The E-fix
This is just a last update to say that the results are through from Odyssey. We came 7th in the Pro category out of 9 Pro category finishing teams. The 6 teams ahead of us came in under the 40-hour cut-off and therefore were ranked and official. We came in ranked 7th but 'unofficial' because we didn't make the finish line cutoff. The two teams behind us were both unranked and unofficial because they finished as incomplete teams and in over 40 hours.
There was only one other female who completed the Pro course, but of course she was on the winning (4-person) team (which came in 13 hours ahead of us, having been less than 2 hours ahead at the end of the river swim!).
In the shortened Sport category there were 14 finishing teams, only 2 of which made it in before the 40-hour cut-off. Approximately 5 of the finishing Sport teams had a finishing female competitor.
Out of the 51 total teams, 23 finished and 28 abandoned.
Under these circumstances, we're very pleased to have done what we did. We can say 'if only' all we like, but coming in with an official time would not have changed our final position and in any other sense it doesn't matter. Roll on next time ... ;)
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It's over. I'm back.
Later on Thursday ...
Roj picks the car up and we pack it up with all our gear, but the boogie boards still haven't arrived. We drive a couple of times round the block, picking up high-carbohydrate things that'll help us with the next few days, and finally sit in the car sheltering from the rain, taking bets on how long it's gonna take the UPS guy to get his act into gear. It's not til 5pm that the brown van draws up at the door so we end up leaving 1.5 hours later than we'd hoped to, meaning we hit the rush hour traffic bang on.
Takes us a while to get out of Manhattan. We drive through New Jersey & Pennsylvania and stop off for dinner at some stripland steak house at 7.50 - in perfect time, unbelievably, to watch the season premiere of Friends on their wide-screen telly - unsociable (and unplanned I promise!), but great timing! We find a Best Western at around 10.30 to get our last sleep until Sunday night - an intimidating thought.
Friday ...
After a classic diner breakfast, we set off to get the driving done. The weather is still horribly wet, but none of the tropical storm aftermath that'd been forecasted. A day of boring driving including the inevitable navigational errors (and hoping that they're the last we make!) brought about by doing an 8 hour drive on Expedia directions, and we finally arrive at Camp Washington Carver, West Virginia, at around 3.45.
At 5pm check-in begins. We have to go through admin (insurance & bib issue), radio, medical, climbing, biking & canoeing/swimming gear & competency checks before we get issued with our all-important race passports & maps and get back to the car to start packing. This is an important part of preparation - you need to be incredibly minimal with what you take but there's a helluva lot of mandatory gear, plus water and food to take with you. All needs to be well waterproofed so submersion doesn't ruin everything (last year we lost half our food 4 hours into the race) and in exactly the right order so that you can grab what you need from your pack without wasting time in the transition areas.
It takes us til 7.30pm to get our packs ready, make peanut butter/banana sandwiches (and squash them down to miminal size!) and get changed into our racing clothes. Still pissing-it-down and getting cold. Very foggy in the West Virginia forests too ... just increases our sense of trepidation. We go up to the Campground clubhouse to do our route planning with highlighters, map and the passport which gives (often vague) instructions on where to find each of the 20 checkpoints (CPs). This is of paramount importance during the race - we can't rely on enough coherence later on to start planning routes so we have to have the whole thing mapped out in advance - in as much colour-coded detail of distances, heights and disciplines as possible.
The race briefing starts at 9pm after a plate of spag-bol, and we learn from the race directors that this year's Fix pro course has been increased to around 140 miles (from 125) - starting with a full gear half-marathon. Nice. We also hear from Robyn Benincasa - possibly the most famous female adventure racer who has been helping with the Odyssey AR Academy in the week up to the race. Very inspirational. Very big muscles!
By 10.15 we're ready to start - just wanting to get it over with. We sit in the car yawning and tape up our maps and passport with clear tape so they don't disintegrate during the race.
At 11.30 we reluctantly leave the warmth of the car, take a final pre-race photo and head up to the start line where 51 teams are jiggling around for pole position (don't know why - 40 hours will separate the bunch!) The countdown goes all too quickly after the inimitable Star Spangled Banner blasting out over the tanoy, and at 12am we find ourselves running down the track into dense forest, head-torches on full, already half-soaked, carrying 35lbs of gear between us, and wondering what lies ahead for us in the next 40 hours.
