Nocturnal Challenge AR

Gerald, Bill, and I at the end of the Nocturnal Adventure Race

Gerald, Bill, and I teamed up once again this past weekend to race as We Blame Javan in The Nocturnal Challenge AR, which turned out to be just that — quite a challenge!  The Nocturnal is the second of Pangea’s summer night races.  The race began at 6pm Saturday evening and finished at 6am Sunday morning.  That’s right, 12 hours in the woods and waterways around the Tosohatchee Wildlife Management Area in Christmas, Florida.

The first 3/4 of this race was rogaine style, which meant that teams were given all the punch cards and maps for the entire Elite portion of the race.  We could collect points in any order we wished, using any mode of transport to get them, and we would not report to transition area at any point during this section.  An added twist was that some controls were worth more points than others, based on their level of difficulty.  There was a 3:00am cutoff to return to the TA from the rogaine course, so we had up to nine hours to tramp around the woods.  When we returned to the main TA, we would receive the punch card for either the trek or the bike portion the Sport course, and if there was time after that (hahaha) we could do the one remaining section.

The St Johns river is known to be difficult to navigate even in the best of conditions, so we decided to paddle first, so that we would be on the river in the daylight.  We had established a route, planning to pick up eight of the 13 available controls for eight points.  We found the navigation to be fairly easy in the daylight, and we picked up the first five controls, it came time to make a decision?  Do we try to attack the three to the south that we initially were willing to give up, or do we stick to our initial plan.  The clue for the first control in question was “dead palm.”  Gerald stood up in the canoe and looked around.  About 800 meters in the distance he spotted an unmistakably dead palm, the only one in sight.  We decided to take the chance and go for it, and with a bit of luck, found it easily.  We then picked up the other two controls that we had been undecided on, and headed back north to finish the course, scaring some cows (yes! cows!) that were roaming the river’s islands along the way.  Somehow we missed the canal to head towards CP 22 and were too far past it by the time we realized our mistake, but we were able to get all of the others we had planned.  We returned to the shore just as darkness fully closed in, having collected 10 controls for 11 points.  We were feeling really good about things at this point…

…Things got a little hairy (and wet) from there. We were planning to pick up a few CP’s on foot on the northern part of the course, near the boat launch.  The “road” that we had planned to ride down to get to this section was pretty unrideable, and we only ended up getting one of the five in that section.  There were times when we *knew* that we were right near the control, we just couldn’t locate it. At this point we realized there was a lot of truth to what Greg (the race director) had told us in pre-race.  “About 10 inches of rain have fallen in this area in the last three nights.  There is a 10 inch sheet of water all trying to get to the river.  For a lot of this race you will be in 10 inches of sheet.”

We hopped out to the dirt road and road to the south towards a WayPoint for the foot orienteering section.  Along the way we searched for a few of the bike controls, picking up three fairly easily.  When we got to the way point for the trek, we were to find directions for the next four points.  At the fourth control, we would find directions to four more.  Prior to reaching the way point we decided to divert from our plan.  There was a 3:00am cutoff for the rogaine portion of the course, and we were running tight on time.  We had heard from other teams that the orienteering course was very challenging, generally having to “shoot a bearing” and bush whack for 300-400 meters through dense vegetation to find the control.  We decided to skip this portion of the race and head back to the main TA, hopefully  picking up four more controls along the way.  There was a water station under the 528 (BeachLine) overpass where we met up with another team.  They informed us that the Blue Trail, which looked like the most direct bike route back to the TA was waist high in water, and traversing the trail was very slow going. We decided to take the long way around and pop out to the dirt roads to ride back, saving us a LOT of time along the way.

We returned to the Main TA with about an hour and fifteen minutes before the cutoff, and headed out on the Sport course to attack the foot section.  Wow! Some of these controls may have been harder to find than the ones on the Elite course!  We headed south from the TA and quickly picked up the S2 control.  At this point we decided to leave the trail and follow the “road” west towards S1.  Big mistake!  The “road” was chin high in dense grasses, and was very, very wet.  After a while we realized we should have just stayed on the trail.  We cut through the woods in a small clearing and fortunately were able to pick up the trial again without too much difficulty.  From there we easily picked up S1 and S3.  Lots of time lost though.

