2013 Shenandoah Epic Adventure Race

My first adventure race started with packing. A lot of packing.

The list of what I packed is too lengthy to re-iterate here, but suffice it to say that I was fully equipped for mountain biking, paddling, trekking / trail running, and travel by night. I loaded up with a ton of food, threw a couple beers in the cooler, and headed south towards Luray, Virginia to meet up with my teammates Adam and Robin for the pre-race check in and briefing.

The huge pile of gear

The registration was sort of like the scene at an ultra or a mountain bike race, except that when I walked through the door I immediately saw several groups of people huddled around maps on the floor, studying up on the course and developing a strategy for the next day. 

The crowd at Appalachian Outfitters for the pre-race check in

 I picked up my race packet, which contained a race bib, rules of travel, a race agenda, 4 maps, an electronic orienteering punch, and a sweet long-sleeve shirt.

A little different than the race packets I'm used to picking up!

Maps and electronic orienteering punch

During the briefing the RD went over the general course layout and what to expect. He also gave us the details about the digital punch system that we were going to use, which was to be supplemented by the traditional manual punch-and-passport system. Very interesting stuff, as they would have a large flatscreen monitor at the main transition area displaying what teams had collected which checkpoints and at what time. 

Race director showing off a digital punch

After the pre-race briefing we headed back to the hotel for some planning. Dima had given us a stack of maps that might come in handy, so we sorted the useful ones from the irrelevant ones, and made a plan of attack for the orienteering courses. However, we had been told that the big orienteering course would be given to us points unplotted at the second transition area (more on that later). I retired to my room and re-packed my kit for the next day.

We arrived at the main transition area (which also was the finish line) at about 6:45AM and began assembling the bikes, picking up paddles, etc. It was interesting to eye up the other teams' gear - some had pretty nice bikes, some did not. Overall the dollar value of bicycles present at this race was much lower than what you'd find at a road bike race, as was the level of pretentiousness. A great vibe.

Dawn breaks in Fort Valley over the main TA

The cool thing about parking at the main transition area is that we could keep a ton of backup gear in the cars for use whenever we made it back here (a total of three times before finishing). I tried to organize my stuff so that it would be simple to find what I needed when I came back in a zombie-like state at 4AM the next morning. We could see that other teams seemed to have this down to a science, like a well-organized race car pit. After setting up our stuff, we went up to the final pre-race brief and then took a bus ride up to the start of the paddle section.

Final briefing. You can tell the serious folks because they have the spit-in-half carbon fiber sea kayak paddles in their packs.

We got on the first bus up to the start area, which meant that we sat around for about 45 minutes before we actually launched the boats. As the "solo" member of our 3 person crew, I got a kayak and Adam and Robin got a canoe. We spent the time snacking and trying to stay warm. I activated my Spot beacon so that people could follow along back on the internets.

Picking canoes

Staying in the sun before the start

Ready!

The entire field of paddlers sat there back-paddling until the RD said "GO!" and then it was mass chaos as the whole pack leapt forward. The energy generated by all the paddles was so great that the formerly calm river turned into a churning, roiling field of little waves. After about 10 minutes of pandemonium, things settled down and we got into a rhythm as we headed towards the first checkpoint.

The field settles in after a hectic start

About 3 miles into the paddle, we got out of the boats and grabbed our first checkpoint, right at the take-out. We headed up the road to grab CP2, along the Indian Grave trail. There were two more optional checkpoints at this area, one at the top of the ridge (CP4) and one down a little stretch of fire road that we had to bushwhack about 50 feet off trail to find (CP3). At CP3, I realized that adventure racing is different in that you have to be a little more selfish and competitive than you are in mountain bike and ultra racing. I had dashed up the little hill to the right of the fire road to find the checkpoint in the woods, and shouted down to Adam (who was carrying the other passport and E-punch) to come up. Well, Adam came up the hill, but so did 6 people right behind him that had heard me shout! Oops.

Headed back to the boats from CP3

We headed back to the water and paddled through a couple more checkpoints to get back to the main transition area and our cars. There were some nice fun rapids, pretty decent Class III stuff, which dumped a bunch of water into my kayak (I had declined to wear a spray skirt). Unfortunately, this also soaked my camera, which was in my pack inside a leaky dry bag. So, no more pictures until it managed to dry itself out around nightfall.

