Triangle Adventure Racing Team

Four, Eight and Twelve hour options for racers of all ability levels.  Held in the Uwharrie National Forest and Badin Lake area of central NC.  The race features all the typical disciplines one would expect in a tough short course format. 

http://adventureracing.meetup.com/17/calendar/6978983/

I had decided a couple weeks out to race this one Singlespeed but apparently didn’t remember how hilly the Garner rec trail was the last time I rode it. Well it was definitely hilly and by lap 7 I was forced to dismount and push up two of the more significant climbs. Overall I had a good race and hung out in the top three single speed racers all afternoon until getting passed by a good buddy of mine Mac Dodge on lap 5. The top three for the race was pretty much set after lap 1 with, Mac Dodge, John Myles and me trading 1st, 2nd and 3rd off and on…on lap 5 I dropped from 1st place to 2nd and then after a horrible lap 6 was passed by John Myles into 3rd.

By lap 7 and 8 I was in survival mode trying to keep in contact and hoping for a mechanical miracle by one of the top two racers. Of course I got no break and couldn’t create one myself and rolled in to finish lap 8. Upon completing lap 8, I was informed I could push on for lap 9 as the 1st place singlespeed rider had….I looked over and saw my buddy Mac who was 2nd putting his bike up…it was all I needed to declare I was done as well! I was very pleased to find out my lap count and time placed me fourth overall among all the SOLO male racers, which stood at nearly 30 racers. Overall a good race, though the rigid front fork took it’s toll on my arms and hands…..

Pictures here Garner 4

Bruce Dale

Team member Bruce Dale competed in the 4 Hour Garner EMS MTB race Saturday finishing 3rd among the Single speed racers and fourth among all SOLO male racers with 8 laps. Surprisingly among the 30 SOLO male racers the 2nd, 3rd and 4th places were all single speed riders! Check out the race reports for more details!

Held in Unicoi State Park near Helen, GA.
3/23/2007

The race started around 8:00am (after a 1 mile prologue run to separate teams, which didn’t really perform because there was still log jam of canoes trying to get in the water) with a canoe paddle for about 15-20 miles on a lake. This was the worst part of the race for me. We were in a three-man canoe with a “temporary” middle seat that I was sitting on…basically a flat piece of plastic that snapped in to the gunwales of the canoe. At any rate, every time the canoe rocked from one side to the other (with every paddle stroke), I’d have to squeeze my butt cheeks together to keep from sliding to one side or the other. In spite of Jon’s “positive thinking” guidelines (such as, “say your name over and over to induce positive thoughts that you know to be true”), I repeatedly thought…”a F&%$#^G back rest would be ideal”

It probably didn’t help that I’m a crappy paddler and I HATE flat-water paddles on a lake where the scenery changes very slowly. Anywho, we didn’t lose a whole lot of ground during the actual paddling part, but got passed several times at the paddle CPs. I had to pee at two different checkpoints, which cost us time at each. So, we came in from the paddle in 34th place at CP5/TA1…I would have never guessed we were that far back, but Brian checked when we came in.

After that we hopped on the bikes for maybe an 8 mile ride to CP6…I was slow on the hills up to it, but I felt strong and we did manage to gain some spots on this short ride. We got to CP6 where we were to drop the bikes and hit three CP’s in any order, on foot. We planned our strategy to get 7,8, and 9 in order (counterclockwise), which turned out to be not the norm since it appeared to us that most teams were hitting them in clockwise direction, but we made good time on our route. From 6 to 7 was a road for a little ways up to a saddle and then a bushwhack down a long steep draw which involved a lot of buttsliding. It was obviously a relatively quick decent, and we found CP 7 after a few minutes searching at the bottom. When we arrived at the CP, the guy says, “Do you have a passport?” I give the smartass reply of, “I sure hope so” then dig into my empty jersey pocket…then the other one…then the middle one…gone. At 6 hours into the race, I had lost the passport. I hadn’t lost a passport before and it’s a terrible feeling, especially when you’re the one that loses it and you’re only a third of the way into the race, after you feel like the team is making a decent comeback from a slow start. My immediate thought was we’ll back track and find it…but we bushwhacked down a mountain in deep leaves…the chances of finding it were non-existent in my mind. There was a specific rule about losing a passport…disqualification. We decided to continue on the course, unofficially. We nailed the next two CPs on this short trek leg and then made our way back down to CP6/CP10 via bushwhack…a slight nav error here cost us some time, but not a whole lot in my mind…maybe 30 minutes. I still think we probably had a relatively respectable time from CP6 to CP10. Once back at CP10, we were told that someone had found our passport near CP7 and it was at CP7. We were given the option of returning to CP7 to retrieve it and continue from there “officially” once again. Considering the time it would have taken to get over the mountain and back, we opted to continue unofficially.

