Here's a Quote I just read that I do not want to forget.
"Never quit the course... Make them throw you off!"
Perhaps this would make a good patch on my pack.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
AR Lessons to Live by...
There are plenty of techniques and strategies that we find and utilize based on other people's experience or recommendation. There are many more we discover on our own. Below is the beginnings of a knowledge base of sorts for Kaizen's AR pursuits. Its lofty goal is to include the techniques and tactics we know to work, the activities we need to work on as a team and those little gems of knowledge we pick up along the way.
Plotting and Document Management
· Link up all supplemental maps/auxiliary information with their larger counterparts in advance.
· Get as much map work done as early as possible, preferably in the day time but most importantly when mental clarity is high.
· One teammate reads out coordinates while another plots.
· Mark Checkpoints with a single black dot in permanent marker. Next, highlight a larger sphere around the dot to make it easy to quickly find without hiding map detail.
· Double check every plotted point (with a different set of eyes when conditions allow).
· Read aloud, all descriptions of points at time of plotting. Designate a person to keep/produce these descriptions.
· When folding a map, clearly mark North on each subsection that will be visible through the map case.
· Bring all maps and compass every step of the way.
Navigation and route choice
· Double check control descriptions and race pamphlets to identify mandatory or off limits paths/areas.
· Keep the speed of the surface in mind when choosing a route. Shorter is not always faster.
· Pay close attention to elevation profiles when choosing a route. Read elevation notation to ensure what you perceive as down is actually down.
· Clearly mark the chosen route with a highlighter.
· Jot down the names of roads and trails (primary route and landmarks/backstops) so they will be clearly visible through the map case
· After determining a route, write down the distance and/or estimated time between turns or major landmarks.
Time estimation & pacing
· Biking on pavement : flat 20 km/hr, down (max) 40 km/hr, up (moderate) 15 km/hr
· Biking on gravel FR : flat 16 km/hr, down (max) 30 km/hr, up (moderate) 10 km/hr
· Know how many paces are in 100 meters on different surfaces (road/trail/open woods/thick vegetation) with basic effects of (up/down/flat).
· Know how fast we paddle on flat-water with a (reasonably) loaded boat. (4 km/hr with a boat ridiculously loaded)
· Know how fast we river board in flat-water. (1-2 km/hr)
· Practice eyeballing how fast a river is flowing.
Paddling
· Keep map and compass available & visible.
· All paddlers shall keep food and water within easy access.
· A bladder is preferable to a water bottle because you can drink hands free. Hydration is super important since you are usually under direct sun.
· Practice staying found on a river.
· Practice proper stroke technique, cadence, efficiency, paddling as a team.
· The Bow paddler's responsibilities are to generate the most forward power, set the pace for the team by establishing a rhythmic cadence, consistently switching sides after a predetermined number of strokes (if single bladed paddles) and communicating about bad rocks and likely good routes. This is the second most ideal position to navigate from.
· The middle paddler strokes on the opposite side as the bow paddler, keeps the stroke tight to the side of the canoe to provide forward power without generate too much turning force and to distribute fuel/water as needed. This is the most ideal position to navigate from.
· The Stern paddler's responsibilities are to keep the boat straight while generating forward power, guide the boat down the river choosing the most efficient course as possible and to help keep the forward paddlers focused.
River boarding
· Practice keeping fins underwater while kicking. This is all about finesse.
· Wear knee pads and possibly shin guards
Transitions
· Navigator:
1. Change clothes/equipment first
2. Distribute tasks such as refilling water/preparing or moving equipment second
3. Then do any map work so the rest of the team doesn't feel like they are just waiting for you to change and pack.
· Practice Transitions and ensure every item of gear has an unchanging designated place in my pack.
· These are not rest stops but rather the most important place to work through. If you need to rest, do it on the trail as a team.
· "Beware the chair", meaning to avoid sitting or lying down during transitions if at all possible.
Fueling
· No effort is more efficient or important than doing what ever we have to do to ensure we are properly fueled.
· Keep food accessible at all times.
· Jesse's Food Preferences:
o Ditch the Tuna for a more efficient caloric to weight ratio. Ditch the Flat bread. Ditch the trail mix. Potato sticks are awesome, salty and full of carbs. Try out cold pizza on a training run and see how it sits (sounded great at 2am).o Keep good mix of Raisins, Granola Bars, Sweet & Salty bars, Clif bars, Gu, Shot blocks and PB crackers.
Hydrating
· Be militant about hydrating. No effort is more efficient than doing what ever we have to do to ensure we are properly hydrated.
· Identify water sources as early as possible. Sometimes it's the last creek you will see for several hours. Some times it's a McDonalds.
· Have water treatment tablets and electrolytes easily accessible.
· Replace standard water bottles with ones that can be drunk from without unscrewing the lid. (Bike style bottles are good, or ones with straws)
Team Roles and versatility
· Designate one person to keep the race passport at all times.
· Know where everyone else's food, water containers, electrolytes and water treatment tablets are stored so they can be accessed and replenished when one teammate is busy with a task and another is ready to go.
· At least two people should be able to provide bearings and shoot/maintain an azimuth.
Spy v/s Spy Tactics
· Help teams and individuals in trouble but there's no need to help them beat us.
· Diversionary tactics pay dividends.
· Anytime a teammate invokes our team name, special meaning is intended and attention should be paid. When a CP is found, discretely notify teammates by saying "Kaizen, did you find it?", "Kaizen, come on, let's re-plot the point." or some such thing.
· When moving towards a teammate who has located a Checkpoint, either dim/hide lights or behave as if you are still looking for the point.
· Once a CP is punched, quickly move away and act as though you are on still on the hunt. Once a safe distance is attained, book it straight to the next nav point.
· Never look around to determine the proximity of other teams when standing near a CP or critical trail intersection, especially at night. This will only give away our position.
Team interaction and morale
· There is always a task to be done to further our team goal. An idle teammate should be looking for that task.
· If a teammate voices a doubt about something, take the time to double check it (current location, direction of travel, trail choice, CP description, actions of other teams, gut feelings, …anything)
· Keeping in touch with our teammates physical and mental well being is a high priority. The map is useless without a team to traverse it.
· Be honest and candid when asked about mental/physical condition or fueling/hydrating.
· Positive reinforcement is contagious and so is complaining.
· Humor breathes life into a team; Sarcasm attacks self confidence and trust.
· Negative thoughts are best kept in the cage of the brain where they were born.
· Use your teammates to talk your way out of Negative Town but don't specifically name your demons out loud or risk poisoning the collective well of team morale.
Assistance
· Always place the speed/efficiency of the team before personal pride or ego.
· Offer help when you think a teammate needs it and you have the energy/fortitude to provide it.
· Do not refuse help (ever) when it is offered. This includes a tow, transferring a load, a push, anything.
· When being towed or helped, your single most important responsibility is to focus on recovery & refueling so it is not a lost effort.
· Be humble and know that you will likely be returning the favor in a few hours.
· If you know you are out of the game physically or mentally, say so. Everyone will at some point in the race go through this. Sometimes nothing can be done but more often than not, the team will likely be able to help reel you back in.
Mantras that have worked
· A team is only as fast as its leader. (Corporate seminar)
· A winner always wants the ball (Nav) when the game's on the line. (Gene Hackman from "The Replacements")
· In endurance events, there are many walls and many other sides to those walls. (Geoff Sidoli)
· I have never been so tired that I could not take one more step. (John Pressley)
· You can't miss fast enough to win a gun fight. (Crusty old timer at shooting match)
Rational for deciding to continue racing
Note: I still feel we made the right decision by pulling out of UntamedVA08 and have no regrets about the DNF, However, a half a day before we came to that particular choice, we were toying with the idea of dropping after having been short-coursed due to receiving inaccurate information from a race volunteer. That took the wind out of all of our sails in the worst way and it is times like that when we need the following perspectives...
· I know that here and now in this moment we feel completely justified in withdrawing, and that any sane person would completely agree with us should they know the full extent of the situation, but at the end of the day it will be much easier to explain to our friends/family/coworkers that we went on to unofficially race the full duration but just missed a time cutoff than to explain why we quit because we just didn't see the point.
· The feeling of a warm shower, a hot meal and a soft bed will be gone in a few hours. The sense of accomplishment from having seen this through will last a life time.
Plotting and Document Management
· Link up all supplemental maps/auxiliary information with their larger counterparts in advance.
· Get as much map work done as early as possible, preferably in the day time but most importantly when mental clarity is high.
· One teammate reads out coordinates while another plots.
· Mark Checkpoints with a single black dot in permanent marker. Next, highlight a larger sphere around the dot to make it easy to quickly find without hiding map detail.
· Double check every plotted point (with a different set of eyes when conditions allow).
· Read aloud, all descriptions of points at time of plotting. Designate a person to keep/produce these descriptions.
· When folding a map, clearly mark North on each subsection that will be visible through the map case.
· Bring all maps and compass every step of the way.
Navigation and route choice
· Double check control descriptions and race pamphlets to identify mandatory or off limits paths/areas.
· Keep the speed of the surface in mind when choosing a route. Shorter is not always faster.
· Pay close attention to elevation profiles when choosing a route. Read elevation notation to ensure what you perceive as down is actually down.
· Clearly mark the chosen route with a highlighter.
· Jot down the names of roads and trails (primary route and landmarks/backstops) so they will be clearly visible through the map case
· After determining a route, write down the distance and/or estimated time between turns or major landmarks.
