Where to begin? Hmmmm, I guess where it all truly began. Probably about a year ago I was talking to Jason Elsenraat, owner of Bonk Hard Racing, and mentioned to him that he should seriously consider putting on a race at the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area at Kentucky Lake in western Kentucky. I live about 2 hours away, but Jason lives in the Kansas City area which is more like 7 hours away. So he did some research on the area and decided he wanted to give it a go. He asked if I would be willing to help design the course and put it on since I live closer and am familiar with the area, and the rest is history. A race was born.
This picture is Gary and I (me in red) going over the maps, UTM's and cluesheets one final time on Thursday night at the lodge.
Many months went into the planning and preparation of this race. We initially intended to put the race on in September or October of 2009, but circumstances changed and April 4, 2009 was the date we came up with that worked for the US Forest Service and ourselves. While things were progressing along, the worst ice storm in history slammed the LBL area, causing complete and utter destruction right through where our race was going to be. The KY governor called it the worst natural disaster in modern history. Widespread power outages, power lines snapped in half, and trees, trees, trees snapped and down everywhere imaginable. HUGE trees, even the healthy ones, weren't spared. We had a conference call with the LBL US Forest service trails manager Bill Ryan who is a real class of a guy, and one of his co-workers Kyle Varel, another class of a guy. They described the condition of the area but remained committed to making this event continue nonetheless. They had crews cutting trees across roads and trail non-stop. The local bike shop owner Steve Wilson from Wood N Wave sports in Grand Rivers was a HUGE part of this as well, rallying crews to clear the very well known Canal Loop trail on the North end of LBL. Steve also helped us out in other ways as well and we really appreciated his help. Another jewel of a guy. And I also had some major help from two of my friend in Cape a few weekends before the race. Keith Hente and Tom Farden both dedicated an entire Sunday to help me with some back breaking work on clearing a certain key road that was decimated with trees, just to make it somewhat passable for bikes. Huge thanks to those two guys too.
Registration was looking great. For a first year race, we anticipated maybe 150 racers, and considering the news of the ice storm slamming the area, we were anxiously awaiting to see if people were scared off from coming. To our delight, we ended up having over 210 racers for this race. Because of the condition of the trails and side roads and jeep trails, I had to spend many, many man hours working on clearing downed trees and branches from roads we intended to use for our route. I spent many weekends doing hard back breaking labor to make this race work. Unfortunately this took away from my time on concentrating on different parts of the race that I needed to do. This is when Jason and I decided to ask Gary Thompson from Osage Beach, MO to come on board. Gary is an orienteer and an avid outdoorsman, having done many O-meets, Rogaines, and even some adventure races in the past. In fact, after the LBL Challenge he was driving straight to Atlanta to begin his hike of the Appalachian Trail. So we now had three heads working on this event and things were progressing well.
Race week: I headed over to LBL on Wednesday, April 1 to begin setting up the course. Every CP was flagged previously with pink colored surveying tape and the location and description plotted onto our master map. Gary had arrived a day earlier and began placing the actual CP white and orange bags/flags. He and I continued to place the flags on Thursday and Friday before the race. We stayed at the Ken Bar Lodge in Gilbertsville where the owners treated us like family. Very interesting place they have there.
The pre-race meeting was Friday evening. Racer check-in began at 3 pm and you could feel the excitement in the air. And the race shirts that Jason ordered from the North Face were simply awesome, and I mean super groovy awesome. WAYYYYY better than just an average ole race t-shirt that we all have too many of already. These were tech shirts, not cotton.
We had some seriously good teams coming in for this race from all over the country. And I mean SERIOUSLY good. It was very cool to have met those teams and racers individually. Adventure racers are such cool people. The one thing I always tell people about adventure racing is that you have to like to suffer, plain and simple. Crazy isn't it? Anyway, the racers got their maps and cluesheets and after the meeting they began plotting their UTM coordinates and plotting their routes and gameplan. Jason, Gary and I had more last minute work to do. No rest for the weary. div>
I went back to Race HQ on Friday night with 4 of my good friends from Cape who came over to volunteer for this race and help me out. I think they got more than they bargained for. We ended up being short on volunteers so we 'recycled' these guys all day long over the course and worked them like dogs. So here is a seriously, from the heart SHOUT OUT to Pat McMenamin, Ben Gray, Chris Heeb and Matt Ochs for coming over and helping me. Steak dinners are in order for these guys to say the least. I hope they at least had some fun. When we arrived back at Race HQ on Friday night we set up the HQ tent and took care of some other business, and then eventually we went to sleep right there in the parking area for a couple of hours before the sound of a 6000 watt generator was fired up at 5:30 am on Saturday morning. What an alarm clock that was for my boys! It was SHOWTIME. The weather was absolutely perfect. Sunny and a high of 70 degrees.
