June 5, 2021: No Sleep 20 Hr Adventure Race – The Rambling Hamblings – Steve and I – 1st in division – 9/30 overall – 28 of 37 checkpoints!

Prologue Trek – 1.31 mi

Stage 1 Paddle – 5.57 mi

Stage 2 Bike – 22.1 mi

Stage 3 Trek – 4.09 mi

Stage 4 Bike – 10.5 mi

Stage 5 Trek- 4.51 mi

Stage 6 Bike – 10 mi

Totals:

canoeing: 5.57 miles

Trekking: 10 miles

Biking: 42.6 miles

Total Mileage: 58.2 miles

This was the first time Steve and I have raced as a 2 coed team since 2009, when I had an absolute melt down during the mtn bike section. Thankfully, my biking has improved a lot since then! I’m not say there weren’t melt downs but I didn’t throw my bike down the hill this time!

Lead Up: My system was primed for the no sleep aspect of this race since I had just done a 36 hr race the weekend before and then spent a night of minimal sleep with my mom in the ICU. What was one more night of no sleep? Since the race started at midnight on Saturday, we drove over on Friday afternoon and had so much time to get our packs together! Maps were given at around 7 pm and the bike drop opened at 8 pm. About 2/3 of the CP’s were pre-plotted, the rest we had to plot ourselves. The route choices were fairly minimal, going by the trails/roads on the map. In reality there were many more route choices to take once we got into the woods!

Start/Canoe Stage 1: At 11:50 pm we gathered for a group photo and a mass start. This was about a 1.3 mile jog to the canoe launch, carrying our pfd’s and paddles. The canoes were our old friends from years past, the trusty yellow bananas! There were 3 CP’s on this leg, two of which required upstream travel. Due to the heavy rains the day before, the current was quite swift. We headed upstream for the first CP, finding it easily since the lead teams were just leaving it. A quick punch and then back downstream to the CP on the old bridge. The final CP was located up a smaller branch and with the flood waters, we were concerned we’d miss the entry. This turned out to be not an issue since the currents clearly showed the merging. A bigger issue was the CP was supposedly located 25 meters east of a stream entering this branch. We had been warmed that we’d probably be getting out of the boats and dealing with major mud to get this point. Well, the CP was darn near underwater by the time we got there, so we just boated up to it and away we went! The rest of the paddle was a nice downstream trek with minimal issues.

Bike Stage 2: We landed at the bike drop and grabbed a quick snack before heading out on the bikes. This was trail biking in the Wildcat hills area, which is a spaghetti bowl of trails! We found the first one but then had some issues with #5. We had ended up on a trail that was not our intended route. Steve did some recalculating and said we need to bike whack over to find the trail we wanted. Sure enough, there it was! Back on track it was just a matter of biking when we could, jumping off to carry bikes over deadfalls and push bikes up hill. CP’s 7 – 11 were easy to grab, all pretty much right off the road. There was a beautiful sunrise as we made our way across the old mine area, but I didn’t bring the camera this time. CP 12 cost us some time since once again we ended up on a trail we hadn’t planned. What I keep learning over and over (and I think so does Steve) is DON’T TRUST TRAILS!! We end up going too fast and then missing the topography and when the trials don’t line up we get lost! A bit tired and saddle sore, we rolled into the TA and got ready to attack the first trek leg.

Trek Stage 3: We had a nice loop planned out that would allow us to clear this section, or so we thought… Refer back to the previous lesson about not trusting trails. We spent about 1 1/2 hrs looking for the first point (#16). This was on a rock outcropping. We zigzagged back and forth across this damn spur so many times! During one of these, I almost stepped on a curled up fawn! Finally Steve decided to head to the bottom and see if we could identify the reentrant from the bottom. We found a likely candidate and after yet another climb up, found the CP on top of what I would call a cliff! Success! Now we knew where we were and Steve took a bearing over the #18. A hike up and over brought us right to it. Feeling confident now, we headed to #15. Ugh, how many times does it take to learn a lesson?? Yep, fell victim to the trails again. Ran into team No Problemo who had found 15 but was looking for 18. Shared some info with them and headed back to a trail junction. From there we ignored trails and just went cross-country following the topography. Number 15 was a lovely hidden waterfall that I would have taken a picture of had I brought my camera! From there 13 seemed to be the next best option. The issue was the cliffs between us and 13. We tried two different attack points and got cliffed out both times. We heard from Team Type 2 Fun later that they found a tiny break in the cliff line and made it down! 

Side story time: I’ve seen this team at races for the last couple of years but I totally misunderstood their name! I assumed Type 2 Fun meant they had something to do with type 2 diabetes or research. It was during the Two Rivers race with Kate and Rachael, both outdoor education ladies, that I learned what type 2 fun really means! According to the fun scale, Type 2 fun is miserable while it’s happening, but fun in retrospect. I love this, great name guys!

