A Wild And Wonderful Odyssey

Next on the docket was Odyssey's Wild Wonderful 24-hour AR, May 21-22.  The trio of Tom, Kelly, and Justin teamed up with last week's rival navigator from Checkpoint Zero, Peter Jolles, to rehash some stories and to throw down on some of the local teams in the Virginia area.  We thought Peter looked pretty good in the jersey pre-race, but he actually wanted to breathe during the event, so wore a slightly better fitting kit for the race.

The race started off with a great paddle on the New River Gorge.  This was a great opportunity to test our bravery on some class IV - V rapids on the swiftly flowing water.  The area had received a decent amount of water recently, so things were flowing good.  Our team plowed through the section, paddled when we could, and held onto the boat tight when needed.  The mass start put us in wave 3 of 3, so our goal was to try and put us toward the front by the time we exited the water. therfore giving us a 5-10 minute advantage on the teams in front of us.

 Sometimes we worried about speed, but sometimes we had to focus on the task at hand.  Kelly certainly enjoyed the ride the most, as a few of the sections looked pretty mean!

 After exiting the water, we completed a decent trek along the bottom of the Endless Wall, one of the best climbing destinations on the east coast area.  Trekking involved a lot of route finding and creative bouldering.

 At times, the cliffs would rise straight above us for up to 150 feet!

 When we finally found the breakdown in the wall that would lead us to the top of the wall and a great lookout.  That CP offered us a great view of the New River Gorge that we had paddled down just an hour or so before.

 Our crew pushed the pace and the hot sun took it's toll.  The course rolled through some great low mountainous terrain.  We biked and trekked well, refilling on water when the trails and roads crossed a few streams from above.  Many of the features that we followed were old railroad grades and mining roads, a historic jaunt past an old mining establishment kept us aware of our surroundings in what must have been a very different place a hundred years ago.  The crux of the race came in the last Rogaine section, where we needed to claim all of the CPs and move on to be assured of a top ranking for the event.  Our crew did really well, but had issues with one point, located along a less than distinct "ridge" filled with logging slash.  We looked for over an hour, but couldn't find the point, so decided to move on with the thought that the point was misplaced.  The rest of the trek went well and it took us from day into night.

We returned to the TA and discussed the CP location with the race director.  In doing so, the race director told us that we were not allowed to return to the CP, even though doing so from the TA would be a high cost in time.  Our lead was significant at this point, roughly 3-4 hours, so not being able to revisit the CP area would essentially cost us the race if another team was able to garner all of the checkpoints.

We left the TA on a down note and biked to the finish without urgency. We finished rather unceremoniously in first, but knew our lead was tentative with so much time before the final cutoff.  IN the end, ImOnPoint and a solo racer would garner all of the CPs of the race, finishing 3-4 hours after us. It was a great event and the crew had a great time socializing with the other teams from the south.  ImOnPoint put together a great race, and in the end there persistence paid off with a win.  

The trip to the deep south for Tom, Kelly, and Justin didn't yield a win in the results column, but all were grateful for the race experience, camaraderie, and general awesomeness of a road trip well done.  The teams that we met along the way were class acts, and made the trip even better.  We're looking forward to catching up with them again (on and off the course) later in the season!

Atomic AR Blowout

Tom, Kelly, and Justin traveled to the southeast U.S. via car to race back-to-back events in two weekends. The May 14-15 Atomic AR, which took place near Amicalola Falls State Park, was our first race of two, and we were excited to start off the trip in the big hills of northern Georgia. The race was definitely one that we won't forget, although not for the best of reasons. Here's a shot of us before the start, preparing for the hoopla.

This event had a few "glitches," most of which are outlined very well by Peter Jolles of Checkpoint Zero in his race report entitled "Atomic AR or Atomic Bomb." Misplaced CPs, a paddle section involving a packraft over rapids, and a few other logistical details led to a less than satisfactory experience.  After our boat hit a stick within 30 meters of entering the river, we took a spare from the TA and headed out on foot to cover the paddling leg.  To skip a thick section of woods and to give us a break, we blew up our second boat and drifted down stream.  The outer chamber held for a few sets of rapids, but the floor blew out and we had no way to get water out of the boat after going through rapids.  Needless to say, drifting along the river in chilly water was a recipe for hypothermia, and we got off the water to generate some heat.

A few of the CPs later on had a tough time staying on the trees!

Later that night, we started to hit the wall and get low on food.  The course had us on a gnarly bike-whack late in the course, and it was a tough moment for our crew.

After a final orienteering section of a few hours, we hopped on our bikes and coasted down hill to the bottom of Amicalola Falls where, as in previous years, the finish was at the top of the falls!