From CP10 to CP11 was a long uphill bike…it seemed like miles long, again we were able to gain a few positions here. I was still feeling strong and just fell into a slow climbing pace and cranked it out. I think Brian was having some stomach issues at this point and once we got to CP11, mentioned throwing up…I don’t think he ever did, but did gag on some Ecaps. I don’t remember CP12, but we hit it on the bike. Then there was more very long uphill on the bike to the attack point for CP 13. This was to be a bikewhack that proved fatal for our “keep your hearts in it strategy.” It plotted about 800 meters off the road and at the end of a spur in a flat area. We opted to terrain navigate, but in the dark, it was difficult and in hindsight we should have followed a bearing from an attack point. We spent probably 2 hours looking for it, but the terrain on the map looked so easy and we kept thinking we must be close. I kind of gave up looking for it and just stood in one place while Brian and Jon searched for a little while longer. Several teams came through while we were there and none of them found it either. As it turns out (so we heard) only 7 teams found it and it appears on the TB board that they all shot a bearing from an attack point and did so in the daylight. I tend to lean towards terrain navigation rather than using the compass a whole lot, so I get screwed if the terrain doesn’t match the map, which I suspect may have been the case here. At any rate, we left CP13’s general area pushing, pulling and dragging our bikes (and our egos at this point) through the woods. I’m pretty sure Brian even threw his bike several times. I just want to re-iterate how much this bikewhack sucked. There was a rule that on the bike leg (except for CP 7-10) you couldn’t be more than 10 feet away from your bike. So, CP13 was essentially a mandatory bike whack. I thought to myself at one point, “would I rather be back in the canoe?” but while I couldn’t convince myself that was the case, I sure was looking forward to riding this bike that I was constantly lifting over tree fall.

At the bottom of CP13, was supposed to be a small creek we’d hoped to cross and get onto a road on the other side….well it turned out to be too fast and deep to cross with the bikes. We stopped there for about 10 minutes with about three other teams who evidently had the same plan. Eventually we all went back up the hill a few yards to an overgrown trail we had passed on the way down. We traveled with these other teams for a while on this trail to an eventual opportunity to cross via some slippery rocks that were not ideally located for a crossing but figured the going must be faster on the other side where the road was. Two teams continued on, hoping for a better spot, while we and one other team made this hairy crossing, it was slow, but we made it with no casualties. Finally on the road on the other side, more bike whacking (tree falls for what seemed like every 10 feet) and several shallow stream crossings later, landed us on a rideable road that matched the map perfectly…although we didn’t check the compass direction since it was such a perfect match to what the map showed, it never crossed our mind that we might be going in the wrong direction…but on the map we needed to go right so that’s what we did. We soon found ourselves at a dead end and spent some time scratching our heads trying to figure out where we were (because we knew (or thought we did) where we had started from just 15 minutes ago). We headed back the way we came (not because we thought it was right, but we didn’t have any other options) and eventually came to a road and were able to determine our location. CP14 was more very long uphill on the bike. I was still feeling strong and just fell into my climbing gear once again…slow but constant up the hill. We passed several teams on these late night/early morning uphills. At one point we stopped for a quick nap. I was very cold at this point, as I hadn’t planned to be out on the bike this long and had only bike shorts and jersey (the lows in the mountains were forecasted at 50 and I knew I could manage even if I did get stuck out there) so I busted out the space blanket during this little siesta. Having never used a space blanket before, I decided that it’d work in a pinch but I did run by REI in Raleigh on Sunday to pick up one that would be more substantial should I ever feel like my chances of actually using it are above 10%. After this quick 15-minute break, back on the bikes for more uphill climbing. Finally we reached CP14 where a couple of teams were holding up and at this point we saw the race claim it’s first victims. One team was huddled very comfortably by the fire that the race staff had going and weren’t going anywhere in a hurry…their volunteers were on their way up to get them. Back on the bikes and back uphill to what would be CP19 later in the race, but for us it was just another stop and another fire and another team that had fallen victim to the comforts of the manned CP’s and were waiting for their volunteers to come get them. One girl was in a sleeping bag lying by the fire! I’m not sure if she carried it with her or borrowed it from the race staff at the CP. For us it was a quick stop with some welcomed hot chicken soup. Then back on the bikes to the start of a long down hill single-track descent. I hadn’t used my headlight until this point, and was looking forward to some fast fun single track after all the boring uphill gravel roads. With a bright headlight, it’s great to be able to see all the action in front of you on a busy singletrack section. I kept coming up on different teams who were either walking or going very slow since the trail was full of baby heads and deep water bars. I saw three people endo right in front of me. One guy’s was about a 9 on a scale of 1 to 8. It was perfect! He ran into what was apparently nothing (I didn’t see anything in the trail) and just flipped completely over, back wheel directly over front wheel (no sidesway), landed on his back in a tangled pile of bike, racer, backpack, and water bottles…all right in front of me. He turned out to be OK, but didn’t respond for at least 20 seconds, until his friend came back for him. From there it was more downhill singletrack to the road which would carry us to the lodge/CP17/TA2 right at about 5am.

