On December 6th, I took place in my first adventure race with Matt, Scott, and my sister.
At six o’clock, we’re loaded onto school buses prepared for “three to seven hours of paddling and trekking” (at this point we know that we have a mountain biking leg not accounted for in the time estimate above). As we drive, we try to guess where we’ll get dropped off — the adventure race takes place in Castlewood State Park, but there are several parks in “striking distance”. But eventually I just give up trying to guess after we’ve crossed the Meramec River.
The team is all green except for my sister, who is used to these racess. We arrive at a field with an open sided barn. Soon after, Matt took off for the prologue, returning with the first clue sheet and a supplemental map (which reveals where we are starting the race from).
Over the next few hours, we have paddle and trek to Route 66 State Park and eventually on to Sherman Beach (Route 66 State Park was the only time we saw the lead teams). At this point we’ve been going for five or six hours and we still haven’t seen the Castlewood. After a few minutes where a teammate was separated, we slug up two different hills for “hilltop” CP’s. This trekking is notably more difficult than the orienteering at Route 66 State Park as we basically traverse straight up and straight down hill. Several times Scott nearly collided, uncomfortably with trees as we made our descent.
When we get back to the park we transitioned to the bike leg, finding that they have sent us up all three major hills in Castlewood (Lone Wolf, Cardiac, and Midway). Cardiac and Midway in particular were long lines of people pushing their bikes upward to get to the CPs. Having done much of our bike training in the park, these points are pretty straight forward for us (aided by also having done the Castlewood Orienteering meet a month prior), but we’re over the eight hour mark with the 5 PM cutoff looming. We decide to nail down the final two points on the bike (which is tough because our legs feel like lead and both require us to ride up another hill).
Finishing that leg, we transitioned quickly to go grab a couple of bonus CP’s and then call it a day, finishing in 9:50. All told, we wrapped up 11th place in our division of 21 which is excellent for a new team! Looking for RSD or another team to roll into some races in ’09!