... into Saturday
We're up with the group of serious competitors for about the first 3 miles, but we're in no shape to run all the uphills and we fall back as we go past the first couple of checkpoints - coming in at around 10th position. It's hard work and an abrupt start to physiologies that are accustomed to being 2 hours asleep by midnight. Anticipating a hard race we try and keep the pace down, but there's a good deal of distance to cover before the first cut-off time at the bike/swim transition which would mean relegation to 'sport' category - a shorter course and definitely not what we're aiming at.
The run is really hard work. Some is on flattish fire-trail, but even with head-torch burning, you can't tell fallen leaves from stones, and you struggle from twisted ankles on the wet ground. The packs are heavy and already grating on our backs ... this is the worst time - we haven't got into the race yet, and warmth and comfort is still fresh in our memories. It feels like an awfully long time til 4pm on Sunday.
After around 11 miles we go off-trail into dense forest on near-vertical slopes trying to find the indistinct trail down to the river. This is where last year I watched Roj plunge 50ft down the bank out of control without knowing what was below - at the time it shook us both up - it was too easy to imagine what could have happened if the steep bank had ended in a rock cliff like it so often does in the New River Gorge. This time we're more careful and have already pre-planned our route with the dangers in mind. After fumbling for 20 minutes or so, we find the right trail and join other teams as they head down towards CP3 - the river swim.
Crossing deep inky water at 4am - even with life jacket on and rope to hold onto - is quite an intimidating prospect, but we need to get going ... that 12pm cut-off is looming, and we know this is not going to be the worst experience on the water this weekend! We get to the other side expecting to pick up bikes for the next section, but are actually confronted with another 7.5 miles of running which we'd both overlooked in the passport instructions. Not a half-marathon at all then - but 20 miles. How annoying!
We're tired now, and irritated. Wearing a head-torch in darkness gives you tunnel-vision very quickly - and associated eye-ache from concentrating hard on an area 3 feet wide in front of your feet so you don't trip. We run in places, but our long-legged walk is quite fast so we conserve energy where we can. We refil our Camelbak bladders with river water and sanitise it with iodine tablets. Some teams pass us and we pass some others, but we know we will make time up on our strongest discipline - mountain biking, and it's too early to be concerned about our position.
Tired and disoriented we find CP4 - the first run/bike transition - at 6.20am. We locate our bikes, strap head-torches to helmets, scoff some already cardboard-like energy bars, refill bladders and, watching as dawn breaks, head out over Beury Mountain - a climb topping 2750ft. Funny how contour lines never give you a real picture of how much your legs are going to hurt! Packs feel really heavy on our backs as we climb on up the hill for two solid hours with no downhills - hard, hard work.
At the eventual top of this mammoth hill we run into one of the Odyssey race directors Joy Marr, who happily points out that our next intersection is flagged with flourescent tape. We belt off downhill hoping for some compensation for the hideous climb, and turn down the track. Within a mile Roj realises that we're on the wrong side of the valley. Confused, we check and double check the map, but end up retracing our steps to an earlier intersection - it's not comforting to know that race directors also get it wrong sometimes.
Always we're feeling the pressure of the 12pm pro/sport cutoff at the river transition area (TA). The biggest reason we came back to the E-fix this year was that we failed to complete the course last year, and we wanted to prove to ourselves that we could handle it. To be relegated to sport category only 12 hours into the race would be an extreme disappointment. Sport competitors are required to skip the river section and mountain bike a shortened route. Possibly the hardest thing about completing sport - for us, anyway - is having the heart to continue with a 'lesser' course.
It is with great relief, then, and encouraging screams from the volunteers (who have dubbed us 'The Married Couple' due to the rarity of such within AR), that we head into the TA at 11.23am to scoff more energy food, and change into wetsuits and swim fins for the 5-mile river swim (it is with less relief and more of a wronged competitive spirit that we shortly afterwards find out that the cutoff was extended to 1pm to allow a couple more teams to make it through).
