Ozark Greenways 8-14 hour Adv Race

Alright alright, Greenways Part 3 for Cyclewerx. This was our third year doing OGAR, a race we really look forward to for alot of reasons. It has become a much tougher race than it traditionally was in it's earlier years. This year proved to be very tough. We all headed down to Gasconade Hills on Friday to camp, and the race begins Saturday morning although we don't know what time. We found out on Friday night that it began Saturday morning at 7 am. No real shock there, a standard time for a 8-14 hr race during late May.

On Friday evening we pretty much found out for sure that due to heavy recent spring rains, the Gasconade was swollen out of its banks and the race personnel determined that it was not safe to have us do the paddling portion of this race. Bummer, two years in a row that this has happened to this race. Mother Nature wins again. So we get the maps on Saturday morning at the 5:15 am map handout, and we learn that instead of doing the paddling leg down the Gasconade to get from CP 9 to CP 11, we now had to trek about 7 miles additional to make up for that segment. Anyway, getting ahead of myself here....

We take off at 7 am for the start of what was a 9 CP trekking leg/orienteering leg. We (ahemm, I) made our usual blunders and had a few snafu's in finding a few of the CP's. We came into CP 9 frustrated because we were near the front of the pack from CP1 to CP 5, but I screwed up on CP 6 and 7 and we lost time. We checked in with the volunteer, then began the trek back to the Race Start/HQ/Transition Area where our bikes were awaiting us.

The bike leg(s) of this race were surprisingly good. They were on some horse trails but were very "singletrack like." Once I heard that the river was swollen and the paddling was cancelled, I had assumed that the trails would be sloppy, muddy, rutted out and essentially unrideable. I had envisioned pushing bikes for 50 percent of the trail sections, but boy was I wrong. I would say it was more like 95 percent rideable, 5 percent pushing your bike. RIght on, I'll take that. We hit the CP's without incident, no nav problems and no bike mechanicals.

The bike/orienteering leg was pretty cool. It actually gave some good route choices. We also hit this section pretty much without incident and hit all CP's quite well with the exception of the fact that somehow I had nav'd us right past a pond where a CP was located. We did a full circle and came back and found it. Sigh.....

Now, the poo hit the fan when I, out of the blue, had some crazy dang allergic reaction to who knows what. Trouncing around in the forest on a hot, sweaty 88+ degree afternoon in poison ivy, oak, psumac, thorns, and everything else under the sun, well.....The toxins must have finally penetrated into my bloodstream and I puffed up. I was a little worried, my face was puffy, eyes were swollen, heart was a little racy, and my throat was a bit constricted, but we only had an hour on the bike (roads) back to the finish left. With only a few easy turns on roads, I threw the map at Marc and Ken and told them to figure out where to go from here back to the finish. I couldn't hardly see out of my swollen eyes to read the map. We took off on the bikes and came through the finish line not really having any idea what place we were in.




So, the results were in: We finished in 6th place out of 36 teams in 4 person co-ed, and 12th overall out of 79 teams which included 2 person teams as well as about a half dozen solo racers. The top teams really cooked the course, somewhere just over 6 hrs. Downhill Bikes blitzed into first place. Man those guys are awesome. Great athletes, great attitudes. I love getting our butts kicked by them!!!! Our race time was 9 hrs 35 minutes.

It was the first really hot day of the year, where temps approached 90 degrees, so there were alot of DNF's. The attrition rate for this race was higher than years past. We had our own issues, dehydration, allergies, etc. but overall, we laid down a solid race. It was a very good day to be an adventure racer. Marc, Ken and Jill all did great all day long. I was proud to have them as my teammates and I always have been. I was illin' from that allergy thing so badly that I didn' even get to back down to the campsite to hang out with my teamies after the race. Heck, I didn't even get a Fat Tire afterwards.
Post by Bryan Greaser

LBL 24 Hour

Well there isn't a whole lot to say about the LBL 24 hr. We didn't finish the race. Ken had major knee issues during our second trekking leg (actually much earlier than that) so we pulled out. He was really beginning to hobble pretty badly.
The weather for the race was phenomenal though, and it was an overall great event once again. Ken was a warrior about it, not wanting to give up, but when you are doing the trekking legs of a race with a tree branch for a staff to assist your walking (I called him Gandolf)it is time to call it a day.

