WARNING: NO UPDATES – THIS ONE IS 100% DIGRESSION, SO FEEL FREE TO CHECK OUT NOW (HEY, I’VE BEEN STUCK IN A HOTEL ROOM IN NYC ALL DAY—WHAT D’YA EXPECT?) …
ADVENTURE RACING. Yeah, that’s right, adventure racing. From the beginning, when I first started letting friends and family know what was happening with me, I heard parallels being drawn between this journey and some of the escapades I’ve been lucky enough to have over the years—climbing, running, exploring, drifting aimlessly, that sort of thing. I apologize for the Dos Equis “The Most Interesting Man in the World” sound that has. For the record, I’m only the 4th most interesting man in my own house, behind a 14-year old and two dogs who take turns eating each other’s poop. Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes, adventure racing. There is an undeniable connection between that particular pastime of mine and the predicament I currently find myself in. In fact, navigating the past four weeks (mentally, emotionally, logistically, physically) has made me realize just how much this obscure sport has meant to me and just how many lessons (I hope) I’ve been able to draw from it.
For those of you who don’t know what adventure racing is, here’s the skinny: you show up some place in the woods, get a set of maps right before the race, plot your course, then proceed to run, bike, and paddle (but really, they can throw anything at you) as you navigate through a series of checkpoints (CPs). Whichever team/soloist has the most CPs and makes it back to the finish line in under the allotted time, wins. As to what order you get each CP, and what route you choose to take between CPs, most of that’s up to you to figure out (hint: if you suck at navigating with a compass, you will suck at adventure racing). One more detail that sets adventure racing apart from other types of endurance events: although some races let you store limited supplies at transition areas (say between a trekking section and a biking section of the race), for the most part you have to carry everything, including food and beverage, on your back. This really isn’t a big deal in shorter “sprint” or “sport” races (think 3-12 hours), but when you stretch it to 24 hours or longer (“expedition” races), things can get dicey. Cue chaos: racers get spread out over hundreds of square miles of wilderness terrain, racers get lost, racers break down, teammates turn on each other, grown men and women cry—it’s all really a lot of fun.
The first 24-hour race I did was in 2010, and it was a doozy. The annual Odyssey One-Day AR took place in the high borderlands of southwest Virginia/West Virginia. I was still young enough (and stupid enough, I suppose) that I really wanted something epic, and the race website promised just that: 40+ teams from 8 states and Canada, 100-125 miles of nasty terrain, 25,000+ feet of elevation change, etc. etc. As it turned out, the 2010 edition would, in fact, live on in infamy. I’ll put it to you this way, it’s the only race or event I’ve ever heard of where the race organizer sent out an open, post-race apology letter to the participants.
Lest you think I’m a complete moron, let it be said I did train very hard for that race. I piled on mileage like never before. My long training days grew to 70+ miles on the bike followed by 20+ miles running. Once a week, instead of going to bed, I’d walk out my front door and hit the dirt roads, stumbling around until the sun came up just to get use to, well, stumbling around in the dark all night—a skill every good adventure racer must master.
I knew I was in trouble when I met my fellow racers at check-in, the morning of the race. Gone were the slightly-soft, middle-aged, weekend warriors—a class of athlete I fit smackdab in the middle of. In their place was a mixed bag of military personnel, young hotshots, and hard-core elite racers (aka Adventure Racing Nerds) who were racing to acquire enough points to get them into the national championship race later in the year. Most teams were decked out in matching uniforms and sported gear I hadn’t even thought of. My uniform was a pair of running shorts, a t-shirt I’d ripped the sleeves from, and a head wrap made out of one of said sleeves. I mixed and mingled, chatting up my competition, and I distinctly remember the weird looks I got whenever I mentioned that this was my first 24-hour race, and I’d elected to enter as a soloist. In short, I had search-and-rescue victim written all over me. But the scale of the impending disaster didn’t really hit home until I took in the multiple 3’ x 4’ topo maps at check-in. The combined area of the maps encompassed close to 900 square miles of dense, rugged terrain. Let the crying begin.
