Odyssey Adventure Race 3/11/2000

We arrived in Big Island, Virginia on Saturday March 11^th around 2 in the afternoon.  Even though the official start time wasn’t until 8pm, we knew we needed quite a bit of time for preparation, as well as time for the race coordinators to do the mandatory gear checks.  Seven of us made it down from Michigan for the race.  There were three teams of two; Dick West and Pete Waters, Amber Walerski and Chris Williamson, and lastly Tim Morley and myself were Team PeopleSoft in honor of our first race sponsor.  We also had Mark Melville running the race solo, and a friend Kim Parrott who came along in case of an emergency and for support.  This was going to be the first adventure race for most of us.  It was the first race for both Tim and I, and we were eagerly awaiting the start even though the weather reports were rather ominous.  Rain and snow were possible, with predicted temperatures in the low 20’s at base elevation.  This would put us in the low teens in the mountains, which, coupled with the wet conditions, made ice and hypothermia very eminent dangers.

Here is a picture of most of us that made it down for the race.  Starting from top row left and going clockwise: Kim Parrott - Race Support then racers Dick West, Tim Morley, Amber Walerski, Chris Williamson, Adam Pastula, and Marc Melville.

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Around 5:30pm we had finished with our gear preparation and were sitting down for our last chance for a good warm meal when it started to thunderstorm.  Around two hours before start time, we were given the maps for the course, six large topographical maps.  Teams were frantically planning their course strategy, marking maps, and re-gearing.  The paper maps, which were sometimes faded in spots and definitely were not constructed for rainy conditions, were the first challenge.  When the start time drew near, the racers all lined up; eager to begin.  At 8pm sharp we started the course, still in the pouring thunderstorm.

The first leg was on foot and it took us up into the Blue Ridge Mountains; way up into the Blue Ridge Mountains.  The trek was around 6 miles long, with around 2000 foot elevation gain.  The total gain/loss for the trek was probably closer to 3000 feet because of the steep inclines and declines that were encountered on the arduous muddy trail.  Our feet were soaked from the start because we had to cross several creeks, and on many occasions, the trail we were walking on had water flowing down from the rains.

The glow sticks that marked the first checkpoint were a welcome sight.  It was a little discouraging to find out we were near the back of the pack at the first checkpoint, 35^th place.  The long uphill hike was also taking its toll, especially on my partner who was breathing heavy and battling a cold.  The five-mile trek to the next checkpoint had abundant steep inclines and declines that seemed to set our leg muscles on fire.  On the plus side, the rains had stopped for a few hours, but were soon replaced by poor visibility from the clouds we were walking through and from snow.  After the second checkpoint, race strategy came into play.  The route to checkpoint 3 was supposed to be a seven-mile hike that was mostly a gradual uphill to the Blue Ridge Parkway.  We chose to take a gamble and take an old logging road deep into the forest, then bushwhack up the steep hillside to reach the Parkway.  The gamble paid off and we reached checkpoint three in 23^rd place.  Unfortunately, the steep climb aggravated a hip injury that I had sustained in a playoff hockey game on the previous Wednesday.  I could only move my leg about six inches, and searing pain was shooting through my leg with each step.  The weather kept getting worse, it was bitter cold, and the snow turned into a freezing rain.  Checkpoint three was a transition from foot travel to biking.  I was close to throwing in the towel as we were putting on our biking shoes in the cold rain, but I decided that I was going to at least make it to the fourth checkpoint, no matter what.  I took some ibuprofen and applied some analgesic sports crème, but was secretly hoping the bike ride would take some pressure off of my hip.

The bike ride to checkpoint four was intense.  It was an eight mile gradual uphill followed by a five mile downhill.  The long uphill actually took us to Virginia's highest point on the parkway at around 4000 feet, and was a route that was passed up by the Tour DuPont bicycle stage race because it was too steep.  Whether it was from the medication, sheer determination, the bike seat taking weight off my hip, or some combination of those; my leg was feeling better.  I wish I could say the same for my partner.  The strenuous activity took its toll on him and he vomited before we hit the summit and ended up walking most of the incline.  On the plus side, the weather had cleared up, and we had a great view of the stars, and the lights from some nearby towns.  After hitting the summit, we FLEW down the road into Check Point 4.  Our damp clothes froze from the frigid temperatures and our hands went numb.  We hit over 50 miles an hour our mountain bikes on the descent.

