as "Get the fuck off the road!" I'll leave up to the reader to decide but the smart money is on Jeremy's ears.

We turned off 64 and headed north through Quebec. (No, not that Quebec, the race was hard, not insane). The fog was solid on the back-roads and the falling asleep at the handlebars wasn't getting any better. But CP13 arrived. Another 10 minute nap was in order. And the fellow at the CP volunteered the inside of his vehicle for the location. I would have slept in the nearby West Fork of the French Broad at that point. Ahhh, sweet slumber…..beep! beep! beep!…. beep!beep! beep!…. beep! beep! beep!…. friggin' Suunto alarm.

Back to work. But first, a really sleep deprived exchange of conversation with our host. This isn't the actual conversation but imagine something like this:

Person A: "So where are you guys from?"
Person B : "Is there going to be ham on this next section?"
Person C: "I once ate a ham from Virginia"
Person A: "Oh you're from Virginia"
Person C: "Hey, do you have a TV?"
Person B: "That Gump sure is funny."
All together: "Thanks, see you later!"

Not all "variably paved" roads are created equal. According to the map legend we traveled north out of the TA on a "variably paved"road. This road was nicely covered in blacktop. According to the map there would also be a right turn through a gate onto another "variably paved" road that would lead east to route 215. Or we could continue north and a bit west until reaching SR 1325 another "variably paved" road. The route through the gate looked a little shorter so I chose that. Stupid, stupid, stupid. All the paved went towards SR1325 and we got the variably. If I had my wits about me I think I would have put us right back on the paved. Instead we headed up the dirt and into my delusion.

Now I'm going to try to give you a sense for this. But words may fail me. I'm sitting at a computer right now typing, my arm is resting on the desk and I know that because I can feel the weight of my body pressing the arm into the hard wooden surface. There's a plate with some pie crumbs on it and I still have a slightly sticky sweet taste in my mouth from the filling (mmm, blueberry, raspberry, strawberry pie). This is all very real. As we started up the dirt road it gradually broke down from rideable double track to hike-a-bike bomb track. At one point I was pushing my bike up the hill and then stopped and had the following conversation with myself. "Jeez, seems like I've been pushing this bike up this hill for forever and this really wasn't supposed to be that long of a section. I'm not really feeling any pain in my legs and I'm not breathing hard either. Oh crap, I think I'm dead. Oh man this sucks,I'm going to have to push this bike up this hill in the dark and the fog for the rest of eternity." Nice try Jon but that job is already taken, the guy's name is Sisyphus. But as real as the typing and pieand arm on the desk are now. I was completely convinced that I was dead and that was real. Delusion with a capital D.

This is again a paraphrase at best but I think the conversation went something like this:

"Hey Jeremy, come here a second." (Why be dead alone, right? )
"What's up Johnny?"
"Umm, do you know where we are?"
"No, not really"
"Cause, I think I'm dead."
"Dead?"
"Yeah, dead."
"OK. What can I do?"
"Umm. I think if I go to sleep it'll be better."
"How long you need?"

I stewed on that and thought that if I was really dead that my watch would continue to tell time but that it would stay dark even after sunrise should have occurred.

"A half hour or so".

It was around 3:00am. Apparently the sun never rises at 3:30am in North Carolina.
I believe Jeremy woke me up a half hour later and I was pretty much babbling. But it was dark still so clearly my test hadn't worked so I needed more sleep to prove I was dead. I don't know why I felt it important to prove I was dead. Like I get a prize or something. But I was completely out of my gourd. 5:00am rolled around. The sleep had worked and I returned to my senses. 1st sure sign of returning. Sleeping on cold wet dirt in a space bag sucks your body heat right out.