Next up for us is the Ozark Greenways Adventure Race near Richland, MO. Hopefully we'll all be healthy and put in a solid finish as we have the past couple of years.

Post by Bryan Greaser

LBL Challenge 24 hour coming up!!!!!!

Well the weather has been crazy phenomenal, with sunny skies, dry singletrack trails, and 70 degree temps.....perfect for training, right? Well, not exactly. When we ran the Syllamo Arkansas "3 Days of Syllamo" event earlier in March (Ken did the 50k and the 50 Mile but the third day run was scrapped, Marc and I only did the
50k), Ken managed to get a blood clot in his lower leg from the 80+ miles of unforgiving pounding of the rocky trails around Syllamo. So Ken was, at least for a day, I think, questionable for the LBL 24 hr Challenge next week. His foot and lower leg looked kind of like a football minus the leather, and the seams, I guess.... I have always heard that canines have a high threshold of pain tolerance. I think Ken is part Poodle.
Here's the foot pic:


Making matters worse, I was doing some carpentry type work about two weeks ago and was in the baseball catcher's squat position, and I had been that way for a few hours working in a small space, and I turned while squatting and felt an "Uh-oh" pain in my right knee. It turned out to be more than an annoyance, and I thought it best to play it safe and keep off of it despite needing to continue training for the upcoming race(s), but I have stayed off of my feet to let it heal. I have been able to ride the mountain bike though at least so that's good. Oh well, what's a guy supposed to do? It is almost never the wrong decision to let something heal longer than probably necessary rather than risk re-injury by getting back on it too soon. I'll be well rested for LBL.

So the field is shaping up to be a dandy once again. Some top notch teams coming in. It won't take very many more teams to enter the race to match last year's racer participation total which I think was about 210.

Race should be able to be followed on Internet via Checkpoint Tracker somewhat "live" but that has been, on more than one occasion, a disappointment. Having helped put this race on in 2009, I saw how difficult it is to keep Checkpoint Tracker updated. It takes alot of time and alot of volunteers to make it work (and good internet connections in remote locations), and when emergencies and other duties come up like picking up teams in the middle of the night who are lost or injured, a race director quickly finds he can only do so much at once. Here's to hoping everyone can get updates at home.

It's gonna be good. Like really, really good.

Oh, and one final thing. Marc has some back issues so instead of waiting to see if he could get clearance to race, we made the decision to try to find a replacement, and lo and behold, who have we found to join us for this race but none other than Lullel Hickman himself from Downhill Bikes. Couldn't do any better than that. That's for bailing us out Lullel! Looking foward to racing with you, but we'll sure miss Marc.

Post by Bryan Greaser

Ultramax 8 Hour Adventure Race

For starters, Ultramax did an overall tremendous job in designing, executing, and organizing this first-time race for them. We were super excited for starters because this kicks off the 2010 race season for us, but we weren't too sure what to expect from Ultramax since this was their first stab at putting one of these races on. I won't say that my expectations were necessarily low, but I figured they would have some "hiccups" along the way and there was only one which I will get to later...

Ok, since Ken Chappell couldn't race with us on this one we picked up Elizabeth Sparks who is an accomplished triathlete who lives here in Cape Girardeau. She is very strong, brings navigation skills to the table, and is tremendously easy to get along with in a team environment. Perfect racing partner, period.
The Friday night mandatory gear check and team meeting was late, and by the time we got our maps (killer, by the way), found out the 6 am start time (ouch, 24 degrees) and drove back to Jill's house in St. Chuck, we didn't even start plotting (21 CP's) until 10:30 and I got to bed at about 1 am after I stayed up a bit longer just to familiarize myself with the overall course map and flow. Wakeup time was agreed upon by all to be 3:30 am and that sucked but there would be time to sleep on Saturday night after the race.