Once the race began, things calmed down and the race begins to play itself out. All of the planning and coordinating just kind of comes to a stop and things progress out. Jason, Gary and I were driving all over the course just checking things out from different locations and transition areas where we had volunteers stationed. Occasionally you get the call from a couple of racers that had bike problems or whatever so I ended up picking up a few and driving them back to Race HQ where they called it a day. These things happen. The 12 hour racers were finished and off of the course by 8 pm Saturday evening. This is when the REAL fun began for the 24 hour racers.
The 24 hour racers were paddling two person canoes from Demumbers Bay all the way around to Cravens Bay, which was about a 14 mile paddle. Unfortunately, as the day progressed, the lake conditions worsened. Winds picked up, waves whipped up, and temps dropped slightly. It made for a really, really challenging paddling leg for some of the later teams. Some even described it as actually moving backwards when the momentarily stopped paddling. Once they became wet, the winds just caused them to be very cold. A CP location at Eddyville Ferry Lake Acces (CP14) had my good buddy volunteers mentioned above with a nice fire going lakeside. Some racers came up to the fire to get warm for a moment and I think they appreciated that. We also had many teams finishing up the paddling leg in the dark of night. Truly tough conditions.
In the evening hours, after 6 pm, I went down to Hematite Lake to set up a very key transition area. The 24 hour racers would be coming into this TA on bikes, drop them and head out into the woods for a 12 mile trek finding 13 CP's in the dark. We gave the racers sacks the night before to do a food and water drop at this area so when they came in they could refuel, etc. The first team(s) to come through were WEDALI and Eastern Mountain Sports. At this point in the race, I had sheets printed out and provided to me from Jason who had internet access. This race was a Checkpoint Tracker series race, which means that friends and family could follow their daddies, husbands, wives, etc. nearly live. I say nearly live because Jason has to actually get updates from the volunteers on the course about what place the teams are in, then he has to run back to the lodge where he could access the internet and actually sit down and input the information, all while trying to do a ton of other race director duties as well. But we did the best we could. Anyway, these people at home could also post "Shout Outs" to their racers and we would then print them out and I would literally "Shout Out" to the teams while they were transitioning at Hematite Lake what their friends and families posted on the internet. It appeared to be a real hit with the racers. There is nothing like hearing "Go daddy, I love you and I hope you aren't tired" coming from your 5 year old daughter while you are out in the woods in the dark 16 hours into a grueling race. It seemed to be a morale booster for most of them, and every time I read these to the teams they all gave a very genuine "thank you." My favorite Shout Outs were from Carrie Sona who races for Alpine Shop. She races with her husband Jeff on that team. She had circumstances come up days before the race that didn't allow her to race with the team. You could tell that it was killing her, just killing her, not to be there. But she should be aware that Jeff, Dave and Doug were getting her Shout Outs down at Hematite TA, probably where they needed them the most. After WEDALI and EMS finished the Hematite Rogaine style 13 CP trek, Carrie posted, "Please come out of the woods next." I believe Alpine Shop did just that!
This Hematite Lake transition area ended up being my favorite spot in the entire race. It was nearly the furthest place south that the racers would go during this race, and it was truly a really full-on effort for some of them to have even gotten down there. Once many of them arrived there, they didn't have plans on going out on this very tough night trek to get many of the CP's, so some of the teams just sat down by our campfire, ate, took in fluids, and shared stories and just chummed around the fire. It had a "we're all in this together" atmosphere down there at Hematite Lake. Many teams sat with maps and plotted a route back to race HQ (20+ miles away on the bike) which didn't allow them to get any remaining CP's, but instead allowed them a manageable way to get back to race HQ nonetheless on their own power and without calling for a ride and pulling out. So many of these teams down there were obviously not "in it to win it" at this point in the race, but showed so much heart that I just really, really enjoyed sitting there talking to them. Many of the teams were fighting major adversity. Team Just for Kids comes to mind. These guys had one teammate who suffered four flat tires relatively early in the race. It was the ole thorn in the tire that kept popping the tube. That is sure to be something they will look for in the future. They also had a teammate who was having major problems with his seat, and they ended up using duct tape to help fix that problem. Wow. And these same guys busted a chain too. But they never even contemplated quitting. They had real heart, let me tell ya. I really grew to like those guys. And they were raising money for a good cause too. This Hematite transition area put many of these teams into a "survival mode" so to speak. There is an old joke in adventure racing about not stopping to get warm by the fire. Once you do this, you get sucked in and something grabs ahold of you and it is very, very hard to get away. It is just too easy to stay there. Well, many teams fell for it. They put wet socks near the fire, warmed their shoes, etc. Some spent a couple of hours by the fire. One guy slept by a tree for probably two hours! But they knew that the leaders were many, many hours ahead and that a win was not in sight, so they took the time to get refreshed and this allowed most of them to eventually bike their way back up north to the finish before noon on Sunday.
