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Life is an Adventure
Race, Nov 2002
Big South Fork Adventure Race
By Jim Farmer
There’s nothing like a lot of pain and suffering to make you feel
alive. Maybe I’m a masochist or have a martyr complex. Maybe
it’s my Irish Catholic upbringing where you’re taught that
pain and suffering get you a ticket to heaven. If the latter
is true, then all you Christian soldiers out there need to get into
twenty-four adventure racing to assure yourselves a spot in the heavenly
chorus. My first foray into this madness was the Big South Fork
Adventure Race in September. For those of you not familiar with
the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, it’s situated
on the Kentucky-Tennessee border just west of I-75. It’s
a beautiful gorge cut by the south fork of the Cumberland River and
makes for great backpacking, paddling, horseback riding and, as I found
out, adventure racing.
All of my previous adventure races had been the twelve hour and under
variety and I was always the team captain. This was not due to
ego or being the best athlete or anything of that sort. It was
due to the fact that I was willing to put in the time and effort to
do the homework required, organize the trip and make sure all the details
were taken care of. I’m also a student in the “If you
want it done right then do it yourself” school of thought. But
this time I was willing to throw care to the wind and let the gods
decide my fate. So I put my name onto the list of individuals
looking for teammates for the race and kept my fingers crossed. Two
days later I was a member of team Big South Fork You. Actually,
there was no team name at that point, just a hodgepodge of two men
and two women from Nashville, Knoxville, Morristown and little old
me from Chattanooga. We met for dinner in Knoxville the week
before the race and exchanged emails and phone calls trying to get
all of our gear requirements ironed out. They seemed like great
folks and we all agreed that our compatibility index was pretty high,
but racing with the group for an entire day would be the true test
of our compatibility.
As with most races of this sort, little of the course was revealed
at the pre-race meeting on Friday night. We were simply told
where to start and that the first leg was going to be on the water. Early
the next morning we gathered up our stuff before heading to the O&W
Bridge where the race would begin. I told one of my new teammates
that I was going to take a trip to the port-a-potty before we left. I’m
not sure if he didn’t hear me or was too involved in the task
at hand to process the information, but when I came back there was
no team BSFU in sight. The trucks were gone, the equipment was
gone and my teammates were gone. The feeling I had in the pit
of my stomach immediately brought back memories of being six years
old in a department store and losing my mommy. I almost started
sucking my thumb and wanted to curl up in a fetal position. This
was not a good way to start my first twenty-four hour adventure race.
The roar of cars and trucks zooming along the gravel road out of the
camping area finally woke me from my stupor. It was time to hitch
a ride. Luckily, Team Sausa, consisting of some Chattanooga homeboys,
came to my rescue. Terry Smith’s parents, who were providing
support for them, had enough room in their vehicle to fit me in for
the hour-long ride to the start. You might remember Terry from
my last article on the Fall Creek Falls Adventure Race. He saved
our butts by helping us navigate a tricky section of the cycling leg
or else we would have missed a checkpoint. He’s quickly
becoming my adventure racing guardian angel.
Arriving at the start I quickly spotted my four teammates and our support
crew. I walked over to them with a big grin on my face expecting
a steady stream of apologies and condolences but simply got a “Are
we ready?” It hit me at that point that they had no idea
what had just transpired since they had taken two vehicles and each
group assumed that I was in the other truck. Once I explained
to them that this was not the case and that I had to thumb a ride the
apologies were flying. It was tempting to use this to my advantage
during the race. Things like, “I’m still distraught
from the harrowing start. Can one of you carry my pack?” But
I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
The race got under way around 9:30 Saturday morning with a mystery
event that involved picking up five pounds of trash and getting it
weighed before we could hop into our canoes for a leisurely eleven
mile paddle down the Big South Fork River. We had torrential
downpours the night before the race that made for fast moving water
and lots of debris in the river. Along the way, we had to portage
over Angel Falls and both of our canoes got washed out while going
through some pretty tricky rapids later on. Luckily, the water’s
not that cold in September.
As we carried our gear into the checkpoint we were given a map for
the next section of the race. We quickly made our way to our
transition area and downed a quick lunch and refilled our hydration
packs for the next leg that involved navigating our way through five
checkpoints strewn throughout the park. The cool thing was that
teams were free to reach the checkpoints in any order that they deemed
appropriate. Most of these checkpoints were well off the beaten
track and required bushwhacking, bouldering and quite a bit of navigational
skill to get to. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we also had
to carry around a big rock with us during the entire navigation leg. Each
team received a five-minute time bonus for each pound that the rock
weighed. Pretty clever, huh? I thought so.