This next is the part that makes me nervous. Having felt the power of the Grade IIIs last year when we got dunked at appropriately named 'Surprise Rapids', I have developed a healthy fear of white water. We were in no particular danger at the time, but terms like 'foot entrapment' and 'unconscious underwater' have been ringing in my ears with ever-increasing clarity ever since. Nevertheless, this is my job and I have to do it. Luckily, for this section, the race officials transport packs (other than medical kit and various small essentials) to the end of the section. Clearly it's challenging enough without being weighed down with unnecessary baggage.
I'm downright scared as we head into the first rapid. I've never used a boogie board before and from 4 inches above the surface of the water, the rapids look more than intimidating. I spend the next hour with my heart in my mouth, thanking God for the sturdy mandatory knee-pads that are preventing my knee-caps from shattering as they hit the rocks we are bouncing off. I receive a hefty blow to mid-thigh as I'm thrown into a rock when I'm plunged into the trough it hides. I nearly lose my board, and certainly lose my breath for a few seconds, but I fight panic and look towards the next checkpoint. This is part of the mental endurance that adventure racing requires - facing fears.
My legs are shaking from pain, relief and downright tiredness as we clamber out of the river only to pick up our packs and don clothes and lifejackets again for the canoe paddle. What follows is 17 miles (4 hours) of open canoeing down Grade III, II and unclassified rapids and across great stretches of still water. It's exhausting work, and not having conquered my white water fear, quite scary also. We portage two rapids, and stick to the calmer sides where we can, but to do this we also lose the advantage of the stream, and get overtaken by a couple of teams who are more gung-ho with the rapids.
If I had time when we finished the canoe section at 5.20pm, I might have felt relieved, but we have to take advantage of the remaining daylight and get going on the next mountain bike leg. We're going to have to push hard to achieve the next pro/sport cut-off at the rappell site at 8am.
It's agonising work to set off on moutain bikes after legs have siezed up in a canoe for 4 hours, but luckily we have 8 miles of flat single-track before the hill-climbs set in. The hills make up for it when they do though - the first hill is on road but almost unrideable. At this stage night is falling too - we're struggling with the exhaustion of keeping going for 18 hours, yet knowing that we're not even halfway, while coping with body clocks that are yelling Saturday night TV, good Mexican take-out and comfortable cotton sheets. The mountains are high and steep and the night becomes extremely cold. We plod on where we can - our pace suffering with our motivation - and Roj hits a bit of a low as we go off-road. I'm worried that he'll fall asleep on wheels (this is a common occurrence in AR but not what you want to happen when climbing ravines with vertical precipices just a few feet to your right). I look round frequently to check that his head-torch is still shining behind me. We walk the uphills.
At 8pm I comment that we're halfway through the race if we use the full alotted time. Neither of us anticipate having to, but neither is particularly enthused by the observation. Silently we climb onwards towards the next TA. The concentration required for mountain biking at this stage is too much - staring at the headtorch beams in front of us, our peripheral vision starts playing tricks on us. Faces appear in the woodland around. You'd think that these would disappear as soon as you looked at them, but with serious sleep deprivation the faces gain shape as you get nearer. The only way they disintegrate is if you keep telling yourself that your mind is playing tricks. It's The Shining all over again.
After numerous minor navigational uncertainties (new trails not marked on the map), we crawl into CP11 and exchange bike shoes with soaking trail-runners for the next section. At this point we're both reaching a peak of exhaustion, but so grateful to get rid of the bikes that walking is almost an appealing prospect.
... into Sunday
The next section is a little hazy. We look for a particular trail, and come to an intersection which could be right and could be wrong. There's no way of knowing - the track is not marked, but we're in the right area. Do we really have to go down each option to find the right track? - it's the last thing either of us want to do. We hang around assessing and re-assessing the maps, hoping for some miraculous enlightenment that will save us from any extra effort. At this point I am hitting the peak of tiredness Roj saw earlier, while he has snapped out of his with the need to concentrate on navigation. When I can, I sit down on trailside rocks with my head in my hands and grasp 30 seconds of sleep. It just makes my body crave more, but I can do little else. In the course of checking out each route possibility, another 6 teams or so get to the same place with the same dilemna. For about 2 hours then, we all wander round in a large group - we finally find the right trail but - too ready to play follow-my-leader - come off it too soon and find ourselves in a small village. At this point Roj and I split from the larger group and try asking some locals where to find the road that leads most directly to the CP. Unfortunately at 1am the locals are either drunk or altogether unwilling to be flagged down by a couple of dirty looking adventure racers, so it takes us a while before we are back on track. We trek the road and discover that our feet are beginning to seriously blister. We're hoping that walking this particular road is not illegal in the race passport (a crime punishable by penalty or disqualification), but are both too tired to check. Again, the pressure to get to the rappell site by 8am is really mounting at this stage and we know we must take the shortest route we can find. We sit in the middle of an intersection and patch our blisters in that blundering way brought on by lack of sleep. We take the opportunity to eat more cardboard carbohydrate and reassure each other that we can make the rappell. It seems an awfully long way off.
