Garrison-IR

What to expect (and not expect) at the 2010 PA Sprint

2010-04-15T21:39:00.000-04:00

As has been stated a couple of times the 2010 PA Sprint is taking on a slightly different style than in years past. Planet Adventure has added a number of shorter sprint races to the calendar that are great for beginners and experienced racers alike. Their length make them perfect races for first timers and novices to "get their feet wet".

This race will still fit into that description to some extent, but we're trying to also make it a better transition for teams looking to step up to (or just warm up for) a 24 hour race, or just looking for a race that is a little bit longer and a little bit more challenging that the traditional sprints.

(Now not everyone has a desire to "step up" to a longer race, so we'll have a standard sprint length offering, but it will still have the same format/layout as the full "jumbo" sprint.)

In an attempt to answer some questions before they get asked, here are a few things you can expect at this years PA Sprint, (as well as some things you shouldn't expect).

(note that the following statements only apply to the Jumbo version of the course. If you've chosen to do the shorter offering, skip to the end!)

What to expect:

1) Longer legs of each discipline. Nothing crazy long, but you could/should be spending over two hours on a particular discipline at one time.

2) Multiple legs of each discipline. You will do each discipline at least once. Being able to transition from one to another efficiently will be important!

3) UTM plotting. Although you will not be required to plot ALL your points, you WILL be required to plot some points. And there is a very high likelihood that you will be required to do that while on the clock. Get online and research how to do it or find someone to show you the ropes. This is probably the easiest thing to practice as all you need is a map and a UTM tool!

4) Slightly more challenging navigation. Some of the control placements were chosen because chances for parallel error in the wrong reentrant is not only possible, but likely. You will have to be paying attention at all times to clear the course quickly!

5) Length. Obviously the course is longer. Long enough that we will be scoring a larger portion of it "rogaine" style. If you want to clear the entire course you will have to move quickly when possible, and navigate cleanly.

6) Hills. Not a lot, but more than the Indianapolis area has. Which admittedly, is not really saying that much.

7) An opportunity for discounted entry into the PA24 race this June. That's right, if you compete as a 3 or 4 person coed team in the Jumbo version of this years Sprint, you have an opportunity to get a discount off your entry into PA24! Keep an eye on the PA website for more info on this.

7) A fun, challenging yet rewarding race!

What NOT to expect:

1) Special challenges. Although a great element of sprint races, and frequently a source of great entertainment/humiliation, you generally don't find special challenges in longer races. It's because of this that we decided to exclude them from this race and give you that much more time on your feet, on your bike, and in your boat.

2) Single track riding. I wish we didn't have to include this one in the what not to expect, but unfortunately there will not be any trails to ride for this race. (Those that raced last year might actually be quite happy to hear this...)

If we think of any other details pertaining to the race, we'll be sure to let you all know!

2010 Planet Adventure "Sprint"?

2010-02-05T17:30:00.011-05:00

Well, my stern determination to not design/direct any races in 2010 didn't even last to 2010. Sad. But, it will be fun to get involved with this years "Sprint"!

You may have noticed that Planet Adventure has greatly expanded the number of adventure races available in and around the Indianapolis area. In 2010 there will be three "Amazing Adventures", four traditional sprint length races, the always popular Urban Sprint AND the AR boot camp in March. All of these races serve as great "entry points" for first timers and great tune-ups and all around fun for the more experienced racer.

However, with all these short races it got me thinking about what the PA Sprint could or should be. For that reason this year the PA Sprint is growing up a little. It's format is changing and it's getting longer!

In short, the intent is to have the PA Sprint serve as a better stepping stone from the shorter sprints to 24 hour races. Although it is possible to jump right in to longer races (and many have and have great stories to show for it), it's nice to build up to the longer events.

The hope for this years Sprint is to have it be more of a "mini-24" that will better prepare you for PA in June (and any other long race you might have on the calendar this year). As such it will have/be the following:

8-12 hours in length, maybe a little longer (We'll no more as we get the course ironed out)
No special challenges (traditional longer races generally don't have special challenges that are not related to your movement through the course, by removing them you'll have more time to spend riding, running and paddling!)
Plotting of points will be required (although there may be some premarked maps, people that are adept at plotting maps will have an advantage)
Multiple maps, mostly 1:24,000 scale
Longer legs (probably won't be able to get by with a few gels and a bottle of water any more)
Harder nav/orienteering section (where possible route selection will be key, and the orienteering specific sections will be more challenging)
The need for a headlamp (you may actually be racing in the dark!)
Transitions, but no TA (You'll be transitioning disciplines multiple times, but there will likley be no access to gear at those times. This will hopefully give everyone a better feel for how to handle gear on longer races.)

Got any other ideas about how to make this race a better intro to long racing? I'd love to hear them. For that matter, with all these changes it kind of begs the question as to whether this race should really be called a "sprint". If not, anyone got any ideas?