It was 3 hours until the official cutoff. I was reincarnated but we had 6 or 7 hours of course ahead. And even though the fixed rope ascent was another hour or so ahead we figured we'd just be holding up the Dirty Dozen. So, we called in, asked for our crew to come to CP13 to get us and then pedaled back down the course to await their arrival. My death and ensuing reincarnation provided good cannon fodder for laughter. Even better was my attempt to "order out" for some coffee when a passing motorist asked if we were OK. Two guys sitting on the side of the road in space blankets during Monday morning rush hour tend to draw a stare or two. What a blast. I have a blank check written out to OAR Events posted on my refrigerator. All they need to do is say where, when and how much for Beast of the East 2004. See you out there.

(Yet Another!) Home on the Web

2008-11-24T11:21:00.002-05:00

The ever expanding universe of places I show up on this interweb thingy just got one page bigger:

Despite abundantly apparent intelligence, skills and general good judgement. Grant Killian has invited me along for the ride in building up to the 2009 Untamed New England.

Wisely my damage will be limited to some motivational and preparatory posts along with other panel members in the Untamed Insights sections.

I'll drop a reminder here when I do post and probably update my facebook status to something like "Jonathan wishes everybody would surf over to his latest Untamed Insight". Something subtle like that.

Props to Baby Momma for chugging through the Philadelphia Marathon yesterday. Far from her fastest time (but far from her best training schedule leading into it) she made it through in good spirits. And was in no apparent hurry as she stopped by the Philly Tri Club tent in Manayunk to visit with Finn and me. It was freezing cold yesterday but somehow I think she was better prepared for it after swimming in a resevoir in the middle of a cold fall night in Virginia at MegaDose in 2006. :)

USARA Nationals Coverage

2008-11-07T08:16:00.004-05:00

9:30am Abby has commandeered the USARA Nationals blog. No need to be redundant. I do have a day job. Move along people, nothing to see here. :) I may be back later if she moves off the keyboard and onto the course.

8:45am EMS was just behind Dart-Nuun at the end of the prologue. Berlin Bike and GOALS ARA (woohooo!!!!) are following close behind. That's not a top four. Abby is just keeping an eye out for leaders and northeast racing friends.

8:15am The race is on....the USARA Coverage is here. Looks like nothing in terms of a leaderboard just some text updates. But my pre-race favorite Dart-Nuun is in the early lead. I'm guessing the teams at the top of the CheckpointTracker Series standings that are in Blue Ridge would be good bets for podium finishes. Go EMS!! :) I love the "train ride to nowhere" start. A cool idea from the EcoChallenge North American Championship days...

I'll post news from Abby when available.

Damn! I'm boring...

2008-10-17T14:18:00.009-04:00

It’s been a long, long, long time since I posted anything. Sadly, it’s been even longer since I had time to actually do an adventure race. My performance at Krista Griesacker was a bit underwhelming and I’ve focused on some PT for the Achilles that I partially tore during PQ. Sure explains a lot about why it hurt so damn much to put on my shoe.

Meantime I’ve had a chance to volunteer at NYARA’s Shag and have put the finishing touches on GOALS ARA’s Edge Sprint Race course. I honestly had a great time at Shag getting to chill and chat with many of the members of the tribe. It’s a nice trade in a way. Usually when I’m racing I get to talk to just a couple people other than teammates during the course of the race. But when you’re helping everybody extract their kayaks from the Hudson and onto a dock you get a chance to visit with the whole field.

The Edge should be good time as well. As an extra special treat Baby Momma will be racing with Frau Farbissina and The Tagger. OK “The Tagger” is a weak nickname but it will have to do for now since that’s my “gift” from Abby.

And now to fulfill my apparent webospheric duty I present Six Random facts about me:

1.) I can remember the birthday cake from my second birthday. Not so much the cake itself but I can remember coming down the stairs into the dining room and seeing it on the table. It was sunny outside and warm inside the room but the perspective of the moment (head high to the table) sticks with me.

