American Adventure Sports Yough Extreme

AAS Yough Extreme 10 hr.

Racers:  John Courain, Aaron Courain, Dustine Reppuhn

On April 26^th John, Dusty and myself met in Ohiopyle, PA for the American Adventure Sports Yough Extreme.  John and I have raced here numerous times and were expecting a fast course for the coming race.  After check in, we got the maps, plotted our points from the master map, and then retreated to our hotel to fuel up on pasta and go over race strategy.  Light and fast was going to be the name of the game.  Our transitions would need to be quick; only stopping to change shoes or put on life vests.  Otherwise everything would be done while moving.

Prelude

The race started with a very short prelude run, about 3/8 mile total out and back to then jump on our bikes.  We left our bikes as close to the rail trail as possible, after we agreed with Team SOG how close is too close.  Sprinting on cold leg muscles is never easy or fun, but the three of us made it onto our bikes with no issues and were immediately chasing SOG up the Baughman trail.

Bike

The first leg consisted of climbing the Baughman trail, then jumping on to the sugarloaf trail which would take us to our first transition at an overlook.  The Baughman trail is one of the few trails that lets you access the mass of the park system from Ohiopyle, it climbs roughly 600 feet in 2 kilometers, then graciously flattens out to let you catch your breath before you continue climbing on the sugarloaf trail.  We had SOG in our sights the entire time, continuing to push hard, but not wanting to blow up on the first climb of the race.  This was only 600 feet of a total of almost 9000 we would be covering today.  We made it into transition 2 minutes behind SOG, and saw them running off as we pulled in.

Run

We dropped our bikes and bike shoes only, and put on our running shoes to start off on a long fast descent back down to the river.  7 kilometers of running downhill  is not easy on the joints at all, but we kept together and worked as a team well, arriving to the paddle put in just minutes after SOG and Soloist – Earl, who is a fantastic racer that we would be swapping leads with throughout the rest of the race.

Paddle

John and Dusty took one tandem raft, and I took a single.  This leg would be the only low intensity section of the entire race.  So we took an opportunity here, to eat something substantial and rehydrate as the swift current carried us for the first few minutes.  The area received a decent amount of rain in the previous few days, so the river was moving faster than normal, which was a nice.  The rafts used for this paddle are comfortable for about 20 minutes, then your legs start going numb.  The cold water was refreshing, but I could feel my leg muscles tightening up after such a hard bike and climb.  After a few small but fun rapids, we found our take out point.  While taking the boats up the ramp to drop them off in transition, I really felt how much my leg muscles had contracted. And there was only one way to warm them back up.

Run/trek

We had another quick transition from paddle to trek, I downed a soda and part of a candy bar as we started off down the rail trail to get to CP5.  Once we started moving, the legs started warming back up.  Once again we were pushing the pace.  We had about 5k to run on the rail trail and then would cut straight up a steep reentrant to get to CP5 and then continue up to CP6 to pick up our bikes.  We estimated the run to take us about 30 minutes, but we arrived a bit early at our reentrant, to our pleasant surprise.

Then the climbing began.

From the rail trail to CP5, was 500 vertical feet. That part was actually pretty easy.  It started off gradual, and then got a little steeper and steeper until we crawled the last few feet up to the dirt road which accessed a gas well, where we would find our CP.  After punching we kept the same course, straight up the reentrant.  From CP5 to CP6 was 1100 vertical feet, with the majority of the climbing spanning less than a half kilometer.   To picture that, we were climbing on all fours, grabbing anything we could to keep us from sliding back down.  We made sure to stagger ourselves out a bit, so that when rocks let loose no one would be in danger. 

On this section I think we lost a bit of time.  In order to ease the steepness a bit, we did an ascending traverse, which put us off course a bit more than planned.  After the climbing was done we found a trail that we thought we had been looking for.  As we followed it, we realized we were at the wrong spot and had to reposition ourselves on the map and correct our course to finish the trek/climb to CP6.  We made it to CP6 with no further issues, just a little behind Earl, who obviously took a better course than we did.

Bike

One last quick transition and we were off on the final leg.  An out and back to bag CP7 brought us back through the transition area to see GOALS getting changed to get on our bikes.  That meant they were only about 15-20 mins behind us.  That gave us the motivation to really hammer the next section.  A long fast downhill with a short detour to grab CP8 which was up a stream, was made even faster by the feeling of being chased.  The smooth dirt road we were descending led us to the sugarloaf trail descent.  This trail is loose, rocky and fast; much more fitting for a long travel downhill bike, than for the hardtail XC bikes with high tire pressures that we were riding.  After having our bodies shaken apart for a while, we made it back to Ohiopyle and headed off in the opposite direction on the rail trail to make our final climb for CP9.

 

We caught back up with Earl at the beginning of the climb, and were soon at the campground, looking for a graveyard for CP9.  At this point, I was really feeling the effect of pushing so hard for 7+ hrs straight.  going the pace we were, I had not been able to get as much nutrition back into my system as I was losing through exertion, and I felt the effects of bonking starting to creep up on me as I started falling behind on the bike.  After punching 9, and descending some single track to get to CP10, a short steep section of trail that I had to run my bike up, pushed me over the edge, and I just had to stop.  I got something to eat and drink and tried to catch my breath and get my heart rate down, while trying to keep my food down as well.  The three of us regrouped, knowing that GOALS could not be that far behind us.  While trying to keep myself together, Earl rode past us for the last time on his way to the finish.  I assured him I was ok, and Dusty and I changed backpacks, as she had packed lighter for the race and divided up some of her gear between John and I.  Having a much lighter pack made a huge difference.  We continued on to punch 10, and then turned around to descent back to the rail trail.  Once at the rail trail, John put me on tow and we pushed back the few Km’s to the finish line, securing our 2^nd place finish behind Team SOG. 

Adventure racing is such a unique sport because of the team aspect.  And I can’t be thankful enough for the amazing team I get to race with every time.  We pushed hard but despite a few hiccups, finished well.  And as always, learned more for the next race.

                                                                            Image credit AAS