My First Adventure Race (part one)

So it has been a week since I completed my first adventure race and I feel I should give a little recap of how it went. Sorry this didn’t come sooner, life and work have been a little hectic this past week.

The week before the race it did nothing but rain, so for race day we expected more rain and some really muddy conditions. Well we were right, the race was set to start at 4:00 am and it was 5.7°C, drizzling rain with a 26 km/h north wind.

This year’s race had a few changes in the format. First, we didn’t get our maps at the pre-race briefing and it was a score format instead of a timed race. In a score format, each checkpoint is worth a certain number of points based on their difficulty and while there were 11 mandatory checkpoints, there were about 40 optional checkpoints that could be obtained to achieve the best possible score. There was still a time limit of 12 hours and the transition areas were only open during certain times, so route planning and time management would be of utmost importance. It would be impossible for a team to get all the checkpoints in the time allowed.

At the start of the race we knew we would need our bikes ready, but we wouldn’t be starting with them. We found as we lined up to start that we would need to climb the nearby ski hill (300 vertical feet) to get our maps that were waiting at the top. So, in mass start, 41 teams of 3 began their run up the ski hill in the pitch black of the night. The slopes of the hill were slick with mud in spots and made the climb a little challenging. Once at the top and the maps in our hands we ran back down the hill to our support vehicle to plot the checkpoints and retrieve our bikes.

The bike started out fairly easy, a good road to ride on and a slight detour to pick up an optional checkpoint. I wasn’t long before we hit the muck, and we hit a lot of it. The road/trail we found ourselves on was so muddy it slowed us to a near stop. We ended up riding as much in the knee to waist high grass along the trail as we could. That worked for a little while until the ditch became unrideable and we were forced back onto the muddy trail. Riding on the mud didn’t last too long because our tires soon got so caked with mud that the wheels stopped turning. We thought we could carry our bikes but the fact that we could barely lift our bikes left us to dragging them until we could find a spot to cross through a farmer’s field. After a quick cleaning off of the mud we were off and riding again, now across a nice rocky, bumpy farmer’s field.

After some faster paced riding through framer’s fields and lifting bikes over barb-wired fences, we were forced back onto the muddy road. By this time everyone had cold, soaking wet feet and hands. The rest of our body was still warm and dry at his point thanks to some good rain gear. The slow and muddy road continued until we hit mandatory checkpoint #2 and we had to hike our bikes up a short, steep hill to where we had to cross a highway. By this time it was now fairly light out and we were able to shut off our headlamps and bike lights but the weather remained unchanged, 5.7 °C with 33 km/h wind and drizzling rain.

Across the highway we got to ride on a grid (gravel) road for a while. It allowed us to go a little faster even though it was still muddy and very muddy in some spots. This new found speed was great but it wasn’t to last.

To be continued …