2.) Most of my childhood I was convinced I could fly. OK, I wasn’t delusional, I knew I couldn’t fly. However, my dreams about being able to fly were so persistent that I could virtually guarantee myself a vivid “Holy crap, I am flying” sensation by going to sleep. As a result I actually looked forward to going to sleep. Accidentally hitting power lines was always the big hazard.

3.) I failed 4th Grade writing. OK, I was going to fail 4th grade writing until a semi-heated parent-teacher conference. My command of sentence structure was fine. I could identify all the sentence parts, make fancy little trees of them. I could write my own compound complex sentences and had a more than adequate vocabulary with which to populate them. It was my POOR PENMANSHIP according to Ms. Maravintz. :-(

And, yes, she was a Ms. Weren't the 70's cool?

4.) I was, quite possibly, the worst morning radio DJ ever. I was a freshman in college and it was morning radio. Need I explain further? For the most part I just had to keep the NPR feed switched on. College Freshman. Morning Radio. Very challenging.

5.) My toes are more like fingers. I can manipulate small objects with them. Write with them. Open a beer with them. I'm not that far evolved from my chimpanzee ancestors it would seem.

6.) I voted for a George Bush once in a general election for President of the United States of America. I'm not saying which of the four "opportunities" it was that I took.

PQ Photo Favorite

2008-09-10T16:14:00.003-04:00

Yeah, OK, PQ is looooonnnnggggggg over. But I remembered that I wanted to post a favorite photo that Ali took.

We were on the bike leg that took us through 15-Mile Canyon that served as the bridge between the Crazy Mountains and the outskirts of Bozeman. 15-Mile Canyon was great scenery in the daylight but before that section it was 40 miles or so of hot, dusty, exposed riding through the plains. Ali broke out her camera and we passed it around for some action shots. Bruce is the scary masked man looming behind her in this one.

Too Big to Fail

2008-09-03T14:31:00.003-04:00

Someone out there! Help me please!

I’ve been searching federalreserve.gov, irs.gov, sec.gov and a host of other Federal Government sites in hopes of finding the form or schedule that allows me to apply for “Too Big to Fail” status.

I’ve tried variants of Federal Form 2008-TBTF, Schedule TBTF, 1040TBTF and even tried general search terms like “Oh shit, I lost a trillion dollars”. No avail.

Not racing recently has left me with some extra time on my hands. So, I’ve decided to accept all of those credit card offers that have been pouring into my mailbox for the last 20 years or so as well as the ones that are starting to arrive for Finn. Hey, he'll be one next week, he's clearly credit worthy.

Anyhow, the plan is to get as many cash advances as possible and then corner the market on Speedo swimsuits autographed by Michael Phelps. He’s really popular lately and I can’t see any change in that trend, ever. Seriously, if somebody hit you square in the face with Michael Phelps in 2006 would you have known who the hell he was? Answer: No. In fact you probably would have been more interested in the huge person that hit you in the face with Michael Phelps. Keep in mind that in 2006 Michael Phelps already had a mountain of Olympic medals to his credit. That just makes his meteoric rise in popularity that much more sustainable.

My prediction is that by this time next year we’ll have impeached the winner of the Presidential election and replaced them with Michael Phelps (as long as he has time to run our country and Google at the same time). Anyhow, my investment thesis is that the value of these items will just keep going up forever as we all busy ourselves building golden statuary of Michael Phelps. Owning Michael Phelps autographed swimsuits will become the new American dream and if I have it my way the overall health of the economy will be directly linked to purchases of them.

Now, as long as I’m right I’ll be able to reap the rewards of selling, re-buying, renting and selling again my collection of Michael Phelps autographed swimsuits. Sure, some of them will become rundown but I'll be able to produce television shows focused on buying slightly worn out pairs making some inexpensive superficial repairs and then reselling them for a huge markup. Again, very sustainable stuff. I'm using using "Flip that Banana Hammock" as a working title.

