Lightning Strikes

Let me start by saying that Gerry’s High Profile Adventure camp is THE BEST! We had so much fun. Yes we did end up with a less than pimp cabin but that’s what adventure racing is all about. You deal with what you have and sometimes what you have isn’t pleasant. We also learned paddling skills, ropes, navigation, how to take care of our skin thanks to April Hernann, and many other things along the way. We did learn that Gerry has a very evil sense of humor.  His name was cursed many times as you will see in the race report below…

 Racer’s Eve….

We attend the pre race meeting which I think started somewhere after 10. I have no idea because after being up since 3am, I was losing my mind by then. Gerry goes over the instructions, gives us our maps and instructions, then off we go to our ghetto cabin with the extremely dim lighting to plan out our route. We’re all tired, our highlighter for marking the bike route dies on us, and Kelly and I get a little snippy with each other about the maps (Kelly was right), but we know that our snippiness is due to tiredness so we shut our mouths. Kelly and Leena opt to bunk with the peeps next door in the glorious cabin with heat and real pine scented walls, while Kim, Nick and I stay to rough it out in the musky cold cave. Torture is good race training. Thanks Gerry for hooking us up in such luxury! ;o) Our team consists of Kim, me, and Nick who is a random dude we met in our cabin. This made us an official coed team which works out for us in the end.

 Race Start

 We wake up at 5am to get into our gear and load up our bellies with racing fuel. We’re on about 4 hours of sleep so I make sure I pack a 5 Hour Energy since I know I will be needing it. That stuff hasn’t failed me yet! We line up at the race start with our PFDs and paddles. I quickly down the bottle of 5 hour and in a few minutes, I’m ready to go. Gerry does the count down and we’re off on foot, sprinting to pick up our canoes and haul those beasts down to the put in. Luckily I get to be the paddle mule. I carry the paddles while Kim and Nick heave that heavy heap on top of their shoulders. I cursed Gerry’s name for them! While Kim carries the canoe she can’t see where she’s going. All she can see are feet in front of her. Well whoever was in front of her, their feet disappeared so she was walking aimlessly with a canoe over her head. Out of the entire huge open area she manages to find the single light pole, and ram right into it. I laughed my ass off! I wish they got that on video!

We get down to the canoe drop and leave all our paddling gear there so we can get the 3 CPs on foot to break up the pack. We have no issues navigating, and run back to the canoe put in. We gear up for the paddle and we’re off.

Paddle Section

We had no idea what we were in for but this paddle section was 3 miles of shallow rapids!! Luckily all of us have paddling experience or we would’ve dumped a million times. We make our way down the river and we’re pretty much playing bumper boats with rocks, rock faces, and other boats. We get stuck up on a rock and we’re pretty much balancing on it, wiggling back and forth and I’m thinking this is it, we’re going in, but Nick jumps out of the boat and pulls us off the rock. Thank you Nick! We get back on course and we played our girl cards a few more times and made Nick get out and pull the canoe when it was too shallow. We just weren’t ready to be wet yet! Another team consisting of a dude and a chick pull up next to us and they’re just out of control ramming into us. The guy gets out of his boat and jumps in his like a raging monkey, which almost makes him tip into us. All I could think was if this guy tips us because he’s been a crazy moron, I’m going to smack him with my paddle. Really guy, you being two seconds in front of us isn’t going to win you the race. I think the guy would’ve punched us in the face just to get ahead. Bad racing etiquette by far. So we keep on trucking down those rapids and we finally get to the take out. We pull our boats and gear to safety, then get ready to head out on our bikes. That was probably one of the most fun paddle sections I’ve ever done in a race. I could’ve done that all day!

