2013 Untamed New England Adventure Race

Untamed New England... It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Mostly the worst of times. And by worst of times, I mean the best of times. In other words, it was awesome. Confused yet? Let me step back a moment and start from the beginning.

As with any good adventure, it started with a ton of gear and some travel. I bought a new duffel bag with the interior volume of a Volkswagen Beetle, and packed it full of clothes, shoes, tools, food, and other essentials. I brushed the dust off my mountain bike from last weekend's Bailey Hundo, checked the brake pads, replaced the bottom bracket, slapped a pair of Nobby Nics on the hoops and packed it back up.

My portion of the gear stash

I met up with Adam, Robin, Vlad, and Dima at BWI airport - we all were on the same flight out. During the flight, we looked over some maps of the area, and reviewed the communications from the organization. Upon landing in Portland, Vlad and I dashed off to rent a mammoth SUV while the others stayed behind to pick up the bikes and gear. This is where the first piece of bad news hit us - My bike didn't make it on the plane!

We were already in scramble mode, trying to get to the race registration before they stopped giving out maps. If we missed the map pickup, we would be at a huge disadvantage because we would have to pick them up in the morning, giving us next to no time to plot a course. Not having my bike there threw a wrench in the works of our adventure machine. After a tense conversation with the empathetic and helpful baggage agent, we decided to head to the race check-in, hoping that my bike would make it on a later flight. During the 2-1/2 hour drive to Sugarloaf, where the check-in was, I got a call from the baggage agent that they had found my bike and would put it on the next plane from Baltimore. Whew!

Unfortunately, this meant that I would have to drive back and retrieve my bike. We got to the race check-in, received the maps, and headed to the hotel. After checking in at the hotel, I promptly turned around and hustled back to Portland, leaving the planning to my very capable teammates.

I got to the Portland airport around midnight, picked up my bike, and was back at the hotel by 3:30AM, having stopped a few times for catnaps and snacks. I shuffled a few items around in my pack, doing my best not to wake the others. I finally got to bed around 4AM, just in time to be awakened at 5:45AM to get ready for the race.

Instead of patiently being able to put my bike together the previous night, I was scrambling to put it together in the 90 minutes before starting off into the great unknown. If this wasn't enough pressure, when I went to re-attach my derailleur, the hanger bolt exploded; I must have over-torqued it a little while trying to make sure it was secure. We ransacked our gear looking for a replacement bolt, and had settled on zip-tying the derailleur hanger in place (which actually worked, at least pedaling around the parking lot) before Dima appeared out of nowhere with a hardware angel who had a whole bin of random nuts and bolts. Amazingly enough, this person just happened to have the derailleur hanger bolt that I needed! Overjoyed, I attached my derailleur to my bike and dropped my duffel full of gear and food at the bag drop.

Team Calleva, ready to go. Photo by Vladimir Bukalo

During the 90-minute bus ride to the start of the paddling section, I tried and failed to grab a few winks of sleep. With only about 2 hours of sleep from Friday night, and a guaranteed all-nighter in front of me, I needed every bit I could get. Unfortunately, race nerves and the bouncing bus prevented me from doing anything but closing my eyes for a bit until we got to the start.

The start!

The race started with a short run through the woods to get to our boats. Adam and I hopped in one canoe, Robin and Dima hopped in the other, and we were off in a mad canoeing dash along with 30-odd other teams. After a few minutes of both trying to steer the canoe, Adam and I sorted out that it was best if I just stoked (being in front) and while he steered. We paddled at a decent pace, but kept falling behind bit by bit as the hours wore on. I know for me personally paddling is not my strong suit compared to running and cycling, so I'll have to work on that! I took my hands off the paddle for just a few moments to snap some pictures.

Dima and Robin paddling

Adam and I in the boat.

The paddling section was pretty uneventful. The rapids were more mellow than what we encountered at the Rev3 race, and we managed to avoid bumping into most of the submerged rocks. I was even able to keep my feet dry when getting out of the boat! However, just because it started off easy didn't mean it would stay that way. We packed our paddling gear into our packs and set off up a trail. It wasn't long until Dima proposed we bushwhack uphill to get to a smoother trail that didn't have as many people on it. We did, and got onto a road. We almost went right past the trail that we'd marked on the map last night, as it wasn't very well marked. Luckily Robin caught the blaze, and we followed the trail up through some dense humidity to reach CP2.

After that, we followed some more trails and dirt roads, skirting around the edges of some ponds. We crossed a portage trail, which the map showed going straight through the pond - it really was for portaging! At one point we got on the Appalachian trail for a couple of miles, which gave me newfound respect for anyone who could have been running on that part of the course. It was very wet and slippery, with tons of roots and rocks. We proceeded at a fast walk, jogging where we could.

Untamed New England = Untamed Foot Bridges

After a while, we came to a swampy area at the edge of a lake, and proceeded to bush whack through it to get to the next checkpoint. For a while we were able to keep our feet dry, but eventually the muck-to-dry-ground ratio became such that stomping through the mud was just faster.

The "path" through the swamp at the edge of the lake

The checkpoint's location meant we'd have to get our feet wet anyway

After grabbing the checkpoint, we proceeded to bushwhack along the edge of the lake, aiming to reach a road that continued around the eastern side of the lake. After twisting, turning, hopping and thrashing through some moderately dense thicket, we decided to just hop in the lake and wade along the shore. It was less than waist-deep, and although we didn't move very fast at least we were moving in a straight line.

