Coastal Challenge 8-Hour

Delmarva Adventure Sports Coastal Challenge

Lewes, DE

May 4, 2013

Rev3/MK Team -  Dave Ashley, Fritz Pameijer & Emily McDonald

Rev3/MK Masters - Terri Spanogle, Rory Welch, Greg Tennille& Pete Cameron

Race Report by: Emily McDonald

Time to play Adventure Racing!

On Saturday May 4th, Rev3/MK headed up to Cape Henlopen State Park  to take on Delmarva Adventure Sports' inaugural Coastal Challenge 8-Hour Sprint Adventure Race.We had two teams competing in the 3/4 Person Co-Ed Elite Division and I was on a 3-person team with Dave and Fritz. Initially I thought this would be a good "training" race to work out my kinks from the Epic and gear up for Odyssey's Wild & Wonderful in 2 weeks. And while I did learn some more valuable lessons, this race also more than lived up to its name, proving to be a fun, but very challenging day.

It was a sunny, but chilly and windy morning and we arrived at the state park with plenty of time to set up our gear, check-in and sit around and wait since while we did get the maps, we wouldn't receive any checkpoints until the race started around 9am. With Dave and Fritz plotting, we were the first team out on the trek and cut through some beach brush to head off to the first few checkpoints. The park wasn't nearly as flat as I had thought - with sand dunes and little hills in the coastal forest adding to the challenge. Running on sand and through sandy pine-needle-covered soil isn't easy, but at least it's more forgiving than asphalt. I was glad that Dave had suggested bringing running shoes as opposed to my heavier trekking shoes.

All the teams were fairly close early on and we saw Odyssey and GOALS at the first CPs and tried to kick it up a notch. We took sand-swept trail from the last CP to the transition to paddle, and were the first into transition. Dave grabbed a sit-on-top single kayak and Fritz and I got one of the sit-in doubles. Hindsight, while the sit-in was theoretically faster, we'd soon find out the self-draining sit-on-top may have been better...


15+ mph winds across the Delaware Bay had our paddle start off smooth and fast. Paddling is my weakest part, but since I was in the double with Fritz, at least I didn't have to worry about steering too much, and could work on re-fueling. Thankful we have Power Bar as an awesome sponsor because I was throwing back their Gel-Blasts like candy. Love those things.  The first two CPs on the paddle were pretty easy, even with a fairly wild beach-launch following the 2nd, where I  I mis-stepped and almost fell over the kayak getting back in (hmm..think the guys missed that thankfully...haha).  We took the opportunity to stretch our legs and run a little bit on the beach getting the last paddle CP before turning back to face the wind and a 4-mile paddle back to shore. And that is when I thought we were going to die. The swell was picking up with probably close to 2-foot rollers and Delaware Bay was quickly filling up our 2-person boat. I had some serious internal panic going on especially since at the front of the kayak the waves were either landing a) On my lap or b) In my face.

So we bailed, we paddled, we bailed, we paddled, I started to freeze, paddled some more and finally, after what seemed like an eternity, made it safely onto dry land.  To put the wind in perspective, when I got too cold to bail and had to paddle to warm back up, Fritz would bail, I'd paddle and the kayak would stay put. Once Fritz started padding again we'd actually go forward. I'm pretty sure if I hadn't been in a boat with him, I'd still be trying to paddle back....yay teammates! Even with the slow paddle back,  we were the 2nd team in, and after a quick 1km we were back at TA and thankfully it was time for the bike!

Dry socks, shoes, jersey and gloves will make you feel like a new person. That, and I downed two gels and half a pack of Power Bar Gel-Blasts before we rolled out on the bikes. Our transition had been quick enough so we were the first team off on the bikes despite being 3rd back into transition as Odyssey passed us running from the boats to TA. This bike was flat and mostly on road and a few gravel trails. The wind was awful and  at times it was all I could do to hold onto the guys' wheels. Somewhere in the melee of TA we forgot our clue sheet for some of the CPs, but luckily Fritz remembered the clue for one CP we needed to write down.  Unfortunately since we didn't have the clue / rule sheet we ended up riding for about 3 miles or so on Rt. 1, which wasn't allowed (oops!) but more on that later. On our way back to the park, we thought we might have missed a CP, but turns out it just wasn't highlighted on the map. Took maybe 3-4 minutes figuring that one out and soon we were rolling again, found the CP and were the first team back into TA.

Look-out tower checkpoint

Another quick TA since Dave convinced me I didn't need to swap out bladders and offered to carry an extra bottle for me. Having awesome teammates rocks :-) The CPs here were fairly straight-forward, and the guys' navigation was spot on. We took some of the park's nature trails and had some minimal bushwhacking to save a little time. By this point in the day, we had been moving for about 5 1/2 hours and neither my leg nor my stomach were happy. Toss it up to downing 2 gels at once or drinking too much seawater, but we'll keep it ladylike and just say I was thankful to find a port-o-potty along the trail since no food seemed to want to stay inside. Flip-side, I felt like a new person and had a little more spring in my step.  Fritz kept us entertained with stories of some of the crazy AR's he's done in the past  and soon enough, we snagged the CP on-top of the look-out tower and were ready to book it back to TA for the last bike leg.

Ribbon, team, bike - Check!

We had a quick TA again and were about to roll out until Fritz yelled that his tire was flat. Not good, especially not good since it was maybe a 30-45 minute bike and Odyssey was maybe 4-5 minutes behind us. As we went to help Fritz change the tire, they rolled out, and of course nothing seemed to work - my pump was acting funny and no one had CO2 handy, but we got it together and rolled out about 5 minutes later to see what we could do. For the CPs on this leg, we had to take a picture at each one that included all the team members, part of a bike and a colored ribbon that was at the CP. We had some "technical difficulties" the first few CPs getting the picture framed right, but soon enough got the hang of it. We ran into Odyssey at a CP and realized that they had two relatively close CPs to finish while we had two relatively far out ones. It was going to be tight.  We cleared the course and finished with about 45-minutes to spare. Odyssey had just come in ahead of us, but turns out it wouldn't have mattered if we had gotten the flat or not, because talking with them after the race we realized we had taken an off-limits road, and ultimately decided to tell the he race director, resulting in us being docked one CP. That didn't change our standings thankfully and we still had our 2nd place overall finish. Terri and the Rev3Master's finished strong in 4th, coming in a little after GOALS who finished 3rd.

 

Fritz, myself & Dave post-race

 

The whole Rev3/MK  gang! Greg, Emily, Terri, Rory, Dave, Pete & Fritz (in front)

Little bittersweet finish, but it was an awesome race that was close until the very end. I learned even more about adventure racing and myself on the course and am finally starting to feel a lot more comfortable in the sport. Not bad for my 3rd adventure race :-) Dave says I'm no longer a rookie ... ha.

Thanks to Delmarva Adventure Sports for hosting a fun and challenging race!