2009 USARA Nationals (race report summary)

2009-10-29T08:56:00.000-04:00

OK, whether it's due to the race being the national championship race, or the fact that it's the last big race of the year this race report is going to be longer than normal. And I haven't exactly been good at keeping them short up until now. So, I'll summarize real quick for starters.

Texas is far from Indiana, even farther when you go there the wrong way. USARA Nationals brings a decidedly stronger field of racers but they still ask an awful lot of questions. Not all adventure racers are comfortable riding in large high speed groups on the road. God either doesn't like adventure racing, paddling, or maybe just paddling in adventure racing. I don't know if everything is bigger in Texas but a few things damn well are including thorns, mud puddles and briar patches and thorns. (Yes, it was appropriate to say thorns twice, I have the scars on my scalp to prove it.) Even when things aren't going your way if you hang in there you'll frequently still be pleased with the result. And most importantly, don't forget to turn east at St. Louis.

And that about sums it up.

If you're wanting more details than that, you'll have to wait another day or so.

Official placing for nationals

2009-10-24T23:18:00.000-04:00

Fifteenth place coed. Not too bad. The real kicker though is that one hour would have put us in seventh.

Considering my sloppy navigation for a large number of checkpoints (and one 40 minute transition) this amount of time would not have been impossible to make up.

However, I'm honestly more happy to have been so close to such a good finish than bummed at not actually getting one.

Sleep now. Drive home tomorrow = bad...

Race is over...

2009-10-24T11:48:00.001-04:00

Too tired to form any coherent thoughts worth writing, but as of now we're unofficially 16th.

Here goes nothing...

2009-10-23T05:37:00.000-04:00

And yes, that's actually a Gremlin...

Sunshine?

2009-10-23T05:33:00.000-04:00

After 5 inches of rain in the area, I'm hoping the sunset is an indicator that the forecast for clear skies is not a load of crap. Apparently the course designers have had to get pretty creative to keep us above water for things like trekking and biking.

Prerace meeting is over (for what it's worth the field looked decidedly more experienced than most races I've done), no maps till 5am, and the gear is packed.

Might actually get some sleep tonight...

Carbo Loading...

2009-10-22T16:24:00.000-04:00

If the photo doesn't come through this time, then this post is a complete loss...

USARA Nationals

2009-10-21T23:06:00.001-04:00

So we're on the road on the way to TX for the USARA Nationals adventure race. Race starts Friday morning, (I believe you can follow the race via the website, www.usara.com, then click on the Nationals link) but we're leaving tonight.

We're leaving tonight because the race is 14 hours away in Pilot Point, TX.

Farthest I've driven for a race (yet), and we run a very real risk of violating the AR drive time rule, don't drive longer than you race.

Going to try and blog from my phone, we'll see how long that lasts!

Below is a picture of the view I'll be getting quite familiar with over the next few days.

Or maybe the photo is above. I don't know. I'm not entirely sire I'm doing this right...

Indy AR v10.0

2009-10-08T20:00:00.001-04:00

(I used to be really really bad about writing up race reports at all, much less actually doing it in some reasonable amount of time after the race. I've got a fantastic collection of partially written reports in various folders on various computers to prove it. Although tempted to punt this one I decided to do it anyways even though the actual race was well over a week ago. (<--Proof at how bad I am, I wrote that sentence well over a week before writing this one...))

This years IndyAR started at Lion's Park in Zionsville, and I was racing it with Angelia Kneisley and John McInnes. The first leg of the race was to be a small urban O course around the village. Race director Michael Sapper and some of the volunteers were joking that I might know some of the answers to the clues for this section since I grew up in Zionsville. They apparently thought that memorizing historical plaques in your hometown was the cool thing to do.*

*-Or, they think I'm dorky enough that I, at least, found it fun to do...

We only had a few minutes to look at the aerial map we used so I made the snap decision to do the points in reverse order thinking less teams would do that. Well, most teams ended up doing just that and we found ourselves playing lemming* to the wrong park bench to start the race out. I hate starting off like that, but the time lost was negligible. After that the rest of this section went fairly well other than overshooting one point. Didn't have time to adjust to the small scale on the map.

*The lemming effect is extraordinarily common in a sport like AR, where navigation can be key. Even the most experienced navigator can have his or her brain rendered useless if more than one team goes an unexpected direction and they don't stand firm to the concept of racing your own race. Safety in numbers, self doubt, or a need to follow the pack, whatever the reason, you see this ALL OF THE TIME. Here's some photographic evidence of the lemming effect from this race's paddle. One team stopped too soon for a checkpoint and you see what happened to all the teams that were behind that one team. My apologies if you recognize yourself in this photo, don't worry, it happens to everyone!

Next up was the "paddle" section. Low to no water turned this 5 mile section into an exercise in frustration, twisted ankles, bruised shins and one tipped boat, (just one for us anyways, not sure how many tipped boats there were for the entire race, but probably more than one). We started with a group of 3 or 4 boats, but it quickly became us and Mystik, with another team only about 2-300 meters behind. (I later found out it was Sasquatch, who ended up finishing third.) It was a real struggle trying to decide between walking with the boat, paddling with all three in the boat, paddling with one in the boat and two walking, and conspiring on the evil things we would do to Sapper at the conclusion of the race.

