Adventure racing

cerebus

I'm competing in a 2-day adventure race this weekend - if you're interested in seeing how we do check the Sea2Summit website.

I think they might be doing live updates on the website though I could be wrong - you might only get final results afterwards. We're team number 229.

Looking forward to it - 160km over 2 days, with a long kayak leg (25km) and two nasty mountain bike sections (40km and 55km - mostly singletrack). Starts at 7am Saturday morning and finishes sometime Sunday afternoon.

I'll post some pictures afterwards if anyone is interested (if there are any photos they'll be taken by our support team so all you'll get to see is the the transitions I guess!)

Next stop the Eco-challenge

daveirl

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Jak

Lucky bast ...

Have fun.

When you get back let us know the exact disciplines and breakdown involved will ye? Be interested in some first hand experience.

Anyhows tis windy,

JAK.

cerebus

Right, all finished...

And what a blast! A lot tougher than we thought it was going to be, in fact extremely challenging, but great fun.

Bare facts:
Winning time was 13 hours something (solo racer - the guy is an exceptional athelete)
Our time was just under 22 hours - we came eight in our category
Total distance ~160km
Day 1
Kayak: 26km or so
Bike: 60km (lots of singletrack, some huge climbs)
Trek (with navigation): 7km (or so they said!)
Day 2:
Bike: 60km (again, mostly off road)
Orienteering (1 hour - kind of hard to say how far we went)
Trek: 12km straight up - 1200m of vertical gain!


Here's a bit of a description (and some pictures to go along) which will give some colour to the whole thing...

We were a team of two, mixed. Approximately 40 teams in our category, maybe 200 teams overall. There were 21 Checkpoints spread out over the race course for the two days, and at each of the first 20 checkpoints there was going to be a word - these words were going to make up a riddle, and we'd have to hand in our answer to this riddle at the final checkpoint.

Day 1: (aka "The day that time forgot")

We were up at 5am and down at the start location just after 6am getting ready. The race started Saturday morning at 7am - ~600 racers were standing in a gravel pit waiting for the off.

The start of the race was cool - every team captain was given an envelope when checking the team in before the start, and these were not supposed to be opened until the start signal.

Once the signal was given, everyone opened their envelope and read the instructions.

Basically, we had two tasks - we had to get our boat (double kayak) down to the water and we had to send somebody (or both of us) on a 2-km run to an abandoned mine down the road to get the first checkpoint and word in our riddle.

We were both going to run to the mine, but we had a quick conversation with a buddy of ours who was also racing. His partner had gone to the mine, so my partner helped him get their boat and ours down to the water while I ran to the mine.

[Quick aside: Race rules were no outside interference allowed (except at transition points), but racers could help each other if they wanted]

This worked out really well - we got a good start. I got the first word and the boat got shifted down to the water. We were on the water by 7.30am or so, and finished the paddle at 10.30am.

Then we had a 4km run to the first supported transition point. Along the way we had checkpoint 4 (2 & 3 were during and at the end of the paddle respectively)

At checkpoint 4 we got our first "unexpected" surprise (these are a big part of adventure racing - extra little tests!)

We were told to pick up a bucket each, fill it ~1/3 of the way with gravel and run down a trail until we met someone who would tell us what to do with it. After about 1.5km we found a guy who got us to dump half of our gravel in a pothole, and then told us to carry the rest on to another person further along. Another 2km down the trail we finally get to dump the rest, then carry the buckets back to the start (kind of a big loop).

Then it was on to checkpoint 5 and the transition.

We grabbed some stuff to eat, refilled our water bottles and hopped on the bikes. At this stage we were lying fourth in our category (co-ed pairs) so we were pretty pleased. We're both experienced paddlers so we always felt we would do well in the first leg, but being so high up was a nice bonus.

The bike ride started with a huge climb - 15km or so up a logging road with an average grade of about 20% I guess... this brought us to checkpoint 6 and the top of the 'Ring Creek Rip' the first real singletrack section of the race - fast, not terribly technical but enough loose rocks to make it exciting and bumpy.