At the transition area, we spent a good amount of time futzing around with our gear, getting ready to head out on the mountain bikes. Robin also prompted us to do the two "Challenges", one mental and one physical. For the mental challenge, you had to take a bunch of pieces of wood and arrange them into a square. Sounds easy, right? Well it took me a solid 10-15 minutes to figure it out. I'm very happy that we did the challenges early on, because the second time we would come through this area wouldn't be for another 10-12 long hours and figuring that damn square out would have taken forever if we were fatigued. For the physical challenge, we had to use a bike pump to inflate an inner tube until it popped. I had no idea tubes could get so big!

After spending about an hour in the transition area (including doing the challenges), we got our act together and headed out on a dirt road to the bottom of Shawl Gap to climb over into the real playground of the race. The climb went pretty well, it wasn't horribly technical but we pushed our bikes quite a bit to conserve energy and to avoid crashes. At the top, we didn't realize that there was an abandoned wagon road that went straight down the mountain, so we took the circuitous and horrendously technical hiking trail that switched back a lot and dropped elevation slowly. After cris-crossing the wagon road several times, we decided to just straight-line it down the hill, which was a good decision.

We made pretty good time once we were inside Fort Valley. The Mudhole Gap trail (which some may recognize from riding the Figure 8 of Hate) is a smooth fire road that turns into a moderately technical section of trail with several stream crossings. Despite my best intentions, I lost my dry feet here. *sigh*. Oh well, it was good while it lasted.

We grabbed a couple checkpoints and noted the locations of a few checkpoints that were designated for the upcoming trekking portion of the race. We skipped CP12, which would have involved a 10-mile round trip down some of what we knew from experience to be some pretty rocky and not-smooth singletrack up on the Massanutten Trail. After we got our checkpoints according to our race plan, we headed towards TA2 at the Elizabeth Furnace group camp area.

When we arrived, we were given the map for the O-course, points unplotted. We sat around for a little while, changing clothes, eating, and plotting the points for the upcoming trek. Robin and I each plotted the points and then cross-checked with each other to make sure that we had gotten them all in the same places. Dima's advice and loaned plotter triangles really made things easy here. Assured of our accuracy, we developed a plan of attack by guesstimating how much time it would take us to clear the two O-courses at the end of the race and how much time it would take us to get from TA2 back to the main transition area. By subtracting all these times from the finish deadline of noon, we figured out that we should be leaving TA2 no later than 1:30AM, which gave us about 4-5 hours to clear this portion of the race. Based on our knowledge of the area, we knew that the trails were pretty challenging so we planned a conservative attack route that skipped some of the more out-of-the-way checkpoints.

At this point I decided to give my camera one more chance at powering up, and lo and behold, it worked! Bravo Canon for making a product that can be leaking water out from around the lens and battery cover for several hours and dry itself out to start shooting pictures later in the same day. Next race I will bring a better dry bag.

"Is this thing on?" - Me after about 10 hours of racing.

!

Ready to roll!

We began our attack plan by heading up the blue-blazed Tuscarora trail, dipping down for a few minutes to grab CP15 which we had spotted earlier on the Mudhole Gap trail. After that, it was on to one of the trickier checkpoints further up the blue trail. This one was laying down on a rock so that it was hard to see from below; it took 2 or 3 trips of scrambling up a steep streambed to finally find it. The feeling of getting that checkpoint after another team had given up and moved on was pretty gratifying. I like being the navigator!

We climbed all the way up to the ridge where the Tuscarora trail intersects with the Meneka Peak trail. Along the way, we kept our eyes peeled for landscape clues that would let us know we were near a particular set of contour lines where the next checkpoint was located. I was following the trail closely on one of the maps, and determined that the map we were following wildly mis-represented  the trail. Luckily, the other map that the organizers had given us seemed pretty accurate, so we stuck to that map.

Two teams (about 6 or 8 people) passed us, saying that the checkpoint was behind us, they had looked all over the place up above and couldn't find it. This threw us into a flurry of exhaustion-induced self doubt; however, after talking it out and a group huddle around the map, we decided that we'd press onwards using the intersection with the Meneka Peak trail as a backstop - the intersection was almost immediately after where the checkpoint was supposed to be located, so if we hit the intersection without seeing the CP we could turn around to find it without losing a lot of time.