We bailed on #13 and then doing a time check, decided we needed to skip 14 as well. We picked up the last one we could, #17 and did a bladder fill. By this time of day, it was incredibly hot and humid. Rolling into the TA we saw we were one of the last teams to leave. The directors suggested that we short course the next section in order to get to the 2nd trek. Feeling pretty fatigued and being really uncomfortable on my saddle, I told Steve I wasn’t sure I could do that long bike for just a few points. 

Bike Stage 4: Ok, here is where I started to fall apart. The biking was hardish, not technical but I was saddle sore from the previous weekend. The race pace was slow for Steve but quite a bit faster than I was used to going. Racing with guys is just a different beast. I appreciate his belief in me and my skills but occasionally I need someone to tell me I’m doing ok! I knew going into this race that at some point I would feel like this and to deal with it I had taped a can of the magic double shot espresso to my bike! In case of a bonking Dell, break seal and pour down throat! Freshly caffeinated, we forged ahead, tag teaming with Type 2 Fun and Paul of solo team North Star. 

Trek Stage 5: We knew going into this trek that we would probably be skipping some points. There was a nice circular route to the south that got all but three of them. The first one was humorous, the clue being “ruins, give yourself a hand for finding this one”. I took it to mean it was difficult to find. Not so much that, but the CP was down an old well and there was a severed hand attached to the punch! From there we headed out to the cliff wall for #27. The trail location was marked as approximate so Steve took a bearing from what we thought was the top of the hill. This put us out too far to the NE but we followed the cliff line to the CP. From there we dropped into the reentrant and picked up the waterfall point. Then it was a big climb up to the Stone Face trail, skirting the cliff tops. By now the temps were hot and I was starting to feel some heat exhaustion. I called for a 10 min stop so I could eat my burrito (one again the best thing ever, thanks Kristy) and just rest for a sec. I tried to rally but continued to trend downward for the next hour or so. It wasn’t a bad climb and then a long descent to Dennison Hollow for the next two points but I was not moving fast. Once we reached the bottom, I took my shirt off and soaked it in the creek and put it back on. That was the ticket to feeling human again. I guess I haven’t acclimated to hot weather exertion yet. CP’s 26 & 28 were both listed as reentrant and we had them plotted pretty much dead center of the stream. Yep, it was a re-play of the Rock Run trek from the weekend before! If you were out of the small canyon, you were not going to find CP 26! CP 28 was much easier to see, out of the canyon and up the reentrant. By the time we got to 28, I re-wetted my shirt and we re-evaluated out plan. Paul from solo team Northstar was there as well and he planned to bushwhack form 28 to 33. Our original plan was to take a trail to a road and then cut over. Given our screwups on trails, we decided Paul’s plan had merit! The clue for #33 was change in vegetation but I’m not sure what change we were supposed to see. We did cross the power line cut and that was a huge change, but the CP was located on a spur  about 150 M off the trail. Although up to this point we had literally been wading through knee to thigh high poison ivy! I’m not even sure you can visualize how thick this carpet of ivy was. Multiple times when I tripped my only concern was that I was about to face plant directly into the ivy! From 33 we continued our bushwhack back to the TA, once again arriving to find we were one of the last teams to leave! Our final bushwhack did have a cool moment when we scared a turkey off of her nest! She had about 12 large eggs she had been sitting on. Once more, I wish I had my camera!

Bike Stage 6: The final bike leg was thankfully pretty easy, with minimal climbs and lots of flat sections. We had one small snafu that I quickly caught and then it was smooth sailing back to the finish. We arrived to the clapping and cheers of the other teams who were enjoying pizza and beer!

Wrap Up: Other than the heat issues, I am pretty happy with my performance on this race. I am looking forward to a solo race so I can actually practice some navigation at my speed! I think the assault bike training is a reasonable sub for real biking and I’ll continue to add that in. We had a number of lone star ticks, whose bites continue to itch like crazy. So far (2 1/2 days in) we haven’t sprouted any poison ivy. Our water purification drops are great, super happy with them! I think I’d like to sew some elastic to the gaiters and ditch the hard plastic strap in the future. Oh, and maybe not wear a merino tech wool shirt when it’s summer time! *Add on: We are now 5 days out and neither of us have sprouted any poison ivy! I was certain Steve would be at the docs by now for some steroids given how much ivy we waded through!

Picture cred to No Sleep Adventures and Matt Gholson (http://www.nosleepadventures.com/?fbclid=IwAR1Q957jtrLYt7LD8mKZBP-VjHgqIsVT_aQzw2wWPkXkVyfL02F8CSnJXSg)