After finishing up the paddle/trek we made our way onto the long O-course on the west side of Eagle Creek Park. The first point was quick but we whiffed on the second one along with Mystik. This allowed Sasquatch to catch up with both teams. After the second CP we stopped to dump the sand and rocks out of our shoes from the paddle. As we were doing this, Mystik emerged from the weeds and their female proceeded to get pulled onto her face by the teammate towing her. That in and of itself was pretty funny, but when a team member from Sasquatch emereged from the weeds about 10 feet from Mystik, and proceeded to go down on his face all on his own it became one of those AR moments you'll never forget.*

*-No one seems to have been hurt, so in this case I don't feel too guilty about laughing at others' misfortune.

The O-course went well and we made no real mistakes, but Mystick pushed the pace harder and went up by about 15 minutes on us at the first TA. Matt, their navigator, knows that part of Eagle Creek as well as anybody other than that second control, was pretty much flawless.

No more than 20 feet out of our TA I was sure my shock had completely lost all it's air but it turned out to thankfully be a flat. The resultant tire change was probably one of the quickest and most efficient I've been a part of. We hardly even talked but in less than five minutes my front tire was aired up and ready to go. Still, it wasn't fun losing that time.

As always the adrenaline you feel on leaving a TA pushed our biking pace and we quickly arrived at CP5 for yet another O section. The first CP threw us for a loop. It wasn't there. Either I screwed up a simple approach on the very first control (never good for the confidence), or it was misplaced. We had committed to pushing well up the reentrant to make sure the flag wasn't off so we were kind of lured into continuing on the rest of the course and coming back for that control. (This ended up being a bad idea due to the vicious bushwhacking it required, but that's one of those things you never know about until it's too late.)

The rest of the course went well (other than the bushwhacking) and upon returning to the site of the first control we confirmed that it had been misplaced. Part of me wanted to go place it correctly, but we had already lost a decent chunk of time with it so we took off and told race management, who confirmed the incorrect placement and moved it.*

*-Having directed and set control myself, I know how stressful it is when placing those darn things. The only thing worse than waiting for that first team to confirm good control placements is finding out that one was off...

A quick ride brought us to the damn for the 40 foot rappel off the 25 foot rope, one of my favorite AR special challenges ever. Angelia decided to show off her newly found swimming prowess and chose to do the challenge with no PFD. (OK, this probably isn't the real reason she went without a PFD, and she's very lucky that everything went well...) After a quick run down and around the dam, we were off in pursuit of first place, now down to them by about 25 minutes.

The bike was windy, and our "jolly" friends standing along the road outside of Ricks didn't make it all that easy to stay focussed, but we managed. We picked up one more CP on the way to a triad challenge.

John and Angelia were in their bike shoes so I took a little over half of the run with Angelia giving me a much appreciated break in the middle. And for what it's worth, scootering* is NOT a piece of cake, as evidenced by Angelia's slightly out of control careen of the trail on a smallish down hill section. Although easier than running I didn't get quite the rest I was hoping for when she swapped me for the scooter

*-I would very much like to find whoever thought that scootering was an appropriate discipline for AR and have a little talk with them. Scooters are for driveways and cul-de-sacs. Oh, and kids, not grown adults with slightly cramping legs...

We managed to make up a few minutes on the triad and continued on the bikes up towards Zionsville. Another clue based control brought us to Climb Time Towers where we each did a brief climb and descent on an auto-belayer. I've never used one of those before and I must say it was pretty cool. That alone is worth a trip out there! John proclaimed that climbing with bike shoes is not "big guy approved".

The gap at this point was down to about 14 minutes and all that was left was biking. So, we put our heads down and pushed the pace as much as we could. We made good time, and lost very little on nav, but unfortunately we only closed the gap to 8 minutes, and came in second.

So, two races in a row where first place was missed by eight minutes or less. But, also two races where I had an absolute blast. As always it was great to see all the usual faces out there on this years course, which was a little tougher than previous years.

Thanks so much to all the great volunteers this year. It seemed like every control had tons of cheerful volunteers, which is always a treat.

Now we just wait and see what happens to the race next year.

Mike Garrison
Indy Rootstock

Benefits of racing with a strong person

2009-09-22T12:27:00.001-04:00

I am personally decidedly un-strong. Therefore certain courses of action are not really all that feasible for me. Many teams (actually, every single other team) opted to push the boat under this log. Normally the course of action I would be forced to take.

John thought that was silly, and decided to throw the canoe over the log...

What do you do when the "big guy" decides on a course of action?

You help...

Get out of the way...

Then make him go chase down the boat he just chucked...