Back onto another logging road at the bottom of this, and another long climb to checkpoint 7 - then a more technical downhill singletrack, onto another logging road, and down a real nasty singletrack called "Made in the Shade". We both had a real zone out on this trail - couldn't concentrate and started making stupid mistakes. We ended up walking most of it. At the bottom of this we had another couple of kms to checkpoint 8, where we transitioned to a navigational trek. This was an unsupported transition, so we were on our own – we carried trail running shoes in our bags, so we changed into these. We also took a 10 minute break, ate some food and drank some Gatorade. This helped us both get back in the groove.

Checkpoint 8 had a cut off time of 4pm according to the pre-race instructions. Any team that didn’t get to checkpoint 8 before 4pm would not be allowed do the trek and would be sent on to the rest of the course (and would not be officially ranked in the race standings). We got there at 3.05pm, so were well inside the time limit.

The trek was nasty – three checkpoints to get, two of which were along a creek/river bed and one at the north end of a lake. It meant lots of bushwhacking, two crossings of the river (both with safety personnel not too far away, but you still had to get wet) and lots of pushing through trees and bushes and splashing through the shallows. It took us 2.5 hours to get the three checkpoints and corresponding words (and I refuse to believe it was only 7km)

We got back to checkpoint 8 at about 5.30pm and then it was back onto the bikes – a quick change back into the bike shoes and off again. Short singletrack section to a crazy hike-and-bike hill (seriously, it must have been close to 45 degrees!) Luckily it was only about 100m long. Then more singletrack, leading to checkpoint 12. Lots of classic riding though at the end of a long day it was pretty hard going.

We finally got to the finish and checkpoint 13 at 7.05pm – a 12 hour day. We had to go through a mandatory gear check straight away and check in as having completed the day. Apart from the transition at 10.30am, a ten minute break at checkpoint 8 and a couple of minutes at some of the other checkpoints to wolf down some food, we had been going hard all the rest of the day. No wonder we looked shattered!

We went for a shower, had dinner and lots of fluids and fell into bed.

Some interesting info: By 4pm only 1/3 of the racers had made it to checkpoint 8 and the start of the trek. The organisers extended the cut-off to 5pm, but even still only half of the field had made it by then. The rest were sent on without a chance to do it. This meant they would not be officially ranked as having finished the race, but they were allowed to continue.

Teams were still coming in at 10pm, having had to do the last 15km of nasty, gnarly, rooty, rocky singletrack in the dark with their flashlights. Ouch.

cerebus

Day 2 (aka “Ick! There’s mud!”):

Woke up at 3.30am to the sound of rain on the tent. Ugh.

5am came around and the alarm went off – it had stopped raining, the legs weren’t feeling too bad, and we started loading up on carbs (mmm, bagels!). No long paddle this morning, so we could drink as much as we wanted (kind of hard to pee when you’re in a boat, so we had been careful on day 1). We got to the start location (a secondary school parking lot) and followed the instructions. Everyone left their bike on the grass and at 7am we went on a quick 5-minute run around a running track and the school, then back to grab your bike and go. This helped space us out so they didn’t have 500+ bikes heading down the road all at once.

We had a great first 15km or so on the bikes, tucked in behind a long train of riders and drafting all the way along the road. Then it switched to a gravel road and soon to a steep, rocky hike and bike section. This followed along a canyon and eventually bought us back unto the highway after some nice singletrack riding. They had blocked off a lane for us, so we got about 3km on the road before we were back onto singletrack. The tracks had lots of roots, which were now nice and greasy from the rain. Nasty and slippy. Another hour and half later and it was 10.20am - and we were at checkpoint 16 and the transition to the orienteering. We dumped the bikes and got our map (with marked controls) and were given the ok to start our hour charging around the woods.

We had an okay time with this – we were both pretty tired, and found it hard to get the first couple of controls but got into the swing of it then. We got 6 controls out of a possible 10, which meant we were going to get a 45-minute penalty (orienteering rogaines have very odd rules!)

Back on the bikes then, and the last leg towards Whistler Creekside. It was raining by now, and pretty miserable. The way they sent us was along a logging road for about half of this, but the last few km was singletrack again and it was *really* hard. It was all up and down (at least if it was downhill momentum would get you over most things!) and full of greasy roots and rocks. A nightmare.