Bike to Nav

We shed all of our drenched paddle gear and hop on the bikes. Good thing we planned out and highlighted our route the night before or we would’ve been struggling to find our way to the nav section. Oh wait, we did struggle anyway! Due to my brain fart and misjudgment of where we were on the map, we end up taking a left at a fork in the road instead of veering off to the right. I thought I knew what I was doing, but after a few super hilly miles, I have a feeling something is wrong. We have the illusion of going the right way because another team is following us, so I think this has got to be right, they wouldn’t be coming this way if it wasn’t.  I look down at my compass anyway and think hmm we shouldn’t be going South. I stop to figure out where we are, and the other team catches up to us. I ask them if they know where we are on the map, and they say well we have no idea, we figured you knew where you were going, so we just followed you. They didn’t even have their maps out! So the realization sunk in my head of oh crap, I screwed up and now I get to tell my teammates I suck at following a pre planned bright pink highlighted route. I break the news to Kim and Nick and they jokingly but half serious give me crap for it which I deserve because now we all have to go back up and up those mountainous hills. I swear those hills never went down. We finally get back to where I made my mistake and head out on the correct road. We end up seeing a couple bikers ahead, so we ride with them for a while. These guys are Team Wahoo, pretty cool guys from Missouri that we are now in contact with for upcoming races. Their accents made me giggle. So we’re chugging along on these endless hills (which Kim is a machine on the bike. Still don’t know how she handled those hills without being clipped in), and all of a sudden Nick falls waaaaaay behind. We slow down a bit so he can catch up and when he does, he’s sporting some hardcore bloody mess on his knee. He took the infamous newbie clipless topple over fall. Wish I could’ve seen that because those are always hilarious. Way to go Nick! ;o) Somehow we end up next to our Wahoo buddies again, and we’re looking for a  road that was never there. We approach a road that we know is off limits, but there’s no where else to go. By this time Kelly and Leena (our other Otter team has caught up), and we make a quick decision with Wahoo. We decided to back track a little and ride through corn fields while Kelly and Leena proceed onward to find another road. We know it slowed us down a little, but it saved us more time than if we would’ve gone all the way back. Our corn field route proved to be our fast track, and we were at the nav section in no time.

 The Heart (Nav Section)

 This was a gorgeous area with crazy hills and awesome cliffs. I always go into nav sections not fully confident since the past few years, I haven’t been the navigator on the team but with all of our skills combined, we did awesome. We head out on foot to some of the steepest hills I’ve ever seen. When you see cliffs, you know you’re going to be crawling or sliding down these heaps. We pretty much nail every checkpoint until we get to CP 9 which is located in a pit. Well the terrain didn’t quite match the map and there were a million pits, so come no now, which pit is it? We wander around for a little while and see John Morris, the photographer. At this point I think Kim is peeing in one of the pits and when she sees John she mentions that we have to be on the right track since the camera guy is here. So we ask him where it is, knowing he won’t tell us and he says he doesn’t know since he’s been hiding in the pits. Hopefully he didn’t end up hiding in the pit that Kim peed in! We finally find this stubborn CP, and move on to the next. As we’re crawling up a hill, I stub my toe on a rock the size of my head. I feel the pain go through my entire body. It feels like my shoe fills with blood and burns like hell. I refuse to take my shoe off because I don’t want to see the carnage, and press on. We hit the rest of the checkpoints dead on, and head back to our bikes.

 Bike to Paddle Drop

 I look over the map and promise myself to not take us down a wrong road this time. The road we need to turn down is not labeled on the map so we don’t know the name of it, we just know it’s the first road heading East. So we approach the first road, it’s named Messmer, but of course that’s not on the map. I start doubting myself since the road is a dirt road, I’m thinking this can’t be it. I look at the map and see it’s the first road heading West so I stick to my original plan and decide to make that turn. I’m immediately thinking of ways to apologize to my teammates for making another bike nav mistake, but I look up and see the radio tower in the distance which is where our next CP is. That gave me a warm cozy feeling. We hit the CP, Kim punches the passport and we’re off to head back to wear we finished our paddle. The ride back isn’t awesome. Nick is having serious shifting issuse and his chain falls off a few times. The ride seems forever since we have to keep stopping and slowing down because of Nick’s angry bike and the hills seem never ending. We hit a few super steep hills and I’m cursing Gerry at every single one. I swear I think he had a few extra installed before the race. We finally get to the last stretch along the river. Our paddle gear is almost in sight, when I suddenly hear Kim screaming “WTF??? Don’t you ever do that again when I’m right behind you!” My first thought was that she was drafting off Nick, and he probably braked and she almost hit him, so I didn’t question it until later. Well it wasn’t a near collision at all, Nick decided to let out a snot rocket, and it whipped back and snotted all over Kim. Disgusting! I wish I could’ve captured that on video! Soon after the snot attack, we arrive to our paddle gear. We gather everything up, attach our PFDs and shove our paddles into our packs, and head out on the two mile bike ride back to camp. This ride is short but it sucks. My paddles keep hitting me in the head every few seconds. It becomes maddening, but I’m stubborn and don’t want to stop to adjust so I figure I can endure the torture for the rest of the ride without going insane. I made myself think of burgers and how awesome it would be to shove one in my mouth to keep my mind off the banging on my head. We make it back to camp, and get ready for our next adventure.