I’m pretty sure everything will work out OK with my new business model. Notice, I did use the phrase “my investment thesis” a couple paragraphs ago so this must be disciplined rational stuff. But on the ultra-slim chance that my models are wrong I need to figure out how much of other people’s money I need to put at risk in order to reach official “Too Big to Fail” status. Because while I’m happy to spend $10,000 on a $100 bottle of vodka in order to get a table at a hot club next summer in the Hamptons. I’m just not sure I want to do that with MY money.

So, if somebody out there can tell me what the federal guidelines are for TBTF status and where to get the form I’d appreciate it. Meantime I’ll be busy arranging a bunch of high interest rate loans that I can use as a platform for building whatever amount is necessary. Time is of the essence I think the commodity hedge funds will be lining up soon and there are only so many future generations left to bailout our current “financial hiccups”.

A Great Disturbance in The Force

2008-08-25T14:33:00.003-04:00

No, The Death Star did not zap an entire planet...

Instead, that screaming sound was just me realizing that my 14-month old iPhone....IS DEAD.

It started acting a little flaky this weekend, constanly asking me if I wanted to turn on airplane mode (which is what it normally does when I plug it into a PC, sound dock or similar item). Problem is, I wasn't doing any of that at the time.

Late this morning it completely freaked out and asked that magic question over and over until it died. Ugh! Off to the AT&T store.

Double Dipping

2008-08-12T16:34:00.010-04:00

Let me tell ya, it is hard damn work being the bastard son of two criminally insane racing organizations. But that’s my fate and as long as GOALS ARA and NYARA fail to figure out that they have better options I’ll keep showing up to race or help direct as a member of one team or the other. Suckers!! ;)

This past weekend was a double dip of sorts. No, I wasn't banging some tart who was apparently banging somebody else because guy #2 is allegedly the father of the resultant illegitimate child with only a mother's name on the birth certificate. No, that's the kind of thing one would expect from a Presidential candidate. Throw in the fact that your wife is dying of cancer while all this is going on and you get a "99% honest" guy like John Edwards. Sorry, I just couldn't resist.

GOALS ARA hosted the annual Krista Griesacker Memorial race this past weekend. 12-hours of climbing two mountains (Hawk Mountain and The Pinnacle) and their connecting saddle as many times as possible. On the plus side: the climbing was interrupted by an expedition length paddle. Primal Quest had two hours of paddling too, so I'm calling it expedition length.

But instead of a run through with my usual Team GOALS crew I was working the other side of the tracks in my sweet NYARA cycling jersey along with Team NYARA staples Jim Kerlin and Sara Percy.

And what a day it was!! It was a real tight race between Nature's Cure, ABC/Calleva and ourselves....for the opening ten minutes....and then we all reached the rappel line at the end of the prologue run.

The prologue was a 1-Kilometer run that each team member had to complete relay style. It might have been a little too short for a 12-hour race but we were aware that this would be a critical stage and didn't quite manage to execute. Nature's Cure reached the rappel line first but a couple two-man teams and ABC Calleva managed to squeeze between us and Nature's Cure in the thirty seconds or so that separated our arrivals.

By the time my ass hit the ground (literally) at the bottom of the rappel we were almost 15 minutes down to Nature's Cure. We were on fireman's belay for the rap and after some of my recent big race experiences I assumed this meant the belayer would tighten the rope up a bit as I approached the ground to slow me. No such thing. I was running down the wall full tilt, barely squeezing the rope with my brake hand and buzzed past Jim on another rope on the way down. Our speed differential was so great that I think the general theory of relativity came into play and I actually aged a good month or so less quickly than him during this time. Anyhow, by the time I realized no one was going to tension my rope it was too late to do much more than ease the impact. Wham! Good thing for the nice soft gravel at the bottom! Seriously, if it had been a pile of roots or boulders I think I'd be getting my tail bone surgically removed from my forehead right now. Yep, nothing like "veteran experience" to keep you out of trouble. :)

From there we had an obstacle course and a short foot orienteering section to tackle. Jim took lead on the maps and I was happy to tag along as we made short work of the foot O (CPs 1-5). All told we cleaned up the opening field breaker, rappel, obstacle course and foot O in about one hour. 8:30am rolled by and we were well on the road to the first bike point.