The first half of the race went something like this … The race started at noon, and it was really hot (like triple-digit hot). I ran out of water. There were no water sources to be found (high elevations, stretch of dry weather). I dragged my bike through thick brush, up and over a couple of mountains, for 5 or 6 hours straight. I cussed a lot. I hooked up with a team of 4 young Naval Academy grads who’d recently returned from tours overseas. We got lost together. I got separated from the Navy boys. I got lost some more on my own. The sun went down. I cussed some more. I ran back into the Navy boys again, but one of them cramped up, and I had to move on without them.
Then, sometime just before midnight, a Jeep-full of locals drove up beside me as I pedaled up the longest freaking hill on the east coast. My new friends drove along beside me, slurping beers and making fun of me. They drove on. Then they came back. Then they started shooting handguns for fun (yes, this really happened). I got mad and cussed a whole lot more. The locals drove away again (they couldn’t figure out why I was so irritable). Then they came back. I killed my lights, ditched my bike, and dropped into the woods like Rambo (but without the badass skills). I waited. I cussed some more, but under my breath this time. I decided maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if they shot me after all, went back to my bike, and started pedaling again.
I never saw the Jeep again, and by 1 a.m., I was back in the woods, picking my way up a bouldered ATV trail towards CP3 (for those of you who know nothing about adventure racing, being 12 hours into a race and still looking for CP3 is not a good thing). But worse still, the cutoff for CP4 was 2 a.m.—it was the first manned CP in the race, and if racers didn’t check in by 2 a.m. they could face disqualification. Not even Rambo himself could make it to CP3 then all the way to CP4 in time. I was a dead man walking. Before I’d gotten married, started a family, and began to soften, I’d run the Pikes Peak Ascent multiple times, several marathons, countless mountain trail races and road races, made a few winter ascents of Colorado fourteeners, and climbed at high altitudes in Africa and South America. I wasn’t particularly “good” at any of that stuff, but I’d at least learned a few things along the way—principally how to suffer a lot. But this was beyond physical pain. This was something different altogether. This was abject failure. Defeat. Disgrace. Humiliation.
I dropped my bike, stood up straight and peered into the darkness. I spun around slowly, illuminating the so-called trail and surrounding woods with the shaft of my headlamp. It was a full moon, and when I cut off my headlamp and bike lights, I realized it was nearly bright enough to navigate without them. I took in the silence. I hadn’t seen a single other racer since leaving the Naval Academy boys over three hours earlier, and it occurred to me that maybe I’d plotted the CP3 coordinates wrong—that I was indeed exactly where I thought I was, but that I’d simply marked the wrong peak on the map when I’d plotted the CPs before the race. What did it matter, anyway? I was done. I stumbled off the trail, found a clear spot in the trees, and laid down in the brush. It was over, just like that. No, I did not actually cry (maybe a few whimpers). But I definitely prayed. Oh yeah, man, I prayed. Not for safety or protection—I wasn’t in any real danger—or even for help exactly. I just prayed for … mercy, in whatever form God wanted to grant it. And then I let that sucker go. By sucker, I mean everything: control, ambition, pride, any notion of self, the whole ball of wax. And, as much as I hated the thought of failing—of quitting (I’d been pathetic in more than a few races in my past, but I’d never quit)—it felt exquisitely good to let go.
I woke up 20 minutes later, rolled over in the dirt, and felt the first flicker of resolve. Maybe they’d DQ me at CP4, or maybe they wouldn’t—it didn’t matter, I had a new plan. I could live with a disqualification, but quitting outright was bound to leave a scar. No, if I could just keep moving for 24 hours straight, it would be a victory of sorts. No matter how slow I moved or how pathetic I was, I was going to keep racing until 12 noon the next day, at which point I would look at my maps, find the most direct road route back to the race headquarters, and hitchhike.