Minutes later we are relieved to find the CP, but cannot afford the time to rest and instead continue hiking. It is now that I hit my lowest point. Every step I take, I fall asleep. I wake abruptly a second later when I feel myself stumbling, but can do nothing to stop my eyes closing again. We hike down a long hill, and Roj holds onto my arm so he can catch me if I fall asleep completely. At one point he hugs me and tells me later that he felt me go completely limp as I fell asleep on his shoulder. I know that I can't go much further without sleeping even though time is really tight - I am literally in a state of half-wakefulness - I'm seeing things and hearing things and struggling to keep my stinging eyes open and my legs from caving underneath me. By the time we get to the bottom of the hill, I persuade Roj that I should have just 10 minutes of sleep, which will enable me to at least be coherent for the next section. So on the concrete at the bottom of the hill, I lie down with my head on my pack and fall asleep immediately.
Ten minutes later is way too soon, but I feel like a different person when I wake up. My tendency to fall asleep on my feet has gone, and I can push forward up the hill without too many problems. The searing ache in my thighs and soreness of my feet have subsided enough to make me comfortable. I can't believe the difference.
So on up the New River Gorge to the next CP. This is familiar territory since we hiked the same section in last year's race. We know what to expect. It's monotonous though, and dark. We hope to see the checkpoint at each corner, but each time it's the next one along. When we finally get there to have our passport signed by volunteers nestled in sleeping bags, we acquire a companion called Tim whose team mate has withdrawn from the race due to foot pain. Tim wants to complete the course, but not alone, so when he asks whether he can tag along we know of no reason why not. Our next task is to find the rappell site which is located on part of a cliff called the Endless Wall. This wall is somewhere in the middle of a very densely forested steep slope. Last year we spent several hours descending too low. We found the path that runs at the foot of the cliff, but took a lifetime finding the rope ladders that allow access to the top. We know that this year we can't afford to take so long. We try to feign optimism with our new companion, but in reality are feeling the time pressure hanging like rock around our necks.
In fact we find the Wall without too much problem. After stumbling around in the dark for about 45 minutes exploring paths that disappear, we happen on a very positive trail which leads right to the top of the Wall. Now we know exactly where we're going, but only have a couple of hours to get there and find the rappell site. We set a fast walking pace, holding head-torches in our hands where the light is less obscured by the thick fog that reminds me too much of the Hound of the Baskervilles. When we get to the village where we got lost the previous year we have only half an hour til cut-off and are swiftly losing hope. Roj manages to recognise the right route though and we head over to the spot, but when we get there, there is no rappell site. We can see the cars of the climbing instructors, and we recognise the area from the previous year, but not a CP in sight. In desperation we go over to the cliff and shout to see whether we get a response, but none is forthcoming and we have to take a 50/50 chance on two route choices. Soon another team walks past us, deciding to take the lefthand route heading further round the cliff. Do they know where they're going? Should we follow? Again we hesitate, until at 7.50, Roj decides to go further in the opposite direction as a last resort and jogs off down the track. With 5 minutes to go, I hear shouting and run to join him. We walk into the rappell site with one minute to spare til the 8am cut-off time. Talk about cutting it fine!
