Life Is An Adventure Race

by Jim Farmer (farmerjp@bellsouth.net)

If you’ve ever read this column before you know that is filled with self-deprecation and amusing tales of my misfortunes while participating in the wonderful world of adventure racing. If that’s why you read this claptrap then you might want to quit while you’re ahead. That’s right, yours truly actually took home the gold in one of these bad boys. Scary, huh. I still can’t believe it myself. Somebody pinch me. Although I’ve won a couple of adventure races as a soloist, I’ve never been able to crack the top spot with a team. Second and third place finishes were all I could muster before a beautiful February weekend in Florida at the 2005 Swamp Stomp 36-hour Adventure Race.

Team Mighty Dog, out of Atlanta, needed a fourth for the Stomp and asked me to be their warm body for the race. I hesitated at first due to an already full race schedule and a promise to myself, my wife, my boss, my cats, and every other animate object for that matter, that I wouldn’t be traveling very far to races this year. I had pretty much blown my wad at last year’s Primal Quest and was still digging myself out of the gargantuan hole it had created. But I couldn’t say no. Led by Ardie Olson, a top-notch navigator, and joined by Patricia Williams Smith, my superb teammate from the past, and Allen McAdams, an absolute stud, I knew that this was an opportunity I could not pass up.

Not being the team captain nor the navigator, all I had to do was get my crap together and show up healthy and in shape. A spur of the moment ski trip the week before the race almost nixed that plan as I stupidly tried to keep up with the snowboarding punks in the terrain park. The adrenaline rush of flying over the jumps is too much for me to resist. A bruised rib, torqued shoulder and sprained thumb brought back the reality of being too old for that stuff. However, I had to count my blessings since things could’ve been much worse. A little discomfort was all that I’d have to deal with for the race.

After driving down to Atlanta late on Thursday night to stay with Ardie and his wife Sherry, I only got four hours of sleep before we had to pack up the van and head out for Florida. Although this race would be unsupported, Sherry, Team Mighty Dog’s support crew dynamo, came along for the ride to cheer us on and help with the pre-race preparations. The five of us arrived in Weeki Wachee Springs early in the afternoon and had time to get our gear sorted out before the gear check, registration and pre-race meeting later on in the day.

At the end of the meeting we were given the maps for all but the first section of the race so it was off to the hotel room to begin the painfully monotonous task of plotting the thirty-six UTM coordinates on the topo maps. We were also given aerial photos and trail maps of some of the areas of the race course since the topo maps were old plus the fact that having topographical lines on a Florida map is like putting a sweater on a furry dog. It may look nice but it’s pretty darn pointless. After over three hours of plotting, choosing routes and preparing gear it was time to attempt to bed down for just a few hours of sleep before starting another adventure. Sleep deprivation was definitely starting early in this endeavor.

Many of the top teams in the southeast, along with Team GoLite/Timberland Sprint from the left coast, were lined up in Jenkins Creek Park anxiously awaiting the distribution of the aerial photo maps of the Weeki Wachee Preserve for the orienteering section that would start the race. Ardie took a quick glance at the map and we were off like bats out of hell to try to get the hole shot to the front of the pack. After a sharp right-hand turn I noticed that no other teams came our way but I didn’t think anything of it at the time. However, after thirty minutes or so of bushwhacking through some of the nastiest saw palmetto and other vicious flora I have ever had to contend with, we realized that our route choice was just slightly less than optimal. We had given up about forty minutes to the front-runners on this first orienteering point, but our speed on foot made up plenty of time as we nailed the other nine points and got back to the park sitting in fourth place and thirty minutes behind the leaders.

Although the canoes were supplied by the race officials, teams were given the option of using the rental single-blade paddles provided or bringing their own. However, if teams brought their own then they would have to carry the paddles for the majority of the race, both on foot and on the bikes. Since there would be eight hours or so of paddling we decided to bring the more efficient kayak paddles and just deal with the inconvenience of having the paddle pieces sticking out of the top of our packs. This decision quickly paid off as we made our way up the Weeki Wachee River after cleverly cutting through a side canal that saved us a couple miles of paddling. Paddling upstream is hard work but spotting the ubiquitous manatees and pelicans and dealing with the President’s Day Weekend boat traffic broke things up quite a bit.