2009 Thunder Rolls 24 Hr AR

2009-09-02T12:45:00.005-04:00

This was my first time at the Thunder Rolls AR, but I've heard consistently great things about it, so I was pretty psyched to see what Gerry Voelliger of High Profile had in store for us. The race had a midnight start, which was also a first for me. (And for the record I now think ALL 24 hour races should have midnight starts. I loved it.) I raced with Matt Jourdan and Brian Betner from Msytik/Gray Goat (CITGO) on an non-traditional all male team.

The race started with a 2 mile prologue run then onto the bikes. CP5 was a traverse (with our

bikes) so we knew we had to hammer to get there in the top 3 to avoid suffering from any bottle-necking on the three ropes they had set up. And hammer we did. The road cycling background of Matt and Brian came out and we set a blistering pace on the bike. Within 20-30 minutes it was just us and Alpine Shop* out at the front.

*(After the race we learned that even "sucking wheel" they were hurting, which I was glad to hear as the pace was putting the hurt on me too!)

Even a mutual nav blunder on CP4 didn't allow any teams to catch us on the way to the ropes.

We came screaming into the ropes station, geared up and knocked out the traverse quickly getting off the ropes first and heading off towards some single track biking.

And that was the last we saw of Alpine Shop. Until 10 minutes from the finish, but more on that later...

After CP5 we got our first real taste of the sandy single track in the area and let me just say, it was brutal. Rideable sections of trail were mixed up with thick wet stuff that would gobble up your front tire before you had a chance to blink. I had more than my fair share of spills, the majority of which were due to waiting about 0.7 seconds too long to try and unclip from my pedals. Throughout this section we saw bike lights on our tails, so we knew there were teams just minutes behind us.

At CP9 we got our maps for the O course that would cover some of the same ground we had just ridden on our bikes, sandy single track criss-crossed with sandy ATV trails. We were told it would be about 5 miles total. The topography was subtle, making off trail nav all the trickier

along with the darkness. But, rather than take the safe attack points from trails and roads we were aggressive and took the shortest route from point to point.

And boy did being aggressive pay off.

We crushed the O course in under 2 hours, giving us more than an hour lead on the next team (which was, of course, Alpine Shop). We wouldn't know about this lead until hours later so we continued to push the pace.* More sandy single track along with a small amount of road riding brought us to our first TA at the Shady Pines campground.

*One of the disadvantages to being first. You don't usually know what your lead is, so you have to push the pace on desire alone, not some quantifiable gap you want to close with the next team.

We transitioned pretty quickly and grabbed our paddling gear and took off for the paddle put-in on foot, about a mile away. Arriving at the put in we realized for the first time the effects that all the recent rains were to have on our race. The small slough from the Mississippi was really moving.

Moving fast.

In the wrong way. Our paddle was to start upstream!

I wasn't entirely convinced that we would actually be able to move the boat upstream to be honest. But we could, and we did for the majority of the five hour paddle. (Downstream portions moved super fast) The start of the paddle was a reality check as our spot on navigation took a hit. I actually took us right to the first control, but didn't know it. When Matt called out that he saw it both Brian and I vetoed him because the terrain did not look at all like it was supposed to.

At this point we had two options. Check out what Matt saw, about a 50 meter paddle to the shore, or continue downstream to where Brian and I were convinced it had to be about a half kilometer away. Easy decision, right?

Apparently not.

For whatever reason, and I'm still scratching my head at this one, Brian and I insisted that it made more sense to head downstream first, and then stop by the suspected control location on the way back. That approach makes no sense to me know, not sure why it did then.

Well, we were wrong, Matt was right, and it cost us 20-30 minutes. (Keep this in mind for the end of this race report.)

Unfortunately the time lost was not the worst effect of this little blunder as Matt (somewhat justifiably) harassed us to no end for the majority of the next FOUR HOURS for not believing him. And let me just say, he is well versed in the area of verbal harassment...

The rest of the paddle was uneventful. The upstream portions were brutal and the downstream ones were fast. A number of times we kind of lost focus a bit I would say and lost that "drive" you need to keep pushing the pace, but that was mostly due to the fact that we never saw anyone!

Ever!

We actually started to get worried that maybe we had done something wrong and even checked the passport to make sure that all the controls were punched. (They were.) Even though we

looked back frequently, we never saw anyone.

Turns out that Alpine Shop saw us a time or two...

Coming off the boat we learned that our lead getting on the water was an hour. Great news and it made the trip back to the TA (with some much enjoyed homemade beans) a good one.

Next up was a short O section that we knocked out quickly with no real issues. Matt kept the pace up and we ran the majority of the time.

Unfortunately upon returning to the TA we discovered that our lead had shrunk to a mere 15 minutes... (Guess who? Yup, you got it. Alpine Shop.)

Wha?

We knew our paddle was sub-par, but it was shocking to learn how much time they had gained. This race had just gotten serious. Our final transition was frantic as opposed to the energetic

one after the paddle. The final bike was relatively short so we got rid of everything we didn't need and hit the bikes.