It seemed like we had made good time in the opening section but I was fairly certain we were still behind Nature's Cure. And after riding to the canoe put in without seeing anybody we finally received some feedback. Nature's Cure was 18 minutes up on us. Squeezed between us were the Gung Ho male duo and GOALS ARA II. The opening foot O had been optional before leaving for the bike ride. In fact, everything other than the prologue, obstacle course and rappel was "rogaine style". So, it was possiblie to pick those points up at the end of the day too. Both of those teams had been behind us in the rappel line so we were pretty sure they had skipped at least some of the opening foot O.

Looking back, skipping that section until later was probably the smart thing to do. Because they were so close to the start line and low value it would have been easy to cut one or two points at the end to make the 12-hour cutoff if that had come into play. Our impulse to get it done and move on was largely based on a belief that we would clear the course with time to spare. Good thing we did. Yep, nothing like "veteran experience" to keep you out of trouble. :)

It turns out that Nature's Cure had skipped some of the foot O too but had an offsetting period of standing around waiting on the bike ride for CP6 to be placed. The volunteer placing the point got a little lost on the way to setting the CP in the morning but apparently thought they had plenty of time before teams would arrive . Not so much. So as we entered the paddle at CP7 we figured we were probably in second "on the road" and a little stunned at how quickly NC seemed to be moving.

We caught GOALS ARA II on the canoe section. They were trying to alleviate the bottom dragging of their boat by paddling with one or two people and trekking the others along the side of the "river". River is a bit bit generous. Technically I think it may be a creek. But whatever it was there were large sections where you could walk the width of the chaneel and not get much more than your ankles wet. But there plenty of sections with nice moving water and it is August. Not exactly the perfect time to run small streams but then again, you aren't going to wet and freezing in the middle of a swollen sping runoff either. There's tradeoffs and it was a lot of fun trying to read the river for the best possible ribbon of water in the hopes of paddling as much as possible and minimizing the canoe drags.

A little under two hours later we departed the river at CP8 and did a mandatory portage a short distance to CP9. Our time check had us 6 additional minutes down to NC. We organized quickly and headed out for more biking. In fact I didn't even bother to take off my bike shoes, helmet or gloves for the paddle. So, I was ready to go as soon as I stripped my pfd and wolfed down a bag of chips. The next leg of biking was straight up Pinnacle Mountain. We made good time reeling in the Gung Ho boys and picking up three more CPs (10-12) on the way to the bike drop before the ensuing trek. We reached the bike drop and found we had lost another 6 minutes. Rats!! NC was moving, the gap stood at 30 minutes.

Not knowing what we didn't know (that NC had work left to do on CPs 1-5 but some offsetiing time credit for Cp6) drove us to try a little bushwhacking to straighten out some lines on the trek. It seemed to work as we held our gap through the first portion of the trek, reaching CP17 near Pulpit Rock without losing anymore time. However, that strategy would backfire later as our line from CP14 (the final point on our loop) ran us right into a boulder pile and some had to pass evergreens and lost us a bucket of time. We had passed a team near CP14 that was returning after electing not to clear all the points on the trek. If we had run out the circuitous trail back we probably would have beaten them in handily. As it went, they were leaving the bike drop for the leg back to the finish line just as we arrived.

There was a little drama out on the Trek as a couple of CP flags had been swiped by day hikers. I believe if I got the story correct that they were kind enough to call and let GOALSknow that they had found their flags. DOH! Fortunately they were at obvious features, so after a couple brief loks around we headed on our way. Actually, just as we were leaving the vicinity of CP15 a volunteer ran by on his way to place CP16 after having hung CP15 just a few moments earlier.