Saturday morning we did a bike drop below a lake dam at 5 am, then drove to the parking area/Race HQ, tried to stay warm, hit the toilets, and lined up for the headlamp trekking start. We ran on a gravel trail and hit CP1 easily as daylight began to flirt with us, then the mass group began to thin out some but still quite a few pockets of racers in line. CP2 looked super easy on the map but I stupidly followed some groups that blew right past it and then made another turn away from it. This ended up causing us to 'wander' for a little bit and we finally went back and the pond was concealed by evergreen trees. Ok, not a good way to start off, costing us alot of time early. My fault.

Next we hit CP3 on a hilltop easily, then somehow I had us heading South towards CP4 when Elizabeth quickly noticed that we made a wrong turn at CP3 and that we should be heading W instead of S, so we quickly righted ourselves back to CP3, then easily went on to hit CP4. CP4 was at the bottom of a reentrant in one of the steepest hillsides I have seen on any adv race terrain. CP5 & CP6 were nailed, then we headed on up to the transition at the lake to hit the paddling leg.
The paddling leg was uneventful except for the awesome fiberglass canoes and the frozen coves. So many canoes going back into the coves were breaking up the one inch thick ice which was causing some slow going for teams but otherwise no big deal.
We finished the canoes, transitioned to foot and trekked to CP8 where we picked up bikes.

The bike leg hitting CP9 thru CP14 was mostly gravel roads, some doubletrack/horse trails, and quite a few creek crossings to get the ole feet wet, wet, wet. It was probably about 18 km and the CP's were easy. No problems here.
When we arrived at CP14 on bikes we dropped them and transitioned back to trek where we would be going out on about a 5 km orienteering course to find CP15 thru CP19 in any order (Rogaine style). CP15 was super easy following a powerline, CP16 also easy at the edge of a lake, CP17 was in a very pronounced reentrant feeding into another large reentrant, and from there we could see a hilltop that we shot up, then followed the flat terrain SE and around a reentrant, then a turn W to where the land had 4 distinct ridges overlooking a valley and Charette Creek below. The terrain was unmistakeable and I was confident since we were just ticking these CP's off so well. When we came upon the ridge where CP18 was plotted on the map, we went out onto the ridge and could not find it. Repeatedly looking at the map and comparing it to the terrain, I was sure it had to be there....Well it wasn't. Soon other teams started showing up and we compared plots, thinking maybe I mis-plotted. Nope. Had it right on. I then decide that maybe the race director plotted it over onto another ridge mistakenly so we went out onto another one and the same thing....Nowhere to be found. We had wasted alot of time by now. Forum Dental came along and told us that they had been to the TA and the volunteer told them that teams were finding CP18 so it had to exist. Hmmmm.

We went ahead and made our way towards CP19 and a four male team said that they found it but that it was indeed mis-plotted onto the wrong ridge. So we proceeded to go S and nailed CP19, then on our way back went over and sure enough, we found the mis-plotted CP18 on a paralell ridge but the ridges were very different from each other. The Race director realized the error and in a very professional way acknowledged it on the website. While all CP's were checked by GPS by the race management, I think they found out the hard way that the GPS method of checking CP's is not always accurate.

Next we hooked up our running tow system and made our way back to the CP14/20 Transition area and transitioned back to bike where we just had to go bike about 5k, hit CP21 and then on to the Finish Area where a "Challenge Course" would be waiting.

The Challenge course consisted of taking an empty sandbag, running to a lake about 3/4 mile away (guessing), filling it with a minimum of 30 lbs of sand, then each team member had to carry the sandbag back to the Race Finish to complete a small obstacel type course with their sandbag. The 'kicker' was that when you filled the sandbag, there was not a scale there, and if you returned to the Finish/Race HQ and the bag did not weigh 30 lbs, you and every team member had to go back to the beach to bring the weight up to 30 lbs. The mental side of that translates to "I'll be damned if I am going to take any chance of having to carry this thing all the way back here," so you end up wayyy overfilling it to make sure, sure, sure. When we took the bags back to the Finish area they all met the minimum weight.

We crossed the Finish at 8 hrs 31 minutes, good for 4th place in 4 person co-ed and 12th place overall. It was a nice event, great weather, and we all felt pretty strong. Innsbrook is a great setting for an adventure race. We plan on being back next year. I would be willing to bet that Ultramax learned a hard lesson about the misplaced CP and will go over and above double and triple checking them for accuracy in the future.