We decided to skip S4 as it was “in the middle of the marsh” and knew that although it was a three point control, it was also a very high risk, as our chances of actually finding it were slim.  We hiked around to CP 19, which was actually a bike control, and shot a bearing to head us towards S5.  Lets just say my teammates had some difficultly realizing what direction we were headed in, even using the compass, and though the clue for the point was “NE of marsh,” we tramped around on the NW side for 20 minutes.  Surprisingly, we had no luck.  We were disappointed as that was a two point control, but we carried on anyway and headed to S7.  We ran into another team when we got into the general area and we worked with them to find the control – a two pointer in the bag!  Off to S6 we went.  This was a tricky one as we again had to shoot a bearing and hope we could stay on course.  We got to the bend in the trail, shot the bearing to 90* and Bill started pacing out 200 meters, the approximate distance to the control.  We got to about 220, and it was no where in site.  The control was supposed to be on the N side of a marsh, but we were, for once, standing on dry land.  I took a look at the map and spoke up, I thought we may have headed off the trail a bit north of the control.  We backed up to the 200 meter mark and headed due south.  Within a minute, Gerald literally ran into the control.  There were a bunch of other teams in the area, and we didn’t want to lead them all to the control, so we quickly punched the card and headed back north a bit.  There was a stream that we figured we could follow back out, as it was much easier to navigate than all of the vegetation in the woods.  We had about an hour left in the race, and we wanted to get back to the TA as fast as we could to finish.  Well, we got a bit overconfident here and ended up quite lost.  We had probably doubled the distance we had walked in when I asked Bill if he was counting steps.  He wasn’t.  We had gone way too far, and somehow missed the trail. We had a few ideas as to where we might be, but nothing concrete.  Again, we were lost.  What we did know was that if we kept going north we would eventually run into the “road” that we had traveled early in our attempt to find S1.  We bush whacked through heavy vegetation and marshes for what seemed like forever.  We went from thinking we would get to the TA with an hour to spare (maybe even being able to head out on the bike for a CP or two) to being afraid that we would come in overtime and be DQ’d from the race.  There was a lot of grumbling going on at this point.  We finally found road, and were able to pick up the yellow trail near S2 and head back to the main TA.  We returned with 13 minutes to spare, handed in our punch card, and officially finished the race.

When all was said and done, we finished fairly well.  We placed 8th out of 19 teams.  There were 59 controls out on the course, and the winning team collected 36.  To say the course was challenging would be a huge understatement.  Even in the difficult conditions, I had a blast, and I think the rest of the team did too.

Some pictures from the race. (photo credit: Gerald Sutton)

Me on the paddle course. It was beautiful being on the water at sunset! 

Gerald excited to be on the bike!

To give you an idea of just how much water was on the course, this was taken along one of the marked hiking trails.

Bill after punching one of the CP’s. He was in water up to mid-thigh at this point!

Luminescent AR

The summer months are hot in Florida, so Greg from Pangea Adventure Racing moves the races to the night.  The first of the two night races is in July, and is named the Luminescent in honor of the bio luminescent plankton that can be seen glowing in the intra-coastal waterways along Florida’s east coast.  Bill and I, along with our friend Gerald, raced once again as We Blame Javan. 

Bill and Gerald have raced together once before, but this was our first time as a trio.  During pre-race, it was obvious that Gerald was going to make for a great teammate.  He had pretty extensive experience in the area we were to be paddling – Mosquito Lagoon, and he also has a lot of experience with navigation in general.  He  has a very calm and easy going manner, as well as a logical and analytic mindset, all of which are beneficial in adventure racing.

The prologue to this race was a bit different than usual.  There were eight controls scattered throughout the park near the main TA, all of which had a corresponding letter attached.  The objective was to determine the eight letter word that the letters spelled out, return to the TA with the correct word, and receive the boat passport.  We found letters 6-8 (k-t-o-n) and quickly realized the word must be plankton. No need to find the other four so we rushed to the TA and were one of the first teams on our way out to the paddle.

Paddling with three people in a canoe can be an advantage speed-wise, but it can be a bit of a challenge as well. The elite teams are allowed to bring their own paddles, so instead of using regular canoe paddles, most teams use  double bladed kayak paddles instead.  We had never paddled together as a team before, so getting our strokes coordinated was the first order of business.  Gerald and I clashed paddles about every third stroke for the first few minutes.  Once we got in sync, we paddled pretty well.  It was designed to be a long paddle section, and there was a four hour cutoff.  We used all but 15 minutes of those four hours and collected 8/10 controls.  One we just missed, the other we bailed on due to lack of time.