At this point the course would have had us trek for about 10 to 12 hours (obviously not enough time to get all the CPs) and we decided to call it here since there was a hot shower between CP17 and my trek poles and a hot buffet breakfast just a few steps away from that. We showered, ate breakfast, and went to the TA to officially end our unofficial race.

The best comment of the race was from Brian’s Dad (he and Ellen were our support crew) at the end of the race after we had explained our story to them. Brian and I were headed to eat breakfast and Ellen asked if she could come with…Brian’s dad chimes in, “Ellen, I don’t know why you would even want to be associated with this debacle.” ha!

I thought it was a good course, my opinion of the paddle is biased for the reasons I stated above, nevertheless, I hated it. I didn’t necessarily like the copious amounts of biking on gravel roads but looking back, I think he did a good job getting a 30-hour course into the area. It was worth the trip and worth the money, I just had high hopes of a better finish, but it’s tough to stay in the game after what seemed like setback after setback. I went directly to REI after we got back to Raleigh to purchase a passport holder that will be modified to better ensure passport security and a better space blanket.

JT

Mountain Bike Festival at Pochahontas State Park near Richmond Va.  More details will be released as the date nears, be sure to mark your calendar to attend.  Night riding, skills clinics, guided trail rides, prizes and entertainment are just a few of the offerings.  Stay posted to www.trianglemtb.com on the events section.

Okay, so you might ask where’s the adventure in this….well just hold on a bit….this was my 2nd Annual Foray into the twisted underbelly of Mountain Biking…and was far more wicked than 2006…I’ve said it before you haven’t done this one then you are missing out on one of the most brilliantly designed all-terrain bicycle events around….so about 40 riders showed up..some very nice bikes by the way…some serious riders…..some well..they were there to drink…I wanted to do both..but ended up focusing on the drinking part…needless to say I did much better in that category then the riding.

We started out with a well paced 3-4 mile road ride over to the local trails which were muddy and quickly becoming extinct as indicated by the bulldozer ruts…well being as adaptable as mountain bikers with a half gallon of Jack Daniels can be, the ruts quickly turned into a mudslide competition…after about 5 beers and two shots of Jack…I took a run at it…good distance but not many style points….by now the beer was flowing..the adrenalin pumping and the XC ride was on tap…two miles of muddy singletrack….it would have been hard to ride sober, as such..massive carnage..riders dumping all over the place…I often found myself carving through trees…only to realize I was off the trail…….we arrived back at camp, only to start chipping away at the massive pile of beers…I don’t recall names…only alcohol content…7.25…6.5…8.75…5.5 and uhhhh…well some more Jack Daniels shots…and then more beers…the trials competition didnt go so well for most of the riders…myself included and so after a couple of endo’s into thankfully soft wet mud I took to the entertaining and pretty much sick viewing of people wrecking their bikes. We all then set back out again for the conclusion of the rally and the crowning of the king and queen….unfortunately the road ride back got ugly with numerous drunken cyclist crashes….after wrecking myself and getting tore up….I took a shortcut to the house to lick my wounds…thank god I was feeling pretty righteous or that wreck might have hurt…….all in all it was a good day…a day in which I finished out by hosing off the bike..my clothes…cleaning up abrasions and being worthless the rest of the day…..I can’t wait for next year!!!

Pictures here HappyFun

Foot care is extremely important in adventure races or any long distance event for that matter. Another important factor specific to multi-sport events is the ability to use individual gear for multiple disciplines. In my opinion, these socks are perfect. They stay tight on your feet after hours and days of racing, they aren’t too thick so you can switch from running to biking without changing socks, they dry quickly and even seem to work just fine if they’re wet, they’re kind of “slick” in the shoes, so the shoes rub against the sock, but the sock doesn’t rub against your foot. At $15 a pair, they’re kind of pricey and I think they’ve recently even been marketing them as “adventure racing socks” which doesn’t excite me, but I still wouldn’t consider using anything else. I do recommend getting different colors so when you’re changing from wet dirty socks into dry dirty socks, you’ll be able to keep track of which ones might be filled with sand. I prefer the mini crew which come just above the ankle.
JT
3-17-2007

This is an ultra classic MTB race involving solo and duo team riders navigating by route choice to designated checkpoints, mileage varies depending on route selection but often hovers around 70 miles of singletrack, doubletrack, gravel roads and hike-a-bike.  Read the race review from Bruce Dale and Jeff Thompson from the 2007 offering.  Details to be posted soon:

www.ertc.com

Mountain Bike Marathon with 2007 finishing times ranging from 4-7 hours.  Featuring the single and double track of the Douhat State Park near Clifton Forge Va.  check out the website below for more details on this race and more.

http://www.mountainbikevirginia.com/mmhighlights.htm

Off-road trail run around the home of the 82nd Airborne, Ft. Bragg NC.  Choice of 10K or 5K options.  Be sure to visit active.com and search for Around the World Run.

www.active.com