About midway up the river there was a checkpoint where we were given instructions for another orienteering section in an oxbow of the Weeki Wachee. The one item that caught our attention was the fact that the one hundred yard rule didn’t apply for this special test. At first we thought we’d split up to find the orienteering points but it soon dawned on us that two of us could paddle the boats around the oxbow while the other two picked up the points and met us on the other side. Allen and I busted it out upstream in the boats while Ardie and Patricia hit the orienteering course. Our plan worked perfectly as Ardie and Patricia had to wait on the riverbank for just a minute or so before Allen and I picked them up. Unfortunately, all of the top teams had figured this out as well so the result was a wash.

The paddling section was an out and back on the Weeki Wachee so we passed the top three teams on our way to the Weeki Wachee Springs Resort (yes, the one with the mermaids) and knew that we still had our work cut out for us. After several hours of upstream paddling it felt good to let it all hang out with the current at our backs on our way to the Bayport boat ramp on the coast. After a quick transition to the bikes we headed north up Highway 50 towards Pine Island picking up a couple of checkpoints along the way, one of which required a swim across a canal. Checkpoints 8 and 9 had us concerned while we poured over the maps the night before since it required a bike-whack from the road across a coastal marsh to Sawmill Island about a mile or so to the east. Luckily, we hit it at low tide and the sunny weather kept the muck to a minimum. However, that didn’t mean that it was easy, proven by the cracked rib Patricia received after getting tied up in the high grass and falling on her bike. She’s an ex-Marine though so she cowboyed up and never said a word about it until after the race.

A decision to take the long way around using roads rather than bike-whacking from CP11 to CP12 put us into second place, but Tally-Ho and Team Explorer were hot on our tails as we hit the gas pedal on the way to the Chassahowitzka Ranger Check Station and our only gear drop of the race. Although it was an unsupported affair we were allowed to fill two small bags with gear and food along with two gallon jugs of liquid that were transported to the TA by the race officials. Before we could get to our gear though we were given the instructions for another special test. Teams could split up once again for a bike and run time trial. Every team member had to do at least one of the disciplines that included a five-mile run and a ten-mile bike. Patricia and I hit the bike course while Ardie and Allen made quick work of the run and actually beat us back to the Check Station. We saw the Adventure Sports Magazine (ASM) Team leaving the TA as we sorted our gear for the next trekking leg so we knew that the gap had been closed significantly. Darkness was about to set in but we could definitely see the light.

The almost-full moon and the white sandy roads made traveling in the dark possible without a headlamp and we took full advantage of this as we spotted the lights from the trailing teams coming up the jeep road behind us and quickly went into stealth mode so that they couldn’t follow our route. Working through a small neighborhood we made our way to the Chassahowitzka Campground to begin the last paddling section of the race. This section, along with the earlier time trials and the first orienteering section were timed events and teams would get extra swag for winning these events. We all drooled at the Simon River Sports paddles that would be awarded to the winner of the paddle time trial. That, plus the fact that we were once again gaining on the first place team meant that it would be an all out sprint for the next three hours in the canoes on the Chassahowitzka River. Ardie navigated perfectly as we made our way in and out of the feeder creeks, sometimes leading us into streams barely wide enough to be considered navigable.

Although the temps were in the high forties to low fifties, the combination of being soaking wet and our bodies being depleted made the transition back to the run difficult at best. The uncontrollable shakes soon subsided though as we picked up the pace on our way back to the Check Station where our bikes awaited us. Unlike the trip up to the campground, this time we would have several checkpoints along the way that were not in the most enviable of spots. Bushwhacking through the swamp at night is definitely a memorable experience. The memory of the gator eyes while paddling in the river earlier was definitely on our minds. After a bobble looking for one of the checkpoints we made quick work of the rest of the trek. Entering the Check Station for the last time in the race we saw ASM in the pits changing a flat tire. It was going to be a close finish for sure. Seeing Tally-Ho come into the transition soon afterwards made it a three-team affair.