After checking in at the TA, we hopped on our bikes to finish out the race.  Basically, the bike leg was split into two sections, north and south, and the trek was located in the middle.  We chose to go to the north section first, easily collecting all six of the points available.

The Trek TA was located at the water treatment facility for Volusia County.  Here we turned in our bike passport, and picked up the maps and passport for the trek. The first CP was fairly easy, but from there it took us a while to get our bearings in the orange groove that we started out in.  Once we got that next CP, and realized exactly where we were, it was a pretty fun experience traversing trails along groves of oranges and eucalyptus. From the treatment facility, we took off down the road a ways to find the remaining trek CP’s.  We collected three of them (which duplicated as bike CP’s – good to know exactly where they were) and bailed on the last two as we were getting short on time.

After returning our trek passport and retrieving our bikes and bike passport, we headed off for the last leg of our journey.  We knew we would not have time for all six of the CP’s in the south sections, but we knew we should easily get three or four.  The first three we picked up were very easy, as they were the same points as three of the CP’s on the trek.  We got them quickly and headed for the next one.  The clue was “culvert” and we had to shoot a bearing, but were not told how far from the waypoint the CP would be.  Bill had his odometer running and at 1.4k we came upon a culvert.  We were allowed to keep one person on the road with the bikes, so I stayed while Bill and Gerald went hunting.  After a bit of tramping around, they came out of the woods empty handed.  Bill wasn’t sure we went far enough up the road, so we went a little further and quickly came to another culvert.  Again, much tramping around and no CP.  At this point we only had about 20 minutes left to get back to the main TA to finish on time.  We decided that it was better to lose the CP than be late, so we hightailed it on our bikes as fast as we could.  It was a long ride on the road back to the main TA, but we made it with about seven minutes to spare.  Bill and I were actually feeling a bit dejected at this point, as we were anticipating a fairly low finishing place.  Turns out that though we made a few mistakes and we *could* have done better, many other teams were in the same boat.  We ended up finishing 5/14 teams, and in the end I felt really good about that!

Points recap:

Paddle – 8/10 points found

Trek – 10/12 points found

Bike – 9/12 points found

Total — 27/34 points found in 7:53.00

Training, Training, Training

During the school year it is very hard for me to get to the gym on a regular basis.  When I’m in season coaching (fall and spring) I generally work at least a ten hour day; much longer than that on meet days during track season.  The desire to see my family usually sees me trying to squeeze in a run during my prep period and then spending a few harried hours with the kids before they go to bed.  Ultimately, I don’t get in too many weight training workouts.  Ahh, one of the joys of summer then, is lots of free time.  I purchased a summer membership to the local gym, and said gym has a kids club, so we go three to four times a week.

When I was younger I worked in a health club and a few of the members there got me into power lifting.  I competed for about three years, and capped my career by winning the PA state championship for my weight class, as well as earning the best overall lifter award.  That was about ten years ago, and since then, very few weights have been lifted under my power.   Ah, I forgot how awesome it feels to do strength training!  I’ve only been back at it for about three weeks, but already I’m seeing gains both in strength and tone.  I never did much cardio when I lifted in the past, but this time around I’m combining 30-60 minutes of cardio into most of my lifting days, and getting longer cardio sessions in on days I don’t lift.  I”m excited to see how fit I’ll be at the end of the summer session, and to see how the training affects my performance in the two longer races I have scheduled for later this summer.  Now to figure how to keep the lifting in my schedule once school starts again in the fall…

Race Recap

Let me start by saying, the Seminole County Adventure Race (SCAR) was an absolute blast!  Bill and I were racing as team “We Blame Javan.” Information on the race promoter we have done all of our races to date with can be found at www.pangeaadventureracing.com

Adventure Racing – a race through woods and waterways looking to collect hidden “control points” along the way.  There is no set course, you’re simply given a map and a clue sheet, you use your compass and navigational skills to create your own route.  The team collecting the most CP’s in the shortest time wins.

