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After having participated in last year's inaugural event and having a really good time, Lisa Randall and I were back for more punishment ... err, FUn. This year it was taking place near New Castle, Virginia, in the heart of the George Washington and Jefferson National Forest. The host site was the Wilderness Adventure Camp at Eagle's Landing. Lisa and I stayed in a room in the Sly Lodge. The accommodations were a huge improvement over last year ... real beds and no dead critters to sweep up.
Having received the schematics back in March, being the planner I am, I started throwing things into my AR bin 2 months ago. By May 1, I forgot what all I had packed, so I dumped my shit out and made sure I had everything I would need, again ... and I do tend to pack my fears (ALL my winter clothing)! Fortunately, Mother Nature played nice, so I wouldn't have to worry about becoming a popsicle.
Day 0 involved checking in, getting Day 1 maps, and competing in 3 summer camp style games to determine which leg the team would start on Day 1. We fared well in the ball toss, frisbee golf, and bow and arrow and ended up with our first leg choice on Friday, the trek.
Since we were one of the first arrivals, once we unpacked, Lisa had plenty of time to plot our route for Day 1. The pre-race meeting did not start until 9pm, so we ate, got our gear ready, and were in bed by 10pm.
Day 1
Wake up at 5am, coffee at 5:05am, breakfast at 5:45am, and go time at 7 am. This was the chilliest morning at 48 degrees, which is why we opted to trek first, as opposed to the bike/paddle leg or the on site climb, string, outer space leg. We needed to get the blood warm quickly.
Right out of the gate, I had to light a match. Lisa was Jesse Spangler'ing it up the road to the first CP. Of course the first 2 CP's would be hilltops. Nothing like seeing my HR hit threshold within the first 10 minutes. After the second CP, Lisa dropped back down to the road. Other teams kept on trekking through the woods on a NW bearing. I assumed they were just contouring down to the road. And Lisa does not contour; it is straight up or down with her. But then Lisa let out an expletive as we hit the road; she had forgotten the one back up on the saddle. So we had to go back up a 20% grade to get that one. Lisa outran her coverage 😆😆😆on that one.
The remaining CP's we nabbed without issue and ran back to camp. We hopped on our bikes and made our way over to the climbing wall. Only one member of the team had to do the wall, so while Lisa knocked that task out, I took a breather. The next "task" was the string course, where we were zip-tied to a string that was strung out through the woods for about 1/2 mile. We had to go around trees, over trees, under trees, through a spiderweb of more string, tight squeezes between trees (glad we are small people), underneath platforms, and then back to the finish. It was about a 12 minute effort.
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| String course through the string spiderweb |
Then we were onto the Bike-O course on the Outer Space Trail. Some sweet single track through the WAC property, with a brief stop at Raider Bridge, where we were hooked up to a 5-point harness and then had to walk across a ravine on an 18" wide, 75 foot springy suspension bridge that had no hand railings. Each team got a safety briefing which made Lisa's eye twitch ... a precious 60 seconds lost listening to the instructor. For me, it was another chance to breathe and recover a little.
The last leg was a bike/paddle section. Leaving the Wilderness Adventure Center on bikes, we had to ford Craig Creek, which was about knee deep. We forgot to punch the CP on the near side, so I had to go back through the creek and nab it. Climbing up Caldwell Mountain Road, we passed No Complaints, who we had been yo-yo-'ing with all morning. We nabbed the CP at the top and then hopped onto a decommissioned forest road. We contoured along the mountain for awhile before dropping down into a re-entrant and began the bike whack along a creek, as there was no trail. At least it was downhill. CP 2-3A (edge of pool below cascade) was a tricky one. Water levels were low and at times the "trail" veered away slightly from the creek. Even with my "speedo" tickking off the meters traveled, we still managed to go right past the CP. This cost us 18 minutes, as we dropped our bikes at the bottom and then trekked back up, along the creek, and finally found the damn flag, tucked way down into the creek.
Next up was the Ferrier Trail, a 5 mile black diamond trail. It was a very steep, side-cut, half-track climb, followed by a spicy descent. We passed No Complaints ... again, and enjoyed the descent back down to the town of New Castle.
We dropped our bikes at the TA, grabbed our paddle gear, and made a 1/4 mile trek to the put in at John's Creek. You have got to be kidding me! The creek level was 3-6 effing inches! We ended up slip sliding through the creek while dragging the boat for a solid mile before the water was deep enough where we could paddle. Lisa was managing way better than I, as I managed to pull a hamstring and jack my back making my way through the slippery ass river rocks.
Our only job was to get 2 CP's along this 6 mile paddle/pack-raft-whack. How we managed to paddle right on by CP 2-7 still befuddles me to this day. I can only surmise that we just didn't see the "island" where the CP was, probably because water was not running on the right side of it due to low water levels. We did not discover our mistake until we were too far down river to do any sort of back tracking. So frustrating and disappointing. We paddled on and got CP 2-8, where we pulled out, and then hiked our pack raft and gear about 1km through the WAC property to the finish.
At day's end, we were 2nd place female team and 7th overall. But on the bright side, we were the 2nd fastest team on the day (10:07), only 1 minute behind No Complaints. And there were still 2 more days of racing.
Now I only had to exorcise the squirrely Jesse Spangler demon from Lisa to help keep us on track over the next 2 days 😁
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| CP 2-3A sneaky little bastard, gotcha! |