Out of checkpoint 4, we rode uphill on a logging road for about two more miles until we reached a gate and a steady downhill on a two track.  We met two other teams at an intersection who were trying to decide which way to go.  This was just before dawn, and we were feeling great about making it through the night.  The directions had us going left on a longer uphill loop, but we decided on trying another short cut to the right.  After about a mile and a half uphill walk/ride up past a cemetery, we entered the woods again and bike-whacked for about a mile until we reached an old hiking trail that wasn’t on the map.  We followed this trail for a bit hoping that it would meet up with one of the roads that were on the map.  Unfortunately, it started going west when we wanted to be heading northeast. We backtracked along the trail and bike-whacked more until we reached an old logging road that was on our map.  This road intersected the paved road we were looking for. After about another mile uphill, we arrived at a campground that marked our planned water stop.  We replenished our water supply, took a breather and grabbed a bite to eat.  From here it was another seven miles to checkpoint 5, many of which on steep uphill roads that switchbacked several times.  Tim had to walk his bike most of the way since his legs were spent, and I had to bike because hiking would aggravate my hip.  To compensate for this, I rode up a short distance and used the time for Tim to catch up to survey the map to see if we could use any other shortcuts and to gain familiarity with the rest of our course.  All the while, I made sure not to let Tim out of my sight and didn’t break the "team members staying within 100 yards of each other" rule for safety.

After checkpoint 5, the route followed the ridge along an abandoned logging road until it ended and there was an official bike-whack.  We followed our compass and many tracks down into a ravine.  It turns out that most of the teams had taken this route and it was the wrong route.  We had to carry our bikes along a creek, through heavy brush, and down a five foot waterfall to get to the road where we hit the next transition from bike to foot.  We hiked another couple of miles down a road to get to another transition, the paddling section.

At checkpoint 6 we started the fifteen-mile river section in our canoe.  The day cleared up and it was great to get off of our legs and use our upper body muscles instead.  Most of the river rapids weren’t too bad, but the wind had become quite fierce, with gusts over 30 miles per hour.  This had us fighting to keep our canoe in a straight line as we were being blown sideways. 

The river was swollen and running larger than normal due to all the rain.  The race crew was supposed to redirect us at two rapids.  We came up on a spot that looked pretty easy, but turned out to be a funnel down into a chute with one of the rapids.  A team had decided to try it, and the people that were supposed to warn us about the rapid were trying to help the capsized racers.  We ended up hitting this class 3 hydraulic about 8 miles into the paddle, filling up with water, and burying the canoe.  We had to float for over 10 minutes in the 40 degree water, bouncing off rocks in the rapids, until we were able to find a grouping of rocks that we could reach and pull our canoe out of the water.  To fight off hypothermia, we ate the rest of our food and ran circles on the rocks, which raised our body temperature.  Since the wind was still whipping, we needed to get to the shore for some cover so we could try to dry off.  We then emptied the canoe, and paddled over to the shore where we wrung out our sopping clothes and ran some more to again try to increase our body temperatures.  We managed to get our body temperatures under control and hit the seventh checkpoint during a portage around a dam. 

Here we learned that many of the teams had hit the same hydraulic and also swam.  Some people couldn’t get their body temperature back up and were treated for hypothermia.  Our spirits were still high because of making it this far, but time was becoming critical as we needed to hit the climbing section before 5pm or we would be disqualified.  Since there was still a bit of paddling left, we bared down and ended up hitting the climbing section at 4:30pm.  After gearing up for climbing and reaching the summit, which was also the eighth checkpoint, we were informed that we were the last team to be allowed to make it through.  This inspired us to get in gear so we could make the finish line by the 8pm cutoff.  We took another shortcut to try to make some time, but this one ended up at a cliff.  We lost valuable time and had to backtrack to a different trail section and eventually made it to checkpoint 9.