Race Review...
Toad Hollow Enhanced Wilderness Adventure Duathlon
DETAILED EVENT WEBSITE
http://ambushadventuresports.com
March 11, 2006
Scioto Trail State Park, Near Chillicothe Ohio
The Event
On March 11 Ambush Adventure Sports put on another great AR: "The 2006 Toad Hollow Enhanced Wilderness Adventure Duathlon" (which surprisingly fits quite nicely on a tee-shirt). The event was a six-hour rogaine style adventure race consisting of two disciplines: mountain biking (with lots of hike-a-biking) and trail running/walking/slipping/crawling.
Approximately 25 CPs were scattered throughout Scioto Trail State park - 7 designated "foot-only" and the rest "bike-only". Teams chose whether to start off biking or on foot. There were two scorecards per team - one for the bike CPs and one for the foot CPs. Teams had to return to the Transition Area when switching from one discipline to the other and swap scorecards with a race official. That way each team had only one scorecard at a time, and it definitely added a twist to each team's strategy-setting.
Along with that were two special events: "memory orienteering", and an event to see how well you could [or could not] pace-count and shoot/follow bearings from one CP to another from a map devoid of all markings except the location of the CPs plus true north and 100 meter grids. Of course to make things interesting, there were a few twists, such as sealed maps in case you got completely lost (but if you returned with an unsealed map you got docked a bunch of points), and "exponential" event grading -- where if you got, say, one "special" CP you were awarded 20 points, but if you managed to punch every special CP you got something like a zillion points.
The cool thing about a Rogaine is the lack of a set course. Each team figures out their own strategy based on their own strengths, weaknesses, or whatever particular goals they might have that day.
The Venue
Scioto Trail State Park is located in a rugged, hilly area at the edge of the Appalachian foothills. It's a nicely compact state park of maybe 50 square kilometers, with an extensive network of single track and bridle trails. Being mid-March, the (mostly oak and hickory) hardwood trees were showing buds but were completely devoid of vegetation -- excellent conditions for reading terrain and spotting CPs!
The Experience
I pulled into the park at 9am, an hour before the race start, and most of the teams had already arrived. There were a bunch of teams - easily over 50 of them. In the parking lots I saw license plates from at least 5 states. Many of the competitors were pacing nervously around, working on bikes, or (of course) standing in the "pee" line. The weather was great -- mid-50s and overcast. As the 10am start approached the western sky drew darker and darker, which caused Brad Hunt - the event official, to joke that he was going to delay the start 5 minutes to coincide with the arrival of the storm.
The event started at 10 without a hitch. I entered it as a solo, and shortly before 10 I decided I was going to try it all on foot. I'm not exactly sure why, but it seemed like a good idea at the time, basically because, for the price of locking up my bike I got my hands on both score cards! Most teams started out on bikes, so I waited a few minutes before starting, figuring it was better to let the teams get a few hundred yards ahead of me rather than coming up fast behind me on a single-track. I had kind of a vague strategy of running until I couldn't run any more, then walking until I collapsed.
The CPs were spread out in two basic groups (at least according to my limited map-reading analysis). The main group covered about 12 square kilometers, with the Transition Area (TA) located in the middle of the eastern edge of this group, and a smaller group of 7 CPs located about 4 kms south of the TA (as the crow flies). I decided to forget about the southern group, which included one of the special event sites, and concentrate on the main group.
My first CP was up a steep single-track; most bikers were hike-a-biking up, and being without one I passed a lot of them along the way. One team even stopped and discussed ditching their bikes - just 10 minutes into the race. I was starting to think maybe I made a good decision.
When I got to the top I easily located the first CP. It's such a great feeling putting that first stamp on the scorecard! No shutout today! As I jogged along for the next hour, zig-zagging on muddy single-tracks and gravel roads to pick up 5 CPs - including a prized 80-pointer - I felt pretty good. The rain which had begun shortly after 10 was steady but not too bad. And the vibe was great! I felt like a kid who just got out of school!
I passed a couple of teams repeatedly and we shouted out hello's and words of encouragement to each other. And that's what I really love about these events. It isn't so much of a competition as it is a shared experience. I felt an amazing spirit of camaraderie. Everyone appears to be going off in different directions, at different speeds, and sometimes even using different modes of transportation. But every team is exactly where they planned to be -- on course and on schedule.
About 90 minutes in, I was going after my first foot CP, and after the low-hanging-fruit nature of the bike CPs (close to the road, minimal bushwhacking, easy to spot) it was a bit of a shock. It wasn't a difficult CP -- maybe 100 yards up a valley between two small ridges, but it seemed like I floundered around in the bush forever until I found it. And it was around this point that the rain shifted from "steady" to "hard". When I turned onto a bridle trail I found it to be a 3-foot wide path of swampy brown goo. More than once I almost had a shoe sucked off. I could only imagine how hard it would be to ride through this mess.
