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| Fraternizing with the "enemy" pre-race. |
In the warm predawn of Saturday morning, somewhere in the Mark
Twain National Forest just East of Fort Leonard Wood and the Big Piney River in
South-Central Missouri, a group of 150-odd adventure racers with head lamps on,
stood looking every which way under the inflatable arch of Bonk Hard Racing,
LLC, awaiting the start of the 2013 Berryman Adventure 12-hour, a real ass-kicker.
Our four-person coed team, 34Down, had now been together for
a year. The 2012 Berryman Adventure Race had been our first race together. It
was bittersweet to be racing without one of our own (Jason welcomed a son into
the world just last week, and therefore was excused), but Jay, an outdoor
adventure veteran in every sense of the word and all-around cool guy, offered
to step right in, pretend that he was 34 years old for a day, and run around in
the woods with us.
Now, Gary, megaphone in hand, counted down from three, and
then we all scattered in the general direction we had been looking. 34Down
headed back into the parking lot, passed the Honey Buckets, and jumped
immediately into the tall grass, up to our waists (Jay’s shoulders). No one followed us. Jeff surged ahead,
and within two minutes we popped out onto a single-track trail paralleling the
road. Another team came out of the
grass onto the trail just behind us. Less than two minutes later, we left the
trail, headed for the hills and our first planned checkpoint (CP). One minute
later, we were thigh deep (Jay’s waist) in shoe-sucking marsh water, and I
wondered if I was going to have to do the rest of the race in my socks.
And that was just the first five minutes. Jeff took us up
onto a spur, and we fanned out across a clearing looking for the first CP. I
had the passport, and I swept my headlamp in a full circle hoping to catch the
reflective tape on the otherwise orange and white flag that indicated our
target. Nothing. Jeff looked at the map and led us down a reentrant and onto
the next spur, where we found the trail again. Not good. We had been on the
right spur. We took the trail back around to approach the spur from the top and
came practically face-to-face with the CP. Sometimes that is how it goes. We shook it off and checked off the
next four CPs in quick succession.
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| A racer's sock covered in Beggar-lice (mine my teammates were similarly besnaggled). |
We came out of the woods, peppered in Beggar-lice (and as time would tell, tick-bombs), but near the front of the pack. At our bikes, we
packed in our new kayak paddles, donned helmets and cycling shoes, and plunged back
into the woods once more. The first CP on the bike confounded us a
little as it was buried deep in a beautiful “natural tunnel”. I had already
taken off my headlamp, so I fumbled with it before I could negotiate the
darkness. Not immediately clear on where the trail went from there (and NO
Bike-Whacking allowed, as per race directors instructions), Josh suggested
there was a trail on top of the tunnel, and I led our exit stage left through
the tunnel, and onto the trail.
The single track was rocky and sandy in turns, with
unrideable uphills, and washed out sections of little rocks we quickly dubbed
“Pop Rocks” for their ability to suck all of our momentum and pop us off our
bikes. The rest of the bike went by in a blur as we came out on the road and
made our way to the Big Piney River bank.
At the riverside, we found ourselves in second! This section
required us to put the bikes in the canoes. So while, Jeff and Josh carried
boats to the riverside, Jay and I put together our shiny new paddles that were
supposed to make us uber-fast in the water. And I suppose they did (no one
passed us on the river), but I still felt like I was paddling with toothpicks
(my arms). Josh was having a little trouble in the back of our boat; the bikes
were too close in front of him, and he was forced to sit on the back of the
boat to get the full benefit of his long arms and paddle stroke. 
At this point, Jay and I were trekking behind Jeff and Josh
as they navigated us through a sea of stinging nettle, tiptoeing and sashaying like
uncoordinated ballerinas. As we
skirted the contour of a particularly heinous uphill, I almost stepped on a
turtle just as Jeff called from ahead, anyone want a deer skull? But, it was
the hive of yellow jackets that we encountered next that I would have loved to
miss. Both Jay and I got bit, both of us yelling in surprise and pain.
