This was my first ARGeorgia race and it did not disappoint! Karen mentioned it in June and I was a little concerned about the whitewater element but decided that there was not better time to conquer that fear again than now! We originally had a team of 3 ladies with one being a fairly new racer. Unfortunately she had an injury just 2 days before the race! With such short notice I figured we’d be a two woman team but Casey was able to clear her schedule and join us! I’d met Casey a few times at races and felt I knew her from following her online presence. I was excited to race together finally!

Friday Aug 14:

Steve and I had to take a day off school and it was only the first week but oh well! 2020 cancelled so many fun things that I’m say yes to as many as possible in 2021. We headed down on Friday and I really felt we had it all together. We even stopped at an REI on the way down so I could upgrade my headlamp situation to a Fenix one.  And yet… and yet it still took me until like 11 pm to get my shit organized! Seriously, it’s almost like the longer I race, the worse I get at the pre-planning. Part of it this time was I was using a new backpack and just didn’t know where I wanted to put things. My trusty OutThere pack was in for repairs since I’d managed to rip all but 3 of the pockets in the last 5 years. I picked up an UltrAspire Epic from Amazon since I love my running pack from them. This pack was more than large enough for all the gear and clothes, and it road well on my torso. Still, I really missed my plethora of front pockets that the MS2 has! Mostly packed, I checked the alarm at least 3 times before I finally fell asleep. Sleep was great until I woke up and saw light streaming in through the curtains and freaked out that we’d overslept. Nope, watch said 3:30 am. The AC had just blown the curtains aside to allow the giant spot light of a security lamp to shine in our window. Another hour of sleep and then Go Time!

Sat Aug 15 Pre-Race

Happy with our morning for the most part, we’ve got the coffee and freeze dried meals down pat! A quick throw everyone in the truck and then off to the bike drop, about 40 mins away. We met up with our respective teams there, dropped the bikes and helmets, then back to the start. I had decided to keep my bike gloves in the tote so I could wear them during the paddle, which we had decided was going to be leg one, given we’d dropped our bikes off at a whitewater center. 

At the start we checked in and were given our pre-plotted maps and instructions. The maps were once again a series of 9×13 (think) double sided maps, with a variety of scales. The instructions were thankfully easy to read and follow. While Casey and I packed the TA tote, Karen started route planning, working from the finish backwards. This was a new strategy for me but it makes sense! We knew we had a time frame to work in and would have to drop some points or miss the cut off. Working backwards meant we could pre-plan what we’d drop. The ladies magically can throw out numbers for estimates of time to travel for different legs. I feel like I need a cheat sheet! They worked out 1 hr to get to finish from TA3, 10 hrs for the Canoe/Trek section, 10 hrs for the bike from TA2 to TA 3. As you can see, we’ve already eaten up most of the 24 hrs! As we continued route planning, the RD directed us to pack up and get our gear bin in the UHaul, our paddle bags staged, and oh yeah, put your backpack and maps in the van. At this point we’d planned to route out the first section on the bus to the rafting put in. Oh well, we’d just look at the maps when we got back to them!

Segment 1 – Whitewater Rafting (or bumper boats) 4.65 miles

We were bussed to the rafting put in and did a short prologue to sort of space out the racers getting to the rafts. Each raft needed 6 people so teams were being combined as they came down. We did not run up the hill for the prologue so were in the backish of the rafting group. We did score an excellent guide (Ben) who had also been on our bus and given us some info on the river. They literally turn the river on at 8:30 am and the river fills and rages for the day, before being turned off at night. The boulder strewn trickle becomes Class III and IV rapids during the day. When it is first turned on, that front edge of water is called the bubble and it races downstream. Ben had said that the lead rafts were going to catch the bubble and have to wait for the water to fill in front of them before they could move on. Knowing this, our raft didn’t go hell for leather on the paddling and instead just got comfortable with the raft and techniques. Soon enough, we rounded a corner and found the front runners with their rafts sitting on rocks, waiting for the water to fill the first big rapids section enough to make it safe to run. We waited our turn and then off we went! This was pretty much the entire rafting section, race through a section, then wait for the water, race, wait. The front section was literally bumper boats and while fun to be in, I was glad when Ben said we’d hang back more. We saw one raft get bumped and flipped and hauled a swimmer into our raft. After that, we were all A-OK with being less aggressive.