The rappell is good. I am totally disoriented and struggle to untangle my harness, but the climbing guys are very understanding and help out a lot. Trusting enough to do a 200foot overhang rappell is not really a problem when you don't have enough energy to think about it, but risking nothing, I resolve not to look down, and only get a jolt of anxiety as I lurch over the edge. "How do I do this?" I call out, starting to panic. Do I risk smashing into the cliff face if I jump for it? An instructor clearly accustomed to disoriented racers calmly reminds me that I should lower myself until my feet are at head level and then step off. My heart slows a little and I let myself hang for a second, finally grabbing the guts to look below me and appreciate the beautiful New River Gorge, whose fringes at that time are burning in morning sunlight, the depths of the valley still overflowing with dense fog. Ten minutes later we're all on the ground breathing a sigh of relief. The final 4 o'clock cut-off seems a long way off, and certainly wholly achievable with 8 hours to go and only two short daylight sections.
It's a hike to the next CP, and we make adequate progress, despite siezing limbs and painful blisters. We get to CP15 at 10.45am and as we change into biking gear, start to let the relief of finishing seep into our veins. The race directors have decided to eliminate two checkpoints so we only have two left before the finish line and we can see no problem other than staying awake that long. Biking is slow and sometimes uphill, but much of the first half is on road and we make good progress. We check in at CP16 at 12.10pm and are told it is only a 40 minute ride to the next and final point. We head in what we all think is the right direction. By this time we have accumulated another 2-person male team so there are 5 of us in total. What happens next is very surreal in my mind. I am suffering from extreme sleep-deprivation and really can't do more than sit on my bike and turn the pedals round. We get caught in a network of trails that aren't on the map and everyone makes the classic mistake of not turning round when we get into unfamiliar territory. We keep going, both navigators asserting that if we just continue in one particular direction we'll get to the final road. But time is ticking by. I perceive all this as if I am in a dream. I think we've finished the race and I am looking back on it and wondering what would have happened if we hadn't made the finish line by 4. I start chuckling at the irony when suddenly I snap to the realisation that we really are in that position. The pain and exasperation become very real for a moment until the sleep urge takes over and I slip back into dreamland. This repeats itself time after time, as if I'm reliving some kind of awful nightmare - we come to complicated intersections and the guys pore over their maps, hoping to strike the lucky golden shorcut. It's 2.20 before we all resign ourselves to backtracking the 3 miles back through the unfamiliar trails, and by that time our hearts are already sinking. There is little chance that we can make the line by 4.
In fact it is a total impossibility. CP17 is located up a very steep nasty climb, and halfway up it Roj gets a puncture. In the process of fixing it, we get 2 more and we know that 50 minutes will not get us through CP17 to the finish. It's a hard thing to take in when all you've been aiming for in the last 39 hours is suddenly taken out of reach, and when it has been so achievable. I can't stop tears streaming down my face - partly from extreme disappointment and partly from extreme exhaustion. Ever since making the rappell CP we have both been expecting to finsh by about 2pm, and every second past that point has taken a supreme effort.
But we know we have to carry on. Tim, our sometime companion, decides to push on to the finish line when we stop to fix the puncture, and the remainder of the 2-man team (one of whom withdraws from knee-pain just 1 hour before the finish line) continues on also. Roj and I go at the pace we can manage, reaching CP17 at 4.01pm, where we're told the finish is just 45 minutes away. In our state we know that it will be longer. We are stopping a lot and walking up some of the hills. It is impossible to do otherwise.
But keep going we do, right up to the finish line at Camp Washington Carver, which we cross at 5:11pm to the sound of cheering from the race organisers, volunteers and other competitors. There's a lump in my throat when I think of how close we are to a ranked place, but reassurance of our achievements from the race organisers, and the best turkey-and-crisp sandwiches on earth from the buffet push the lump away. Already the realisation of what we have achieved is drowning out what we lost. This is one of the hardest E-fixes - harder by far than last year's. As relatively inexperienced racers we pushed ourselves to the limits of exhaustion and endurance and then pushed a little more. This is an experience of a lifetime.
After eating what our shrunken stomachs would allow, we take our gear back to the car, peel off our sodden socks to reveal whitened prune feet, and immediately fall asleep for an hour on the front seats. When we come back to the land of the vaguely human, we return to the campground clubhouse where the Odyssey race organisers, including Don Mann (famous AR name) are incredibly congratulatory. We are presented with glass beer mugs and certificates, and buy t-shirts before heading back north via another dodgy Best Western, to inspect our battle scars (not all that impressive), and reflect on our achievements (more so).
