Pre-Race
Thanks to Heather, we had a free entry into this race. Little did we know when signing up that it would be upgraded from an 18 hour to a 24 hour race. Nerves and anticipation build for weeks prior to the race. We know there was going to be some tough competition, but we figured if we raced a good race, we could at least place toward the top. One of the most unique and intimidating things about this race was the fact that it started at midnight rather than early in the morning. This meant that we would have to be up for an entire day before even beginning the race, which meant 24 hours of sleepless racing was more like 36-40 hours of sleeplessness with a little 24 hours of racing mixed in there somewhere.
The pre-race meeting was held at 9:00pm and was quick and thorough. Upon it's conclusion, we headed back to the transition area and began preparations. The race would start with a short 4 mile road bike, continue with a night orienteering section, some road biking, more orienteering, more road biking, paddle, hike-a-bike, single track, an 'advanced' orienteering section, and a short road ride to the finish. Seemed like a piece of cake! We continued plotting the course and packing our food and drink for the first section and before we knew it we only had a few minutes before the start of the race. I began checking our tire pressures when suddenly the all too familiar sound of escaping air filled the transition area. My valve stem had blown off my tube! Just as I began changing the tube, the race director (Gerry) began calling roll and having the teams line up. Andrew and I burst into action as Heather informed the race staff of our situation. A couple minutes later we were done and lined up at the start. It was probably the fastest tire change I have ever done!
Race Start
The race began promptly at Midnight and 100+ racers were immediately riding in a pack trying to muscle out the short 4 mile ride. We were relatively even with everyone until the hill climb began. Little did we know that this hill was only a pre curser to the many similar hills we would be up against in the next 24 hours. Once we began the climb, we quickly passed many of the teams. For some reason, us flat Chicagoland riders had some hill legs in us at the time, so we used them! It didn't take long to finish the ride and we were soon back in TA getting ready for a few hours out in the woods. After a quick transition, we were soon off for some Night O!
Night Orienteering
We started the section off with a slow run heading down a gravel road toward the first checkpoint. Minutes later we were in the woods navigating the hilly terrain when we realized we already missed the point. We identified where we were and before we knew it we had punched the first two points and were on to the third. We had quite a long haul to CP3 but we got to the area rather quickly due to Andrew's route choice. We were near the CP when we got turned around for a moment, and the next thing we knew, we were amongst a dozen other people! We traveled in a pack to the checkpoint, but the pack was divided on the approach to take to CP4. We opted for the bushwhack instead of the backtrack which proved to be a rather long and 'stinging' ordeal! We were now traveling with Team Maximus (Dom, Mary, and Tom) through endless Stinging Nettle plants. For those of you who aren't familiar with them, when you walk through a patch, you feel a quick prick on your skin, followed by intense burning and itching that is known as the 7 minute itch. Unfortunately when you are traveling through the plants for nearly an hour, the 7 minute itch loses it's meaning.
We were bushwhacking for what seemed like an eternity when we finally came across the channel between the Mississippi and a slough to the South. the water looked absolutely disgusting! It was covered with a still green layer and stank of raw sewage. Unfortunately for a racer from another team, he mistook the green film on the top of the water for grass and hike right into chest deep water with his arms flailing. We decided we had no choice but to cross, so we joined hands and started the 20 meter crossing. The mud on the bottom was so soft that if you stopped moving, you continued to sink until you wiggled your foot loose for another step. Lucky for us, none of the logs on the bottom tripped us up and we were soon all across without a problem. Soon after the crossing, we got CP4 thanks to Dom's eagle eye, crossed another similar channel, and were finally off of the swampy stinging isthmus. We got the remaining few points without any major issues and were back at TA to prepare for the remainder of the race.
Bike/Orienteering
After leaving transition, we had quick 8-9 mile bike ride to the next orienteering section. It was a mixture of paved road, gravel, and grass two track. It didn't take us long to knock it out and we were soon off the bikes and on our feet heading for CP10. Right off the bat, we made a navigation error that put us in a clearing we couldn't identify on the map. After killing 15-20 minutes, we opted to go back to the bike drop and try again. We took a different approach and ended up in the exact same clearing, difference being, we knew where we were now. We bumped into Maximum again here and decided to all travel together to CP10 since both teams had decided to take the route through the clearings. As we looked over our shoulders, we could see the sun rising with the Mississippi River in the background, it was absolutely beautiful!
CP10 proved to be much more challenging (and irritating) than we originally though it would be. It felt like we had been walking alongside the corn fields forever when we finally started to question our strategy. Luckily Dom and Andrew were able to work out our location and we were able to get back on track and to the right area. We were able to turn our headlamps off now which was a huge pick me up. We got CP10 and bushwhacked out way back into the clearing to attack CP11. Within minutes we got CP11 and were climbing down the reentrant to the rappel at CP12. We were lucky to get there when we did because moments after we arrived there was a line of teams behind us waiting for their turn. All of us made it down the rappel without falling to our death (although Andy from Team V fell almost the entire 50ft and walked away without injury) and we headed back to the bike drop for the next leg of the race
Road Bike
The road bike section was pretty straight forward. We navigated a series of paved and gravel road for 20 miles or so grabbing a couple of checkpoints along the way. Some of the hills were pretty grueling, but for the most part we remained strong and peddled hard. At one point along the ride, another team latched on for a while since they lost one of their bike leg maps and didn't know where they were going. After an hour and a half or so, we grabbed the last bike CP and were en route to the paddle put-in. We were all ready for it too since we had been on our feet either biking or hiking for nearly 12 hours so far!