There was still quite a bit of ground to cover before any of us could break the tape. The bike orienteering course that lay ahead would prove to be more difficult than expected, partly due to the sugar sand that made travel inefficient and the lack of up-to-date maps. Despite these hazards we made good time on the first handful of points, even gaining ground on the other two teams by taking a hard-packed road the long way around rather than trudging through the sugar sand on a much shorter path between two CPs. Our success came to a grinding halt on CP25, however, as we joined Tally-Ho in the desperate search for the orienteering flag at the northeast end of a pond according to the orienteering clue in the passport. Trudging our way through and around several different ponds in the dark and through milkshake-thick vegetation between them we soon become frustrated and tired. Tally-Ho found the flag after a while but we failed to see exactly where they had been so we continued our search until Patricia finally said the magic words, “Over here!” We had spent over an hour and a half finding this needle in the haystack.

Tally-Ho had a few more checkpoints to pick up after CP25 that we had gotten earlier but they were right behind us as we started heading south again on the long haul back to the Weeki Wachee River. They soon zoomed past us with fire in their eyes and we gave it everything we had to keep them in check. Sections of sugar sand slowed everyone down to a crawl but we soon hit pavement and I soon began to hit the wall. Twenty five hours of racing had taken its toll on me and my inability to hydrate and eat enough on the last bike section had set me up for a big bonk. As we pulled into the last TA of the race my legs trembled and I had trouble getting my bike gear off and my running shoes back on for the trekking section that would decide our fate.

The race volunteers told us that the Adventure Sports Magazine Team had come through the transition an hour before us so our hopes of first place were dashed but the fight for second place was in full swing. Tally-Ho hit the chest deep water of the river first and we followed them to the south side of the waterway and the start of less than a mile of bushwhacking before hitting the jeep roads in the Weeki Wachee Preserve where we had started the race the previous day. The difficulty would be in hitting the small spur road that ran mostly north to south into the main roads. Following a perfect bearing was a must. The two teams stayed together for this section although Tally-Ho was constantly probing for a better route through the woods. We knew that we would be faster than them once we hit the roads so we were content with the status quo. I stayed near the back of the pack and regained my strength knowing that it would be a gut check to the finish.

Ardie nailed the spur off of the jeep road and we started the sprint to the finish. Allen, our fastest runner, had a little trouble keeping up because he had lost a running shoe out of his pack on the bike leg and had to finish the race in bike shoes; however, we still quickly lost sight of Tally-Ho. About three miles of running put us back at Jenkins Creek Park and the sweet sight of the finish line. Maybe it was our sleep-deprived state or maybe it was the fact that we had resigned ourselves to a second place finish. Either way, when Sherry, Ardie’s wife, started jumping up and down screaming “You won!” and “You’re in first place!” it didn’t quite sink in. Finally, it hit us. Where was ASM? They weren’t at the finish line. Maybe they had already left. It turns out that they were still out in the Preserve and would be out there for another hour or so. Not knowing that we had lost so much time on CP25 they thought that we were still hot on their heels and, in their haste, had missed the road spur during the bushwhack section.

Although this was an epic finish to an epic race, I had a little trouble celebrating since both Tally-Ho and ASM were chock full of friends, ex-teammates and fellow TrailBlazer members. I know that it’s something that I have to get over if I want to race with the big dogs but I still can’t help feeling a little guilty afterwards. I race to win but I don’t race to beat other people. There’s a big difference. I don’t have contempt for my opponents and I do everything in my power to make sure that they have no contempt for me. However, I know that winning, especially winning consistently, puts a big bulls eye on your chest. But winning is nice so I’ll worry about that later. A fat $1,200 check plus high end Simon River Sports paddles for winning the paddling time trial and plenty of other swag to boot definitely makes the mental anguish a little easier to deal with.

P.S. If you think adventure racing is for you then check out our club website at www.TrailBlazerAR.com. If you’re looking for a great race for beginners and experts alike then check out the Greenway Challenge Adventure Race in Chattanooga on May 21^st at www.NorthChick.org.