Wild Wonderful 24 Hour Adventure Race - Part Two

When I arrived at my house after driving home from the race, my kids ran up to me - first to give me a hug and then to count the bruises, scrapes and scratches. There were a lot to count. My husband was right behind the kids and he simply asked - "... so when are you doing the next one?" He knew, as did I, that doing this race would mean that I would get hooked and doing just one would not be enough. I had a dim thought of doing an adventure race one day, but I purposely did not want to do one because I was afraid that I would add it to my growing list of hobbies. Time is precious - and I am simply running out of it. But the opportunity to do an adventure race presented itself during the month I took off between jobs and I'm glad I took it.

From what I've gathered, no two adventure races are the same. They can consist of a variety of elements, including water sport (swimming, white water, kayaking, etc), trekking, ropes, mountain biking, to name a few. They can range in time from a couple hours to a couple days. The Wild Wonderful Adventure Race was a 24 hour race consisting of white water rafting, trekking, mountain biking and an optional orienteering course.

I spent the week before the race at the Odyssey Adventure Academy (see previous blog) with nine other racers and most of us went on from the academy to race. My team consisted of two other academy participants - Curtis and Andreas. Unlike the other teams, none of us knew each other prior to the academy, and it was clear from the beginning that managing personalities would become as difficult as the physical aspect of the race. I often referred to Andreas, a 31 year old software engineer from Uruguay who is temporarily stationed in Memphis, as the "bad boy from South America." Curtis was far more conservative and a bit of a geek. By the end of the academy he managed to alienate just about every other participant. At the very least he prompted many eye rolls. He was however, a great navigator - something I clearly was not.
As for me - I have my own flaws and my lack of patience came out often - particularly as I became more and more exhausted. At times it felt as though we were stopping every couple minutes, to get our barrings or change clothes, etc. when I just wanted to ride or walk. Curtis and Andreas - on more than one occasion had to remind me that we had a long race and stopping was inevitable. The three of us did not have much in common, but in the end we really did not have much opportunity to hang out and talk anyway.

The race started with white water rafting. Teams were placed on rafts based on lottery with 7-8 total people per boat. We ended up with the perfect storm resulting in what I believe to be a last place finish in that stage of the race. First each team had to select a member to run up stairs, down a little hill, jump into the water and swim to the raft. Most rafts had two teams and thus two swimmers. We had four teams - a team of three, a team of two and two solo racers. We were only as fast as the slowest swimmer and unfortunately one of the solo racers was pretty darn slow. We also only had seven paddlers, while most other boats had eight. And just to put the final nail in the coffin - our guide, Stan, announced that last time he did a race like this one - his boat placed last. In fact, the only person who nearly got ejected from the boat was Stan. Despite the less than stellar finish, the water was high so we got to go through a number of class 3-5 rapids.

After the white water, we transitioned to the first trek along the Endless Wall. With in the first hour of the trek, I slipped and hit my knee squarely on a rock. Andreas asked me if I was okay. I replied "Don't ask me again, because I'm afraid if I think about it I'll have to stop, sit on a rock and cry." Yeah - it hurt... a lot! It bruised and swelled and fancied a couple scrapes, but as I continued, it hurt less and less. We came across the first couple check points with relatively no problem until CP 4. There were about six teams hanging around a flag that didn't seem quite right according to the coordinates. The navigators all huddled and discussed until someone finally called the race management. He described the location of the flag and mentioned that it did seem quite right. The person on the other end of the line, suggested we punch our passport and move on. She took a list of all the teams for further reference. We punch and were ready to move on - but by this time Andreas had disappeared. I whistled, I yelled and I got very annoyed. He had gone off exploring and now we could not find him. After several minutes, we finally located him and continued on - but not after letting him know that he had to stay with in 100 feet of his teammates per the rules. We caught up with the other teams by the time reached CP 5 about 6 hours into race. CP 5 was the transition to bikes and we were all looking forward to getting off our feet for a bit. BUT - as we were getting our bikes ready we over heard another team talking to the race director, apparently the flag we thought was a check point was actually mistakenly left up from the previous race several months ago. We were very disappointed to learn that we had to trek back to the real CP 4 and return to CP 5. This mistake cost us nearly an hour - more than physically - it wore us down mentally.

When we finally made it back to CP 5, we discovered that Andreas had a flat. It seemed like we were never going to get beyond CP 5! Andreas was quick with the tire change and we were off to to check points 5a and 6. We went screaming down a hill in search of CP 6 when I discovered that I had no back brakes... scary. We pulled over to fix them and a solo rider walked past us on the steep incline. We said hello and asked how far he thought CP 6 was - and that is when we found out that it was actually behind us. It wasn't too far distance wize, but we would have to work our way up the huge hill we just came down. Another costly mistake!

There were several points where we were unsure of our direction, but after a while I learned that Curtis did best if he went on his first instinct then when he second guessed himself - so I was the one who after listening to his options - generally pushed him towards his first direction. Most of the time he was right on. We ended spending over 10 hours on the bikes mostly at night. Andreas nearly fell asleep as we rode and swerved several times. We ran out of water at 3AM and had to re-fill at a stream. Right before dawn my front lamp began to dim, but we made the bike cut off and thus could continue to check point 11. Unfortunately, we did not make it in time to do the long course, so we had to settle for the short course (which seems like a misnomer to me...).

We transitioned from bikes back to trekking and I was ready to move... once again my teammates had to urge me to be patient. I think because I was moving slower to stay with the team, I started to fade - I did most of the trek out to CP 11 with my eyes closed. I think Andreas was completely a sleep - yet still walking. After the check in and turn around at 11 I got my second wind and as I walked back to the finish - this time with my eyes opened, I was amazed at what I had traversed with my eyes closed!

We reached the finish line and successfully completed the short course in less than 24 hours. We opted to get at least one optional orienteering point. We found one and then lost the concentration to go after any more. I was exhausted and ready to be done. We returned to the finish line, grabbed some food and started talking to other racers. I had to chuckle when I found myself asking other racers about good races to do in the fall... yeah, I'll be doing another!