Having been on the racing/participating side of adventure races, this was my first time being on the other end of it. After the race is over, racers pack up and leave, but our work was just getting started. Taking down race HQ tents, cleaning up trash, and most importantly, going out onto the course to retrieve all of those CP's over the entire 95 mile course. Fortunately, many were pretty easy to get to by car and a short hike, but not all of them. We worked all Sunday afternoon and Monday until mid to late afternoon getting everything picked up. And although the weather for the race was great, the weather for the course takedown was awful. Windy, cold rain was switching back and forth from rain to sleet. But we got it all done nonetheless.
Some general parting thoughts: As a race designer, it is the goal to strike a balance between making a race course that is both enjoyable and manageable for both experienced teams and less experienced teams, while at the same time making a real challenge for all racers. If you make it too easy, less experienced teams will probably like it more, but the real top dogs who traveled from so far away may not feel that it challenged them enough. We attempted to strike the balance, but many variables come into play that are very difficult to plan for. One such variable was the wind on the lake later in the evening on Saturday. My impression is that it was less of an issue for the 12 hour racers who were on the lake on Saturday morning, and the winds picked up significantly into the evening when our 24 hour racers were out there. Also, the ice storm caused the trekking sections in the woods to have slower travel due to the large downed trees and limbs. Finally, we were limited in our route choices somewhat due to certain roads being open and others being closed from trees being across them. Due to that, the final biking leg was probably longer than I would have liked, but it was really the shortest route we could design while making due with the roads that were open and usable. While we projected the top finishing time to be about 18 hours, it was 19 hour hours and some change, which wasn't far off of the mark.
I learned alot from this race that should prove to be invaluable to me as a racer. And I learned alot more about adventure racers than I knew before. While racing, you are going through alot yourself, but when working on the course during the race and observing, you learn more about racers in a different perspective. I have come to respect adventure racers even more than I used to and I never thought that was even possible.
Ok, ok, I might be waxing poetic here, but I am not done yet... All of these racers, both 12 and 24 hour course participants, they have heart and soul, and determination beyond comprehension. Some are in it to win it while others are there to have fun. I can only hope that despite a very tough course, everyone came away having had a great time, learning alot about themselves and their teammates and friends, and learning that adventure races are not meant to be easy, and just like life itself, an adventure race throws things at you that you might not expect, might not want, and might feel like you cannot continue on any longer. There are trials, and tribulations, but more trials than tribulations, but at the end of the day, just finishing the race, or even knowing that you gave it your best shot, that is what matters the most. When one reaches down deep and puts their mind into it, and when the legs say "I can't go any more" but the mind and heart says "GO," you put one foot in front of the other, rely on your teammates to help, and make it to that finish line knowing you took the challenge head on, and came away a winner regardless of the time or number of checkpoints that were punched.
This was an unforgettable experience for me of which I am so grateful that Jason asked me to help him out with this event. I hope he feels the same way.
There were five teams who finished with all CP's punched. That was a monumental effort for those five, and of course, you can't forget WEDALI, being the first team to finish by about 45 minutes, only to later discover they had missed CP 24. That was a real shame as they raced an incredible race. But things like that happen in adventure races.
The race course ended with a 20 mile bike leg, a little less than half of which was singletrack. I know some of the teams liked it, but others said it was less enjoyable, and more like a ride on the 'pain-train.' But the teams can't say that they weren't warned ahead of time. Our race description told the racers that they would be on very few roads, and instead on alot of singletrack trails.
Finally, a big thanks to Jason and Gary, two really great guys who were great to work with. A big thanks to Bill and Kyle with the USFS, Steve Wilson with Wood n Wave, and all volunteers who made this possible, especially my good buddies Pat, Ben, Chris, Matt, Tom and Keith. And finally, and most importantly, a HUGE thank you and lots of love for the patience and sacrifices that my family endured through all of my time away while working, designing and planning this race. I have such great friends and family, and at the end of the day, there really isn't anything more important than that. As my profile states, I continue to be "the luckiest guy in the world."
Post by Bryan Greaser