The first part of the final bike came as close to breaking us as any part of the course would. It was the worst sand we had ridden yet. I suspect this was due to the sand being much drier than during our earlier single track riding. Whatever the cause for the worsened conditions, the constant off and on and bike pushing was wearing us down.

After punching the final CP I almost wanted to kiss the packed gravel as we made our way on towards the final single track loop for the race. (I didn't though. Didn't want Matt yelling at me for taking too long to do it, and I wasn't sure my legs would cooperate with the standing back up part.)

Thankfully the single track final loop was well packed and rode quickly. To this point we had seen no sign of any teams in front of us. No tracks, no visual sightings. We were starting to feel

like we would hold our lead to the finish.

After finishing the loop we had three route choices to get to CP46, our second to last control. Knowing that Alpine Shop were solid navigators and could push the pace at the end of a race, we chose the most aggressive route, thinking that's what they would do in an attempt to catch us.

It didn't go. The little gravel road I was hoping would take us to the CP petered out and turned in to a driveway. We quickly backtracked and made our way around to the east to CP46. Cost us about 3 minutes. We also stopped to hook up our tow system which took one to two minutes.

After CP46 the finish line was pulling and we rode hard. The pre-5PM finish that Matt had obsessed about for the past 6 hours was a sure thing.

But, the race wasn't over.

As we neared the access road that would take a couple hundred meters down to CP47, the fina

l control, I saw something that elicited the second worst feeling* I have ever had in adventure racing.

*The worst feeling was a bone-headed decision a couple years ago that turned a podium finish into a DNF. Stupid boat drag...

Alpine Shop was riding away from CP47 and on to the finish.

After 16+ hours it was over just like that. In the final hours of the race they just kept at it and kept closing the gap and in the closing meters of the race, snuck past us.

By sheer chance we were totally oblivious to them being that close due to differing route choices. We never saw them in front of us, hell we hadn't seen them in over 14 hours! They just popped out from 47, saw us, and put their heads down on the way to the finish.

When the dust settled and we had all crossed the finish line they had edged us out by seven minutes. Now, seven minutes can be made back anywhere (everywhere?) on a 24 hour course.*

*(This should be, and will be, the subject for a blog post all it's own.)

But, I keep going back to that massive mental flatulence on the first paddling control. I'll kick myself for that one for quite some time.

Now, like I told Jeff, Carrie and David of Alpine shop after the race, I'll ALWAYS be happy when a coed team takes the overall win. AR is a coed team sport, and seeing a team racing in the true spirit of the sport take the overall is just plain cool no matter the circumstances.

That being said, it sucked being on the team that got nipped at the finish.

Oh well!

The course was great (even with all the infernal sand) and the organization was top notch. Kudos and a big thanks to Gerry, all his fantastic volunteers, the town of Oquawka*, and Big River State Park. Matt, Brian and I had a blast and the weather could not have been better!

*If the race goes back to this area again next year I might be able to pronounce the name of the town on the first try, no promises though.

Now, time to get ready for nationals...

First the hard way

2009-08-17T14:31:00.002-04:00

Until Saturday I had never been on a team that flat out won one of the local races. PA Urban, PA Sprint, IndyAR etc. We'd won our division a few times, but never the whole enchilada. Saturday at the 2009 PA Urban Sprint John McInnes, Sumitra Ghate and I managed to finally do it. (At least, it was a finally for me, not sure about them.)

I can't say it went down exactly how I would have expected though. I'm probably in the best shape I've ever been in and figured that would be pretty important to a strong finish for my team. After feeling good on the opening O section (I even towed John for a bit, physics be damned) and fine on the paddle*, I proceeded to feel pretty darn lousy until we were within spitting distance of the finish.

*For the record, I did not feel fine when we managed to flip the canoe. That was a first for me, maybe all of us. I'm thinking the ensuing dousing in White River water may have contributed to how I felt for the majority of the rest of the race. Also, whatever paddling prowess John and I managed to display at the Midget race in July had evaporated as we staggered about the White River like drunken sailors. All Sumi could do about it was sit there and get hit in the head by John's paddle...

As soon as we got on the bikes I had no kick in my legs at all. Thinking I just needed to loosen up I let John pull on the bike for a bit. Turned out that "bit" ended up being the majority of the next 3 hours of the race. I don't think I slowed us down any, but I sure didn't do much to help to push the pace much. With all of the riding I've been doing I was really hoping to do some work on the bike for this race. But, the only work I ended up doing was call directions from the back of the pace line.

And that right there is the beauty of adventure racing. It's a team sport and when a team is working well together it's possible to overcome someone having a bad race. Both of them were constantly asking me if I had eaten enough, drank enough and was taking my electrolytes. (If you're not at least somewhat annoyed by the frequency of these questions from your teammates, they're not asking them enough).

Despite not knowing where the heck we were relative to the other top teams due to some confusion with the opening O, we pushed hard and stayed steady. By the time we completed Stage 1, we departed onto Stage 2 definitively in first. No other teams had started that stage yet.