Post by Bryan Greaser

Race calendar 2010

Well we are super, super excited in the early race season calendar. Despite a recent miserable period of cold, cold weather and dreary skies, we are all eagerly looking forward to some upcoming races. Here's what we are shooting for right now for sure in the first half of 2010:

March 6th, Ultramax 8 Hr Adventure race near Innsbrook, MO This is Ultramax's first crack at an adventure race, and they normally put on triathlons. Ken is unable to race this one with us so we have Elizabeth Sparks, an accomplished triathlete to say the least joining us for this one. Cannot wait.

March 13th: Myself, Ken and Marc will be traveling to Syllamo Arkansas for Three Days of Syllamo, a strictly trail running event on the hallowed trails of Syllamo. You can bite off as much or as little as you want for this 3 day event. The mileage of trail running equals 100 miles over the three days if you choose all 3 days.

April 10th weekend we have the Bonk Hard Racing 24 Hr LBL Challenge. This is one we absolutely positively cannot wait for. This will be myself, Marc, Ken and Jill.

Finally, in May we have the Ozark Greenways race once again near Richland Missouri. We have had good success at this race over the past few years and hope to continue that success or possibly even improve on it.

We'll be looking to supplement another race in the mix somewhere during June or July, then hopefully we can tackle the Berryman 36 hr in September.

Post by Bryan Greaser

Sand Spring Adventure Race

The Sand Spring Resort Adventure race is a popular sprint race just outside of Lebanon , MO. Marc has run this race three years previous and claims this is one of his favorite races. I was unsure at first whether or not I wanted to do it since I have absolutely no sprinting ability! Plus, it was the same weekend as volleyball sectionals. Unfortunately for my volleyball girls at Zumwalt West, we lost in Districts. But on a positive note, I was able to run the race with Marc. The weekend actually turned out perfectly. Friday afternoon I left St. Louis to go to Richland/Lebanon to spend some time with my family for the Halloween weekend. I was able to not only run the race with Marc, but also able to participate in some Halloween festivities with my sister, my nieces and nephew, and my parents. What a great weekend! And to top it all off, Marc and I surprised ourselves a bit and did pretty well in the race.

Marc and I arrived to the race fairly early as usual. The morning was chilly, but bearable. We hung out by the fire until the race meeting started. During the meeting, I just happened to ask Marc is he had any bike tools with him. He said no, so last minute I decided to run back to my car to get some bike tools just in case of a flat. I rushed back to meet Marc, and a few short minutes later we loaded the buses so they could drop us off at the race start.
We started the race with a short sprint run for about 3 miles before jumping in a four person raft to begin our journey down the Niangua River. Since the rivers were above flood stage at dangerous levels, we were not allowed to go down the river in canoes. We happened to get into a raft with Amanda Glendenning (the wife of the person in charge of the race) and her partner. Amanda immediately instructed us on where to sit and how to keep count on our strokes. It was intense, but she led us exactly where we needed to go down the river. We actually went at a pretty good pace with the water moving so fast.

In the middle of the rafting section, we jumped out of our rafts, jumped in the water (about waist high, burrrrrrr……… It doesn’t get better than river water at the end of October) and began our hike up the mountain. It seriously felt like a mountain even though it was just a huge steep hill. In my opinion, this part of the race was pretty intense. I had to keep telling myself to keep my legs moving, pick one leg up, then the other. I am not sure how Marc felt during this part. There wasn’t much talking. But at one point, Marc did tell me to take a second and look at the view. It was an awesome view, not realizing how high we had hiked. Wish there would have been more time to relax and enjoy the fall scenery! Once we made it to the top, it was time to go down. Parts of this were a bit rough with the ground being muddy and slippery, but we managed to make it back down, back through the river (but this time chest high for me), and back in the rafts. Away we went for another couple miles or so with a different team.