Time estimation & pacing
· Biking on pavement : flat 20 km/hr, down (max) 40 km/hr, up (moderate) 15 km/hr
· Biking on gravel FR : flat 16 km/hr, down (max) 30 km/hr, up (moderate) 10 km/hr
· Know how many paces are in 100 meters on different surfaces (road/trail/open woods/thick vegetation) with basic effects of (up/down/flat).
· Know how fast we paddle on flat-water with a (reasonably) loaded boat. (4 km/hr with a boat ridiculously loaded)
· Know how fast we river board in flat-water. (1-2 km/hr)
· Practice eyeballing how fast a river is flowing.
Paddling
· Keep map and compass available & visible.
· All paddlers shall keep food and water within easy access.
· A bladder is preferable to a water bottle because you can drink hands free. Hydration is super important since you are usually under direct sun.
· Practice staying found on a river.
· Practice proper stroke technique, cadence, efficiency, paddling as a team.
· The Bow paddler's responsibilities are to generate the most forward power, set the pace for the team by establishing a rhythmic cadence, consistently switching sides after a predetermined number of strokes (if single bladed paddles) and communicating about bad rocks and likely good routes. This is the second most ideal position to navigate from.
· The middle paddler strokes on the opposite side as the bow paddler, keeps the stroke tight to the side of the canoe to provide forward power without generate too much turning force and to distribute fuel/water as needed. This is the most ideal position to navigate from.
· The Stern paddler's responsibilities are to keep the boat straight while generating forward power, guide the boat down the river choosing the most efficient course as possible and to help keep the forward paddlers focused.
River boarding
· Practice keeping fins underwater while kicking. This is all about finesse.
· Wear knee pads and possibly shin guards
Transitions
· Navigator:
1. Change clothes/equipment first
2. Distribute tasks such as refilling water/preparing or moving equipment second
3. Then do any map work so the rest of the team doesn't feel like they are just waiting for you to change and pack.
· Practice Transitions and ensure every item of gear has an unchanging designated place in my pack.
· These are not rest stops but rather the most important place to work through. If you need to rest, do it on the trail as a team.
· "Beware the chair", meaning to avoid sitting or lying down during transitions if at all possible.
Fueling
· No effort is more efficient or important than doing what ever we have to do to ensure we are properly fueled.
· Keep food accessible at all times.
· Jesse's Food Preferences:
o Ditch the Tuna for a more efficient caloric to weight ratio. Ditch the Flat bread. Ditch the trail mix. Potato sticks are awesome, salty and full of carbs. Try out cold pizza on a training run and see how it sits (sounded great at 2am).o Keep good mix of Raisins, Granola Bars, Sweet & Salty bars, Clif bars, Gu, Shot blocks and PB crackers.
Hydrating
· Be militant about hydrating. No effort is more efficient than doing what ever we have to do to ensure we are properly hydrated.
· Identify water sources as early as possible. Sometimes it's the last creek you will see for several hours. Some times it's a McDonalds.
· Have water treatment tablets and electrolytes easily accessible.
· Replace standard water bottles with ones that can be drunk from without unscrewing the lid. (Bike style bottles are good, or ones with straws)
Team Roles and versatility
· Designate one person to keep the race passport at all times.
· Know where everyone else's food, water containers, electrolytes and water treatment tablets are stored so they can be accessed and replenished when one teammate is busy with a task and another is ready to go.
· At least two people should be able to provide bearings and shoot/maintain an azimuth.
Spy v/s Spy Tactics
· Help teams and individuals in trouble but there's no need to help them beat us.
· Diversionary tactics pay dividends.
· Anytime a teammate invokes our team name, special meaning is intended and attention should be paid. When a CP is found, discretely notify teammates by saying "Kaizen, did you find it?", "Kaizen, come on, let's re-plot the point." or some such thing.
· When moving towards a teammate who has located a Checkpoint, either dim/hide lights or behave as if you are still looking for the point.
· Once a CP is punched, quickly move away and act as though you are on still on the hunt. Once a safe distance is attained, book it straight to the next nav point.
· Never look around to determine the proximity of other teams when standing near a CP or critical trail intersection, especially at night. This will only give away our position.
Team interaction and morale
· There is always a task to be done to further our team goal. An idle teammate should be looking for that task.
· If a teammate voices a doubt about something, take the time to double check it (current location, direction of travel, trail choice, CP description, actions of other teams, gut feelings, …anything)
· Keeping in touch with our teammates physical and mental well being is a high priority. The map is useless without a team to traverse it.
· Be honest and candid when asked about mental/physical condition or fueling/hydrating.
· Positive reinforcement is contagious and so is complaining.
· Humor breathes life into a team; Sarcasm attacks self confidence and trust.
· Negative thoughts are best kept in the cage of the brain where they were born.
· Use your teammates to talk your way out of Negative Town but don't specifically name your demons out loud or risk poisoning the collective well of team morale.
Assistance
· Always place the speed/efficiency of the team before personal pride or ego.
· Offer help when you think a teammate needs it and you have the energy/fortitude to provide it.
· Do not refuse help (ever) when it is offered. This includes a tow, transferring a load, a push, anything.
· When being towed or helped, your single most important responsibility is to focus on recovery & refueling so it is not a lost effort.
· Be humble and know that you will likely be returning the favor in a few hours.
· If you know you are out of the game physically or mentally, say so. Everyone will at some point in the race go through this. Sometimes nothing can be done but more often than not, the team will likely be able to help reel you back in.
Mantras that have worked
· A team is only as fast as its leader. (Corporate seminar)
· A winner always wants the ball (Nav) when the game's on the line. (Gene Hackman from "The Replacements")
· In endurance events, there are many walls and many other sides to those walls. (Geoff Sidoli)
· I have never been so tired that I could not take one more step. (John Pressley)
· You can't miss fast enough to win a gun fight. (Crusty old timer at shooting match)
Rational for deciding to continue racing
Note: I still feel we made the right decision by pulling out of UntamedVA08 and have no regrets about the DNF, However, a half a day before we came to that particular choice, we were toying with the idea of dropping after having been short-coursed due to receiving inaccurate information from a race volunteer. That took the wind out of all of our sails in the worst way and it is times like that when we need the following perspectives...
· I know that here and now in this moment we feel completely justified in withdrawing, and that any sane person would completely agree with us should they know the full extent of the situation, but at the end of the day it will be much easier to explain to our friends/family/coworkers that we went on to unofficially race the full duration but just missed a time cutoff than to explain why we quit because we just didn't see the point.
· The feeling of a warm shower, a hot meal and a soft bed will be gone in a few hours. The sense of accomplishment from having seen this through will last a life time.
Untamed Virginia - After Action Review
After Action Review:
Author: Jason Smith
What went right:
Physically strong – again we ran a race that our physical strength and abilities were on par with the top teams.
Portage wheels – unbelievable physical and mental assist thanks to this purchase….and something we will have in the long run. Remember to deduct the cost from what you owe me for the race.
Positive Attitude – the team remained strong mentally in what was by far our most mentally challenging race.
Jesse's guidance of the canoe – this strength for our team was ever more evident after allowing another to helm the back seat for a brief moment. We were able to stay close to teams with better equipment buy good decisions and hard work.
Biking in a line – this formation allowed us to move quickly while on the bike
Finished in good health – close call but this is our 4th healthy team finish!
What went wrong:
Nutrition – food and water consumption, or lack there of, limited the ability of our team to function at optimal performance. This is a basic need of life and must be a focus during the race. There is no excuse not to eat and drink constantly.
Transitions – Too much time was spent at every transition. Our physical abilities allow us to run with the best but time lost at transitions keep us in the middle pack. One suggestion I have is to limit the amount of gear carried by Jesse. Not only does he have nav duties but he also tends to carry the majority of team gear. This causes him to spend time fumbling through his pack looking for what he needs. In the next race I will carry and organize a majority of the gear, slimming Jesse down to the essentials and nav material.
Use of maps – poor job of utilizing supplemental maps provided. I am thinking a resolution for this in the future will be to assign a team member to match supplemental maps with the course while others are plotting points and hold them responsible for utilizing those maps at the right time.
No map or compass – These two tools are the core of Adventure racing and will for now on be with us at all times.
Not achieving our goal of remaining on the pro course – not hitting the goal was bad but the effect it had on our attitudes was worse. The fact that it only killed us for about 40 minutes and we came back around is a very good sign.
Double bladed paddles on the canoe – again we used more energy and moved slower than teams with these paddles.
Jason's gear – again the guy lost mandatory gear (whistle) during the race and could not get his rear bike light working (wrong battery type). This causes unneeded stress for the team during the race that can easily be avoided.
Next step:
Winter race – perhaps February if not a spring race. One that can include team member Bethany.
On a very positive note my company has offered to pay for our next race fees. They may also want to have a story of us on the website or in our global magazine.
-Jason
Author: Jason Smith
What went right:
Physically strong – again we ran a race that our physical strength and abilities were on par with the top teams.
Portage wheels – unbelievable physical and mental assist thanks to this purchase….and something we will have in the long run. Remember to deduct the cost from what you owe me for the race.
Positive Attitude – the team remained strong mentally in what was by far our most mentally challenging race.
Jesse's guidance of the canoe – this strength for our team was ever more evident after allowing another to helm the back seat for a brief moment. We were able to stay close to teams with better equipment buy good decisions and hard work.