This is where I finally started to find my legs. After 4+ hours of just hanging in there all it took was a little adrenaline brought on by the approaching finish line to get me going at least a little bit and help push the pace. We saw a couple other teams out on the roads but weren't exactly sure how they were doing or how much of the course they had done so we just raced like they were right on our tails. Even the final 3-4 miles after solving the word scramble*, we continued to push the whole way to the finish.

*For the record, although we were in fact trying to "solve to win", we felt that "loves to win" was pretty appropriate too. (Huh, Jay and the volunteer at CP32/33 might be the only ones that get that...)

I haven't done a whole lot of racing in individual sports. Never done a tri, only a couple of marathons and half marathons and one cycling road race. I do know that the few times that I've felt awful while racing are pretty darn miserable. Encouragements from fellow runners/riders can help, but it's not quite the same as a teammate that's determined to keep you focused and in the game.

I frequently see "tweets" and facebook statuses (stati?) and blog posts about how someone blew up or melted down or failed epically at a triathlon or running race or whatever. Had I been by myself Saturday, I'd probably be writing something similar. But, since AR is a team sport I'm not. And I think that's pretty cool.

A little bit of reluctance to give up and some teamwork and you can turn a crap day into a pretty good day. Heck, you might even come in first...

Ready to go! (I think)

2009-08-10T23:59:00.000-04:00

Shirt with no zipper?

Check.

Rested legs?

Check.

Smile?

Eh, I think so, depends if I see the camera or not. At the very least I can limit the grimacing.

I think I'm about as ready as I'm going to to be for the 2nd TNT race at Town Run Trail Park.

We shall see!

Planet Adventure AR Clinics

2009-08-10T13:52:00.004-04:00

This Wednesday is the second "Basic Navigation and AR101 Clinic" being hosted by Planet Adventure. The first one was two weeks ago and had quite a good turnout of neary 30 people. Most folks were there for the beginner stuff, but a couple were looking for some more in depth training with naviagation, UTM's and just general AR stuff (mostly wanting to know what it's like to take on your first 24+ hour race).

I volunteered to help out with the advanced nav and AR portion of the clinic. "Advanced" of course is a relative term and in this case it mostly meant "more advanced than someone who has never done this before". As it turns out I have the qualifications for that type of advanced.

My little group started out just talking UTM's, which is one of those things that's really easy to explain to somone in person, but really tricky to convey well in writing*. It didn't take long to get them comfortable with UTM's, so we moved on to other AR related stuff.

*- I tried to come up with a one sheet primer on UTM's but failed miserably. I'll hopefully get it done some day because I have seen a lot of UTM tutorials out there and there isn't one that I've seen that is "perfect" for the complete novice.

It was a lot of fun and we ended up being out there for over 2 1/2 hours talking AR. We covered everything from gear to food to strategy to teammates. Feedback from the beginners session was really positive as well. Just an hour or so talking about the sport with experienced people really seemed to ease peoples minds before their first race.

Adventure racing really is a great sport for first timers. Pretty much every race I've been to has had lots of helpful people from staff to volunteers to racers. I can say from experience that a first adventure race is WAY less intimidating than a first road race (cycling).

Hopefully we'll keep seeing these clinics and maybe even some discussion sessions specifically for more experienced folks to talk about what they have found does and doesn't work.

Susan's fight

2009-08-06T08:47:00.004-04:00

Susan Nelson, wife of "Fat Cyclist" Elden Neslon (Fatty) passed away last night after a long and courageous fight against breast cancer.

I started reading Elden's blog about a year and a half ago. Mostly because it was funny and most of the humor was in the context of something that I enjoyed, cycling. He's written on everything from his successful efffort in getting Bob Roll's head shaved to the chemical and physical properties of incredibly stale energy food.

However, I quickly learned there was a lot more to his life than riding his bikes and writing

funny stuff. His wife was dying of cancer.

He didn't keep it to himself nor did he use it as a focal point for pity from others (or himself) through the very public forum that is a blog. He told their story and together they started to do what they could to fight back at the disease that was slowly killing her and countless others. "Win Susan" and "Fight like Susan" became a rallying cry for those that chose to spend their time and money fighting cancer by raising awareness, money or both.

Over the past year Elden got very involved with the Livestrong Foundation and through his efforts and those of the 500 members of "Team Fatty" over $500,000 has been raised to help with cancer research. Having a loved one taken by a disease like cancer is a very personal experience but their willingness to share their story with the world inspired many others to join in the fight. And because of this there is an extra half million dollars to fight cancer so far. (Who knows how much will be raised by the end of this year alone thanks to their effforts?)

I don't know about you, but I think that's pretty

damned impressive. So take a minute to check

out his blog, maybe pass on your condolences and consider donating.

Heck, if you do it now you might even win this bike--->

Contests like the one that is going on currently, where this Orbea bike is the prize (thanks to the generosity of others) are just one of the ways that Fatty has come up with to help entice people to join the fight.