Back in the boats, I ran straight into the river to cool the
hornet bite on my leg (through my leggings). The others thought this was a good
idea, and jumped in too, Jay even dragged/guided both boats from the water across
the shallow river to the take-out. Once on the beach, we reattired our helmets
and bike shoes, and rode our bikes up the biggest hill, granny gears all the
way.
Eventually we came to another riverside where we dropped our
bikes, chugged cokes and trail mix out of our gear bag, reloaded on water (we
had been at it for ~five hours), and mapped the next big
O-section. Team Fusion/Kuat was
just leaving the CP in first place. Looking around for a flat spot to
map on, Jeff pulled down the tailgate of an ancient Chevy truck that looked
like it had been abandoned there a long time ago. The volunteers informed us
that the front of the truck had caught on fire earlier that morning, and the
owner had just rolled it out of the way and left it there, so maybe “a long
time ago” wasn’t exactly accurate. Maybe it should have been. As we mapped, I
noticed a foul smell tickling my nose. The area was swampy and marshy, and
probably recently flooded, but it wasn’t until one of the volunteers mentioned
duck heads did I place the smell. Apparently, the area had been littered with
animal carcasses/pieces when the volunteers arrived and they had had to tidy it
up. That is above and beyond.
Jeff took a few minutes to study the map, and then
commented, “This is going to take a while”. Between every CP and us was a sea
of tightly spaced contour lines, indicating the ups and downs we were about to
experience. And we were tested. We did not see a single other team in the woods
until we were heading to our last CP in the section, Bushwacker and the
inimitable Rachel Furman passed us going the other way. We also found another
yellow jacket nest. This time, I received two stings, one in the arm and one in the
back. The one in the arm seemed to simultaneously seer and put my arm to sleep!
But, Jeff was dynamite, and before long and still in full daylight we arrived
at the riverside for a second paddle. And we were in first!
PIcture
All four of us jumped into the river bodily before floating
the boats into the rapids. Almost immediately we were faced with a tricky
section filled will half submerged trees and debris. Years of paddling
experience between the four of us (I may not have brawn, but I can keep a boat
afloat), we moved through it quickly. Paddling might be simultaneously my most and least favorite section. Josh kept my spirits up and the boat moving rapidly forward. It wasn’t long before we were paddling
along glassy expanses, and Jef and Jay helped us out with a short tow. Rather than singing "row, row, row your boat, we tried to
remember and sing off key the refrain to “Some Nights” by Fun. I
asked Jeff if he thought we might be close, and he called out (as he is apt to
do) the chorus to Disney’s Pocahontas “Just around the river bend!” The sky had
been threatening rain since “lunch”, and halfway through the paddle, a warm
steady rain began to pour down.
It was about this time in the race that we could almost taste the
cheesy potatoes and BBQ chicken that we thought surely must have been delivered
to the finish line by then. And we were sure that once we exited the boats, we
would be told to hop on our bikes, and head back to the start/finish for a victory
celebration. Bonk Hard had other plans.
We were handed another course to plot at the paddle take
out, and my heart sank as I saw eight CPs listed, including three “FREE” CPs
this time. Jeff pulled down the same tailgate once more to map, I chugged
another coke and we divvied up the remainder of our water between the four of
us, emptying every last drop into our packs. I had sucked my bladder dry during
the paddle, so I was happy to onboard another liter. With night falling, Jeff
plotted our course in the rain, making ghostly red watermarks on the map in the
general vicinity of the CP. I
packed the non-water proof clue sheet in a sandwich bag previously occupied by
a PB&J. Just then the truck
owner came ambling up. We apologized for using his truck, but he absolutely
cared little, instead starting to tell us the storied history of the earlier
fire. We politely listened as we finished up the mapping, and soon he turned
his attention to the business of getting his truck “fired up”. As we rode out
of the transition we heard behind us, “It’s a good thing we brought the fire
extinguisher. Keep it close by.”
