Gung Ho 10-Hour

Gung Ho 10 Hour Adventure Race

Pine Grove Furnace State Park

Racers: John Courain, Aaron Courain, Dusty Reppuhn

Report by: John Courain

Murphy’s Law, it turns out, is a real thing, and is also a real son-of-a-gun especially when a great start goes so wrong.  Pine Grove Furnace State Park is one of the best places I’ve been to for a race.  High ridgelines over looking giant valleys, crystal clear water, miles of incredible single track and relatively tame mountain laurel made this place unforgettable.  We woke up to a perfect day in a perfect location and were hoping for a perfect start. We got just that. The race began with a twist, a paddle start turned into a split section where two racers were to take a pack raft to 4 weighted points around the lake the furthest off worth 70 points and the closest worth 40.  In order for these to count though a third racer needed to work some land nav and run the perimeter of the lake to pick up 4 corresponding points hidden down trails and on hilltops.  Aaron and Dusty worked the paddles and I was sent to chase down the land points.  The top teams made short work of the foot section and all the runners had a few minutes to catch their breath while we waited for our paddling teammates to return to shore to start the bike leg.  Sure enough I saw Aaron and Dusty paddling to the shore before anyone else. Excited with a tremendous start and a cleared first leg I prepped our gear and set us up for leg 2  a long single track ride through trails dubbed “ankle breaker” and “grave ridge”…  awesome. As I was helping stow away the pack raft, race director Jay Zech congratulated us on the early lead and asked “ what are you going to do with it” (our lead),  ever the comedian, I joked “screw it up of course!” Famous last words…

Right before starting our bike leg there was one point on a hilltop right next to the TA. Here is where our troubles started.  A navigation mistake so dumb that its painful put us on an adjacent hilltop and demolished the lead that we pushed for in the first leg.  This being our only mistake of the race we were confident that we could race our way back into the lead.  Unfortunately my mountain bike had other plans.  Having earlier that morning fixed a brake issue with little more than the business end of a flathead screwdriver and some elbow grease things were looking fine mechanically but a rear derailleur issue began on our first hill and plagued us for the entire 10 hours of the race.  Reguardless we pressed on and began picking off a litany of mountain bike points moving through both ankle breaker and grave ridge.  On ankle breaker Aaron’s head made contact with a branch and put a nice gash in it. Luckily dusty is a vet and knows how to take care of animals like Aaron.  After a few minutes of field medicine and recovery we stopped the bleeding and continued our bike leg.  We cleared all the points and made it to our second transition.

This was a short foot course up to a short ridge line with two optional points and one CP.  We ran down the first optional and climbed up to the second located in a fenced animal exclusion area at the end of the ridge. On the way out we had our second injury. Dusty got a nasty ankle sprain which put us out of running commission for the rest of the race.  Luckily a good Samaritan with some XL Motrin pills helped us out and got dusty back on her feet. We grabbed CP 6 on the way back to our bikes and started our journey through the second half of the course.  

We wound our way through more tremendous single track picking off three more OP’s on the way the big payoff, a rappel high over Laurel Forge Pond. With time not on our side we had to skip the last of the bike orienteering to make the cutoff for the rappel.  Hitting a bottle neck at the rappel saddled us with some down time so dusty could nurse her ankle but it was the right move because the point value of the rappel was a whopping 150.  With about an hour to course closing, we had enough time to make our way to the optional foot orienteering section.  We were able to navigate to some of the higher value points without aggravating Dusty’s ankle and made it to the finish in with about 5 minutes to spare. With the cascade of problems we ran into, the podium just wasn’t in the cards for us but a tremendous day was had by all.

 

If I had to sum up the race in a sentence it was the best worst day of racing ever.  If you are on the east coast and you want to race and incredible venue Gung Ho should be high on your list.