Segment 2 – Trek 1 – 1.41 miles

After the take out, we had to wait on a shuttle to the trailhead that we would trek to our bikes on. The RD’s had taken so much care to keep us off the busy road and it was appreciated! While we waited, Karen scoped out the next section which was a straightforward trail trek with one checkpoint. We finished this section at our bikes and TA bin. Karen and Casey did a quick socks and shoe change and we all put on what was needed for biking. I opted to keep my wet shoes and socks on since the day was trending super hot. I somehow didn’t have my bike gloves with me. I was sure I had them in my pack but nope, no gloves. We’d already packed up the bin so I gave up and figured it would be fine. It was fine but dang, I hadn’t counted on how hard hanging onto bike grips would be with sweaty hands! We might have taken too much time at TA (this doesn’t surprise me since I know I’m slow) and were the 2nd to last team to leave it! 

Segment 3 – Bike leg 1 – 24.8 miles

We had decided early on that we’d not be trying for all of the bike points on this section. This segment had two distinct sections, so we opted to just ignore the loop that was more southern, skipping pts 2 – 6. We headed out on the single track and saw zero other bikes for miles! The trails were a bit more rocky than I was comfortable with for rolling over everything. I felt like I was ping ponging from one side of the trail to the other. After an hour or so of this, Casey stopped to adjust her tire pressure and took a feel of mine. She let out a lot of air from both of my tires and bam, suddenly I could stay on the trail and make more contact for climbs! I’ll make a note of the pressure I ended up with and stick with that for trails in the future! We zipped around the route we’d picked, I was feeling pretty confident, not falling too far behind. Overly confident and going too fast, I biffed it on a large rock. Up and over the handlebars, landing on my left arm and skidding a good three feet! Hard enough of a crash to take the chain off the front ring, but luckily no lasting damage to the bike! I had a small laceration on my arm that Casey did an excellent job cleaning and bandaging. The bruises are still pretty colorful a week later! Bandaged up, we continued on the trail, picking up the points as we got to them. At CP 10, which was by a water spigot, we actually ran in Steve and his team. A quick water fill and then out again, with a long bike to TA 2. We rolled into TA 2 at 5:41 pm, where we found out that our tracker hadn’t been working up to that point! 

Segment 4 Trek leg 2 – 7.74 miles

This trek section also presented us with a couple of options to either shorten the course and move on, or head out the long way and pick up all the points. We opted again to pick up half of the available CP’s. We knew the next section after this was a long bike and there was no way to shorten it, once you started you had to continue all the way through.

We had a leisurely TA, fueling up with some ice cold soda from the cooler! Our first CP was #12, off on it’s own to the east. We were looking for a saddle and a 3 pronged tree. We got to chatting perhaps too much and didn’t pace count from a know section and yeah, we ended up not knowing exactly where we were! A quick aborted attempt to find the CP, we backtracked to a known area and then paced out the distance we needed. A quick trip down to what I’m not sure was a saddle and I did find 3 trees in a group, along with the CP. Once again, the classic mistake of you’ve not gone as far as you think you’ve gone had played out! From #12 we decided to bushwhack over to the next trail. We scoped out the power line cut but it was so thick and overgrown that we cut over in the woods, getting a little jungle gym action in as we went! This also kept us out of the open area as the lightening and thunder started to set in. I don’t remember much about 13 nearly 2 weeks later so it must have easy! Dusk was setting in at this point and we stopped for headlamps and I needed some Excedrin to hopefully wipeout the headache that was starting. From 13, we cut back on the trail to 18. The other four points were off to the north and west of 13, making a long out and back. After CP18, we trucked through the TA2 to pick up CP19. Somewhere along the last hour, the storms began! As we were heading in, we saw a racer coming out and they said you are almost there, and they have pizza! I totally figured they were joking, on both accounts, but nope, the race staff had pizza for us at the TA! We rolled in to the TA, dropped our passport off, picked up the new one, and then proceeded to get stuck in a time warp! We didn’t dawdle, but we did take time to swap out some clothes, eat some food, and route out the next section, not a lot of choices to make though!

Segment 5 Bike leg 2 28 miles

Sometime between 9:45 and 10 pm we left the TA, but not before I’d convinced myself I’d packed up our new passport in the TA bin, which had left in the box truck 20 mins ago! Cue frantic rummaging through my pack where I was convinced I’d been using one pocket for passport, but actually had been using a different one… Rachel, if you are reading this, it was eerily like what happened on the Two Rivers race, and the same pocket was to blame! Passport secured, we mounted our bikes in the rain and headed out. Other teams were waiting for the rain to stop a bit but we were already soaked so a bit more didn’t matter. This bike leg looked like a fairly straight shot through the forest roads, with 7 CP’s to pick up along the way. We had budgeted 10 hrs for this at the beginning of the race and we ended up using almost exactly that amount of time! Great job on predicted just how tired we’d be and how long this section would take Karen! Karen had been doing the bulk of navigating so far, with Casey and I doing pace counting and support. Being the only navigator for a 24 hr race is exhausting mentally, so I tried my hand at bike nav! It was truly a team effort because due to the rain, I had to take my glasses off so I could see the map (short vision is great, long vision is BAD) but this meant I could no longer see the road/trail conditions in front of me. Casey was my seeing eye biker, calling out what was coming up and giving me a blinking red light to follow in the rain and mist! I was able to mostly track our progress along the road, but with all of the zigs and zags, I thought I nailed the correct re-entrant for #20, and our trace shows us heading up it a bit, but not far enough to actually punch the passport! Dang it! Once again, I hadn’t gone far enough! I then proceeded to stop us at every reentrant for the rest of that section in hopes of finding it but alas, no luck. CP 21 was a hilltop that was pretty straight forward, and a good morale boost after #20. CP 22 was another hilltop and I can’t really explain how we missed it. I really don’t even know happened here (see pic) but I looked and roughly half of the teams that did this leg (12 out of 25) made the same mistake we did!