It is disappointing that we didn't cross the finish line by 4pm, more so because we know we are fully capable of it. In a direct way, it was navigational errors that caused our delay, but it is not this that can be blamed. When we got caught in the network of trails before CP17, we had both already been 55 hours without sleep. Though both of us were still capable of pushing forward, this form of exhaustion affects your mental capacity enormously. A navigator's job in an Adventure Race is to direct the team from checkpoint to checkpoint along a route that is usually pre-determined when the maps are handed out before the race. Throughout the race he or she is pressured to make accurate decisions about directions and route-choice. It is a difficult job at the best of times, but add to that severe mental and physical exhaustion and the difficulty of staying accurate goes off the scale. Exhaustion also leads to doubt. Has the navigator got the route-choice right? Is that trail on the ground really the route he can see marked on the map? Confidence wanes. In our situation we had merged with another team, doubled our navigators, and together they inspired confidence in each other's decisions. At an earlier stage in the race either of them might have realised their mistake sooner, but faced with having to backtrack several miles or taking the risk of moving forward, any racer or navigator will prefer the latter. All these issues compounded the mistakes we made. My personal opinion, now based on some experience, is that a navigator can never be (and never be expected to be) more than 90% accurate in an adventure race. Roj did a fantastic job of navigating throughout the course, and most times hit the exact trail immediately. It was bad luck that we got lost in a trail system at the point and to the extent we did, but it could have happened to anyone at any time.
What's really important is that we finished the pro course. In the E-fix this is a huge achievement in itself - the average percentage of official finishers is just 24.9. Without question this E-fix is the hardest thing I've ever attempted, in terms of physical and mental endurance. For that reason alone it is also one of the most satisfying.
And of course ... not finishing ranked this time means that we have something to aim at next year!!!
Statistics
- Hours without sleep: 59
- Hours to complete the course: 41:11
- Calories burned according to Polar s710: 10,500 (in actual fact this will be higher, since the HRM doesn't take pack weight into account)
- Total ascent according to Polar s710: 15,500 feet (this may be slightly inaccurate because pressure changes are not taken into account)
- Approximate pack weight: 15-20lbs
- Total teams: 51
- Number of ranked Pro course finishers: don't know yet
- Number of unranked Pro course finishers: don't know yet
- Number of female Pro course finishers: don't know yet
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OK. This is it. Not much to say really. Already nervous, already excited. Keep going through in my head whether we've got everything on the gear list, but I've checked and re-checked so many times I can't see a problem. Still waiting for the boogie boards to show up, but it should be any second now, as UPS.com says they're out for delivery.
Thanks to the tropical storm making its way up the East Coast from the Caribbean, the conditions are going to be horrendous, but I'm not even worried about that now. To be honest I just want to get there and get on with it - it'll be miserable and we'll be swearing nearly all the time - but we'll love it ... in that sick, masochistic way!
Nothing more to say really ... except here we go! :)
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Well, thanks to the super-efficiency of ebodyboarding.com, our boogie boards made a swift turnaround in CA yesterday and are, as we speak, hot-footing it back to NYC in time for Thursday's departure.
I spent most of last night waterproofing packets of batteries and food so that nothing gets spoiled on submersion as it did last year. Found out this morning that our packs get transported for us during the white water river swim section though, so that's a weight off my mind.
And now the countdown really begins. I'll be at home at this time tomorrow, and packing up final stuff. We have to get in 4 hours of driving and stop off, eat and get back to our motel in time to catch the season premiere of Friends, and Will and Grace. Priorities, priorities!
We'll be able to have a reasonable lie-in (sleep is paramount at this stage of the preparation), and a good diner breakfast, and set off to complete the remaining half of the trip down to the New River Gorge, aiming to get there around 2 to 3pm on Friday. Check-in starts at 5.
Last year we got substantially lost on the way down, and weren't well prepared when we arrived at the check-in site. We want to eliminate the hassle of rushing our packing and checking-in so late that we only had an hour or so to map our route before the race started. We need at least 2.
So that's the general plan. The weather still looks apalling for the next two days, so we're definitely packing wellies (if only!). Lets hope the river swim doesn't get too dangerous. At least it'll be over quickly if the river swells a lot! (Lara smiles wryly).
One last update tomorrow, and that'll be it until we get back on Monday with a dubious set of results and plenty of blisters. Don't expect full coherence.