Heather's sleepmonster:
During this bike leg, the sleeplessness started to take it's toll on me. I was drafting off of Rod, but when I looked in front of me, Rod had disappeared. I was following a ginormously fat old man with a comb over flapping in the wind! I freaked out! Where did my team go? Who was this fat guy? Finally, my eyes stopped being crazy, and I realized it was Rod the entire time. The fatness was a shadow from his camelbak, and the comb over was actually his half detached race bib.
Paddle
We arrived at the paddle put-in just as our legs were about done letting us peddle. We took a little longer than we should have at this transition, but we were so out of it at the time we couldn't really tell. Maximus pulled into the area about 5 minutes after us looking strong. We chugged a bunch of the complimentary 180 drink, and set sail on the great Mississippi. We spotted a couple of other teams ahead of us and were able to use them as navigational guides. We got to the channel leading to the first checkpoint and we promptly greeted with some impassible water. PORTAGE!! YAY!! Knowing that the paddle was going to be 15 miles long, I dreaded the thought of having to get in and out the whole way! Luckily, 3 portages later we were back in open water and soon punching the first of the 3 checkpoints.
As we paddled down river toward the next CP, we really began to feel the effects of the sun. It was nearing noon and there was no shade to hide in. We pressed on getting the remaining 2 CPs and began our two hour paddle up river back to where we put in. It was during these two hours that I really began to feel exhausted. Between the relentless sun and the monotony of the paddle, I was searching myself for any bit of energy I could muster. Somehow in spite of the exhaustion we managed to pass the two teams that had been in front of us since the start of the paddle. After 4 hours on the river, the take out was within reach. We completed the paddle in 4 hours and 6 minutes which was right where we hoped to be, especially given two pee breaks! Once back on shore, we fueled up, filled our water bladders with the most sulfur ridden water EVER, and were once again back on the bikes for a short ride to the hike-a-bike section.
Hike-a-Bike
Not much to say about this section other than pushing a bike up and down hills is VERY tiring! Although it was a short 1-1.5 mile Hike-a-Bike, I could still feel it sucking the energy out of me. It didn't help either that the mosquitoes found us extremely easy prey and feasted on us the entire way. Luckily we were out of the section pretty quick and were once again riding our bikes on a short 2-3 mile road ride to the start of the single track.
Heather's Sleepmonster:
During this exhausting hike with my very heavy bike (which I ended up trading for Andrew's), I noticed a shiny gold robot standing along the trail. I wondered why someone would put a statue in the middle of the woods (especially an Indian reservation) but I thought it looked cool anyway. As I got closer, I realized that my eyes were crazy once again. Where I thought the robot stood, were nothing but a bunch of leaves with the sun shining on them.
Single Track
For me personally, this was the most demoralizing part of the entire race. I'm generally good at single track and typically have no fear when it comes to barreling down hill, but due to exhaustion, even the smallest roots were freaking me out. On top of it, my stomach was beginning to cramp so bad I could barely take a deep breath. It was definitely slow going for us as well rode and walked the downhills and walked the uphills. Andrew was a power house for this section and would muscle the uphills and meet Me and Heather on top. We finally made it to the picnic area (about a third of the way done) and as I hoped, an outhouse! Now that my stomach cramps were gone, I figured I could focus more on getting through this section. Unfortunately, my energy level only increased slightly and the going was still VERY slow. Regardless of our crawling pace, we managed to finish with some day light to spare, so we knew we could use that to our advantage if we could get a point or two in the final orienteering section before dark set in. We took a few moments to fill our water back up at the picnic area and started our short ride to the 'Advanced' orienteering section.
Heather's Sleepmonster:
By this time, I was so exhausted that I barely knew where I was. As I moslty hiked this section, I kept passing trees, and large stumps along the trail. These jagged stumps turned into animals, in which I saw a giant deer sitting with all four legs sticking straight out, staring me down. He looked pissed!
Advanced Orienteering
We arrived just as Team V was finishing up. We didn't waste any time as we knew we were now racing against the sunset. Andrew was spot on for this section and within an hour we had gotten all three points in this section as the sun was setting and simply needed to get back to the bikes for our ride to the finish. We started heading Northwest which was a sure fire way to hit a clearing which would give us an easy hike back. Unfortunately, we were mistaken as to our starting point and what started as a short bushwhack ended up being one for the record books! In the daylight at the start of the race, it probably wouldn't have been this bad, but knowing that we were so close to the finish made the ups and downs and endless Stinging Nettle too much to bare! FINALLY after 30 minutes or so of complete HELL, we popped out right at the bikes and rode in to the finish.
Heather's Sleepmonster:
Since it was taking us longer to get out of the woods than it did to find all the CPs, it started to freak me out. We were getting deeper into the woods, almost crawling, with nettles everywhere. I started to believe that Andrew was mad at us because we sucked (I don't know why we sucked), and he was leading us to his cabin in the middle of the woods where he would kill us. This was my scariest hallucination yet. All I could do was yell at the nettles, it was the only thing that kept my sanity. When we finally got out, all the craziness went away, and I was happy to get back on to the bike to head towards the finish! (We are still alive, Andrew didn't kill us.)
Finish
We ended up finishing 10th of 24 in the coed division in just under 21 hours. We learned the winning team (Wedali) finished in just over 13 hours! The hills and length of sections of this race made it one of the toughest and most epic 24 hour races I've done. Andrew did a great job in both the navigation and tolerating and motivating Me and Heather through our exhaustion. Thanks to Gerry for an AWESOME race and we will likely be back for some more torture next year (with Nettle proof clothing!). I always say that if we walk away from a race learning from our mistakes then the race was a complete success, and with this race, that was definitely the case.