One more trek to the top and we were cooked.  It was a long race and one that we pushed hard throughout and battled some less than ideal conditions.  Checkpoint Zero came into the finish a few minutes after us, but had obtained one more CP than us earlier in the race, and so the win went to them.  Another close race for us in the hilly woods of Northern Georgia.

LBL Challenge Great Start to 2011

Jason, Scott, Molly, and Justin represented WEDALI during a recent trip to western Kentucky for Bonk Hard Racing's Land Between the Lakes Challenge.  The 24-hour event, starting on April 2nd, drew a good batch of regional teams and was sure to provide a competitive event for everyone this early in the adventure racing season.
The action kicked off at 7am with a short O-section to split teams up, followed by a lot of classic LBL single-track riding - very doable, but scenic and twisty trails with a little bit of nav to keep everyone honest.
Three hours later we did a TA with several other teams including Bushwhacker, Alpine Shop, and CP0, with Technu and ImOnPoint right on our tails - This was going to be a close race for sure! We thought this trek would likely be the toughest part of the race - a challenging 19 mile O-section with 18 controls to obtain - so doing well here would certainly improve chances for a good finish later on.

Teams had to return to the TA within 7 hours, so getting all of the CPs was paramount to ranking well against the other squads.  Not far into the course, we ran across this snake while trekking along with CP0. Thankfully it was busy sunning itself, so no worries on any bad encounters.

The trek had a lot of upper river reentrant type topography along with plenty of parallel features to mess up the navigation.  Lots of small creek crossings made the trek scenic and enjoyable.

We tried to push hard on this big O-section, knowing this would likely be our chance to pull away from a few teams.  We worked hard to run in areas where the vegetation wasn't too think, but keep a consistent pace in the woods as well.

The heat of the day started to wear on us, and a few of us started pulling water from creeks less than two hours into the trek. It was awesome to have a tube of Nuun on this section, not only to mask the iodine taste of the water, but to put back electrolytes that we were sweating off in the heat.

Being from Iowa and Minnesota, this was the first time we hard trained/raced all season in temps above 50 degrees, and the sunny skies were pushing the temps into the mid-70s on this trek. We stopped at a few creeks not only to fill our bottles, but dunk our heads in the refreshing spring water of LBL - Ahhh!

After a little over 5 hours of trekking, we emerged from the woods back to the TA.  No other teams were in sight and the volunteers informed us that we were the first team back.  This was good news and we tried to get out of the TA quick and onto the bike, even though our legs were drained from the effort.

 We rode a variety of paved, gravel, and unmaintained roads on the next 28 mile bike leg.

We arrived at the next TA without any knowledge of how we were doing or how far behind any of the other teams were. When we left to run out on the next trek, Bushwhacker was riding into the TA, so our lead was confirmed at less than 10 minutes.  We made a critical error at this TA however and forgot to punch our control card. Luckily we realized this about 5 minutes down the trail, and so we ran back to the TA that we had just left to punch. Our ~10 minute lead over Bushwhacker had been lost, but we were enormously happy to have realized it at that point as opposed to at the next CP, which would have cost us an hour....
After a brief 6-mile trek, we returned to the Start/Finish, which was also CP40. We needed to plot the paddle leg along with the trek and bike sections to return to the finish.  Bushwhacker entered the TA shortly behind us, so we tried to get out quick again. Due to the heavy winds earlier in the day, the paddle had been shortened to 13 miles instead of 16, but this also added another 2 miles of trekking to the put in.
We arrived at the paddle just after dark, knowing that finding the CPs in the dark would be more challenging with so many parallel bay and inlet features.  We paddled at a steady pace, seeing the glowsticks of Bushwhacker about 10 minutes back for most of the leg.  We made a few minor nav errors, but nothing too major in the 3 hour endeavor.
After landing ashore, we TAed quick to a trek back to where we had dropped our bikes, a short 5-mile leg with 3 CPs. These were obtained without a hitch, save for a 5-minute visit to the Bermuda Triangle near the last unmanned CP. Not the best time to lose your bearings!
We got to our bikes and opted for a shorter, single-track biking route home over a lengthier, gravel road ride.  The potential for a team to pass us without our knowledge was there, so we tried to keep the bike pace quick (for a 2am night ride) on the 6-mile leg. We finally came into the finish in 19 hours and 13 minutes. After a quick check of the CP card, we had locked in 1st place!

Not far behind, a scant 13 minutes in fact, Bushwhacker crossed the line in 2nd. They raced hard the entire day and had a great effort, pushing us from behind. Alpine Shop, Technu, Checkpoint Zero, ImOnPoint, and Midwest Mountaineering rounded out the top 7 coed teams, all finishing the tough event put together by BHR in good form.

2011 Season Begins!

Follow WEDALI at the LBL Challenge 24-Hour race April 02, 2011 in Grand Rivers, KY

http://www.checkpointtracker.com/leaderboards/24/1