Tales of a First Time Race Director

My wife's Little Sister, Amy, meekly said "Go" through the megaphone at 10:16 AM on Saturday, April 27^th, 2002, to start the 1st Annual Greenway Challenge Adventure Race. It was a moment I had been working towards and dreaming about for eight months. The problem was that I hadn't put a heck of a lot of thought into what to do after that moment. What I really wanted to do was grab my mountain bike and take off with the teams as they hit the trails. What I ended up doing was looking around at everybody like a deer caught in the headlights.

Reality finally sunk in when I realized that the volunteer I had stationed at the first critical trail junction was in the wrong spot. This was the excuse I was looking for to get rid of some of that pent up energy. I knew that the riders would hit the junction soon so I ran across the grass field to try to beat them there. I made it, but after the racers came through and continued on their way I was once again left with the dilemma of what to do next. But at least, this time, I had a pretty good sweat going.

Let me back up several months to fill in some of the blanks. I'm a member of the board of directors of the North Chickamauga Creek Conservancy and we were looking for an event that would promote our organization and the work we do and perhaps raise a few bucks in the meantime. I had participated in a few adventure races before and thought, "How hard can it be to put one of these things together?" So I laid my head on the chopping block and suggested that I try to put on an adventure race for our cause. Of course, I got a lot of blank stares from many of the board members who had never heard of such a thing. However, in hindsight, that probably worked in my favor. If they knew more about this sort of thing they might have asked more questions. They might have even insisted on having a race director with at least a smidgeon of experience. Imagine that.

Eight months later, at 2:00 in the morning, I was trying to fall asleep knowing full well that I had a snowball's chance in hell of actually nodding off. So I went driving off around the Greenway Farm checking route markings, putting up more barricade tape and making the neighborhood dogs bark in the process. Anything to keep from thinking about was going to transpire in several hours. All the while I was listening to the digitized voice on the weather band radio telling me that it was going to be cloudy with a chance of rain, but NO THUNDERSTORMS! WHEW! I had spent the week prior watching the Weather Channel and incessantly checking forecasts on the Internet. Maybe I thought that if I stared at the screen long enough the little smiley-faced sunshine icon would magically appear on the Saturday rectangle. Write this down as truth: During the spring, only pay attention to the forecast for that day and the next. Any extended forecast is absolutely meaningless. I pretty much knew that going in, but despite this knowledge and the experiences from this year, I'm sure I'll be doing the same thing before next years race.

Now back to where I left off. The teams were on their way over the quarry and I was looking for something to do. That's when the adrenalin started to wear off. But I didn't have to wait long for it to kick back up a notch or two. The call came in from the EMTs about 15 minutes into the race. Someone had gotten hurt right before the turn-around. Things were serious now. I was no longer looking for something to do. Luckily, this was a walk in the park for the EMT and EMS folks and they simply did their thing while I tried to act calm and collected and stay out of their way. Needless to say, my stomach was in knots. That's when I realized that I hadn't eaten anything in quite a while. After wolfing down two bagels I was feeling a whole lot better.

By this time the lead teams were starting to arrive at the transition area (TA), putting their bikes up and hauling their canoes down the boat ramp and into the creek. With a belly full of bagels and caffeine coursing through my veins I ran over to the TA to see how things were going. Saying that I ran is a bit of an exaggeration. I had purchased, just for this day, a pair of shorts with more pockets than any human could possibly need. I had proudly managed to stuff them full with a radio, cell phone, Palm Pilot and various other paraphernalia. I felt like Inspector Gadget. I still have bruises from the radio whacking me in the leg on every stride. Oh, by the way, mentioning caffeine brings up probably my biggest mistake of the day. I forgot to have coffee available before the race. Okay, okay, I know that this is a mortal sin, but I'm not a coffee drinker so cut me some slack. I admit that I screwed up big time and I promise that it will not happen again. I don't see how anyone can drink that hot sludge anyway.

