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Life is an Adventure
Race:
2003 NOC 12-hr, Blue Ridge Adventure Race,
Riverbend Challenge,
Southern Crush I
By Jim Farmer
It's been a while since I've written an article and I thought
that nobody would notice, but apparently there are two or three people
out there that actually read my prattle. I couldn't let
those dedicated readers down so here goes. A lot has happened
in my life as an adventure race since my last article in February. I
started an adventure racing club (www.TrailBlazerAR.com) in Chattanooga,
participated in several adventure races and tried to find work somewhere
in between. I hate when real life gets in the way of adventure
racing but working does help pay for stuff. Speaking of stuff,
I don't even want to think about how much dime I've dropped
this year on Required Gear List crap. The Required Gear List
is the list of items that the race director makes you have with you
before you can hit the starting line. It‚s a combination
of race equipment like a bike, helmet and climbing gear and safety
items like strobe lights, Motrin and Ace bandages. Each race
has a different gear list and the race directors can get downright
picky. I had to buy a new locking-blade knife for my last race
because the one I had was two inches long rather than the required
two and a half inches. Of course, I had to have the absolute
lightest one available but that's because I'm an addict. More
about that later.
After the frigid conditions of the North Georgia Adventure Race in
January, I was ready for spring. Well, spring took a while
to arrive but we lucked out at the NOC 12-Hour Dawn To Dusk Adventure
Race in Bryson City, NC. It ended up being a beautiful March
day in the middle of a month of nastiness. Unfortunately, my
team didn‚t have much success but we did beat all of the time
cutoffs to finish the race, something that nearly half the teams
couldn't say. It was a tough 12-hour race since it had
24 checkpoints. That‚s a checkpoint every half hour and
some of them were not easy to find. We spent nearly two hours
looking for CP2. Needless to say, we were deep in the hole
and it was tough getting motivated again. Then came the killer. The
UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator) coordinate, that‚s a positioning
system for land navigation similar to latitude/longitude, given for
CP4 was one kilometer off. That‚s a KILOmeter, not a meter
or centimeter or millimeter, but a KILOmeter. We had lost about
600 feet of elevation gain going to where we thought CP4 lived before
being told about the error and going back up the mountain. Boy
were we really in the hole now. But I‚m proud of my team
for gutting it out and finishing the race on time. It was purely
out of pride. Maybe we were lucky to have stumbled early in
the race though, because several teams, including many Chattanoogans,
spent several hours trying to find CP15. They found out later
that it either blew away or was stolen. Talk about frustrating. The
NOC left a lot to be desired in putting this race together but Lecky
Haller, the race director, was very apologetic and made assurances
that the problems would be corrected next year. I guess that's
all you can ask of them.
The next stop on the tour was the Blue Ridge Mountain Adventure Race
in Blue Ridge, GA, in late April. This race holds a special
place in my heart because it was my first ever adventure race two
years prior. I couldn't make it last year because it fell
the week before the Greenway Challenge and I was up to my eyeballs
in minutia at that point. Once again, it turned out to be a
beautiful day for racing, but our troubles started three weeks before
the race when my wife, Carol, turned her ankle while trail running. This
was going to be our first race together since Fall Creek Falls last
August and we invited our buddy Mike Pollock to come along for the
ride. He had never done an adventure race before but Mike's
always in good shape and never shies away from an adventure so he
was a perfect fit for our team. With Carol on the DL, we found
a last minute replacement and trudged forward. Our replacement
was a good athlete but not a strong runner. I thought that
this was fine since, in years past, the race started off with a short
run, then a whitewater paddle down the Toccoa River, followed by
mountain biking and a trek at the end. Unfortunately, this
year, the race directors decided to put a thousand foot climb and
an extra five or so miles onto the start of the race and impose time
cutoffs along the way. Well, we didn't make the last
time cutoff and got a DNF. This race was doomed from the start. It
happens.
I had a short respite in May and started training hard for the Southern
Crush Adventure Race in June. But there was a little race called
the Riverbend Challenge that was being held a week before the Southern
Crush that kept distracting me. The Riverbend Challenge is
a sprint adventure race held in downtown Chattanooga at the start
of the Riverbend Festival every year. It‚s a great little
race that you can do solo or as a three person coed team. The
problem is that I‚ve finished in fourth place as a solo racer
the only two years that the race has been held. Each year there
was something that kept me off of the podium. The first year
I forgot my helmet coming out of the transition area and had to go
back and get it. The second year I had just gotten over the
flu. I was determined to make this year different. I
told Teresa Potts Wade, the race director, that if I approached the
finish line in fourth place she should hold me back so I could at
least finish something other than fourth. Well, guess what,
she didn‚t hold me back and I was fourth again. If I‚m
anything I‚m consistent. No excuses this time though. I
simply got my butt whipped. Kevin Croft, who finished third,
didn‚t help matters when he said that he was not in great shape
this year. $^@O*&(^#*&%)!!!! Next year I‚m
going to wear a shirt during the race that says on the back, „If
you‚re reading this then you're in fifth place.
It was not shaping up as a great year of adventure racing for me
but the race I had been prepping for the most was the next weekend
and I was determined to take the bull by the horns. The Southern
Crush Adventure Race was being held on Pigeon Mountain, GA and the
nearby town of Lafayette. For those of you that have not been
to Pigeon Mountain before I‚ll simply say that it's a rugged
place with lots of caves, sinkholes, snakes and other nasties. It
was about a fifty minute drive from my house so I had spent countless
days riding and running the seemingly infinite trails on and around
the mountain and GPSing them as much as possible. I collected
every map I could get my hands on and, using my topo software, overlaid
the trail maps and GPS data onto the mountain to try and make sense
of the place. By the time race day came around I had hiked
and/or biked every trail, both documented and undocumented, on the
mountain. Remember that comment in the first paragraph about
being an addict. A little over a week before the race I had
lost my major client. Instead of looking for work I spent most
of my time memorizing maps, training and trying to shave ounces off
of my required gear. Thank god my wife is an understanding
person; otherwise, I'd be signing divorce papers about now.
As expected, the race was a navigational nightmare with checkpoint
flags in sinkholes well off of the beaten path and stuck in the middle
of big fields. Of course, the maps given were as old as dirt
and, in many cases, were more hindrance than help. Wait a minute. Did
I mention the fact that the race was held at night? Yep, race
start was at six o'clock on Saturday evening and it ended at
six the next morning. Now, imagine finding a checkpoint in
a sinkhole well off of a trail that isn't even on the maps and
throw in the fact that it's the middle of the night. That's
where months of preparation paid off. As soon as I plotted
the checkpoints on the map I knew the best way to get to each one. I
had played these scenarios in my head for weeks.
 Unfortunately
for my poor legs, a lot of these scenarios involved bushwhacking
my way up and down the mountain. It's been almost two
weeks since the race and my legs still look like they‚ve been
through the Spanish Inquisition. But that's the price
of victory. I finished first in the solo division. The
jinx had been broken. The bad part of it all is the lesson
that I had learned: Ignoring my job, wife, family and friends
for months at a time results in a win. God help me.
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