After the rafting, we arrived at our bikes. Our families were there at this point cheering us on. My parents even brought Cooper (my dog) down to the river. It was now time to complete a 2-lap bike course with an obstacle in the middle. We changed our wet muddy running shoes to our biking shoes and off we went. Near the end of the first lap, we were walking our bikes up a hill (yes, Bryan, we were walking) and I looked down to notice my front tire was completely flat! Uugggghh!!!! I was so upset, this was the second race in a row one of my tires has gone flat. Marc did an amazing job getting the tire off, tube switched, aired up, and back on in about 5 minutes! Thank goodness I took the extra minute before the race to get my bike tools!!! While Marc was changing the tube, about 3-4 teams passed us. It was so disappointing trying to play catch up the rest of the race. Five minutes in a sprint race is actually quite a bit of time lost. Marc even did an amazing job with the obstacle by splitting a piece of wood with one swing!
We finished the race in 2 hours, 37 minutes finishing 10th overall and 2nd in the co-ed division out of about 30 teams. After looking at the final results, 5 teams were within about 2-7 minutes of our finishing time. It’s disappointing about the flat tire, but I guess that’s going to happen from time to time. Let’s just hope it’s not my tire AGAIN next time!
Post by Jill Plassmeyer

Berryman 36 hr Adventure race

Wow, where do I start? Chronologically I guess.
I arrived in Van Buren about 5:30 on Friday and met my teammates for the first time ever near Race HQ. I was never concerned about racing with people I don't know, and after meeting them, I was even less concerned. I knew everyone was cool, prepared and easy to get along with. We signed in and then took our bikes to the trailer for the race management to haul to an undisclosed location. We continued getting some gear together, then went over and ate at the pasta dinner, then off to the pre-race meeting to find out exactly what this thing was all about.
The pre-race meeting was at the Landing which is right beside the Current River and almost under the Hwy 60 bridge. Here's a shot of the pre-race meeting:


Very cool place. It was outside and weather cooperated. Jason began explaining things, and most importantly finally disclosed that the 36 hr race would start at 11 pm Friday night, just hours away. He then said that we would board buses beginning at 9:30 and the bus ride was an hour away. So it was getting to be 8 pm. How would we have time to drive back to Race HQ, pack our gear, and plot so many CP's before 9:30? Well, that question was answered when he then revealed that the entire course was pre-plotted and every CP was already on the maps! Wow, that was a first. It took the UTM plotting completely out of the mix, so there was no chance of anyone mis-plotting and searching in the wrong area for mis-plotted CP's. We also learned that we would have some disposable sacks to stash a food cache and anything else we might need later on in the race. These would be encountered much later in the race and provided the much needed opportunity to refuel.
So we stuff our packs to the gills, including our breakdown paddles, and we boarded what had to be one of the smelliest buses I have ever been on. We turned on the headlamps and looked over the course maps and highlighted our agreed upon route choices. This worked out very smoothly between me, Mike and Bill, and we discussed different routes from each CP to CP, pros and cons of each, and then by committee came up with our agreed upon route. They all turned out to be pretty much 'spot-on' for this initial nighttime 17 mile trek.
So we arrive at riverside and get dropped off, warned about wild horses on the trails, and off we went into the dark of night. It was really foggy at times too, expecially with the scattered hue from our headlamps.


We had no significant problems at all finding these CP's. There were several times we had to cross knee to thigh high deep creeks, but nothing any deeper than that. We had very minor problems finding two particular CP's. We wandered for a bit looking for CP 7, then we decided to go up to the peak (a known point) and shoot a bearing to the CP. We headed off in a southwesterly fashion and began dropping down the hillside and sure enough, we hit it. It was there that we encountered the Iowa Wolfpack and kept running into them for many, many hours to come. We also refilled our hydration packs several times with Mike's water purifier which did a bomber job. The creeks were clean and water tasted just fine. It was super nice to never have to worry about conserving water, we had so much clean water around us at all times.