I was about to leave the TA when I had a microphone shoved in my face and a television camera pointed at me. It's the last thing I needed at this point but the whole purpose of the event was to increase our visibility and raise awareness, and there's no better way to do that than through the boob tube. So I sucked it up and answered all the reporter’s questions and thought I did a bang up job considering my physical and mental state at the time. I think that being exhausted actually helped. I'm extremely long-winded when I'm hyped up and that's doesn't work well for TV news. They want sound bites and I gave it to them. The problem is that they get to decide what sound bites to use. Watching the news that evening I saw myself being asked something about what it takes to complete the adventure race. My response was, "You just gotta believe in yourself." I cringed. What a lame response. I felt like I had been trained by Kevin Costner's character in "Bull Durham" when he coached his protégée to say things like "We gotta play 'em one day at a time" and "I'm just happy to be here and hope I can help the ballclub" when talking to reporters. I sounded like such a gomer. Oh well, live and learn.

It seemed like no more than 15 minutes had passed since the race started but I looked up at the race clock and we were almost an hour and a half in. I had predicted that the winners would come in between 1:30 and 1:40 so I got on the radio to see where they were. Sure enough they had just climbed over the twelve-foot wall at the ropes course and had a leisurely mile long run to the finish line. However, we had one last obstacle in their way before they could cruise in for the victory. The slippery wall would be twelve feet high if it stood vertically but we had it laid out at an approximately twenty five degree angle. Oh yeah, it was also covered with a tarp and manned by an overly zealous young gentleman whose job was to lather it up with a scientifically formulated combination of dishwashing liquid and water. Let me mention the fact that we didn't do much field testing of the wall due to various supply problems with our distributor in Malaysia and last minute changes from the architects in San Francisco.........okay, it's getting deep in here. We simply waited to the last minute to build it. In fact, we finished the slippery wall about 10:00 PM the night before the race using our headlights to keep from nailing someone’s hand to one of the plywood sheets.

Now back to the overly zealous young gentleman. When Team Rock Creek hit the wall they were truly guinea pigs. We knew that the wall was sturdy and safe. We overbuilt it in every possible way. However, we had no idea how slick it should be to make it difficult but not too difficult. We got our answer when Team Rock Creek took several attempts to get over it. I thought if the front-runners had that much trouble then we're going to have some major problems later. So we lassoed the young gentleman and his garden sprayer full of our special concoction and let the wall dry out a bit. This seemed to work great for the next few teams but then things started getting a little too dry. I sent him back to his lathering task after one racer took a running head start and simply launched himself over the wall with three long strides. I guess we'll have to come up with a definitive lathering schedule next year.

Teams started to stream in, one after the other, following the leaders. I spent most of this time on the PA calling off the team names as they crossed the finished line and publicly berating some of my friends as they slid down the slippery wall or had their clothes nearly ripped off as their teammates clawed their way over top of them. I finally started to relax and enjoy myself. That's when the question came over the radio, "Where's Team #100?" Most teams were well past Checkpoint #3 by this point and on the last leg of the race. However, Team #100 was still on the water. I had established a cutoff time of three and a half hours and knew that they'd be pushing it, but I couldn't worry about that. The awards ceremony was scheduled for 1:00 PM and people were starting to get antsy. I had to get things going.

The awards ceremony, despite little planning, went pretty smoothly and teams started drifting off to the TA to pack up their stuff and call it a day. That's when Team #100 came around the trees on the gravel road and headed towards the slippery wall. They were looking pretty haggard at this point and I decided to invoke my privilege as race director to modify the rules as I see fit. It's one of the perks. The race rules allowed, and even encouraged, teams to help other teams during the race. As I had hoped, teams that had finished the race turned right around and headed back to the wall to help their fellow racers over the obstacle. I have to admit, I got a lump in my throat watching this. To me, it's what adventure racing is all about and it makes all the sweat equity put into this race well worth it. But the race rules said nothing about the race director helping out; however, opportunity knocked and I was definitely going to answer. So I raced to the base of the wall and laid on the ground placing the bottoms of my boots on the soles of the shoes at the base of the Team #100 human ladder. This kept them from slipping off the wall and they scooted over it with ease. They had finished the adventure race just under fifteen minutes from the cutoff time.

This was a fitting end to a race intended to be for people just getting their feet wet in the wonderful world of adventure racing. I saw quite a few folks with the “I can’t believe I just did that” look on their face. They were first time adventure racers that are now hooked on the sport. It was not long ago that I was in their shoes and I'm proud to be able to create a few more addicts. I'm glad it's over but I'm already looking forward to next years race. Hopefully, now that I have some experience under my belt, it will be bigger and better. I put a lot into it but I got a whole lot more back. A pretty good return on investment if you ask me.

You can check out information on this year's race, along with some neat pictures, at www.northchick.org/adventurerace2002.html.