We reached the saddle where the minuscule contour lines on the map implied the checkpoint would be located, and slowed our pace and kept our eyes peeled. I tried to put myself in the course designer's shoes - "where would I hide a checkpoint if I was trying to be a little sneaky?". Eventually we saw a faint glimmer of reflective fabric a ways off in the woods and dashed over to get it. Our persistence had paid off! What a great feeling.

Using the E-punch on the checkpoint.

The next checkpoint was fun; it was the only one that really required an extended bushwhack to get to. We had to follow a rocky ridgeline to the highest point to reach the CP, it was pretty technical but enough people had already been through that we had a good path to follow through the thicket.

We continued moving clockwise around our trail loop and grabbed the checkpoints at the Fort Valley overlook (not much of a view in the dark) and Buzzard's Rock. The final descent down to the Signal Knob parking area on the Massanutten trail was kind of rough, with lots of rocks and tricky off-camber sections. I can see why running the Ring is going to be a challenge!

We reached the TA and rested and ate for a few minutes. We decided to leave our running shoes on for the hike-a-bike back up Shawl Gap, as it would be a steep slow slog. The scene at the transition area was pretty subdued; there was one guy who was passed out sitting up in front of the fire. Rough! We got moving before the chill set in. With air temps hovering around 30 degrees, that didn't take too long.

Quiet time at 1:00AM at the transition area

We elected to take the abandoned wagon road back up over Shawl Gap, which was a smart move because we seemed to arrive at ridge saddle pretty quickly. At the top, we changed over to bike shoes. At this point I ingested my first caffeine of the race, because I was feeling a little sleepy. After being more or less off of caffeine for the past month, it kicked in and perked me right up. The descent back down the east side of the ridge was a pleasure. The only hitch was that Adam got a branch in his derailleur that bent it just enough to keep him out of his easiest gears for the rest of the race - however, it wasn't broken (good news!) so we pressed on.

Cruising back towards the main transition area. Nothing like mountain biking at 3AM!

We reached our cars and were extremely glad to put on dry socks. After about a 30-minute transition we headed back out on the last trekking portion of the race. At this point we were all dragging a little bit, having been racing for 18 hours now. We walked a lot and jogged when we could. Luckily, the trails in the Guest state park were very tame compared to the George Washington National Forest, so we still managed to make good time and clear the course almost an hour faster than what we budgeted. Our two "oops" moments were when I found a checkpoint but didn't realize that it was the one we were looking for (it had a big tag that said "Family / Sprint" on it) and when we literally walked right past a checkpoint that was right next to the trail. Groggy much?

Adam grabs a checkpoint in the culvert

Dawn was finally arriving!

This pretty much sums up how we felt at this point, almost 20 hours in.

We got back to the transition area and got switched over to bike gear for the final time. I was overjoyed when Adam reminded me that I had brought a second pair of bike shoes - I had completely forgotten! The race organizers played a cruel trick by having a full spread of food laid out (including hot chocolate!) but telling us we couldn't have any until we got back from the bike. A few cold honey stinger waffles and some trail mix later, we headed out on bikes. The bike portion was very tame in comparison to what we had been riding earlier, which was a welcome change. I heard that last year, it was the other way around! That must have been a character-builder for sure.

Frost on the bike seat - it was cold!

Gratuitous shot of the flight deck

Robin and Adam round the bend

The biking was fast, fun, and flowy. Near the end, Robin made us do a bike bushwhack to avoid a lengthy detour, just so that we could feel that we were actually in an adventure race. Although I wasn't particularly inclined to the idea, it really turned out to be not that bad.

Another shot of the flight deck

The final descent back to the TA was super fun, very fast machine-built flow trail. We rocketed down it and rolled in to the finish, and immediately learned what our results were (sans people still out on course). Robin and Adam would wind up getting 3rd place coed duo, and I wound up with 6th place solo male (out of 13). We decided to have some beer and sit around napping while we waited for the awards ceremony.

Relaxing while we wait for the awards ceremony

Finished! Go Calleva!

As my first adventure race, I had a ton of fun. All the sections were very enjoyable and the parts in GWNF were challenging. I really liked the navigation aspect, although there wasn't really too much of it; we only broke out the compass once and even then it probably wasn't necessary). It keeps you mentally engaged. Also, switching between sports really helps break up the monotony you can get in a 100-mile mountain bike race or an ultra. Every time I got into a different section I felt fresh (at least for a little while). I can't wait to do another one!

Many thanks to our sponsors, Calleva, for making it happen and to Dima for all his wily tips and tricks.