Night trekking:



The good thing about the terrain is that there were almost always jeep trails running along the ridge tops which didn't show up on the map, but nonetheless were there. Sometime about 3-4 am we came to a clearing and we all marveled at the clear sky and the stars. While I don't by any means live in a metropolitan area, it is big enough to have city lights which inhibit such killer views of the dark night skies. It was truly phenomenal. I think it was also about that time that we discussed hallucinations and sleep deprivation, and somehow this resulted in us singing the song to the Muppet Show under a canopy of stars. But I digress......
We made our way towards CP8, crossed a creek and found the correct hollow and began following it, waiting for it to turn westerly, then began looking for the second reentrant on the left which should have CP8 ready to welcome us. We finally came to the second one, but the downfall was very thick, so the movement was very slow. Mike started scrambling up the reentrant in the lead and finally shouted out that he had found it. We were thinking that it shouldn't have been up the reentrant that far off of the creek, but we found it and continued climbing out of the hollow and back to ridgetops to head to CP9. As the sun began to come up, Karin's knee was really beginning to bother her greatly, especially from the brutal terrain. We did what we could, but ultimately, when we came to CP11 and prepared to transition to the canoe leg, she made the tough decision to pull out. I knew she was in pain, and selfishly I would have loved to see her continue onward with us, but when a knee begins hurting that badly, no good can come from pushing onward, especially with what still lied ahead of us. She could have done some serious damage to it had she continued. Due to having lost a teammate, we were now considered an "unranked" team so we were only racing for pride from here on. So we bid her farewell and we took off in canoes for the 25 mile canoe trip. Mike made like Rambo and said he would prefer to paddle a canoe solo rather than three of us in one canoe, and that was a solid decision. He managed his canoe very well down river. If Bill and I pulled ahead a little bit, I used the opportunity to get some 'shut-eye' and practically fell asleep in the canoe for a brief few minutes. Here's a shot of what the river treated us to all morning and early afternoon on Saturday:


Once we pulled into the riverside TA, we finally arrived at our first re-fueling station. We chugged Monster energy drinks, scooped our fingers into a jar of peanut butter, and pretty much ate and drank to fill the ole tank as much as we could, then threw some of the food into our packs and took off onto what would be another trekking section, this one about 12 miles. Once the three of us took off, a pretty chubby rain began to fall but it cleared out after about 15-20 minutes. We made a small navigational error here but we realized it fairly quickly and righted ourselves just fine and it was of no real consequence.
We hit CP13 & CP14 nearly perfectly, passing GoLite and DFW Hounds, then came to the infamous CP15. From CP14 we followed the reentrant down to a creek/hollow, and followed that creekbed into Sugarcamp Hollow which brought us to a crossing with the Ozark Trail, and then came to the base of the looming Barnett Mountain straight ahead of us. With no obvious trails up and around it, we just went UP, and kept going UP, through a large boulder strewn course. We started at 600 feet elevation, and ultimately the peak was nearly 1100 feet. It was a very strenous 500 feet of elevation gain. Towards the summit, the downfall was utterly insane. I don't know if this was due to higher winds up there, lightning strikes, or the recent devastating ice storms that the region sustained, but the peak of Barnett Mountain was awful. It was the only time all day that I saw a snake too, and I nearly stepped on it. And there were many false summits as well. Yes, I wouldn't believe it myself if I hadn't been there, but it seemed so many times it was about to plateau and peak out, but just kept going on and on. Finally the three of us came to the CP, took in a super awesome view from the top, shot a bearing and took off down a spur to where we would descend the mountain and intersect with the Ozark Trail. The descent was not any easier than the ascent with navigating through the downfall and bushwacking. And to top it all off, the gnats that were swarming us at the top of Barnett Mountain were awful too. They tapered off as we came down the side of the mountain though.
Finally we came to the bottom and intersected with the Ozark Trail. From here at least we were on a trail finally and no more bushwacking, and we were to follow this to CP16 & CP17/TA where the bikes were waiting.
This hike on the Ozark Trail was a big relief but took longer than we had expected. There were several little shut-ins type areas with small waterfalls, etc. We agreed that Rocky Falls (our destination) would have to be pretty impressive to be better than these spots. It was...

We finally came to Rocky Falls probably about 6:45pm or so. It was still daylight. The CP was in a spot that you really had to scramble up alot of rocks to get up to it but the falls were spectacular. Once we punched the CP we followed the creek and came to CP 17 and the bike transition area where we would get additional maps with the bike course. Here's a shot from the TA with the race volunteer laying out our new maps while we pondered life....