By the time I reached CP 60, which was the second-most eastern CP, it was 1:30 and I had been out of water, gels, and bars (Clif Nectar - my newest favorite) for at least an hour and I was starting to feel the effects. Besides that, I was completely saturated with rain, and I thought briefly about the irony of that: sodden exterior, thirsty interior. I decided the best action (after wringing-out a few mouthfuls of rain from my "rain-proof" technical shirt) would be a general bee-line back to the TA, picking up as many CPs as I could along the way. Then, I could restock and, considering how much time was left, plan my next move accordingly. I took a bearing from CP 60 to 53, and reckoned a 300 degree heading through the bush would get me to within eyesight of it. To my amazement I stumbled up the hill and ran right into it. I was so dumbfounded I honestly thought I hit the wrong checkpoint!
With the exception of diving down into the briars for CPs E and D, my "bee-line" back was along well-marked and relatively flat trails, and I should have made excellent time. But every time I tried to break into a jog my calves would cramp up with excruciating pain. So I shuffled down the road. One team slowed down and asked me if I was alright. With forced bravado I said, 'yeah man! howya doin yourself?' But the guy's voice sounded kind of alarmed. Jeez, I thought. I must look like hell.
Coming down a steep, mucky bridle path behind the TA, I stepped to the trail-side to avoid sinking up to my shins in muck and proceeded to snag my ankles in a tangle of greenbrier. My upper body momentum kept moving forward as my feet stuck firmly to their spot, and I tumbled head-over-heels, landing hard on my back and sliding quickly down the muddy trail. It was the fastest 50 feet I traveled all day.
Back at the TA at 3:15pm; it was still pouring down rain and I was amazed to see the parking lots were still full. Yes, one of the volunteers confirmed, only 2 teams have turned in their cards. Cool! Awesome! Hard core!
A banana, a liter of water, and a mouthful of dark-chocolate-covered-espresso-beans later, I set out for CP 'A'. Being how it was marked 'A', as in, 'this is the very first CP', and was only 1/2 km or so from the TA, I thought this one will be a gimmie. It wasn't difficult to find, but it looked as if someone had set off a small thermo-nuclear device in the forest, and then hung the CP marker in the middle of all the fallen trees. A logging area actually, but it looked to me like those pictures of the 1908 "Tunguska blast" in Siberia with an orange and white CP marker hanging on the lone surviving tree.
Punching my card I checked my watch: 3:35. Too early to check-in, plus those espresso beans were starting to kick-in, so I moved as fast as I could towards CP F, located maybe 1 km away and 100 ft up the side of a hill in a creek bed. As I reached the hill another team was running down to the finish. When they saw what I was doing one of them said, "Ooohh, I don't know if that's a good idea. It's late!" Flailing up the hill against the clock, scrambling over the wet, slimy obstacle course of fallen tree trunks, I reached it at 3:48, punched my card and headed back down. When I got to the road, about 1/2 km away from the finish, my watch said 3:55, and several other teams were running back. I broke into the best imitation of running I could muster. When I reached the finish I saw that the official clock read "5:58". Crap!! Damn!! How did it get that late?! Oh, wait... 5 hours, not 5 o'clock... I get it.
After the race, I sincerely enjoyed the post-event meal of gourmet weenies, and was entertained by the antics of the potato-chip-stealing-dog. And as if on cue, the rain stopped. According to my own quick tally, I covered about 24 km with over 6000 ft elevation change. No doubt many teams had a more efficient miles-per-checkpoint rating. I didn't do either of the special-O events, but I did manage to get 17 CPs on foot, felt like I gave "110 percent", left everything I had "down in the hollow", met a bunch of great people, and had a blast.
By the time I reached home in Columbus, the sun was out, the skies were bright blue, and the weather was a balmy 70. My wife met me at the door and said, "You guys had a beautiful day for a race!!" I absolutely agree.
Ken Eichman
We arrived at the Hash House to collect our map and scorecard. The object of this event was to find as many controls as possible before the six hour time limit was up. After studying the map we decided to do the foot section first. I was still getting gear ready when Brad (the race director) gave the 5 minute warning before the race start. We finished getting our gear ready and then the 30 second warning came; the race was about to begin. However, we had not traded our bike score card for the foot card, so we started the race by scrambling to the Hash house to get our foot card - SNAFU (Situation normal all f#c!ed up).