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Where are the bloody boogie boards??
Picked up the last of our first-aid kit today - had to use a bit of artistic license with the sterile compresses, but otherwise we have all the antiseptic, alcohol wipes, plasters, bandages and pain-killers we could possibly hope for.
Tried packing my backpack last night. The small pack I bought a couple of weeks ago would fit my PFD (lifejacket) and just about nothing else in it, so I have to take the big heavy pack that I used last year. There's nothing wrong with it except that it holds water so it has to be emptied thoroughly after submersion.
Still have to do things like fit lights to my MTB and work out something comfortable and warm to wear when we're finished. Have to be packed up tonight because tomorrow night is theatre night and we need to leave pretty promptly on Thursday so we don't have to do too much driving Friday morning. The trip should take around 8 hours in total.
Feeling less nervous about it today, although not inspired with a great deal of confidence when looking at the weather - big thunderstorms and heavy showers predicted for Thurs and Fri should make the MTB course a quagmire, and swell the water levels in the river to interesting levels.
For those bored enough to be interested in what I'm taking, here's a list (M meaning mandatory gear):
- Lowe Alpine backpack (25litres capacity)
- Very old but lightweight Berghaus Goretex jacket (M)
- Lowe Alpine Fleece top (M)
- Long-sleeved thermal top (M)
- Fleece hat (M)
- HIND lightweight leggings
- Salomon XA Pro Goretex trail-running shoes
- Petzl Duo halogen head-torch (M)
- 2x Camelbak bladders - 1x100oz for Accelerade, 1x50oz for plain water
- About 8x Clif bars & Oatbars
- About 8 peanut butter sandwiches
- Water purification tablets (M)
- Silva compass (M)
- Lighter (M)
- Knife (M)
- Space blanket (M)
- Medical kit (M)
- Polar s710 heart rate monitor
- Trek 9.8 Elite MTB (M) with Petzl Zoom headtorch strapped to the front and Cateye rear light (M)
- Bell MTB helmet (M)
- Trek gel MTB gloves
- Terry MTB shorts
- Shimano MTB shoes
- Oakley M-frames with clear lenses
- Bike repair kit (M)
- Climbing harness (M)
- ATC (M)
- 3 locking caribiners (M)
- Petzl Meteor Climbing helmet (M)
- Kokatat PFD (M)
- Spartan Wetsuit (M)
- Swim fins
- eBodyboarding Boogie board
- Knee pads (M)
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I have to say that I'm starting to wonder what got us into adventure racing in the first place.
On September 27th at midnight we will be embarking on our second attempt to complete the Pro category of the Odyssey E-fix in the New River Gorge, West Virginia.
While you might be saying "so what?" at this point, I have to add that this is what we expect to be a 36-hour non-stop endeavour to cover the 125 miles of the Pro category, during which we will be carrying approximately 15-20lbs each of food, water and equipment, stopping only to change trail-running shoes to mountain biking ones.
We will be hiking/trail-running, mountain biking, white water canoeing, white water swimming, rapelling (abseiling), and trying to do all this while wishing we were somewhere else - preferably asleep.
On top of the mere physical challenges, we also will be having to find our own way from checkpoint to checkpoint using compass and rudimentary map. Those of you who've known me for a while will know that this is where we slipped up last year at hour 31 - we failed to find the rapell site (like many other teams). West Virginia, like much of the American east coast, is thick forest. Add to that darkness, sleep-deprivation and thick fog, and you'll start to get a picture of what the problem may have been.
For a large portion of the race we expect to be soaked through - of course we don't know what the weather's going to be like yet - rainstorms will make it even more horrendous. Scrap that - I've just looked at weather.com ... those thunderstorms that I was talking about ...
It's interesting trying to imagine what it's going to be like. For those who haven't done an adventure race of this length, there's no way of knowing. It's a really tough thing to do - the challenges are mental as much as physical, all of which add to allow only about 1/3 of starting teams to cross the finish line. This year we will be one of them.
In the run-up to the race I'm interested to find myself remembering the nastier details from last year, and wondering whether this year we will be able to complete the course. And then I find myself wondering what on earth people do in these races (the big names of AR):
Anyway - enough about them. I will be updating this page as the run up to the race continues. For now here's a couple of relevant links.
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