It was still daylight, but we knew that would end soon. We would be forced to do our first ever
night navigation to finish the longest adventure race any of us had ever
done. Our strength was waning, but
our resolve was strong as ever, and at each CP we would decide to keep
going. Navigation on the bike is tricky enough without night falling, but a lot
of the CPs were on unmapped roads or off-trail a couple hundred yards.
I knew something was up as I approached one in particular. According to Jeff,
the CP was “just ahead on the saddle” adjacent to a feature called the “King’s
Sink”. As I approached it, passport in hand, my energy faltered. The sign on
the CP read, “the punch for this CP is at the bottom of the deep depression to
the East”. And an arrow, pointing east. I called out to the guys, “Hey, you’re
going to want to come check this out!” Good sports that they all are, Jeff
called back, “Is it cool?” as he and Jay came down the hill. “You might not
think so.”
Did I mention they were good sports? They accompanied me
down into the deep depression, using trees like climbing ropes to repel us down
what felt like a vertical slope of loose soil. And just like the sign said,
there was the CP, at the very bottom of the deep depression. Climbing out was
no picnic, but as I approached the guys, I called out, “Race you to the top!”
and we all took off scrambling.
Darkness was falling quickly, but the rain had for the most
part ceased. The next CP was three kilometers out of our way, at the end of a
road and off the beaten path. The clue suggested it was near a small pond, and
as we reached the end of the road and found the edge of a farmer’s field, we
realized that the rain had turned every dip in the proceeding jeep trail into a
small pond. We did our best to
skirt the big puddles, taking furtive glances at the gorgeous sunset, and trying
to maintain speed. One puddle came up to fast for Jay, and he went in up to his
hubs. We found the CP practically
in the pond, banks swollen with rain. The rest of our ride would be in
darkness.
Riding along the trail back to the road, the beams of our
headlamps on the ground became our focus. Two teams came in hot pursuit up the
trail as we were exiting, and we knew we had to see this one through to the
bitter end. The next CP came on
singletrack. Mountain biking at
night is hard enough without having to navigate, but Jeff was really going
above and beyond. We ran into a couple of teams going back and forth along the
trail looking for the same CP. We
were looking for the second of two hills off to the right that came after a
deep reentrant as we climbed up to a ridge. I tried to help out by turning off my headlamp and looking
through the trees for sky and stars that would indicate we were going past the
reentrant. At the same time I
spotted the sky, Jeff let us know that we should be about there and pointed
into the darkness. Thankfully it was close to the trail, but as I punched the
passport, I was plunged into darkness, and a momentary stillness and
sensory-deprivation swept over me. <shudder!>
We rode on, Jay illuminating the way for all four of us with
his 300+ lumen lamp. We kept
looking at the clock, not wanting to get too close to the 10:30 race cutoff,
but not wanting to leave any CPs out on the course, either. But as the minutes
ticked by, and the miles didn’t, we had to face the fact that we were not going
to make it to the last CPs. We held a 34Down summit on the trail near one of
the connectors to the road, the finish, and the cheesy potatoes to discuss the
prospect of calling it a night. We were all in agreement. It had been a great day
filled with firsts and adversity, but it was time finish.
We came in with ~45 minutes to spare. We had to wait until
all teams finished, and the 10:30 PM mark passed to see if we had cleared the
most CPs. After 14 hours and 52
minutes of racing and 36 checkpoints (out of a possible 38) cleared, we had
won the Berryman Adventure Race, a real ass-kicker.
Huge thanks to my "enemy" Doug for building such a sweet mountain bike for me to ride, to my teammates for being such good sports, to the Bonk Hard organizers for laying down such an amazing course the was equal parts fun and ass-kicking, and to all the volunteers who kept us safe and organized out there! Picture credits also to the volunteers, spectators, and race organizers.
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| 34Down - Berryman Adventure Champs 2013 |