Pushing through the swamp felt like traveling the Forest Moon of Endor

Wading on the edge of the pond

We ended up popping out through some guy's back yard, garnering some odd looks although we tried to be exceedingly polite. We got on the road and continued around the pond to our next objective, a bushwhack up to the top of a minor peak. Looking back at it on Google Earth, there was a road almost all the way to the top. This road wasn't on our map, but we found it and followed it about halfway up before we found some logging trails that we were able to follow up to a saddle adjacent to the summit. After threading our way through some thicket we got to the top, admired the views for a moment, and then bushwhacked down to another road to continue on our way to the transition area.

Bushwhacking - not so bad.

Bushwhackers converging on the summit from all directions!

The view from the summit - quite nice. Flagstaff Lake with what I believe is Bigelow Mountain in the background.

Back into the thicket

Running down the road towards the transition area

We got to the transition area and packed up, knowing that we'd be going for about 12 more hours without seeing our gear again. The paddles and PFDs went into our teams paddling gear bag, and a clean dry pair of running shoes and socks went into my backpack for later use. We fueled up, eating some previously frozen (now thawed) burritos.

As we left the transition area, a few mechanical problems reared their head immediately. My derailleur was doing some weird stuff where it was dragging on the chain when coasting or pedaling backwards, which caused some slack to appear in the chainline. This didn't really pose a practical problem unless I needed to ratchet through some tough technical sections, so after a brief look we decided to ignore it. Robin's drivetrain was also having problems, not shifting into the small chainring in the front. After attempting to fix this by adjusting several things we gave up; post-race examination under calmer conditions revealed that the chainring was in fact bent, causing it to skip in and out of granny gear.

I didn't take many pictures during the biking section, mostly because my camera batteries were on the brink of going dead (it had decided that it was a good idea to turn itself on and play a slideshow for a few hours in my drybag, apparently). Our route to the next checkpoint at Stratton Brook Hut was mostly on dirt roads, with a few sections of pretty good single track trails.

We had a bit of trouble navigating to the hut - while the route appeared pretty simple on paper, in real life it was difficult to tell which intersection you were at. This is because there were many trails that appeared on the map that did not appear in real life, and for a long time we were traversing along a slope, so we didn't have any good terrain features to confirm our position. We turned uphill a bit too early and reached a dead end at logging area; a stick got stuck in Robins derailleur, bending it so that she was now stuck with just 4 usable gears. Nevertheless, we pushed onwards and reached Stratton Brook Hut after a steep hike-a-bike climb.

At Stratton Brook Hut we transitioned back over to trekking gear for the orienteering course. We had been stressing about getting to the hut quickly, because we would need to complete the orienteering course and be back at the hut by midnight, and we were behind schedule. Luckily the O-course turned out to be amazingly simple, just an out-and-back on some trails, and we completed it in about an hour and 40 minutes and were back at the hut by 10:30.

We put on plenty of warm clothes for the next bike section, as it was a long descent back into the valley. The descent was fairly uneventful, and we arrived at the base of the next climb without any trouble other than checking our maps repeatedly to make sure that we were on the right track.

The climb went on forever. It wasn't too steep, so we were able to ride several section of it, but at 2AM any long climb will seem interminable. Reaching the top was a cause for celebration! We paused to snack and to put on a layer for the descent down to the next checkpoint, which was where we would leave our bikes to embark on the final trek of the race, up and over Sugarloaf Mountain.

About halfway down the descent, it started to rain. After a few big fat drops hit, it started to pour. We were cruising at a pretty good clip downhill, so within minutes we were completely soaked, despite wearing all our raingear. Stopping briefly at intersections to verify our location, we eventually made it down to the U-Haul at the transition area at 3:05AM.

A sight for sore eyes!

Dima and Robin pulling up to the transition area. Can you tell that it's wet??

Unfortunately, the race organizers had made the call at 2AM to instate a new cut-off at this transition area at 3AM. Not knowing about this cutoff (we'd been out in the middle of nowhere when the decision was made), we'd arrived 5 minutes too late and were told that we were not allow to continue on the course. This was very demoralizing; I'm sure that if we'd known there was a cutoff at 3AM we could have pushed a little harder, stopped a little less, whatever it took to get us there 5 minutes faster. Oh well, such is life.

The alt course lead us back to the main road in the valley. It was seven miles on a side road, and then 14 miles on the main road back to the start/finish area. Those first seven miles were downhill, and in the soaking rain they were pretty cold and miserable. At the intersection with the main road, we stopped under the awning of a hardware store to put on any dry clothes that we had left and to eat some snacks.

Taking a break under shelter at 4:00AM

The 14 miles up the main road were really bad - after all the adrenaline and mental energy we'd been putting into navigating and paying attention to our surroundings, 14 miles on the same paved road was a total snoozecase. In fact, I'm pretty sure I literally fell asleep on my bike for a slip second a couple times. We did all sorts of things to try and keep ourselves awake - talking, standing up on the bike, short sprints, riding with no hands. Eventually we made our way back to the finish, tired, dirty and wet, but happy to have finished.

A little haggard but glad to be done. Photo by Vladimir Bukalo

Not exactly a huge crowd to greet us. Although the keg of beer was nice!

We took hot showers (awesome) with cold beers from the keg (double awesome), napped in the car for a little bit, and then packed up and headed home.