Biking in a line – this formation allowed us to move quickly while on the bike
Finished in good health – close call but this is our 4th healthy team finish!
What went wrong:
Nutrition – food and water consumption, or lack there of, limited the ability of our team to function at optimal performance. This is a basic need of life and must be a focus during the race. There is no excuse not to eat and drink constantly.
Transitions – Too much time was spent at every transition. Our physical abilities allow us to run with the best but time lost at transitions keep us in the middle pack. One suggestion I have is to limit the amount of gear carried by Jesse. Not only does he have nav duties but he also tends to carry the majority of team gear. This causes him to spend time fumbling through his pack looking for what he needs. In the next race I will carry and organize a majority of the gear, slimming Jesse down to the essentials and nav material.
Use of maps – poor job of utilizing supplemental maps provided. I am thinking a resolution for this in the future will be to assign a team member to match supplemental maps with the course while others are plotting points and hold them responsible for utilizing those maps at the right time.
No map or compass – These two tools are the core of Adventure racing and will for now on be with us at all times.
Not achieving our goal of remaining on the pro course – not hitting the goal was bad but the effect it had on our attitudes was worse. The fact that it only killed us for about 40 minutes and we came back around is a very good sign.
Double bladed paddles on the canoe – again we used more energy and moved slower than teams with these paddles.
Jason's gear – again the guy lost mandatory gear (whistle) during the race and could not get his rear bike light working (wrong battery type). This causes unneeded stress for the team during the race that can easily be avoided.
Next step:
Winter race – perhaps February if not a spring race. One that can include team member Bethany.
On a very positive note my company has offered to pay for our next race fees. They may also want to have a story of us on the website or in our global magazine.
-Jason
Untamed Virginia AR - Race Review
CP 1 - Canoe-O down by creek
CP 2 - Top of ridge in woods (Passed Hoverman)
CP 3 - Transition to Paddle (Hoverman passes) Picked up Tire, 4 hrs paddling
CP 4 - Transition to River Boarding
CP 5 - Left side of River on Log
CP 6 - Transition to Trek
CP 7 - Sticker under bench overlooking JRSP
CP 8 - small creek west of small lake
CP 9 - Re-entrant South of big bushwhack
CP 10 - Re-entrant North of big ridge
CP 11 - Gary Fisher Time Trial Start
CP 12 - Gary Fisher Time Trial Finish
CP 13 - Red gate past sneaky drive way road
CP 14 - Church Built on...
CP 15 - Transition to O-Course 1 (In at 12:45am)
CP 16 - Transition to Bike-O course (Out at 4:00 am) (Team morale down for first two points)
CP 17 - Transition to O-Course 2
CP 18 - Transition to Bike
CP 19 - Gas station (gas price)
CP 20 - Elk Hill Farm (Dropped)
A work in progress...
The night before the start, Friday, we checked in and dropped off our canoe and bikes with the race officials. We were hoping to get our maps and at least some coordinates then but we'd have to wait until the next day. By then, we were all pretty hungry and snuck in some Sushi at a local restaurant before the official race meeting at 8:30PM. After an introduction to the staff and sponsors and a Q&A session, we received directions to the race start (we thought) and went home for some final preparations. That night we weighed ourselves so we could see what we needed to replace when we finished and weighed our packs. My pack with food, water and all mandatory team gear came in at just over 29lbs. Saturday, we showed up to the start little early hoping to get a little extra time with the maps for plotting and route planning. Promptly at 7:30am, we were given a large manila envelope stuffed full of 8 maps of varying scales and were instructed that we had to be on one of the school buses at the end of the field in 5 minutes with all the rest of our gear. Typically, at these things, you get one or two maps and have ~30mins to plot coordinates on picnic tables and start right from somewhere near your vehicle. Not this time... We were crammed elbow to elbow on a school bus with 40 other racers with all the gear stacked to the ceiling in the back of the bus for 2 hours driving down dusty windy back roads of the Virginia Piedmont. It was chaotic with teams trying to pull out each of these huge maps that folded out to cover a whole seat, figure out how it connected up with the other maps and then plot the 22 race coordinates. Typically, Jason Smith A.K.A. "Smitty" calls out the UTM coordinates while I plot them and then we double check them when we've plotted all coordinates on a given map. He gets motion sickness so he was quickly out of the game and could just look out the window and try not to hurl. Jason Heron, "Heron" didn't have any experience with UTM plotting or navigation but after a quick tutorial, he had the hang of it and was reading off coordinates and helping me check them. The bus was loud, dusty and all the other teams were calling out their coordinates. We were cramped for space and I'd never worked with more than a few maps in much less intense situations. I was thinking how insane it all was and about how could we have ever prepared for something like this? It was then that I realized HAH!, We couldn't have prepared for this situation and this is exactly what we were paying these guys for... to chuck us outside our comfort zone, make us think on our feet, learn under fire and grow or perish. This was awesome. About 3/4 of the way through plotting, the intense focus and swaying bus started to get me sick. I would have stopped plotting but thought about John P. on that Halibut boat sneaking off to the head several times but never letting anyone know how awful he felt. After a quick break, I pushed through the rest of the coordinates, packed up the maps in the order we'd use them and put my head down on the seat for the rest of the ride.
When the bus stopped, we were close to 70 miles away from where we started. We unloaded to find our canoes lying out in a field. The first leg of the race was a Canoe-Orienteering course. There was a wrist band attached to the front handle of our canoe that had to be punched with a special pattern at each of the controls. We loaded our packs, paddling and river boarding gear in the boat, strapped on the portage wheels we'd later be so thankful we brought, picked up the SPOT Messenger unit. I used the head and spent the last few minutes before the mass start fixing Map1 in my map case and figuring out which way we'd head out of the field to go nab the first point. (Some teams had up to a 30 minute head start based on the results of an optional river boarding prologue the day before. Due to the clusterfudge that was getting everyone together with all gear, we hadn't had time to run that mini-course.)
We edged our way to the front of the group and surrounded by about 15 other teams, they released us into the wild with a dramatic countdown. The Canoe-O consisted of 3 controls and took us from this field through the woods and trails about 3 miles to the James River. Our wheels were working well and we passed several teams who were straight carrying their boat or whose "roll your own" wheels had already broken or fallen off. In our excitement, we blew by a re-entrant where the first control was hidden by about 100 yds. Quickly realizing the error, we went back and waded through the crowd and some swampy muck and punched the point. Next was a choice between a long way around a mountain or straight up and over a steep trail. We chose the trail and passed two more teams on the way up. Smitty and Heron pushed from the back while I pulled from the front. Near the highpoint, we ran into an intersection of trails and 2 other teams looking around in the woods for the control. I had it plotted on over the other side so we slid past those teams, found the point and discretely left the area. The last point was down on the water at a manned transition area. They confirmed the codes on our boat band and once we had on our paddling gear they signed off on us to leave.
At this point it was nearing noon and the mercury had risen to 90 degrees with high humidity. The river is wide so we'd spend the next 4 hours out cooking in the open sun. When we started out, Smitty took the bow position to provide the most forward power, Heron took the stern to guide and I took the middle to paddle and navigate when necessary. The 16' Blue Hole canoe was only setup with 2 seats so I stacked our boogie boards and sat Indian style in the middle of the boat. After a few minutes of winding around all over the place it became apparent that while Heron is a good kayaker, he didn't have much experience on a single bladed paddle in a canoe. He and I switched places and we continued on down the river. The nav on this leg was easy. We just had to go 16 miles down the river and collect some trash along the way. Racers were awarded a 2 minute time bonus for every aluminum can or glass bottle and the maximum of 1hr bonus for collecting a tire. About 30 minutes into the paddle, we found our tire which ended up giving Heron a much better seat in the middle of the boat. The river was very low and with our heavily laden boat, we spent a lot of time dragging, pushing and scooting through the many shallow gravel bars. At one point, we got snagged on a rock, spun sideways and were dangerously close to getting side pinned and flipped. Everyone reacted fairly quickly to my "High Side... LEAN DOWNSTREAM!!!" commands and we spun off the rock. Another noteworthy event was when given a choice between two particular branches of the river, we chose the straighter, shorter route on the other side of which we could see teams paddling in the distance. We had worked hard to pass two teams on the paddle. They chose the longer route and gained probably 1/2 mile on us when it was all said and done. After that, the phrase "River water rarely bothers to take a shortcut and neither should we" kept ringing through my head.
True to most AR canoe sections, the way you know you're getting close to the transition area is that when you are just over it and have absolutely had your fill of canoeing, you have about 4km left to go. In the future it would probably help to paddle 3hrs and THEN look around for a tire to load in the boat. We were having to work extremely hard to hold ground with teams that had double bladed paddles. I'll concede that this could be largely due to our lack of paddling practice as a team and as individuals.