When we hiked into the TA we could see that there were many, many bikes still there, which is always a comforting sign to know that there were still alot of teams behind you.

Many teams were transitioning in progress also. We began fueling again as this was a second food cache that we had with our bikes. Prior to coming into this TA we were all having foot issues with wet feet non-stop, and unfortunately Mike was suffering from some severe chafing in his nether regions from just trekking 30 brutal miles in cycling shorts with a chamois. That does have a tendency to rub you the wrong way if you get my drift. Despite applying generous amounts of Bodyglide on several occasions, he was in major pain. He tried to sit on his bike seat to test the waters, but the pain was too much. We were staring at a 65+ mile biking leg ahead of us all through the night, and he made the decision to pull out. I didn't doubt for a second his pain and discomfort, as I had just raced along side iwth him for nearly 24 hrs, and it was clear to me that he was a warrior and a very strong racer, never complaining about fatigue or soreness, etc. I knew that he still had energy and strength in his legs, but if you can't sit on a bikeseat, all the strength and energy in the world can't compensate for that. Bill and I changed into dry socks which felt soooo good as our feet were killing us with wet socks. When I took off my shoes I was prepared to see something out of horror movie, they felt that bad. I thought the soles had split open on me. There were deep fissures and swelling but nothing beyond that. We dried them and rubbed them back to life.
So Bill and I put on our bike gear, I looked over the new maps and highlighted our routes, and we took off into the dark of night with lights burning. We hit CP18 pretty easily, and then we were off to CP19. This was the very first time all day long that somehow, someway we could not get the right road to connect us from 18 to 19. We tried several different jeep trails/fire roads, but none of them were the right ones. We would ride one for a mile or so and it would be a screamin' downhill, only to come to a deadend and have to spin back up and climb back out of there. I knew we couldn't keep doing this or our legs would be zapped.
A straw that broke the camel's back was when I went through a large puddle in the road that turned out to be deeper than I thought, and the mud stopped me in my tracks. I had to put my foot down and the water went up to my ankle. So much for the dry socks and shoes now. I was back to having feet issues again.
After never finding exactly which trail connected to CP19, I suggested to Bill that if we continued to wander, and even eventually came to CP19, we had so much left to do, and if we pulled the plug later on we would be that much further from that last TA where there were volunteers and potential to get a car ride back to Race HQ. Since we were only about 8 miles from that last TA where we took off on the bikes, we made the call to turn back and return to CP17 and hope to get a ride back to my van. It also made a difference, at least mentally, that we had dropped two teammates at this point, and I believe that we would have been more likely to push onward had we still had a full team. Nonetheless, Bill and I pulled the plug after having raced about 24 hrs. I have no regrets. Even though we were an incomplete team at that point, we made it much further than alot of other teams who had pulled into CP17 and decided not to go out on the bike leg at all. They all got DNF's but will still rank ahead of us since they never dropped a teammate, even though Bill and I in reality went farther and longer than many of them did. But that's the way the game is played, and rules are rules.
Parting thoughts: This was a remarkable race and I had a great, great time racing with Karin, Mike and Bill. Ultimately the dropout and DNF rate was extremely high, evidencing the brutality of the course. In fact, all three Colorado teams that came in for this race didn't finish either! That should say something! Morale was high throughout the race generally (with a few lows but nothing that spoiled the race by any means). Morale certainly hit a low point on Barnett Mountain. I suspect that teams who summited that at night were demoralized beyond comprehension. That would not have been pleasant.
I never had a single cramp, never bonked, and overall felt very strong throughout. My legs felt super strong when I mounted our bikes Saturday night. My feet hurt alot from the long treks but that was the extent of any pain that I had. I really feel like I have had some good races this fall that are preparing me for some good racing next year. And I am very fortunate to have had the Mid-Rivers gang invite me along to race with them since my normal beloved Cyclewerx comrades could not do it with me due to schedules.
What a great weekend, man, just great. All told we trekked 30 miles, paddled 25, and Bill and I covered 20 miles on the mountain bikes. And I came home to a beautiful loving wife and beautiful loving little daughters, and I was once again reminded that I am the luckiest guy in the world......

Post by Bryan Greaser