Even cleverer were the surprises in store for us at each of the navigation
checkpoints. At our first checkpoint there was a bucket with
small slide puzzles inside. You know, the pictures that are cut
up into little plastic squares and jumbled up inside the frame. You
have to move the pieces around to get them lined up properly and form
the desired image. Anyway, you had to bring the puzzle back to
the transition area with you, but the kicker is if the puzzle was solved
by the time you got back the team received a thirty-minute time bonus. Another
checkpoint was at an old burned down homestead and it had a Polaroid
camera in the bucket. You had to take a picture of your team
next to the fireplace that remained and bring it back with you. The
team with the most creative pose got a five-minute time bonus. Unfortunately,
our YMCA pose didn’t give us top billing, but we liked it.
Due to the fact that the order of the checkpoints was not an issue,
we had no idea how well we were doing until we got back to the transition
area about five hours later. To our surprise we were in third
place. It was very tempting at that point to make a quick transition
and head out on our mountain bikes ASAP to keep us in the top three. But
we decided, as a team, during the navigation leg to take a fairly long
transition, change our clothes and get our bellies full of pasta before
heading out again. Luckily, we stuck to our plan. These
kinds of decisions are what attract me to this kind of adventure race. In
a sprint race that’s only a few hours long, it’s just go,
go, go as fast as you can for as long as you can. In a longer
race format, the tortoise can beat the hare if the hare doesn’t
use his noggin and race within himself. It’s a true test
of mind as well as body. Plus, you have four other people to
worry about beside yourself.
We had about an hour and a half of daylight left when we started the
bike leg but it wasn’t long before we were grinding it out along
various terrains in thedark. Unfortunately, a lot of the bike
course was along gnarly trails of rock and mud that turned it into
a hike-a-bike leg. It was also an out-and-back course so we knew
what we had to face on the way back, but sometimes ignorance is bliss. This
was definitely one of those times. One advantage of having an
out-and-back is that you get to see how far ahead the leaders are and
how far behind the competition is. The first and second place
teams were more than an hour ahead of us so we pretty much gave up
hope for a top two finish but we had gained time on the fourth place
team and were sitting comfortably in third. But we found out
that the rock they had carried during the navigation leg was six pounds
heavier than hours. At five minutes a pound this time bonus cut
our “virtual” lead in half.
We got back into the transition area a little after two in the morning
on Sunday. Needless to say we were pretty tired. Dragging
our bikes through mud up and down hills for eight hours had definitely
taken its toll. But the thought of getting third place got us in and
out of the transition area quickly. We changed clothes and refueled
for the last leg of the race, the trekking leg. Unfortunately,
the new clothes didn’t stay new for very long since the first
part of the trekking leg was a river crossing. It definitely
woke us up though. The trekking leg was along hiking trails and
required navigational skills but was not as difficult as the navigation
leg earlier in the race. The toughest part was keeping everybody
moving when our bodies were screaming for sleep. Periodically,
I would shout, “Big South Fork Me????” in order to invoke
the response of “No, Big South Fork You!!!!” At three
in the afternoon it was a rallying cry to keep our spirits up. At
three in the morning it was simply an attempt to keep everybody awake.
The last obstacle in our path was a Tyrolean Traverse across a drainage
area on the rim of the gorge. That’s where they string a
cable across the chasm and you pull yourself across while lying on
your back and hooked onto the cable with a carabineer. It was
a blast. After finishing the traverse and heading off on the
last part of the trekking leg the sun started to rise over the mountains
as we made our way along the rim of the gorge. Now this is where
those creative writing classes would have kicked in and I could describe
the fog over the river and the purple hue of the sunrise with beautiful
prose. Unfortunately, I was an engineering major and didn’t
have time for that crap. Let’s just say it was beautiful
and unforgettable and leave it at that.
It was almost nine in the morning when we finally reached the finish
line. It was a welcome sight. We knew that we had third
place wrapped up because we never saw the fourth place team at the
Tyrolean Traverse and it took over a half hour to get all five team
members across which negated their half hour time bonus advantage. Being
a rag-tag team of racers from all over Tennessee we had never dreamed
of finishing in the top three, but that shows you what some hard work
and good team chemistry can do. Two of my teammates qualified
for the USARA 24-hour National Championships being held in Sapphire,
NC in November and invited me to join them. I’m sure I’ll
be writing about that in the near future.
Oh, by the way, I failed to mention that Team Sausa was the fourth
place team I’ve been talking about all along. They’ve
regretted giving me a ride to the start ever since. Congratulations
to team Haas Binns for finishing first and Team River City for finishing
second. That means that there were Chattanoogans on each team
on the podium. Way to go guys…..and girls.
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