We pulled into TA2, unloaded our tire and unpacked the rest of our gear. We found our bikes staged there but we would go out on Riverboarding and Trekking legs before hopping in the saddle. The race officials instructed that we would only need a minimum of gear over the next two legs, basically maps and our food/hydration. At this point I was having a tough time deciding what to bring and what to leave with my race pack at the bikes due to a pretty sizable hydration deficit I ran into during the canoe. At one point Herron looked at me and asked if I was OK because I was looking all "Doe Eyed". After getting the maps together for the next two sections, we finally grabbed our fins, life jackets and Herron put all our shoes and socks in a dry bag in his pack and stashed some water treatment tablets and E-Tabs. Smitty and I packed our pockets with food and hung water bottles off our life jackets. We jogged down to the river and eased in the water with our kick boards. The water temperature was awesome given the 90+ degree heat and high humidity. Unfortunately we faced the same basic problem of low water levels although this time our bare knees were exposed to the reef sharp rocks. Control 5 was right on the water and readily visible making the couple km kick fairly uneventful. This leg was pretty frustrating as we basically crawled down the river in the prone position intermittently gashing up the fronts of our legs. The real bummer was that we had expected the water segments to be the most fun and they win the first place prize for most suck. Rounding a bend in the river to the last 1Km straight shot to the next TA, we decided we'd had enough, exited the river, scrambled up the bank to a parallel trail and transitioned to our dry trekking gear. We had some discussion about whether we'd be penalized for not spending the entire leg in the water but figured as long as we nabbed CP5, we could argue that we had in fact been in the water. At this point our feet were wrinkly old man feet so we took a moment to dry and powder/lube them up. It was amazing how much faster we could move on land than in the water and jogged into the TA in just a few minutes. We pulled into the CP in 16th place out of the 35 teams still in the race.
Smitty took our River boarding gear to the UHaul while I changed maps and plotted our course to the next Control. At this point we were feeling pretty sweet about a good decision hitting the trail instead of staying in the river and finally getting a quick transition. We took off down the road and took a short whack over a small saddle cutting off about 1Km of trekking. It felt good getting into open hardwood forest to escape the heat. At CP7, we had to write down a number found on a sticker underneath a bench overlooking a beautiful section of the James River State Park. The exit from there gave us a few options. One of them was a newer trail not on my 1:24k map so we opted to go back out to the FR where we attacked the point from. We noticed two other teams take the other trail. Jogging along, we made it back to the gravel road and hung a left. Both of the other teams emerged right in front of us a short ways down the road. We kept cooking along and passed them back, taking a right on the next designated trail. We noticed quite a few newer signed trails that weren't on my map. My plan had been to reach a certain re-entrant and bushwhack. We found one of these new trails that headed basically in the right direction and we decided to take it until it no longer made sense. It was now that Smitty overheard another team looking around for "Chestnut Trail". Suddenly it dawned on us that if they knew the names of these new trails then we must have missed that one of the supplemental maps and this trail system on it. My heart sank as I knew I only brought the maps I thought we'd need to save weight and left the rest back at my bike/pack several miles away. Overall, we did pretty well using the trails when they did what we needed and bushwhacking the rest of the time. We found CP8 pretty quickly in a creek bed southeast of a small pond. At this point we were getting low on water so Smitty did the honors of filling water bottles and treating them while Herron and I plotted our route to the next point. If we had the supplemental map we would have just jumped back on the same trail and rolled around a small mountain to the next CP. Not knowing for sure where those Wiley trails went, we chose to ride a bearing straight over top of the hill. Smitty (a.k.a. kaizen's favorite trail blazer) lead the charge up and over keeping on course from instructions from the back. We found CP9 without much searching. This time we heard another team searching around higher up in the drainage and so we exited quietly to the South. At this point we were at a pretty big disadvantage not having the supplemental trail guide but we chose one again that seemed to behaving itself directionally and while doing some winding around, it did get the job done spitting us out on a gravel road.
Crossing the road, the trail continued on out onto a long spur. We plotted the point down in a strong drainage to the south of the ridge about 1Km away. We jogged out the ridge to the West for about 5 minutes and then dropped down off into the drainage to the left. After following the drainage down much further than we thought the control to be, the left hand ridge stopped agreeing with the map by dropping elevation pretty close to where we were. After a long discussion, we accepted that we weren't where we thought and started relocating. Smitty noticed a gravel road to our South which meant we were one Drainage too far in that direction. Having come so far down, we had little choice but to head back up on the ridge and roll down the other drainage from its head. Herron was starting to feel bad and needed to get some calories in the tank. I stopped with him briefly while Smitty charged off down to locate the CP. We were a bit uncertain after the last nav error but once we were back on track we found the control pretty easily. The end of our present re-entrant spit us out back close to our bikes in the riverside field.
Finally having all the maps again and knowing we'd be shortly riding into the night, I laid out all the remaining maps and noted how they related to one another. I drew rectangles on the large scale maps where the remaining supplemental maps matched up. I also chose and highlighted routes to the CPs we knew about. While this took time, it was much easier to accomplish all at once in the daylight when I was feeling pretty good than later in the race. While I was doing this, Smitty was busy filling up water bladders and bottles. With the nav work wrapped up for a while I finished up the transition and jumped on my bike the guys had all ready for me.
The bike up to CP11 was a nice climb up into the Virginia foothills. Eventually we got up high enough to see some good long range views out to what I'm assuming are the Shenandoah Mt. Range. The sun set quite spectacularly across the landscape and shortly thereafter an almost full moon rose right in our path. We arrived at the Gary Fisher Time Trial and chatted with the volunteers for a bit to learn we were in around 18th place. The volunteers were extremely friendly and let us know we wouldn't need our packs or any mandatory gear other than our bikes, lights and helmets for the time trial. The trial consisted of a sustained and steep 4km ride up a mountain to a "spectacular view". We ditched all our stuff and agreeing that we'd weren't at risk of being close to winning the thing decided to just keep a sustainable pace up to the top. After about 15 minutes of riding and passing several teams on their way back down we came to a fork in the FSR. The nice new gravel path on the road we had been on continued up the left fork and the right fork was obviously a much older road. Once again I kicked myself for not having brought a map. I had examined the time trial route and saw that it was an out-n-back up a single Forest Service road and the CP was plotted right smack in the middle of the road. I had left all maps and my compass back attached to my pack. In hind sight, having it wouldn't have really helped us as the new road wasn't on it but it sure would have helped my team not be miffed at me for not being able to confirm this on the actual map. Smitty brought up he thought he saw someone heading up the right fork. I hadn't seen that so I led us up the left fork. Feeling guilty from leaving the map, I charged ahead. 200vft and 1/4Km later I reached the top and quickly saw that we wanted the other fork. Both Jason's were going through a physical low and so the rest of the trial was just a head down grind up to a Cell Tower and the CP. We all punched the team ID cards on our bikes to prove we'd been there and headed back down. It became apparent that the biggest determination for who won that trial and a free trip to Switzerland was not how fast you could climb but more about who would throw caution to the wind and fly down the sketchy steep gravel road. We magically finished in 16th place without having passed or been passed as two teams ahead of us dropped from the race when they finished the Trial. We quickly packed up, refolded the current map and left the TA around 8:30PM.
After riding on gravel and paved roads for around an hour, we came to a 'T' in the road. My map clearly showed a quick Left-Right onto another forest road. Directly across the street was what looked like some one's house with a small 30m long driveway in which cars were parked. We rode left on the paved road for 1/3 km and stopped when we didn't find any other roads heading off from the right. One or two other teams seemed to be circling this stretch of road looking for the same FSR. Upon inspecting the maps more closely, a small black square was shown in the corner of the two road intersection. This must be that house back there! It felt weird riding up their little driveway. Sure enough, at the back of the driveway was an open gate that led to a small old logging road. We quickly turned off our tail lights so as not give away our position and headed out to CP 13. The bike computer once again proved to an awesome piece of gear. We rode out into the virtually unpopulated Virginia Piedmont for the estimated distance and took a right to a red gate to find CP 13. Here we passed two teams that looked like professional bikers (Ohhh Yeah!). Eventually the gravel dumped us back onto paved roads.
I typically find my nav sweet spot a few hours after sunset and I was getting dialed in. We got into a hella sweet pace line and blazed through twisting back roads and many turns. I would call out the distance to and name of the next road to turn on and the direction of the turn. When we started, Smitty was the least experienced at this technique but by the time the night was through, he was riding wheel quite capably and a believer in how effective it is. I think we passed 2 or 3 teams while we were going full tilt and they were stopped to figure out if a particular road was the turn they wanted. This felt goooooood. After about an hour we made it to the church and CP14. Our task was to record the date the church was built from a plaque to the right of the door. It was good to see 4-5 other teams there regrouping and resting. I don't know what it is about churches and not having water spiggets on the outside but we were quite dissapointed not to find water there as we were running low. With no luck in the water department we cruised out of there and hopped back on the pace line. In the back of our minds was the 1AM Pro course cut-off at CP15 but also in there was the fact that we would shortly be out of water.
Our race pamphlet listed a Win Dixie Grocery store in a small town along our route. We cranked on getting there to find two teams sitting around the locked doors on the sidewalk. The store had closed about 15 minutes before we got there. No problem, we could see the Golden Arches shining in the distance. Passing two closed gas stations on the way, we lucked out to find McD's open for business. It was obviously a total mind trip for the locals to see these crazy white guys and girls come riding out of the night all muddy and beat up with tales of having over 50 miles left without a motorized vehicle. One particularly amusing (and blitzed) character was talking to Herron and commented on his awesome chest tattoo. He reached forward as if to pull open Herron's bike shirt to see more and then realized it was just a massive chest hair farm. That moment was priceless as he almost jumped out of his skin in surprise. On the inside, I purchased a large coke and large water and replenished all my water containers from the fountain, saving my bike water bottle for Coke mixed with Accelerade (the kick in the butt I'd need later in the ride). I prepared the the maps to get us the rest of the way to the first O-Course while Herron and Smitty got some warm food to eat and replenished their supplies.