Well, I found CP3, then CP4. There was no fanfare, just one guy sleeping in a lawn chair. He spilled the beer in his lap when I woke him up. He said “this race is a mess,” then gave me two options: stay in the race, but skip ahead to CP9, or quit, drink a warm beer, and wait for someone to come pick me up when the sun came up. If the beer had been cold maybe I’d have bagged it right then … but alas it wasn’t. So, I laid out my maps, plotted a course to CP9, and got back on my bike.
Not long after that decision, my feet began to disintegrate. There’s really no other way to put it. I’d changed socks and duct-taped the blisters as they’d formed, but after 14 hours of sweating and countless stream crossings, they’d basically turned into mash potatoes (see pic). But I had another, equally worrisome problem. Somewhere along the way, some unseen person had held a blow torch to my nether regions—think diaper rash bad enough that blood begins running down your inner thighs (no, there’s no pic for that one). When I stood on the pedals to take the pressure off my seat, my feet screamed. When I sat back down, my ass bellowed. It wasn’t long before I forgot about my pledge to race for 24 hours, no matter the consequences. I just wanted to see the sun. If I could just endure—just keep moving until the sun came up—everything would be okay. The madness of a nightmare always fades with the morning light, does it not?
And so, I pedaled on. Kind of. The miles crept by. 10, then 20, then 30, on my way to CP9. When the sun did come up, I found myself on a paved, backcountry road cut through a beautiful valley of farmland. I gingerly crept along on the uphills, and coasted down the long, winding declines. I passed a small church on the side of the road with a cemetery cut into the hilltop above it. I took in the undulating carpet of green grass on either side of me and the smell of the sun warming the earth, and I was indeed okay. I was a hitching zombie atop a mountain bike, yet I was filled with that unique brand of optimism birthed only with the passing of a great ordeal. I’d made it through the night. It would all be over in a matter of hours, and suddenly ANYTHING seemed possible. When I returned home, I’d finally edit those novels I’d written, or teach myself guitar, or make plans to move the whole family to Italy the next summer. Ah hell, I’d do it all!
When I finally reached CP9, I was greeted by a scrambling crew of race volunteers. Walkie-talkie chatter filled the air. I listened to the reports. The race really was a mess. Racers were spread out all over the place, many had quit and were hunkered down at CPs, some were just unaccounted for altogether. They’d cancelled the entire river section of the race because no teams had made the established cutoff time. I was given options again: quit, get fed, and take a van ride back to the start/finish, or get in another van and be dropped at CP13. Wait? I was still officially in the race, and most teams had either quit or were destined for disqualification if, and when, race organizers found them? CP13 here I come, baby!
The van dumped me off at a public boat ramp along the river, and I pulled out my maps for the umpteenth time. After a few minutes of studying, my mission was clear: find, then follow, a remote mountain trail roughly 25 miles to CP14, which was a mere 3 miles from CP15, and another half-dozen to the finish. Of course, nothing in this race had been or would be simple, and getting to the trail was no different. Thirty minutes later I reached a dead-end. I knew where I was, and I knew where the trailhead was, but the only route between the two crossed what looked to be private property—an adventure racing no-no. I studied the map over and over again, but there simply was no way to get there. I was a man dying of thirst in the middle of an undrinkable ocean.
Just as I began scouring the countryside for the closest cabin or house at which I might take refuge, a 4-person coed team came up on me from behind. I was too tired to talk—the best I could manage was a nod and a grunt—but they hardly noticed me anyway. Although we’d arrived at the same locale at the same time, I had no doubt they’d bagged twice as many CPs as me. I was a hacker, reduced to survival mode, this team was still clearly in it to win it. I hovered close by, trying to take in the details of their conversation. They were in the same predicament as me, trying to get to the trail without crossing private property, but I couldn’t catch what they were saying. As they began folding up their maps and mounting up, I was left with only one option. I would have to try to tail them, keeping them in sight until we reached the trail. To be clear, this isn’t cheating. Racers regularly share information out on the course, but when one team isn’t in the giving mood, or you get a gaggle of lead teams competing hard with each other, it becomes a cat-and-mouse game. If you don’t want someone following you, you simply outrun them. On the flip side, if you’re the follower, you’re effectively giving up navigational control by trying to tail—you’re trusting that the other guys know where they’re going.