Ever onward, we came to the next junction where we knew we needed to make a turn onto a smaller trail. We came and found a couple of teams resting and milling about. There was a bulldozer here and the ground was a mess. There appeared to be a main trail heading out but we knew it was going to dead end, plus we needed to be heading west. The trail we wanted should have crossed the main forest road but we just weren’t seeing it. As we milled around and shone lights into the misty woods, Karen once again saved the day! She spotted a small, like coaster sized, metal tag on a tree. This was the only trail marker leading into what appeared to be a creek. The creek was actually the trail but due to the rain, it was camouflaged as a creek! Another team had actually scouted down that direction but had come back. Off like a herd of turtles, us and all the teams that had come in while we looked took off down the trail. From here, we leap frogged as some teams walked obstacles or hills, making steady forward progress. CP 23 was fun, a true waterfall that required some climbing to get to the top. In the daylight I’m sure it would have been beautiful but at almost 2 am, I’m not sure my eyes were even open. The young man racing with his mom, not sure of the team name (Team JaM maybe?) did remove a slug and a centipede from my backpack before we headed out! CP 23 to CP 24 was two hours of bleary eyes and second guessing of where we were. At one point, Karen and Casey chased after the wrong blue raincoat and I looked up to be all alone on the road! When we pulled off for CP 24, we heard through the grapevine that if we found a Jeep road then we were on the right track. At this point, I handed the map off to Karen for the foot nav and I stumbled along behind her. We did find a Jeep track and after walking it out to what we assumed was too far, then heading back, Karen was like “this is the only saddle that makes sense, where is the CP” then she ducked off the trail and said “found it”! I swear, she is magic! An hour and 15 minutes later found us staring down an incredibly steep ravine looking for CP 25. We had seen other lights traveling down that direction from another attack point that we had overshot. There was only down, so that is what we did. By the time 25 was punched, the sun was slowing rising and I knew that the worst was past! The hours of dark from 2 – 5 am are always were I mentally struggle, leading to physical struggles as well. We had a lovely bike ride as the sun rose higher, picking off CP 26 with no issues. From there we cruised for about 30 mins and arrived at TA3 super excited to get off the bikes for a bit! TA3 offered another surprise, breakfast sandwiches! Yay! And access to our gear bin for another can of Double Shot Espresso!

Segment 6 Canoe 1.71 miles

We hit TA3 at 7:34 am and knew the race technically didn’t end until 11 am (thanks for the bonus 2 hrs). This paddle section had 4 pts you could paddle to, then a trek section only reachable by boat with a paddle back to TA. We had estimated 5 hrs for the paddle and 5 for the trek. Looking at the time and energy remaining, we chose to just get one CP on this leg and then head in to the finish. The paddle was smooth, no boats out and about that early! We probably could have paddled to CP28 in the time remaining, especially if we had bushwhacked over the hill which was allowed, but our adventure buckets were full!

Segment 7 Bike leg 3 8.9 miles

The final segment was a smooth bike back to the start. We had plenty of time and picked up the two points on the way. We rolled in after 24 hrs and 47 mins of racing! 

Finish: We ended up taking 2nd in our division of two, and 13 overall out of 26 teams who finished. There were 13 teams who had to withdraw for one reason or another. We stuck to our race plan and other than a few goofs, I feel we had a great race!

Post Race Thoughts

Overall, I feel like this was my best race in a while! I didn’t fall completely apart during the night, was able to actually help a bit (however small) with the navigating, and didn’t get left behind on the bike! Not having my gloves as not great, but manageable. Food wise, I think I did ok with nutrition. Went through the Arby’s, a PB & J, most of my burrito, chews and gummies, meat sticks, and random other stuff. I didn’t do a great job documenting food this time! I need to remember to not overinflated my tires for trails. The new pack performed admirably but still not 100% sold on it vs my MS2. I’m not sure which I’ll use for Nationals in three weeks!