Limited Success

2009-07-30T13:00:00.000-04:00

My goal was simple for the TNT 5k Tuesday night. Run well enough to not embarrass myself and incur the ridicule of my "friends" and teammates. I'm not a runner per se, so I didn't think it would be too hard to do that. I feel like I actually ran a pretty respectable race and my legs didn't bother me near as much as I anticipated.

Mission accomplished.

Right?

Wrong.

This photo was circulated as part of a friendly caption contest. ------>

I'm not sure if I'm more disappointed that someone makes a shirt that zips down that much in the front, that I chose to wear a shirt that zips down that much in the front, or that I actually zipped it down that much in the front. Plenty of disappointment to go around I suppose. (Pass the gold chains!)

And seriously, does that look like the face of someone having a good time? I apparently spent more time as a child focusing on the "agony of defeat" images than I did the ones for the "thrill of victory".

Despite my failure of avoiding ridicule I did have a great time. It seemed like the nearly 100 other runners had a blast as well. The course was hilly and almost all on wooded trails and the weather managed to hold off for us. Since the course was two laps and wound throughout Horizon's wooded property you had plenty of opportunities to attempt to acknowledge other runners without sacrificing too much oxygen and falling on your face.

I also learned that I have no prayer in keeping pace with real runners on flats and downhills, but I do actually have a fighting chance on the uphills. This was the hilliest race in the series, so I fully expect my performance relative to the field to only go downhill (no pun intended, seriously, I didn't see this until doing my last spelling/grammar check) from here.

Speaking of the series, the next race is in two weeks so go sign up!

I'm going to go practice smiling...

Whoops

2009-07-27T17:03:00.004-04:00

After my last AR in the middle of May I took about a month off from any real training. We were getting ready for PA, and I was pretty beat from a lot of racing in the spring, (A lot by my standards anyways.) so it seemed like good timing.

After PA I started getting back into training, primarily on my road bike, (and I was having a lot of fun with it.) I was riding frequently, and pretty hard, so I didn't spend much (any) time running.

Due to recent unfortunate circumstances (that I'll get into shortly, as in, it's earned it's own post that I haven't quite finished yet) I've been unable to ride my road bike the past 9 or 10 days.

So, I've taken the opportunity to get in more running. I've managed to get in 20+ miles in 5 days. I ran 6 miles both Saturday and Sunday. Now I know for actual runners (which I will never claim to be) that's not a lot but it's come as quite a shock to my system.

Mostly my legs.

I'm sore. Like, surprisingly sore.

Which is where the whoops comes in.

I've got my first 5k since 2001 coming up. And by coming up, I mean tomorrow. I'm running the PA TNT race at Horizon, and although I never had any aspirations of doing anything impressive, I would prefer not to embarass myself.

Seeing as how the focus of most of my racing is endurance for events for events 24 hours long I don't spend a lot of time working on my "top end". Still, it might have been wise to look at my calendar and not done the crash course in footwork the last few days.

So, short of some kind of recovery miracle, meeting that modest goal of embarassment avoidance might be kind of tough.

Whoops.

Oh well, I'll just have to keep reminding myself that I'm an adventure racer, not a 5k runner and have fun!

(Credit for the "I'm an adventure racer, not a "insert sport your doing poorly at here" goes to someone else, and is another good topic for a blog post...)

2009 Midget AR Adversity Excercise

2009-07-14T09:33:00.009-04:00

Raced the 2009 Midget AR with John McInnes this past weekend. It started well for us with a lead after the short opening trek, paddle and run back to the TA. Then, about 1/4 mile out of the TA John's front tire exploded.

Not the tube, the tire. Right through the sidewall. KaBLAM!

I have to say that it's the first time I've seen a little bit of fear in John as we were at speed (around 20 mph) and he had to fight it a bit to get control back.

To make a long story short after 45 minutes of trying to find a new tire (including an aborted trip to the rumored local Meijer) we finally got one thanks to race director Matt VanHoosier. Even after the tire was fixed I forgot to put my helmet on as we left the TA and had to loop back. (Coincidentally from about the same place John blew his tire. We were starting to think we'd just be doing laps between that point and the TA all day.)

We rode hard for the rest of the race, made (almost) no mistakes and managed to catch all but

one team for a first place finish in the 2 person coed. (Hard to compare 2 person and 3 person times due to a slight variation in courses at the start of the race.)

It was my first time racing with John and it went really well. We race together WAY better than we do time math together...

Oh, and the coolest part of all? We got yard gnomes as trophies.

Sweet...

Twenty mile sprint

2009-06-28T20:46:00.000-04:00

Despite the title of this post, the twenty mile sprint does not, in fact, exist. (And by sprint, I mean actually standing up and pedaling hard, the standing up part being key to this story.) Feel free to try if you want, but don't say I didn't warn you.

My saddle fell off 15 miles in to a 35 mile ride last Tuesday. So, I rode the remaining 20 miles with my saddle in my jersey pocket and the inability to sit down. Seemed like the logical thing to do.