By the time we closed out the Trek leg our "shortcuts" aka "slowcuts" had left us a full hour behind Nature's Cure. We worked fairly hard on the way back, though it seemed we were still in good position and with all the CPs in hand. Once we cleared the final climb of the day back past the Hawk Mountain Preserve it was an easy glide downhill to the finish. Turned out that after all the time credits were applied and Nature's Cure finished off the opening foot O that we finished only 20 minutes down. Good for second place aka "first loser". That's what the red ribbon on our medals stands for. ;)

I had a blast. See everybody out there again soon.

Off the deep end

2008-08-04T15:52:00.008-04:00

Like I said in the beginning. Occasionally I will go completely off the topic of adventure racing.

Today is one of those moments.

My normal circuit of reading has produced several worthwhile pieces on what I believe to be the greatest problem that neither of our presumptive Presidential nominees will have the guts to address this fall. Our assorted national debts.

Disaster isn't the right word to describe the agonizingly slow loss of economic power that this nation's debt crazy habits of the past quarter century have generated. It's not quite plate techtonics because it was possible to stop the process. Tighten the collective belt buckle in good times and invest in something other than current consumption.

Charlie Wheelan has been working hard at the keyboard with two recent offerings. One describing our current culture Instant gratification nation . And better still an article that includes the following: "We're spending like drunken sailors, but we're not even getting the hookers and booze".

Maybe just maybe there's hope. Can Warren Buffet become the next Al Gore? (The Inconvenient Truth version not the Hanging Chad version). When IOUSA debuts we'll find out.

Somehow I doubt it. It's much cooler to head out and plunk down $0 on a brand new Toyota Prius that you can't afford in the first place . Certainly a more palatable action than saving some of your paycheck, buying things that you can afford and investing for the future (both individually and collectively).

Hey Mike Bloomberg! How ya feeling about that NYC real estate cut now? Times sure were good. How about just setting something aside for when they aren't (like now) instead of just behaving like every other eternal optomist. Weren't you paying any attention last year to the articles on your news service??? If you didn't see the possibility of a train wreck on Wall Street that's just sad.

College graduation rates are dropping, highway systems are in dreadful repair and we just promised another $1.4 million as a nation in the time I wrote this sentence.

Anyhow, hope you enjoyed the reading list. And Vote for whoever you'd like this fall. It doesn't make a difference in this category.

Hot Videos!

2008-07-23T16:10:00.003-04:00

Got your attention??

Check out this excellent video of the 2008 Cradle of Liberty Adventure Race.

And if that isn't enough: watch the equally exciting Part 2 here.

I was busy with the rest of Team GOALS ARA trekking the Bridger Mounatin range at PQ while all this was going on.

Some might say we were ducking a third whupping by Jen Shultis and the Team EMS juggernaut this year. But, really, we could have just scheduled a hair cut or something and saved a lot of foot pain if that were the case. ;)

Anyhow, it's cool to see general media coverage of an AR event and they did a nice job.

Things to check out

2008-07-14T13:09:00.004-04:00

Check out some GOALS ARA publicity in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

That's our "tough and crazy" Jeremy Kuhlen. Although I prefer to alternate between calling him "I am just the mule" and "Bubble Boy". Jeremy never ran out of energy once in 7+ days at PQ. Oxygen tent or no oxygen tent you can always count on that.

Also, check out GOALS ARA teammate Ali Bronsdon's blog. Now featuring a permalink in the Mandatory Checkpoints menu on the right side of my blog. Damn, she writes way more gooder than me. It's like she's a professional or something.....

Mountain Lions, Grizzly Bears and Moose...

2008-07-13T15:55:00.002-04:00

....Oh my!!

I promised some firsthand tales of Primal Quest last week. I'll start with the lighter side of the extreme life and work my way up from there.

