I kicked off the summer races on June 15th with the 361 Adventures inaugural Homeplace Ramble. This was an entirely by foot race and they offered a couple of options, 6 hr, 12 hr, or 2 day stage race. I opted for the 2 day stage race where we had 14 hrs for day one then 10 hrs for day two, with a campsite for the night between.From their website:

I was a bit nervous for this adventure given my achilles tendonitis but I was also desperate for some nav practice. The week before I had the pleasure of meeting Katie at the Unbridled Women race and she really wanted to do the 2 day race as well but was nervous about the nav being newer to adventure racing. I offered to show her what I know and we spent day one traipsing around the woods together!

Day 1: In true Dell fashion, the night before the race was a shit show! We arrived at the campground and started putting the final touches on our packs. That was when I discovered I had left my entire food bag at home on the counter! Luckily there was a Dollar General just a few miles away so I hustled over and made some questionable choices for race food. Instead of the caffeinated jelly beans I love, I picked up some JACKED UP purple high octane gummies!

The course started deceptively simple, knocking out the first 19 CP’s with mostly clean nav and straightforward travel on well marked trails. The wheels started to fall off after CP 22 when the travel became much more of the cross country way finding type! Looking at my trace, I am still confused about how I screwed up so completely but Steve said he saw lots of others make a similar mistake.

This section of the race was in a heavily forested area crisscrossed with old roadbeds from before the lake was created. So many ridges and reentrants! Eventually we made our way back to the main ridge line and I still wasn’t sure of our location. Looking back, we passed by CP23 so close we should have seen it but alas we did not. From there, I hiked us down and up and out, all to no avail! As we walked out yet another ridge that became a spur we met up with a fellow racer. He was was going to head a different direction, possibly heading for a marked road on the map, but at least we had a moment where we all knew our location! Back up to the ridge (again) and then we made our way to CP 24. At this point we were solidly into 12 hours of racing and and even having refilled my water once (twice?) I was running very low. From this CP, looking back, we should have stayed on the ridge line, doing the small ups (which looked huge at the time) and downs but staying mostly high. Instead we allowed ourselves to be drug down towards the shoreline by an old roadbed. Part of this was poor choices spurred by dehydration and lack of experience. Katie for sure saved me from worsening symptoms by offering me some of her water! I’d say this was the deepest I’ve gone into dehydration during a race, the tingling/buzzing in my lips and fingers entirely new sensations to me! The plan once we ran out of old road was to just skirt the shoreline to the swim location which was a manned TA. Unfortunately this section of shore was cliffy and impassable, and the vegetation along it was super thick. We beat ourselves through the shiggy for about an hour, morale decreasing with each passing moment.

The time cap for day 1 was approaching and we hadn’t even made it to the swim! Katie hadn’t experienced a DNF in a race before and that was something weighing on her. I felt bad for having made several nav errors that cost us a lot of time and energy. To say that when we finally made it to the swim we were both relieved and a bit disappointed would not be an understatement! The volunteer at the swim offered us the use of a kayak to cross but we had been dreaming of this swim for hours and gleefully donned the pfds and set out. We learned that we were not the absolute last to cross and also that only two races had continued on past the swim! Everyone else was transported to the camping area via shuttle. Ok, now we felt a bit less demoralized! Since there were only 2 racers left on the course, we had to wait on the shore for them to show up and then one final shuttle would take us all to camp. This hopefully short wait turned into about 2 hours of occasionally chaos as one racer showed up, wading/swimming around the peninsula and the other was still missing. With cell phone reception bordering on non-existent, communication with the race director, volunteer, and racers became a bad game of telephone! Add in the random fishermen talking about a strange man that had walked out of the woods and was offering $20 for a ride to the boat ramp, things just kept spiraling! The volunteer, hearing about the guy asking for a ride, took of in his kayak up the finger of the lake to look for the probable racer. During that time, I managed to get a text from the RD that the missing racer had checked in and was safe but I had no way to contact the volunteer to let him know to turn around! Eventually it all come together and we pulled into the campsite around midnight. What I had hoped to be a casual relaxing evening was now a mad dash to eat something, drink a lot of water, and then fall asleep as quick as possible. Oh yeah, the only two races to make it to camp under their own mode, one of them was Steve!

Day 2 – Morning came way to early! I’d told Katie that there were no hard feelings if she wanted to strike out on her own for this day, she was a faster runner than myself, and was picking up nav really quick. There were enough people heading back on the “easier” day that none of us worried about getting super lost. The RD had decided to create a short course category for all of us that got bussed into camp so that we could continue and not just be DNF’d. This was great call and nice boost to keep spirits high! I think I was the last racer to leave the campground… From the campground there was a choice of routes and I didn’t not make the best choice. Feeling pretty beat up from the day before, I opted for the shorter route with the hope I could snag one of the CPs on the way. What started as a well marked largish road dwindled to a snaggy forest track that became just a wall of green. Looking at the map vs my track, there might have been a trail uphill from where I was hiking but I never found it. So much for choosing the shorter route! An hour and 43 mins into the day and I finally found my first checkpoint! From there I had a decent day of nav, getting stung by yellow jackets and slipping and crashing into the lake during a water refill, until about hour number 5 where I made what is becoming my signature move. I aimed off the road to the trail and was 260 feet from the CP but proceeded to walk uphill (and then back down) for a total of 2100 feet before finding the checkpoint below where I had found the trail. Ugh. Soon after this goof I had a choice in routes again. My original plan was to take the paved road which looked to be a tad shorter but bypassed an easy CP. Once I arrived at the intersection I made the snap decision to stick to the trail based on one single thing – SHADE! I was overheating all dang day and the idea of a blacktop road in full sun was not worth the saving in distance at all! The trail was well marked and shady! At this point I was the DFL of the racers but that simply meant I got to put in more practice navigating! It’s sometimes hard in a race to not follow other teams, especially if they are going the same route as the one I’d chosen and then I question if I would have found the CP without the other team being there. I was toodling along when I saw a trail leading to the creek and I knew I needed to be in a creek for the next checkpoint. I was a lot too early though and ended up getting in a nice creek stomp, a slide down a cliff into a garbage pile (complete with random cut to my hand), and some more creek creeping until I popped out at the CP. As just the same time, Steve, Katie and the other solo racer all came off the trail. Now it was the four of us making our way back to the finish and being that Steve is an expert navigator, it became a bit of follow the leader. I was feeling really salty, both physically and mentally, at this point so I’ll just say that I bypassed two checkpoints and set off on my own to the finish. I was ready to be done! Day 1 25.6 miles in 14:01 1.8 mph Day 2 stats – 21.15 miles in 8:42 2.4 mph