In order to make it to the O-Course before the Pro course time cutoff at 1AM, we'd need to ride faster than an average of 16km/hr. In our pace line we ranged from 14km/hr to 35km/hr depending on how many hills we were hitting. It looked pretty good for us to make it with some time to spare. This next stretch was fast and sweet. I got out front and broke the wind for a while and we sailed into the TA at 12:45AM with 15 minutes to spare.
CP 2 - Top of ridge in woods (Passed Hoverman)
CP 3 - Transition to Paddle (Hoverman passes) Picked up Tire, 4 hrs paddling
CP 4 - Transition to River Boarding
CP 5 - Left side of River on Log
CP 6 - Transition to Trek
CP 7 - Sticker under bench overlooking JRSP
CP 8 - small creek west of small lake
CP 9 - Re-entrant South of big bushwhack
CP 10 - Re-entrant North of big ridge
CP 11 - Gary Fisher Time Trial Start
CP 12 - Gary Fisher Time Trial Finish
CP 13 - Red gate past sneaky drive way road
CP 14 - Church Built on...
CP 15 - Transition to O-Course 1 (In at 12:45am)
CP 16 - Transition to Bike-O course (Out at 4:00 am) (Team morale down for first two points)
CP 17 - Transition to O-Course 2
CP 18 - Transition to Bike
CP 19 - Gas station (gas price)
CP 20 - Elk Hill Farm (Dropped)
A work in progress...
The night before the start, Friday, we checked in and dropped off our canoe and bikes with the race officials. We were hoping to get our maps and at least some coordinates then but we'd have to wait until the next day. By then, we were all pretty hungry and snuck in some Sushi at a local restaurant before the official race meeting at 8:30PM. After an introduction to the staff and sponsors and a Q&A session, we received directions to the race start (we thought) and went home for some final preparations. That night we weighed ourselves so we could see what we needed to replace when we finished and weighed our packs. My pack with food, water and all mandatory team gear came in at just over 29lbs. Saturday, we showed up to the start little early hoping to get a little extra time with the maps for plotting and route planning. Promptly at 7:30am, we were given a large manila envelope stuffed full of 8 maps of varying scales and were instructed that we had to be on one of the school buses at the end of the field in 5 minutes with all the rest of our gear. Typically, at these things, you get one or two maps and have ~30mins to plot coordinates on picnic tables and start right from somewhere near your vehicle. Not this time... We were crammed elbow to elbow on a school bus with 40 other racers with all the gear stacked to the ceiling in the back of the bus for 2 hours driving down dusty windy back roads of the Virginia Piedmont. It was chaotic with teams trying to pull out each of these huge maps that folded out to cover a whole seat, figure out how it connected up with the other maps and then plot the 22 race coordinates. Typically, Jason Smith A.K.A. "Smitty" calls out the UTM coordinates while I plot them and then we double check them when we've plotted all coordinates on a given map. He gets motion sickness so he was quickly out of the game and could just look out the window and try not to hurl. Jason Heron, "Heron" didn't have any experience with UTM plotting or navigation but after a quick tutorial, he had the hang of it and was reading off coordinates and helping me check them. The bus was loud, dusty and all the other teams were calling out their coordinates. We were cramped for space and I'd never worked with more than a few maps in much less intense situations. I was thinking how insane it all was and about how could we have ever prepared for something like this? It was then that I realized HAH!, We couldn't have prepared for this situation and this is exactly what we were paying these guys for... to chuck us outside our comfort zone, make us think on our feet, learn under fire and grow or perish. This was awesome. About 3/4 of the way through plotting, the intense focus and swaying bus started to get me sick. I would have stopped plotting but thought about John P. on that Halibut boat sneaking off to the head several times but never letting anyone know how awful he felt. After a quick break, I pushed through the rest of the coordinates, packed up the maps in the order we'd use them and put my head down on the seat for the rest of the ride.
When the bus stopped, we were close to 70 miles away from where we started. We unloaded to find our canoes lying out in a field. The first leg of the race was a Canoe-Orienteering course. There was a wrist band attached to the front handle of our canoe that had to be punched with a special pattern at each of the controls. We loaded our packs, paddling and river boarding gear in the boat, strapped on the portage wheels we'd later be so thankful we brought, picked up the SPOT Messenger unit. I used the head and spent the last few minutes before the mass start fixing Map1 in my map case and figuring out which way we'd head out of the field to go nab the first point. (Some teams had up to a 30 minute head start based on the results of an optional river boarding prologue the day before. Due to the clusterfudge that was getting everyone together with all gear, we hadn't had time to run that mini-course.)
We edged our way to the front of the group and surrounded by about 15 other teams, they released us into the wild with a dramatic countdown. The Canoe-O consisted of 3 controls and took us from this field through the woods and trails about 3 miles to the James River. Our wheels were working well and we passed several teams who were straight carrying their boat or whose "roll your own" wheels had already broken or fallen off. In our excitement, we blew by a re-entrant where the first control was hidden by about 100 yds. Quickly realizing the error, we went back and waded through the crowd and some swampy muck and punched the point. Next was a choice between a long way around a mountain or straight up and over a steep trail. We chose the trail and passed two more teams on the way up. Smitty and Heron pushed from the back while I pulled from the front. Near the highpoint, we ran into an intersection of trails and 2 other teams looking around in the woods for the control. I had it plotted on over the other side so we slid past those teams, found the point and discretely left the area. The last point was down on the water at a manned transition area. They confirmed the codes on our boat band and once we had on our paddling gear they signed off on us to leave.
At this point it was nearing noon and the mercury had risen to 90 degrees with high humidity. The river is wide so we'd spend the next 4 hours out cooking in the open sun. When we started out, Smitty took the bow position to provide the most forward power, Heron took the stern to guide and I took the middle to paddle and navigate when necessary. The 16' Blue Hole canoe was only setup with 2 seats so I stacked our boogie boards and sat Indian style in the middle of the boat. After a few minutes of winding around all over the place it became apparent that while Heron is a good kayaker, he didn't have much experience on a single bladed paddle in a canoe. He and I switched places and we continued on down the river. The nav on this leg was easy. We just had to go 16 miles down the river and collect some trash along the way. Racers were awarded a 2 minute time bonus for every aluminum can or glass bottle and the maximum of 1hr bonus for collecting a tire. About 30 minutes into the paddle, we found our tire which ended up giving Heron a much better seat in the middle of the boat. The river was very low and with our heavily laden boat, we spent a lot of time dragging, pushing and scooting through the many shallow gravel bars. At one point, we got snagged on a rock, spun sideways and were dangerously close to getting side pinned and flipped. Everyone reacted fairly quickly to my "High Side... LEAN DOWNSTREAM!!!" commands and we spun off the rock. Another noteworthy event was when given a choice between two particular branches of the river, we chose the straighter, shorter route on the other side of which we could see teams paddling in the distance. We had worked hard to pass two teams on the paddle. They chose the longer route and gained probably 1/2 mile on us when it was all said and done. After that, the phrase "River water rarely bothers to take a shortcut and neither should we" kept ringing through my head.
True to most AR canoe sections, the way you know you're getting close to the transition area is that when you are just over it and have absolutely had your fill of canoeing, you have about 4km left to go. In the future it would probably help to paddle 3hrs and THEN look around for a tire to load in the boat. We were having to work extremely hard to hold ground with teams that had double bladed paddles. I'll concede that this could be largely due to our lack of paddling practice as a team and as individuals.
We pulled into TA2, unloaded our tire and unpacked the rest of our gear. We found our bikes staged there but we would go out on Riverboarding and Trekking legs before hopping in the saddle. The race officials instructed that we would only need a minimum of gear over the next two legs, basically maps and our food/hydration. At this point I was having a tough time deciding what to bring and what to leave with my race pack at the bikes due to a pretty sizable hydration deficit I ran into during the canoe. At one point Herron looked at me and asked if I was OK because I was looking all "Doe Eyed". After getting the maps together for the next two sections, we finally grabbed our fins, life jackets and Herron put all our shoes and socks in a dry bag in his pack and stashed some water treatment tablets and E-Tabs. Smitty and I packed our pockets with food and hung water bottles off our life jackets. We jogged down to the river and eased in the water with our kick boards. The water temperature was awesome given the 90+ degree heat and high humidity. Unfortunately we faced the same basic problem of low water levels although this time our bare knees were exposed to the reef sharp rocks. Control 5 was right on the water and readily visible making the couple km kick fairly uneventful. This leg was pretty frustrating as we basically crawled down the river in the prone position intermittently gashing up the fronts of our legs. The real bummer was that we had expected the water segments to be the most fun and they win the first place prize for most suck. Rounding a bend in the river to the last 1Km straight shot to the next TA, we decided we'd had enough, exited the river, scrambled up the bank to a parallel trail and transitioned to our dry trekking gear. We had some discussion about whether we'd be penalized for not spending the entire leg in the water but figured as long as we nabbed CP5, we could argue that we had in fact been in the water. At this point our feet were wrinkly old man feet so we took a moment to dry and powder/lube them up. It was amazing how much faster we could move on land than in the water and jogged into the TA in just a few minutes. We pulled into the CP in 16th place out of the 35 teams still in the race.