 Caving

 We drop our bikes and paddle gear and head out on a trail that takes us to a cave. We get to a creek crossing and just as Nick puts one foot in, he remembers that we need our PFDs for this section. If we don’t have them, we could be disqualified or not allowed to do the section. The realization of this sucking kicks in because now we have to go uphill on that trail back to where our bikes and paddle gear are. See what happens when you don’t thoroughly read instructions? So I start running with Nick and Kim close behind. I told them I’d grab their gear for them, so they drop back a little but not too much so we don’t get DQ’d for being too far apart. I hoof it up the last hill, grab our PFDs and run back. We cross the creek that’s up to our ankles and I think well this isn’t so bad, why do we need PFDs for this? Two seconds later my question is answered as I gaze upon the cave that is on the OTHER side of the river. I curse Gerry. I take off my trekking pants since I want to keep something dry. No, I didn’t bare ass it, I did leave my tights on. Kim takes her own route across because she is brave and taller than me, but Nick and I opt for a route where we can try to balance on shallow rocks that really aren’t so shallow. The water is almost up to my waist, and it’s freezing. I curse Gerry again. Nick holds a stick that I grab on to so he can guide me onto the invisible rocks and we finally make it across. We get into the cave which is about 15 degrees colder and it’s wet, so I’m cursing Gerry even more. We find the CP at the end of the cave and start to head out. Other teams are coming in, and the walls are narrow, so we have to pretty much booty dance with them to get past them. Nothing is sexier than booty dancing in tights loaded with swamp ass. We pop out of the cave and it actually feels warm now, so I decide to brave the river crossing without balancing on rocks. The water goes past my waist, it sucks, and I hate Gerry, but I make it across and decide that was pretty freakin awesome so I unhate Gerry. I put my dry pants back on, we strap on our packs and we head off to the final section.

 Ropes

I’ve never done a race that had so many different types of ropes, so this was an amazing section. We snag a couple CPs along the way and arrive at the first rope course which is a 500ft rappel. I love rappelling, it scares the crap out of me at first and then it’s awesome. It’s that getting over the cliff thing that’s freaky, but once you’re past it, you can fly on down. Well I had an issue with getting over the cliff. I wasn’t scared, but everything was wet and slippery, so my foot slipped and I fell, took a huge swooping swing to the right and smashed my right ass cheek into the rock face. That hurt like hell!  I felt like I got kicked by a donkey. I swung myself back to where I was actually facing the rock like I should be, and rappelled down, not onto ground but into freezing cold water! I hate you again Gerry! Not only did we have to rappel into the water, we had to stick around and belay our teammate, so I had to stand in the water for even longer than I wanted to. FREAKIN GEEERRRRRYYYY! All 3 of us finish the rappel, so now we have to get back on top of the cliff. The only way to do this is to ascend back up it. We practiced this at camp so all 3 of us were confident about this. It feels awkward at first, and our legs are done for, but we all make it up in pretty good time. I kept remembering what Robyn (adventure racer champion) taught us at camp….when you’re ascending, the two important moves are Statue Liberty, then Buttblaster. It doesn’t make sense unless you try it so I won’t bother to explain it. So we conquered the ascent and we’re off to zip line, weeeeeeeeeeee! We get clipped in one at a time of course, and fly down this rope. It was crazy fast! They even had to put a padded mat on a tree in case anyone hit it. That was a great finale to a race! We leave all our ropes gear on and start running back towards camp which is the finish. We see a rock face and Kim recognizes that we’ve been there before during camp. She knows the camp is just on the other side of that so we scramble up the rocks and pop out onto the trail that leads to camp. We strong finish it with a run across that finish line where Gerry which whom I love again, is waiting for us. As soon as we finish Gerry yells, you’re our 1st team for Coed! This takes a few minutes to set in and then it clicks, holy crap, we got 1st place, we just qualified for Nationals and we get $400 prize money towards it! Hell yeah! I turn around and yell to Kim and she goes crazy and mauls me with a hug. Then Nick comes crashing into us and punches me in the nose which hurt but I was too excited to care if it was broken or bleeding! We finally calm down to take some final team pictures and thank Gerry for putting on an awesome race. Although it was a shorter race than I’m used to doing, it was definitely one of the best races I’ve ever done. Thanks to Gerry, the volunteers, and to my awesome teammates for making all this awesomeness happen!