All I knew at that point was that I had no freaking idea where I was going—at least not how to get there without crossing private property. And so, I gave it all up over the next 30 minutes. I shoved the pain in my feet and ass into the deep recesses of what was left of my mind and redlined it. Whenever the studly team disappeared around a corner or over a hill, pure panic propelled me forward. Truth be told I have no idea to this day whether we crossed private property or not, but I do know we threw our bikes over more than one barbed-wire fence in the mad chase to the trail.
Two hours up the trail (the 4-person team was long gone at that point), I stopped when I caught myself whimpering out loud. In a contest of torture techniques, it was a dead-even tie between sitting on the bike seat and standing on what was left of my feet. Was it possible to crawl the remaining fifteen miles, dragging my bike behind me? I sat down beside the trail and considered the possibility I might actually need rescue. How and when would that even happen? Surely at some point the race organizers would figure out I was unaccounted for and come looking for me. But what would they do, carry me out on a stretcher? Fly in a helicopter? I considered the degree of humiliation that would accompany such a fate. What would the report say? Not that I’d gone out like a man, with a broken leg or crushed skull, but that I’d suffered extremely sore feet and 3rd degree chafing of my goodies? No, rescue was neither practical nor acceptable. I rose once again.
When the downhill section of the trail finally came, I coasted side-saddle as best I could, bouncing over the rough terrain with a sing-song of moans and yelps. When the trail at last cut across a wide stream, I didn’t plop down beside it and begin filtering water, I plunged into it and lay back, letting the cool running water bring temporary relief to my raw spots. I was in this position, floating on my back in the shin-deep water, when another 4-person coed team came hammering down the trail behind me. Within moments, the stream was full of bodies, the air filled with cries of relief. One-by-one, we each crawled out of the stream and began filling water bottles and bladders. I was still pumping my filter when the team picked up their bikes again. They thought they were in the lead, and I considered telling them about the team I’d trailed earlier, but I couldn’t summon the energy. But then the last man stopped as he crossed the stream. He looked back at my bike.
“Is that yours?” he asked, with an air of superiority.
I was delirious, but the stupidity of the question registered, nonetheless. There’s no one else here. Of course it’s my bike. Then the true meaning of the guy’s question hit home. My Cannondale was a cheap, over-the-counter model I’d bought at a big-box store over a decade earlier, and it had been reduced to jalopy status over the years. I’d cursed it countless times over the previous 24 hours or so. But I’d ridden it, pushed it, dragged it, and carried it every step of the way. I’d taken it this far, and it had taken me. It may have been a banger, but we were just right for each other, and the last thing I needed was some jackass looking down his nose at it.
“You’re not in the lead,” I said.
“What?” the guy asked.
“You’re LOSING,” I said. “Big time. There’s a team ahead of you, and they looked REALLY STRONG. You’d better hammer it.” The man began shouting to his teammates as he splashed through the stream. I didn’t realize it then, but I owed the guy a thanks. Throughout the race I’d felt the rush of relief, inspiration, or divine grace at the precise moments when I needed them most. Now I was just pissed. The final fuel to carry me home would be indignation.
I crossed the finish line exactly 25 hours and 34 minutes after the start, way past the 24-hour cutoff to be an official finisher. Once again, there was no fanfare or crowd of backslapping spectators. There were only a few weary volunteers and a spattering of racers tending to wounds and packing up gear. In the days to come, when the race results were posted, I would see that I’d been given time credit for the period I waited at CP 9 and the transport time to CP 13. My official time would go down as 24 hours 17 minutes. In all, 35 of the 41 teams had quit racing somewhere along the way and were given the dreaded DNF (Did Not Finish) designation. I was one of the fortunate six teams to finish, but only three teams “officially” finished in under 24 hours. Myself, another soloist, and a 4-person team were recognized as “unofficial” finishers—we’d picked up all the mandatory CPs but had missed the 24-hour cutoff. In the post-race newsletter sent out to all the racers, the organizer apologized for going “old-school on this one.” He admitted to having “returned to his roots,” which, he said, had previously been to put on the hardest races in the country. He wrote, “I just had to get this one out of my system,” implying that racers aren’t the only ones who grapple with inner demons. To my surprise he also gave a shout out to me personally, explaining that, with my time credit, I’d come within 17 minutes of officially winning the solo division and 4th place overall.