Funny thing is, everyone on the ride seemed to think that I had a screw loose. Got a lot of comments like "I would have called my wife!" and "It fell off all the way back there?!?". To most of those folks, finishing the ride wasn't just an undesirable choice, but a non-choice.

But when you're used to doing adventure races your decision making might just be a little goofy compared to normal social standards. There may not have been a race director there telling me that it was time for the "riding without a seat" special challenge, but finishing out the ride not only seemed to make sense, I kind of looked forward to the challenge.

Maybe we do all kind of have a screw loose...

Things I learned at the 2009 PA Challenge

2009-06-23T22:40:00.000-04:00

Now that I've had a few weeks to process everything:

1) It's borderline disturbing what you can get an adventure racer to do with no questions from them. It's tempting to test this behavior and is certainly something that has crossed my mind.

2) If you're going to work a single checkpoint for 20+ hours do it with Monty Wilson and my wife Cristal. Hot dogs, chicken, wine, beer, S'mores, you name it. I had to warn them early that they'd be in big trouble if any teams dropped the race in favor of the creature comforts they filled their CP's with!

3) Time math is hard. Time math after being up for 36 hours is beyond hard. Discussing time math after being up for 36 hours with someone else who has been up for 36 hours is nothing short of completely absurd.

4) Witnessing the discussion outlined in item three is wildly entertaining.

5) It never gets old watching people push their limits and enjoy something that most people would classify as "crazy", "nuts", or just plain "weird".

6) Farmers seem to give free Cokes to weird people. Not sure if this is out of fear or a belief that adventure racer money is akin to Monopoly money and can't be used in the real world, or if farmers are just nice people.

7) Ticks suck. (no pun intended)

8) Poison ivy sucks. (no pun possible)

9) Poison ivy with ticks is still better than 35 degrees with rain, snow, sleet and flooding. (And from what I've heard since the race I'm apparently not the only one that feels this way.)

10) There appears to be an as of yet unnamed emotion that is some combination of relief, gratification, accomplishment, delerium and whatever it is you feel right after something that hurts real bad stops hurting. This emotion is easily readable in peoples faces immediately following a race like this years PA!

FINALLY, a link to detailed PA "results"

2009-06-22T22:39:00.002-04:00

And yes, there is a reason that "results" is in quotes. The link below is actually to a spreadsheet still in process. It was promised last Friday, and I'm not getting it until today. Not too impressive. What's even less impressive is my ability to get a damned spreadsheet from Excel 2007 into Google Docs. (which is where I generally put stuff like this for easy sharing.) Here's the link for what it's worth.

2009 PA Results

I ended up scrapping a large portion of what I had done due to the two programs not agreeing on how to do some time math. (Apparently some computer software is about as competent at this as sleep deprived race directors.)

I'll keep updating it over the next few days, so bookmark the link and keep checking back for new info. I'll post again once it's all done!

First rule of going on vacation

2009-06-19T08:13:00.003-04:00

When you go on vacation, don't come home.

Somehow in the space of four days my yard became the Amazon and more than an appropriate amount of work piled up at work. In case you were wondering this is my lame excuse as to why I don't have the fully detailed results posted yet.

Anyways, I WILL have a link up to the majority of the splits today sometime. I'll also have a sheet for each course showing which CP's teams obtained. This should help you figure out what parts of the course you did compared to other teams, or which orienteering points other teams chose to obtain. As always, feel free to contact us with questions.

Hopefully all your feet have healed and you feel fully recovered (including poison ivy rashes and bug bites). I'm fairly sure that it took me longer to recover from this race than most others, and I didn't even race it!

Shoe Dogs

2009-06-14T15:52:00.005-04:00

These things seem pretty cool, although I'm not sure they are intended to be effective on a pair of Salomon's worn through stank nasty creeks for 18 hours, then tossed in a bag and left in a car for a couple of days. Worth a shot though.

I wonder if they can make one in an appropriate size for a '99 Subaru Outback...

2009 Midget AR Summer Sprint

2009-06-12T10:13:00.004-04:00

Just signed Cristal and I up for this race yesterday. We're hoping that her foot will be close to 100% by then, or at least good enough to race without causing any further damage. She's been an increasingly good sport about the rehab but needless to say the frustration is building. Even 4-5 hours out racing will do a lot for her mental state!

For anyone that has not done an adventure race, this event is more than likely a great place to get started. The distances are short and the navigation should be fairly straightforward. So, if you have any family members, friends or coworkers that have shown even the slightest interest in AR, start leaning on them to give this race a shot!

It's also great to see another TWO races on the Indiana calendar. (They'll be doing a Brown County race this fall.) We're at the point now where you can almost fill your race calendar without even leaving the state.

(For those of you waiting for more detail on the PA OS and 24 results, I promise they're coming. I've got 6-7 hours of travel tonight to work on them, then it's just a matter of finding some internet, which has become increasingly easy...)