Coal Country in
Easter Kentucky has some of the most drastic terrain that I’ve ever been on.
With hills so steep that 40 foot contour lines are necessary and valleys so
shear that they should really be called canyons we (Dusty Reppuhn, Aaron
Courain, and John Courain) had our work cut out for us. 65 miles of trek, bike,
and paddle along with 13000 feet of climbing would bring us through one of the
toughest and most picturesque races we’ve run so far.
The Breakdown AR, 361o
Adventure Racing, Breaks Interstate Park
By John Courain
The gun went off at
6am on Saturday. The prologue was a 5k road run heading east toward the
sunrise. We led the charge for about 4k
until an anxious 3male team decided to push for an early lead. We let them run away with it and soon grabbed
our second map at TA1 where we would find the CPS for the first Foot
orienteering section. All the
checkpoints in this section were situated in a figure 8 on top of a hill 900
feet above where we were standing. And so we climbed. As soon as we hit the top
and reached our first cp we realized that the last cp that we planned to get
was actually back down at the bottom of the hill… awesome. We finished our loop
of all the cps on the top of the hill and then proceeded back down and up the
800 feet to the final CP in the leg. Even with the course hiccup we
transitioned as the first team to clear the section.
The next leg was a long road bike
through some of the winding valleys as we made our way down and up hills nabbing
points 11 – 15 on our way to the paddle section of the course.
The Flannagan
Resevoir was our paddle destination. CP’s 16 – 23 were up for grabs with a
total of 15 miles of paddling to clear the leg. Rolling in at around noon we
quickly transitioned into our canoes and made our way from point to point
grabbing up 16,17,18,19,22, & 23. This was an out and back with plenty of
landing stops to find CPs. We had a time constraint in the form of a 3pm hard
cutoff, losing a point every minute we were still on the water after 3.
Skipping 20 and 21 was a good decision because anyone who went for the course
clearing paddle ended up losing a bunch of points. We pulled back into the TA
with 10 minutes to spare, hopped back on the bikes and rode them up the second
bike section climbing 1100 feet from river to ridge. We cleared the cps in the
bike section and parked them at the side of the hill to start what ended up
being the final leg of the race, another foot orienteering course. We held onto
daylight as we worked our way in a sweeping circle around the hilltop. Our loop
took us down spurs and under waterfalls, To hilltops and reentrants, circling
almost 10k of rugged terrain back to the TA. With a total of 38 CPS punched and
25 minutes left until the 9 pm cutoff we loaded back onto our bikes and
screamed down the final hill into the valley and crossed the finish line. 38
points was enough to win both our division and the overall points race.
Now what we’ve
conquered coal country Dusty, Aaron, and
I will be teaming back up for the Youghe Extreme AR in beautiful Ohiopyle PA so
stay tuned.
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