Seventeen minutes. I considered all the stretches of time I’d stopped racing to rest or tend to my wounds. And what about the time I’d wasted standing in the woods waiting for the gun-toting jackasses in the Jeep to reappear? But the one stretch of stasis that stood out above all others was the twenty minutes I’d lain down in the woods beside the ATV trail. I’d spent that time asking God to grant me mercy, letting go of any notion I was in control, and nodding off. It would be easy to say if I hadn’t stopped then, I would have made it in under 24 hours. But the truth is, if I hadn’t stopped then—if I’d been stronger and faster to begin with—I most assuredly would not have finished the race at all. If I’d made the 2 a.m. cutoff at CP 4, I would have set out on foot for the orienteering CPs, which would have consumed a great deal of time and energy. In fact, if I’d headed further into the bush, on foot, trying to navigate with a compass in the middle of the night, in the state I was in . . . well, we’ll never know, but chances are I would have hit the canvas for good at some point. I’d prayed to God for mercy, and by stopping me in my tracks for those twenty minutes, that was exactly what He’d granted me.
I still have a hard time explaining to people what adventure racing is, or why it’s good for the soul (at least mine). For many of us, adventure in any form wains with the onset of adulthood. When’s the last time most of us went out and played kick-the-can at night? Or walked more than ten feet off-trail in the woods? Even camping seems to be a dying art. Most of us are too busy making the money that fuels the lives we’ve built for ourselves, paying bills, getting our cars fixed, keeping our marriages spinning, and trying to raise kids in a world that increasingly makes little sense, for adventure. This is not meant to disparage mine or any other person’s life. But we need adventure. We thrive on it. We’re built to move, to solve problems, to explore the world beyond well-groomed roads and trails. We’re designed to get lost and find our way back again.
In the years before and since the 2010 Odyssey One Day AR, I have completed 30 adventure races. I’ve finished courses in as little as three hours, and several in more than twenty-four. I’ve raced with my wife, three of my kids (if you count racing with Christie when she was pregnant with Tegan!), my brother, and a slew of friends—some I’ve known since my youth, others are more recent additions to my life. In fact, I’m guessing I’ve taken to the woods with fifteen or twenty people who might be reading this post (you know who you are!). And, of course, I’ve raced alone. I’ve finished near the bottom of some races (54th place one time), won my division in a few, and won one race outright. I’ve gotten desperately lost, napped in cemeteries, been chased by packs of dogs, gotten knocked out of canoes by fallen trees, and thrown from my bike too many times than I can remember. I’ve skidded my bike to a stop on top of a rattlesnake, almost been zapped by lightening, and fallen asleep going twenty miles an hour down a steep mountain road. Good stuff, really.
But no matter the distance, no matter the venue, no matter my companions, and no matter the degree of calamity, there are a few common threads that connect just about every race experience I’ve had. Not long after the start of each race my field of vision narrows. Any thoughts of work, worries about the kids, or stress over the checkbook, fade to black, as life itself is smelted to the pure, present moment. Later on, often after reaching a particularly diabolical CP or simply hitting an easy stretch of the course, a sense of peace and optimism—the thought that anything I might dream up is possible—washes over me like a soft wave. And inevitably (especially in the long races), I reach a point of letting go. In the midst of some catastrophe—there is always at least a minor catastrophe—I give up the reigns, humbly ask for mercy, and soak up the sweet sensation of taking things as they come.
Well, here we are, about to embark on another race. Check-ins tomorrow at 10 a.m. Time to get the maps, plot our course, and get rolling …
Peace.