Smitty took our River boarding gear to the UHaul while I changed maps and plotted our course to the next Control. At this point we were feeling pretty sweet about a good decision hitting the trail instead of staying in the river and finally getting a quick transition. We took off down the road and took a short whack over a small saddle cutting off about 1Km of trekking. It felt good getting into open hardwood forest to escape the heat. At CP7, we had to write down a number found on a sticker underneath a bench overlooking a beautiful section of the James River State Park. The exit from there gave us a few options. One of them was a newer trail not on my 1:24k map so we opted to go back out to the FR where we attacked the point from. We noticed two other teams take the other trail. Jogging along, we made it back to the gravel road and hung a left. Both of the other teams emerged right in front of us a short ways down the road. We kept cooking along and passed them back, taking a right on the next designated trail. We noticed quite a few newer signed trails that weren't on my map. My plan had been to reach a certain re-entrant and bushwhack. We found one of these new trails that headed basically in the right direction and we decided to take it until it no longer made sense. It was now that Smitty overheard another team looking around for "Chestnut Trail". Suddenly it dawned on us that if they knew the names of these new trails then we must have missed that one of the supplemental maps and this trail system on it. My heart sank as I knew I only brought the maps I thought we'd need to save weight and left the rest back at my bike/pack several miles away. Overall, we did pretty well using the trails when they did what we needed and bushwhacking the rest of the time. We found CP8 pretty quickly in a creek bed southeast of a small pond. At this point we were getting low on water so Smitty did the honors of filling water bottles and treating them while Herron and I plotted our route to the next point. If we had the supplemental map we would have just jumped back on the same trail and rolled around a small mountain to the next CP. Not knowing for sure where those Wiley trails went, we chose to ride a bearing straight over top of the hill. Smitty (a.k.a. kaizen's favorite trail blazer) lead the charge up and over keeping on course from instructions from the back. We found CP9 without much searching. This time we heard another team searching around higher up in the drainage and so we exited quietly to the South. At this point we were at a pretty big disadvantage not having the supplemental trail guide but we chose one again that seemed to behaving itself directionally and while doing some winding around, it did get the job done spitting us out on a gravel road.
Crossing the road, the trail continued on out onto a long spur. We plotted the point down in a strong drainage to the south of the ridge about 1Km away. We jogged out the ridge to the West for about 5 minutes and then dropped down off into the drainage to the left. After following the drainage down much further than we thought the control to be, the left hand ridge stopped agreeing with the map by dropping elevation pretty close to where we were. After a long discussion, we accepted that we weren't where we thought and started relocating. Smitty noticed a gravel road to our South which meant we were one Drainage too far in that direction. Having come so far down, we had little choice but to head back up on the ridge and roll down the other drainage from its head. Herron was starting to feel bad and needed to get some calories in the tank. I stopped with him briefly while Smitty charged off down to locate the CP. We were a bit uncertain after the last nav error but once we were back on track we found the control pretty easily. The end of our present re-entrant spit us out back close to our bikes in the riverside field.
Finally having all the maps again and knowing we'd be shortly riding into the night, I laid out all the remaining maps and noted how they related to one another. I drew rectangles on the large scale maps where the remaining supplemental maps matched up. I also chose and highlighted routes to the CPs we knew about. While this took time, it was much easier to accomplish all at once in the daylight when I was feeling pretty good than later in the race. While I was doing this, Smitty was busy filling up water bladders and bottles. With the nav work wrapped up for a while I finished up the transition and jumped on my bike the guys had all ready for me.
The bike up to CP11 was a nice climb up into the Virginia foothills. Eventually we got up high enough to see some good long range views out to what I'm assuming are the Shenandoah Mt. Range. The sun set quite spectacularly across the landscape and shortly thereafter an almost full moon rose right in our path. We arrived at the Gary Fisher Time Trial and chatted with the volunteers for a bit to learn we were in around 18th place. The volunteers were extremely friendly and let us know we wouldn't need our packs or any mandatory gear other than our bikes, lights and helmets for the time trial. The trial consisted of a sustained and steep 4km ride up a mountain to a "spectacular view". We ditched all our stuff and agreeing that we'd weren't at risk of being close to winning the thing decided to just keep a sustainable pace up to the top. After about 15 minutes of riding and passing several teams on their way back down we came to a fork in the FSR. The nice new gravel path on the road we had been on continued up the left fork and the right fork was obviously a much older road. Once again I kicked myself for not having brought a map. I had examined the time trial route and saw that it was an out-n-back up a single Forest Service road and the CP was plotted right smack in the middle of the road. I had left all maps and my compass back attached to my pack. In hind sight, having it wouldn't have really helped us as the new road wasn't on it but it sure would have helped my team not be miffed at me for not being able to confirm this on the actual map. Smitty brought up he thought he saw someone heading up the right fork. I hadn't seen that so I led us up the left fork. Feeling guilty from leaving the map, I charged ahead. 200vft and 1/4Km later I reached the top and quickly saw that we wanted the other fork. Both Jason's were going through a physical low and so the rest of the trial was just a head down grind up to a Cell Tower and the CP. We all punched the team ID cards on our bikes to prove we'd been there and headed back down. It became apparent that the biggest determination for who won that trial and a free trip to Switzerland was not how fast you could climb but more about who would throw caution to the wind and fly down the sketchy steep gravel road. We magically finished in 16th place without having passed or been passed as two teams ahead of us dropped from the race when they finished the Trial. We quickly packed up, refolded the current map and left the TA around 8:30PM.
After riding on gravel and paved roads for around an hour, we came to a 'T' in the road. My map clearly showed a quick Left-Right onto another forest road. Directly across the street was what looked like some one's house with a small 30m long driveway in which cars were parked. We rode left on the paved road for 1/3 km and stopped when we didn't find any other roads heading off from the right. One or two other teams seemed to be circling this stretch of road looking for the same FSR. Upon inspecting the maps more closely, a small black square was shown in the corner of the two road intersection. This must be that house back there! It felt weird riding up their little driveway. Sure enough, at the back of the driveway was an open gate that led to a small old logging road. We quickly turned off our tail lights so as not give away our position and headed out to CP 13. The bike computer once again proved to an awesome piece of gear. We rode out into the virtually unpopulated Virginia Piedmont for the estimated distance and took a right to a red gate to find CP 13. Here we passed two teams that looked like professional bikers (Ohhh Yeah!). Eventually the gravel dumped us back onto paved roads.
I typically find my nav sweet spot a few hours after sunset and I was getting dialed in. We got into a hella sweet pace line and blazed through twisting back roads and many turns. I would call out the distance to and name of the next road to turn on and the direction of the turn. When we started, Smitty was the least experienced at this technique but by the time the night was through, he was riding wheel quite capably and a believer in how effective it is. I think we passed 2 or 3 teams while we were going full tilt and they were stopped to figure out if a particular road was the turn they wanted. This felt goooooood. After about an hour we made it to the church and CP14. Our task was to record the date the church was built from a plaque to the right of the door. It was good to see 4-5 other teams there regrouping and resting. I don't know what it is about churches and not having water spiggets on the outside but we were quite dissapointed not to find water there as we were running low. With no luck in the water department we cruised out of there and hopped back on the pace line. In the back of our minds was the 1AM Pro course cut-off at CP15 but also in there was the fact that we would shortly be out of water.
Our race pamphlet listed a Win Dixie Grocery store in a small town along our route. We cranked on getting there to find two teams sitting around the locked doors on the sidewalk. The store had closed about 15 minutes before we got there. No problem, we could see the Golden Arches shining in the distance. Passing two closed gas stations on the way, we lucked out to find McD's open for business. It was obviously a total mind trip for the locals to see these crazy white guys and girls come riding out of the night all muddy and beat up with tales of having over 50 miles left without a motorized vehicle. One particularly amusing (and blitzed) character was talking to Herron and commented on his awesome chest tattoo. He reached forward as if to pull open Herron's bike shirt to see more and then realized it was just a massive chest hair farm. That moment was priceless as he almost jumped out of his skin in surprise. On the inside, I purchased a large coke and large water and replenished all my water containers from the fountain, saving my bike water bottle for Coke mixed with Accelerade (the kick in the butt I'd need later in the ride). I prepared the the maps to get us the rest of the way to the first O-Course while Herron and Smitty got some warm food to eat and replenished their supplies.
In order to make it to the O-Course before the Pro course time cutoff at 1AM, we'd need to ride faster than an average of 16km/hr. In our pace line we ranged from 14km/hr to 35km/hr depending on how many hills we were hitting. It looked pretty good for us to make it with some time to spare. This next stretch was fast and sweet. I got out front and broke the wind for a while and we sailed into the TA at 12:45AM with 15 minutes to spare.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Sleep Monsters - The Research
Let's face it... Sleep is important. I love sleep and am not afraid to admit that I am damn good at it.
I have confidence that I can run, ride and paddle for long periods of time but when it comes to the prospect of not sleeping, that confidence crawls into the fetal position and quietly cries itself to... you get the idea.. I will just put it out there up front that this is my biggest concern about the UntamedVA. Topping my list of the challenges to overcome in a 30hr AR is how to manage sleep or the lack thereof. I am not going to attempt to provide a concrete answer at this point but simply aim to collect and present some options for coping with this issue.
Over the past few weeks, I have been veraciously reading everything I can on the subject, from AR race reports to clinical research studies. It seems that sleep strategies for 24hr, 30hr and multi-day races seem to vary greatly and that the caliber athlete also greatly dictates the strategy employed.