The race was not without its non-course related challenges, however.  First, I loaded my 3 Liter pack bladder with fluids and set it down.  I picked it up about 10 minutes later and underneath was a huge puddle.  We thought maybe it just leaked out the threads of the cap so we refilled and set it down again.  Ten minutes later the bladder was down 1/3 of its content.  Fortunately we had some bottles that would both fit easily in my pack and hold the required fluids, so after a bit of a temper tantrum on my part, we were set to go.  Then, while transitioning to the bike from the canoe leg I realized that my front tire was completely flat.  As Bill had just filled it that morning, we were a bit concerned and contemplated changing the tube, but we decided to fill it and change the tube if/when we needed to during the ride.  Fortunately, it held the entire way.  Lastly, the blazing heat was a factor for all teams, but I think we handled that well.  It was about 95* for much of the race but we hydrated really well, which I believed really helped keep it from getting to us.  We were talking after the race and agreed that though we were both sweating buckets for the entire race, neither of us really felt “hot” until the very end of the trek, about 5 1/2 hours in .

In an effort to keep things short, I’ll keep the recap brief.  All teams started on the canoe leg, and it was absurdly crowded at the beginning.  We were able to collect 7 of the 8 controls, and finished in about 2:20.  From there we transitioned to the bike, and after the aforementioned tire issue, we were on our way.  I really enjoyed much of the bike route – not too much sand, lots of fun hiking trails to ride along, and challenging, but not too crazy, control placement.  There was a section of paved road a couple of miles long  that connected the two sections of forest we were searching, but that was the only part I didn’t really like.  After the bike came the trek.  We had about 1:40 to find the 8 controls in this portion of the race.  The first control we searched was a tough one as we had to bush whack through a very dense area of palmetto bushes and small trees to get to it.  I was pretty scratched up by the time we got out.  The next two were fairly uneventful, then came our big navigational error of the day.  The result was that we traipsed through about 50-75 meters of super densely pack 7ft high palmetto trees to find the CP.  Once we got to it, we realized that if we had followed the main trail another half mile or so, there was a much easier way in and out.  We found the next three controls pretty easily and then came decision time.  There was one control remaining, but it was a bit of a haul to get to it, and we only had 35 minutes to make it back.  After further consulting the map we determined that it was about a mile and a half to get the control and get back to the main TA (transition area.) We were both starting to feel the heat and were getting tired, but we figured we should be able to make it if we pushed so we went for it.  We made it back with 7 minutes to spare, finishing the entire race in 5:52:12.  When all was said and done that was good enough for 7th place out of 18 teams!

Pre-Race

Tomorrow is the big day!  My first “elite” race, with elite being about double the distance of the day’s “sport” race.  This one is short for an elite, only 6 hours, but still a bit intimidating.  The fact that its once again forecast to be 95 or so degrees with a touch of Florida humidity is not helping my anxiety. The fact that the race is only 6 hours, and not the 8 I had in my head, has helped tremendously.

Today was a very laid back day in the Dean household.  Bill and I puttered around the house for quite a while this morning getting our race gear together and organized.  I snuck in a little nap in the afternoon, and then we went for a carbo-loading family dinner to one of our new favorite restaurants.  We drove home in a torrential hail and lightening storm, then as the rains subsided got the van packed up for tomorrow.  The only things left to do are to get a good nights sleep and pack the cooler (post-race beverages are imperative) in the morning.

Oh, and I’ll be navigating 2/3 of the race tomorrow – Bill is going to take charge on the bike so that I can focus on making my legs get the peddles around.  Should be a fun day!

Getting Started

So, I’m taking the plunge and starting a blog.  I’ve decided to write about my journey into adventure racing, but this likely will become more about my journey back to being myself, finding the inner peace that comes with truly doing what you love and loving what you do.  I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years doing things I was “supposed” to do as a mom, wife, career woman.  I’ve enjoyed it immensely, but  along the way I lost touch with the things I needed to do to take care of my core self, the athletic, competitive, nature loving part of me.  When that part of me is nourished and happy, all other things in my life seem to run more smoothly.  When that part of me is neglected, the rest of my life starts to become listless, cranky, burdened.

When Bill did his first adventure race last year I was dubious. He had so much fun, however, that he convinced me to do the next race with his team.  It was a four hour race, and at the end I was totally cooked.  I don’t think I could have paddled, peddled, or ran another foot.  I was in the midst of catching a lovely cold the kids had brought home, and I was significantly under-trained for a race of that length.  I had also had an absolute blast, and was well on my way to becoming hooked on the sport.  I mean, what could be better than biking, canoeing, and running through the woods with your buddies, looking for small orange and white flags, while competing against a bunch of other people doing the same thing?  I’ll tell you, — not much!  As soon as we finished I knew I would do another race.  I’m four races in now, set to do my fifth this weekend, and I’m starting to feel that core part of me come alive again.