Chris, Danielle, and I met up in Stearns, Kentucky and headed out the prerace meeting at the local 4H camp. We were there to race in the Sheltowee Extreme 24-hour adventure race. With only seven teams competing in our division, our goal was to complete the race and maintain a point lead in the USARA rankings. With the other competition in the division the goal was to finish 4th, but any placement would give us the points we needed to keep Trakkers with an overall lead in the USARA rankings. We received our maps at 7 am. The map outlined the overall race route with major transitions and methods of travel between the TAs. We would be receiving additional check points (CPs) at each TA as the race progressed. We loaded into buses at 8 am and rode to the race start.
The race stated out with a prologue across a trestle bridge to get a supplemental map and the location of the first four check points. All the racers were bunched and the energy was as high as the heat of the day. All the checkpoints were on trails and easy to find. It was a good warm up and let Danielle, Chris and I feel out our team dynamics and the other racers on the course. CP4 was a 100’ free rappel. Danielle who had never done a rappel did an amazing job. She was totally calm and didn’t pause for a second as she went over the edge. Chris, who I know is not too keen on heights, did a fantastic job too. A rappel is always fun but can be a little frustrating waiting in-line to get on the rope but 10 minutes in the scheme of a 24 hour race is pretty insignificant.
After the initial trek we headed to the boat ramp to start the first canoe leg. At the first TA we got our first two check points. I plotted them, and they were located just off the river between TA1 and TA2. We loaded into the boat and headed down the very warm river. The water must have been at least 80 degrees. Chris, Danielle, and I had not paddled together before, but we quickly found a good rhythm and made good time on the water. There were only a few rapids, and they were probably just class 2 but that didn’t stop one of the rapids getting the best of us and we swamped the boat on an undercut rock. We were thankful we had put all of our gear in dry bags and had strapped it in. It made for good entertainment for the family with the preteen kids who easily navigated the rapid in their kayaks.
CP5 was an easy find except I managed to complicate the search by not orienting the map as we headed up the wrong stream. After this 15-minute long navigation error, we were back on track. CP6 was further down the river up another stream we had to scramble up, but we hit it without any problems.
Next was TA2. We pulled out our boat and received our next set of coordinated for CPs 8 through 10. This section was located at Yahoo Falls. We picked off the check points, working clockwise around the park on a mixture of trails with some heavy bushwhacking to get to the CPs. CP10 had some very heavy bush whacking and many teams had difficulty finding the CP. We spent about 40 minutes looking for it before we found it. The undergrowth was so dense you had to be right on top of it to be able to see it. Danielle and I got attacked by hornets at this CP. I got by lightly with one sting. Danielle took four. They hurt like hell.
After CP10 we headed back to the boat put in and paddled the last 3-4 mile stretch to TA3. It was around 4pm as we reached TA3, and we got ready for the first bike section. We received our next three CP coordinates and headed out on what looked like would be mainly road riding. CP11 was a breeze, located at a road intersection. Finding CP12 was a total wreck. We missed a trail turning and ended up about 3 miles north of where we needed to be. I don’t think a section of roads was marked on the map and that totally confused me. We eventually got reoriented and with some help from the very nice locals backtracked down a trail we should have come up and hit CP12 just as night fell, so we fired up our lights.
CP13 was an easy find along a major route and we rolled into TA4 at around 10pm. The next section was a trekking leg forest to get the last five mandatory CPs and then three optional CPs. As I plotted the points I knew that with night upon us, the CP locations, and my limited night navigation experience this was not going to be an easy leg. We set off with the goal to get at least the five mandatory points before moving on to TA5.
My initial thoughts on the navigation were confirmed as I struggled to locate the points. There was a huge amount of deadfall. Trailheads were totally obscured and large areas required major scrambles over down trees. For CP14 we stopped short on the trail to begin with and wasted time searching in the woods and then when we finally got to the right tack point didn’t initially go far enough up the side of a hill to find the rock formation we were looking for. It was only by seeing another team leaving the area who confirmed the CP was indeed somewhere near where we were did we manage to locate it.
CP15 was the only feel-good moment in the woods as we hit that check point dead on first try. It was located off a reentrant of a reentrant so not so easy to navigate to. CP16 was located up a stream that was obscured and took some major hunting to locate. CP17 and CP18 never materialized. I took our team up the wrong reentrant for CP17, and we spent a large chunk of time looking for a CP that would never materialize. As we begrudgingly gave up on CP17 and headed out toward TA5, the sun was coming up and daylight finally returned to break the darkness of the night but not our moods.
At TA5 we transitioned back to bikes and plotted a few checkpoints that we knew were on the way back to the finish. Because of cut off times we were not going to make it to the next trekking leg, and without the last two mandatory checkpoints we knew there was little point in collecting out of the way optional check points. We had about a 17-mile ride back to the finish and we would be done.
As we rolled into one of the optional CPs I needed to empty some of the 100 ounces of water I just added to my pack and handed off the map case to Chris to go and punch the passport. As Chris hunted through the map case we, to our horror, found that we no longer had our passport. The sense of total deflation, frustration, disappointment, and anger at myself was insane. How could I have possibly lost the one thing that showed the progress we had made over the past 24 hours? Losing a passport is usually an instant disqualification. So having made it to within 45 minutes of the finish I had totally blown the whole race. All we had to do was finish to maintain a lead in points with USARA and now that was in jeopardy. I know the last time I had seen the passport was at CP16 and since then we had wandered around the wood for hours and could have dropped the passport out of the map case at any time. I should have known better and kept the passport separate from the map. That is the usual protocol, but I had failed to follow it to our detriment.
We rode back to the finish and did our final check in at 10:30 am. We had been out on the course for 25.5 hours but without the passport, we had little to show for it except tired and dirty bodies.
Unfortunately there is no happy ending to this story–just lessons of hard knocks as follows, unfortunately all of which I already knew:
- Always keep your passport separate from your map case and check on it often.
- Distances at night are deceiving–all my navigation fell short. Always go a little further than you think you need to go, but not too far.
- Never eat food you have not tested before (Chris had a reminder of this).
- A canoe will sink very easily of you broadside a rock in fast-flowing water.
- We did not have any mechanical issues.
- We did not have any major injuries (scrapes, gouges, stings, and small cuts don’t count in an adventure race; they are just par for the course).
- I learned a lot more about night navigation if only through mistakes.
- As a team we worked well together and overall enjoyed the experience of racing together (although and I am not sure Chris or Danielle will want to race with me again as the navigator any time soon).
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