The Effects of Sleep Deprivation:
The most promising resource I came across was a study by Duke University's medical program regarding the performance of their residents based on hours worked w/out sleep and outlining the effectiveness of different sleep strategies before, during and after those shifts. The study examined everything from the number of major errors performed during the shift to the percentage of car accidents on the way home from work. Here are some of the interesting conclusions from that study:
- The effects of going without sleep for a mere 24 hours are equivalent to having a blood alcohol level of .08% which is classified as intoxicated by most states. Lessened coordination, poorer decision making abilities, diminished self-awareness and lack of focus are all on the list of impairments caused by this (mild) sleep deprivation.
- Much the same as when consuming alcohol, as you tack on more sleepless hours, an individual continually looses his ability to diagnose himself as being tired and recognize the degree of his impairment. I can certainly attest to that finding as there have been countless occasions of me working late and being so tired that I couldn't make the decision to get up and go home long after I needed to so I just kept working.
- Hospital residents heading home from a 24hr shift are 6 times more likely to get in a car crash than someone who worked 16 hours or less.
So the writing is on the wall here and I bet no one is too terribly surprised. Lack of sleep impairs many of our abilities. The question I pose here is that if little or no sleep is possible, what activities or techniques can help minimize those impairments (at least on a temporary basis).
To Sleep or Not to Sleep:
Several endurance event bloggers feel that the best performance in 24 hour events is achieved by those individuals who paced themselves evenly through the entire event and that never slept. Of course they periodically stopped, took breaks, changed clothes and took small mental diversions but the best performers stayed up and kept moving, opting not to nap. The racers claimed this was much easier than taking a nap or lying down, building some "sleep inertia" and then trying to get going again.
Many Pro Adventure racers on multi-day courses reportedly shoot for 2 hours sleep for every 24 hours of the event. Even then, many report basically going clinically insane for periods of time to the point of not even recognizing their teammates, or falling asleep while riding a bike and crashing.
30 hr races fall somewhere in between.
The bottom line is that the individual racer or team must find a strategy that will work best for them. It is a tricky business trying to find the right balance but I am convinced that the strategy must be worked out and tested well in advance of the event because it is tough to have the mental capacity to reliably make the call to nap when necessary. It is also tough motivating to wake up in a reasonable amount of time without a set plan that everyone agrees upon.
Hoplites may only have one opportunity to test out sleep strategies before Untamed Virginia. We should formulate a sleep plan that theoretically seems the most sound and then try it out. The test will provide the feedback we need for designing a race specific sleep strategy.
Mitigating fatigue - Naps:
The Duke researchers looked specifically at some of the more common techniques for delaying or alleviating some degree of exhaustion. Here is their recommendation for effective use of naps and using caffeine.
- Brief (1-2 hours) napping prior to prolonged period of sleep loss, such as 24 hours on duty, can enhance alertness. Consider a two-hour nap prior to a 24-hour period of expected wakefulness.
- To be therapeutic during a wakeful period, naps should ideally be frequent (every 2-3 hours) and brief (15-30 minutes);
- Naps work best the “earlier” they are in a period of sleep deprivation. If you can pick just one nap, get it as early in the period of sleep deprivation as possible.. Better to “top off the tank early than wait till very fatigued.
- Time naps during circadian window of opportunity, between 2-5 a.m. and 2-5 p.m.
- Longer naps, such as those more than 30 minutes duration may be counter-productive in terms of “sleep inertia”. But probably better than “no nap”. Instead know how to counter sleep inertia. Get moving, get upright, bright lights, caffeine, etc ...
- Utilize quiet, environmentally comfortable locations for naps, ideally where there are no other interruptions such as colleagues dictating or using the computer. Hand over beepers and clinical responsibilities to another colleague when possible. (This one won't exactly be easy to pull off in an AR)
Mitigating fatigue - Caffine:
Using caffeine, a central nervous stimulant, “strategically” can help manage fatigue. It is not a sleep substitute. Tolerance quickly develops. If you intend to use caffeine to counteract fatigue, minimize the regular social use of caffeine so that it will be more effective when consumed. Caffeine may modulate symptoms but does not substitute for sleep. The effects of caffeine generally occur within 15-30 minutes. If you use it just before you drive home its stimulant effects may not kick in until you are home and ready to go to sleep. Avoid regular caffeine use (the social use of caffeine) if you plan to use to abate sleepiness. Instead use it for its “drug effect” when you are on duty only.
- 400-600 mg (3-4 cups of brewed coffee) is a usual dose, but some individuals may be overly sensitive to this amount.
Substance Caffeine content
12 ounce cola 36 mg
12 ounces diet cola 47 mg
8 ounces brewed Coffee 133 mg
12 ounces ice tea 26 mg
1.45 ounce dark chocolate 31 mg
Excedrin, 2 tablets 130 mg
No Doz maximum strength 1 tablet 200 mg
- Consider using caffeine 30 minutes prior to drive home following night call. (In an AR application, caffeine should be used 30 minutes prior to those hard hours of the morning when it is still dark.)
- Useful only for temporary relief of sleepiness. The benefit typically lasts 3-5 hours (Again, caffeine should only be used one time in the middle of the night/morning for coverage until the sun takes over in waking the body up.)
- Adverse effects include disruption in sleep quality, tolerance, diuresis and irritability (Before using caffeine, we must be aware of the possible irritability it could cause. It may just not be worth it in an already intense environment.)
- Can minimize sleep inertia symptoms. (It could be useful to help us get started again after a late night nap)
Conclusions:
5/2/2008 - When discussing this issue with my friend Jason H., a fellow AR junkie, he said not to worry because the excitement and adrenaline would carry us through the race w/out need for sleep. I am eager to test this theory.
8/10/2008 - Empirical Evidence! (24hr) - After racing the Odyssey One Day AR, June 26th, and finishing in 23 hours and 55 minutes I can confidently report that sleep/rest appears to be unnecessary in a 24 hour race. Without naps, supplemental caffeine (other than found in a Gu pack here and there) and few if any breaks in action, we knocked out the course and I yawned a grand total of 4 times. J. Heron was right in that the action is enough to keep you going through the night and the sunrise will take care of the "rest" of the race. One caveat to this is that my experience was from the navigator's seat. While I did experience a low period in motivation between 2-2:30am, constantly having something to think about kept me mentally engaged when other racers were getting sleepy. I know that my partner in crime, Jason Smith, was feeling vulnerable on the bike between 7-7:30am as he attempted to maintain a pace line back to the race HQ. The only time I felt sleepiness starting to creep in was when we were in long sections on the same trail with few navigation decisions to make. Once in the passenger’s seat on the car ride home, less than an hour after the race finish, I could barely keep my eyes open between 10th of a mile markers while Jason powered out the 30 miles back to his mom’s.
9/23/2008 – Empirical Evidence (30hr) – During the Untamed Virginia 30hr AR, September 12th, team Kaizen (Our new name) had the strategy to keep racing the whole event without sleep/rest but to keep in touch with one another and stop if any of us felt it was necessary to rest for safety’s sake. I knew this would be tough since most all three of us had a terrible week leading up to the race in the sleep department due to travel, sick kids, nervousness, ..etc. While team morale rose and fell at different times, no one felt the need to take a nap. This time around, I did dump a “big ass Coke” into my bike water bottle at a McDonalds around 11:30PM and one of the other guys drank one of those 5 hour energy drinks in the wee hours of the morning. It seems that a 30 hr race is just a 24 with “a little extra” tacked onto the end.
My conclusion so far is that for endurance events up to 30 hours, the best sleep strategy is to plan to go without but be willing to take a break should someone be at the end of their rope. There are times that physical breaks are obtained when pausing to take care of feet issues or plotting points on the clock but our philosophy is to roll with the tortoise and maintain a pace we can keep for the duration. Our bodies have proven themselves capable of staying awake for 30 hours of exercise with few breaks in action so unless there are special circumstances, that’s what we’ll plan to do!
I have confidence that I can run, ride and paddle for long periods of time but when it comes to the prospect of not sleeping, that confidence crawls into the fetal position and quietly cries itself to... you get the idea.. I will just put it out there up front that this is my biggest concern about the UntamedVA. Topping my list of the challenges to overcome in a 30hr AR is how to manage sleep or the lack thereof. I am not going to attempt to provide a concrete answer at this point but simply aim to collect and present some options for coping with this issue.
Over the past few weeks, I have been veraciously reading everything I can on the subject, from AR race reports to clinical research studies. It seems that sleep strategies for 24hr, 30hr and multi-day races seem to vary greatly and that the caliber athlete also greatly dictates the strategy employed.
The Effects of Sleep Deprivation:
The most promising resource I came across was a study by Duke University's medical program regarding the performance of their residents based on hours worked w/out sleep and outlining the effectiveness of different sleep strategies before, during and after those shifts. The study examined everything from the number of major errors performed during the shift to the percentage of car accidents on the way home from work. Here are some of the interesting conclusions from that study:
- The effects of going without sleep for a mere 24 hours are equivalent to having a blood alcohol level of .08% which is classified as intoxicated by most states. Lessened coordination, poorer decision making abilities, diminished self-awareness and lack of focus are all on the list of impairments caused by this (mild) sleep deprivation.