We popped out on the highway about 4km south of Whistler, and biked up to Creekside where we got to checkpoint 17 and the transition where we met our support person again. We ate as much as we could in a few minutes, changed into hiking shoes and got the trekking poles out for the last leg – the trek up the hill. We were viewing this with a bit of suspicion – the route map for the trek marked the way up the mountain to one of Whistler’s big mid-mountain restaurants, but then seemed to indicate we would be taking the gondola down.

This started innocently enough – we followed a cat track to checkpoint 18. It quickly got worse. From checkpoint 18 they sent us into a river – I kid you not! We were climbing up this wet river gorge, full of downed trees and slippery rocks. Lots of crossing over and back, which meant we got soaked to the skin.

We finally popped out of this creek bed and had to heave our way up a steep switch-backing trail, then onto the ski runs and cat tracks again. We got to checkpoint 19, and only had one more to go. It was pretty crappy weather-wise – the rain had turned to sleety snow and it was pretty cold, so we dug out every scrap of warm clothing from our packs and kept moving. Finally we reached checkpoint 20 at 3.59pm – and were given tickets for the gondola down the hill.

We sat in the gondola trying to work out whether we were actually finished – we thought they might send us for a run around the village or something, so we did our best not to get too excited.

Sure enough, we get down to the village and were directed out into the finishing stretch. We jogged around the corner, looking great, feeling great only to see this. Yes, we had to crawl through the mud pit (under the ropes) and climb over the wall. With no help from anyone except ourselves. And not just mud – stinking, steaming compost…

Anyway, we got through it – arrived over the finish line looking rather muddy and handed in our completed checkpoint passport (the answer to the riddle was ‘The Stars’) and we were all done.

Well worth doing, and we’re already planning for next year…

cerebus

Originally posted by daveirl
Anyway some questions for you cerebus if you don't mind!

• What sort of training do you do?
• How long have you been at it?
• How did you get into Adventure Racing

Some answers for you:

Our training was pretty much just to get out and do things - over the summer we tried to get out on our bikes 2-3 times during the week, paddle at least once, and spend as many weekends as possible doing either two day trips or an overnight (usually one of biking/hiking/paddling, sometimes combining these).

No real training program as such - just fun stuff wth mates. We also did a lot of trail running, and a few practice orienteering events. We were also gearing up for a triathlon, so we were doing some swimming for that (the Sea2Summit race sometimes has a swim thrown in as a surprise)

This was our first real adventure race - but we're both outdoors types and have been for years.

I got interested in adventure racing more or less the same as you - always seen the eco-challenge highlights on TV and was always really impressed.

Having said that, I had done similar style things for years - mountain marathons mostly, two days (or more) unsupported. Kind of like long-distance orienteering. But no real multisport stuff.

The local adventure racing scene is really strong, so anytime we go to trail-running or paddling races we'd be competing against people who were planing to do this Sea2Summit race. We'd usually do reasonably well against them in individual disciplines so we decided to give it a go.

Originally posted by daveirl


I'll probably come up with some more questions later on, but I suppose I won't get a reply until Mondy anyway so GOOD LUCK!!

Any more questions just fire them my way - I'll do my best to answer.

Key points I would stress:

Support - a good support person is worth their weight in gold. We had an absolute superstar (friend of my wife) who was brilliant. She had everything all ready to rock at the transitions and kept us going psychologically. If you can find a good support person you'll find it much easier.

Being part of a team - I'd have to say I wouldn't like doing one alone. We found it great to have somebody to lean on mentally when times were tough. I have a lot of respect for the solo athletes, but it isn't something I'd fancy at all.

Hydration and fuel - Keep eating and drinking! It is really easy to get caught up in the race and forget to drink/eat regularly. Worst thing in the world!

Mental state - a big part of the adventure racing thing seems to be your mental sharpness, especially after pushing hard physically. They seem to like springing surprises on you. It relates back to the eating and drinking thing - being well hydrated and fed means you don't bonk! Stuff like navigating and route-finding becomes so much harder to do when you're not all there mentally. Even simple things like making sure you have all your mandatory gear packed before leaving a transition get hard when things get tough.

daveirl

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