A big chunk of the pre-race meeting involved an extensive review of the more (potentially) hazardous members of the local fauna. Our wildlife expert was well prepared and extremely knowledgable. We learned that there was little if any reason for us to try to differentiate between Grizzlies and Black bears. For our purposes it was best for us to behave like any bear was a Grizzly. Keep pepper spray at the ready but make consistent "human" noises as we moved in order to prevent close encounters from occurring in the first place.

Moose are dumb but dangerous as hell given their size, potential speed and hooves. Pepper spray will just make them angrier and more dangerous. Same with the mountain lions but at least they are of a size that if push came to shove you could fight back. They might not care about your noises though so it's best to look back and around to make certain they aren't stalking.

Great stuff...however, we weren't warned about the vicious beast in the photo below (attacking Halti Merril Multimania in this picture I believe). And sure enough we found ourselves fending off 10-minutes of constant assaults with our trekking poles after it let loose with it's war cry of "duhduhduhduhduh...." We were exhausted after a long night of hair raising ascents and descents in the Crazy Mountains and just a couple miles from the next TA when the attack occurred. If somebody out there can tell us what this animal is I'd sure appreciate it. I think it would outdo my school of ill tempered sea bass, even without laser beam attachments.

(Almost) Back from Montana

2008-07-06T09:49:00.004-04:00

Primal Quest is over but the trip back to Philadelphia is not yet complete. Baby Momma and I have taken a side trip to her family's Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire compound to celebrate the 4th of July and spend some quality time with Mini Me.

I celebrated 4th of July by sleeping through dinner, waking up briefly to eat and then slept through the ensuing fireworks. Between the long slumbering segments there's been beer, ice cream, an assortment of nitrated meats in casings and a massage session. I'm feeling much better. :)

Summary statements about PQ:

1.) I do have an amusing anecdote or two that will show up later.
2.) 12th Place was quite satisfying. Ali was a big unknown at this distance and Bruce sounded like an emphysema patient in the early parts of the race as he adapted to the altitude.
3.) Denise Mast and Jim Mertz kicked ass as a support crew. (Later Denise was bolstered by Margaret, Kase and Baby Momma). But Denise and Jim really handled the heavy lifting most of the way.
4.) Did I call it on the whitewater section or what?? This is a sweet video of the carnage.
5.) I have never come into so many TA's feeling so hammered and rebounded so well.
6.) If you haven't seen it, click here to view all the great stuff that Denise placed on the Team 82 blog during PQ. Not only was she moving our gear, feeding us and generally kicking ass as support crew. But she was also serving as our our own personal embedded media team.
7.) Speaking of the Team 82 Blog page. Thank you so much for all the comments during the race. The words of encouragement from home were greatly appreciated and often made us laugh.

And, finally, you don't really believe I'm retired from racing, do you? :)

Yer Pal,
Dr Evil.

Under 24 Hours.....

2008-06-20T10:59:00.003-04:00

Until I jump on an airplane that will eventually deliver me to Montana and the 2008 Primal Quest.

The last couple days has seen tons of hand wringing, more hand wringing, web polls and outright whining in response to an announcement that GPS would be mandatory equipment. However, I think their final decision rings true to most ears. A critical defining challenge of AR is the navigation.

I do think it is much ado about nothing. The front teams (generally) know how to navigate. And footprints in the snow have a fairly long shelf life. In some sense (if the snow doesn't melt in a hurry) we're going to be following a marked course no matter what.

The bigger issue is all that melting snow. My must see web page has been the USGS gauges on the Gallatin River. That is some cold water and whole hell of a lot of flow. I generally think whitewater swimming is the best event in AR. But I'm not necessarily looking forward to this one. But the jury is out. Who knows, maybe the river section is an easier swim in higher water. Guess it depends on how high out of the water the obastacles normally protrude.

If you want to send me a message visit the online tracking here. O/W I'll be back in 10 days or so.