- Much the same as when consuming alcohol, as you tack on more sleepless hours, an individual continually looses his ability to diagnose himself as being tired and recognize the degree of his impairment. I can certainly attest to that finding as there have been countless occasions of me working late and being so tired that I couldn't make the decision to get up and go home long after I needed to so I just kept working.
- Hospital residents heading home from a 24hr shift are 6 times more likely to get in a car crash than someone who worked 16 hours or less.
So the writing is on the wall here and I bet no one is too terribly surprised. Lack of sleep impairs many of our abilities. The question I pose here is that if little or no sleep is possible, what activities or techniques can help minimize those impairments (at least on a temporary basis).
To Sleep or Not to Sleep:
Several endurance event bloggers feel that the best performance in 24 hour events is achieved by those individuals who paced themselves evenly through the entire event and that never slept. Of course they periodically stopped, took breaks, changed clothes and took small mental diversions but the best performers stayed up and kept moving, opting not to nap. The racers claimed this was much easier than taking a nap or lying down, building some "sleep inertia" and then trying to get going again.
Many Pro Adventure racers on multi-day courses reportedly shoot for 2 hours sleep for every 24 hours of the event. Even then, many report basically going clinically insane for periods of time to the point of not even recognizing their teammates, or falling asleep while riding a bike and crashing.
30 hr races fall somewhere in between.
The bottom line is that the individual racer or team must find a strategy that will work best for them. It is a tricky business trying to find the right balance but I am convinced that the strategy must be worked out and tested well in advance of the event because it is tough to have the mental capacity to reliably make the call to nap when necessary. It is also tough motivating to wake up in a reasonable amount of time without a set plan that everyone agrees upon.
Hoplites may only have one opportunity to test out sleep strategies before Untamed Virginia. We should formulate a sleep plan that theoretically seems the most sound and then try it out. The test will provide the feedback we need for designing a race specific sleep strategy.
Mitigating fatigue - Naps:
The Duke researchers looked specifically at some of the more common techniques for delaying or alleviating some degree of exhaustion. Here is their recommendation for effective use of naps and using caffeine.
- Brief (1-2 hours) napping prior to prolonged period of sleep loss, such as 24 hours on duty, can enhance alertness. Consider a two-hour nap prior to a 24-hour period of expected wakefulness.
- To be therapeutic during a wakeful period, naps should ideally be frequent (every 2-3 hours) and brief (15-30 minutes);
- Naps work best the “earlier” they are in a period of sleep deprivation. If you can pick just one nap, get it as early in the period of sleep deprivation as possible.. Better to “top off the tank early than wait till very fatigued.
- Time naps during circadian window of opportunity, between 2-5 a.m. and 2-5 p.m.
- Longer naps, such as those more than 30 minutes duration may be counter-productive in terms of “sleep inertia”. But probably better than “no nap”. Instead know how to counter sleep inertia. Get moving, get upright, bright lights, caffeine, etc ...
- Utilize quiet, environmentally comfortable locations for naps, ideally where there are no other interruptions such as colleagues dictating or using the computer. Hand over beepers and clinical responsibilities to another colleague when possible. (This one won't exactly be easy to pull off in an AR)
Mitigating fatigue - Caffine:
Using caffeine, a central nervous stimulant, “strategically” can help manage fatigue. It is not a sleep substitute. Tolerance quickly develops. If you intend to use caffeine to counteract fatigue, minimize the regular social use of caffeine so that it will be more effective when consumed. Caffeine may modulate symptoms but does not substitute for sleep. The effects of caffeine generally occur within 15-30 minutes. If you use it just before you drive home its stimulant effects may not kick in until you are home and ready to go to sleep. Avoid regular caffeine use (the social use of caffeine) if you plan to use to abate sleepiness. Instead use it for its “drug effect” when you are on duty only.
- 400-600 mg (3-4 cups of brewed coffee) is a usual dose, but some individuals may be overly sensitive to this amount.
Substance Caffeine content
12 ounce cola 36 mg
12 ounces diet cola 47 mg
8 ounces brewed Coffee 133 mg
12 ounces ice tea 26 mg
1.45 ounce dark chocolate 31 mg
Excedrin, 2 tablets 130 mg
No Doz maximum strength 1 tablet 200 mg
- Consider using caffeine 30 minutes prior to drive home following night call. (In an AR application, caffeine should be used 30 minutes prior to those hard hours of the morning when it is still dark.)
- Useful only for temporary relief of sleepiness. The benefit typically lasts 3-5 hours (Again, caffeine should only be used one time in the middle of the night/morning for coverage until the sun takes over in waking the body up.)
- Adverse effects include disruption in sleep quality, tolerance, diuresis and irritability (Before using caffeine, we must be aware of the possible irritability it could cause. It may just not be worth it in an already intense environment.)
- Can minimize sleep inertia symptoms. (It could be useful to help us get started again after a late night nap)
Conclusions:
5/2/2008 - When discussing this issue with my friend Jason H., a fellow AR junkie, he said not to worry because the excitement and adrenaline would carry us through the race w/out need for sleep. I am eager to test this theory.
8/10/2008 - Empirical Evidence! (24hr) - After racing the Odyssey One Day AR, June 26th, and finishing in 23 hours and 55 minutes I can confidently report that sleep/rest appears to be unnecessary in a 24 hour race. Without naps, supplemental caffeine (other than found in a Gu pack here and there) and few if any breaks in action, we knocked out the course and I yawned a grand total of 4 times. J. Heron was right in that the action is enough to keep you going through the night and the sunrise will take care of the "rest" of the race. One caveat to this is that my experience was from the navigator's seat. While I did experience a low period in motivation between 2-2:30am, constantly having something to think about kept me mentally engaged when other racers were getting sleepy. I know that my partner in crime, Jason Smith, was feeling vulnerable on the bike between 7-7:30am as he attempted to maintain a pace line back to the race HQ. The only time I felt sleepiness starting to creep in was when we were in long sections on the same trail with few navigation decisions to make. Once in the passenger’s seat on the car ride home, less than an hour after the race finish, I could barely keep my eyes open between 10th of a mile markers while Jason powered out the 30 miles back to his mom’s.
9/23/2008 – Empirical Evidence (30hr) – During the Untamed Virginia 30hr AR, September 12th, team Kaizen (Our new name) had the strategy to keep racing the whole event without sleep/rest but to keep in touch with one another and stop if any of us felt it was necessary to rest for safety’s sake. I knew this would be tough since most all three of us had a terrible week leading up to the race in the sleep department due to travel, sick kids, nervousness, ..etc. While team morale rose and fell at different times, no one felt the need to take a nap. This time around, I did dump a “big ass Coke” into my bike water bottle at a McDonalds around 11:30PM and one of the other guys drank one of those 5 hour energy drinks in the wee hours of the morning. It seems that a 30 hr race is just a 24 with “a little extra” tacked onto the end.
My conclusion so far is that for endurance events up to 30 hours, the best sleep strategy is to plan to go without but be willing to take a break should someone be at the end of their rope. There are times that physical breaks are obtained when pausing to take care of feet issues or plotting points on the clock but our philosophy is to roll with the tortoise and maintain a pace we can keep for the duration. Our bodies have proven themselves capable of staying awake for 30 hours of exercise with few breaks in action so unless there are special circumstances, that’s what we’ll plan to do!
Eyes on the Prize - Untamed Virginia 30hr Adventure Race
The Back Story:
Two and a half years ago, some friends and I hatched a plan to get into the best shape of our lives and start Adventure Racing. Our half baked idea was to one day be able to complete a 24hr Adventure Race. Team "Hoplites" was born and we set our eyes on a 4hr sport level AR in the spring of 2007, The Impossible Panther. The Impossible Panther was held in the totally unknown (to us) Uwharrie National Forest near Cary, NC. That race was a wonderful experience and our ideas of how fun it would be were surpassed by leaps and bounds. In the fall, we upped the ante and threw down in the Gold Nugget AR (8hr) put on by the same folks, partially in Morrow Mountain State Park and the Uwharrie National Forest. The middle of the pack finish in each of these races had little effects on the unbelievably fulfilling feeling to overcome each challenge and to have worked as a team to get to each finish in style.
The Beat Goes On:
With two races under our belts and a many learned lessons later, we are ambitiously setting our sites on a 30 hr race in September of 2008 called Untamed Virginia. I have another blog to record workouts so this one will be primarily dedicated to identifying and solving the problems that a race 22 hours longer than our best effort to date will entail.
Two and a half years ago, some friends and I hatched a plan to get into the best shape of our lives and start Adventure Racing. Our half baked idea was to one day be able to complete a 24hr Adventure Race. Team "Hoplites" was born and we set our eyes on a 4hr sport level AR in the spring of 2007, The Impossible Panther. The Impossible Panther was held in the totally unknown (to us) Uwharrie National Forest near Cary, NC. That race was a wonderful experience and our ideas of how fun it would be were surpassed by leaps and bounds. In the fall, we upped the ante and threw down in the Gold Nugget AR (8hr) put on by the same folks, partially in Morrow Mountain State Park and the Uwharrie National Forest. The middle of the pack finish in each of these races had little effects on the unbelievably fulfilling feeling to overcome each challenge and to have worked as a team to get to each finish in style.
The Beat Goes On:
With two races under our belts and a many learned lessons later, we are ambitiously setting our sites on a 30 hr race in September of 2008 called Untamed Virginia. I have another blog to record workouts so this one will be primarily dedicated to identifying and solving the problems that a race 22 hours longer than our best effort to date will entail.
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