The warm air that greeted us when we arrived disappeared and like a ghost the cool damp air shadowed us. Then rain engulfed us; the once dry forest became a soggy bog that sucked our will. Despite being cold and soaked we continued on. Then we had a TARFU (Things are really f#c!ed up.) We dropped down into a reentrant to visit a control, but ended up jumping off the road too early and into the wrong reentrant. We corrected ourselves, but it cost us a little time. The control we were seeking was just ahead of us. I reached for the scorecard that I keep in bag around my neck when I found that it wasn't there, BOHICA (Bend over here it comes again). We backtracked and luckily found it only 50 yards back, saving us from a total competitive disaster. There were 7 foot controls all together. We decided to leave the last two and head to the Memory course.
On the Mem-O there were 5 controls that had to be found by memory. We were allowed to study a map as long as we wanted, but couldn't take it with us. After discussing strategy a bit, we finally agreed on our plan and went off into the forest, trying to remember the contours we had briefly studied. Fighting our way through green brier we managed to find all the controls and picked up 320 points.
Back at the transition area I changed out my completely soaked shirt, socks, and shoes; then we got on our bikes to finish up the task at hand: get all the bike controls we could and complete the X course. After visiting a bike control, we headed to the X course. We turned in our map and were given a map with controls with no contours. We shot our first bearing and headed off. It was obvious that the X course was strategically located in a very steep and rugged area covered with green brier for maximum pain and no pleasure. A few scars later, we completed the X course after having punched all 5 controls.
It was all downhill from here; literally. Although by this time, with all the rain, we were not only soaked again, we were covered in mud. We must have looked like wet turds as we zoomed downhill, visiting controls along the way. With only 15 minutes left, we biked hard and picked up a 30 pointer before heading back to the Hash House with 4 minutes to spare. It was cold, wet, and muddy day, but we were warm on the inside after completing this adventure; although those awesome chili dogs served up at the Hash house helped too!
Mark Stinson
While I am driving from Columbus to Chillicothe I am thinking "what a beautiful day, I thought they said rain". I pull up and there are racers everywhere. I felt nervous. This was my first 6-hour. I found my teammate, a seasoned veteran and accomplished trail runner. We touched-base, got organized, had our pre-race briefing and mapped our route I felt pretty good. The sky started to change and lost some of its beauty but I was nervously excited. The other racers were very friendly and encouraging and that was comforting. I had the feeling they wanted me to do well and have a good time. We decided we are going to sweep the foot cp's first. Our plan was to then try one of the "special" Ambush extras, the Memory-O. We thought we could do this and this would give us some nice points and after that we could get as many bike cp's as time would allow. In theory our plan was solid and we felt good about it. Within 1 hour we had two cp's logged, felt great even though the blue skies are a distant memory and the rain had greeted us. We managed to run this leg of the race with another two-person team, figuring four minds is better than two. The rain poured down we struggled to find our third cp, we passed the same location twice, found a private drive with posted "Beware of dog" signs, we believed this driveway should have been a forest service road, we ran further down the main road, found a trail, headed up only to see nothing that looked familiar with the map. The trails were getting messier and I thought how fortunate we were not on trying to ride on them. We deliberated and decide to let go of our 3rd cp, meaning finding the 4th would have only been time-wise by finding the third. We cut our losses, head back, passed the same location for the third time, jogging through pouring rain. We passed some teams on bikes, spirits seemed good, and we passed a couple of teams on foot, smiles everywhere. I thought, "wow we paid to do this". We grabbed cp’s 5-7 with relative ease. I did realize that for me it's nicer to race in early spring when the forest isn't too overgrown, though the brambles were everywhere. The bushwhacking wasn't bad, the warmer temperatures were a tremendous benefit though they didn't feel like the 67° the forecast said. We checked-in for the memory-o course, we parted ways with our other "teammates", with renewed optimism we maximized our score there. The thundershowers were scattered throughout the day and there were times when it's a really nice day to be out in the woods. Fortunately and unfortunately, we had 1 hour left for the bike leg of the race. We decided to end where we began, and headed up the first trail we'd run that day. By now the rain made the trails a muddy mess and biking up them was just not an option for us. I was wet, tired and heading up was not a fun time for me. My only consolation, this was it, up the hill, down the hill, we could call it a day. That hill seemed much steeper than I remembered but up we went, grabbed our final cp. We headed down but for some reason the trail didn't look familiar, we headed back up, my partner is much more comfortable with the map and all day had taken the time to educate me. This was not only a race for me but a true learning experience. We checked the map again, headed back down, only to turn and head back up. We were running out of time and if we didn't make a decision we would miss the cut-off time and lose our last cp. We picked a trail, headed down. Much to our dismay we picked the wrong way down and ended up on the other side, not where we dumped our bikes, we have 18 minutes left and a good distance to make up. We see another team heading up the hill just as we were coming down, I noticed they really looked good and were up and down and passed us on the road, they did take the time to share encouraging words as they go by me. We high tailed it, my partner is in much better condition than I am and she was very patient, she jogged backwards as I ran/walk, I probably could have crawled faster at that point. We finally made it to the finish, with three minutes to spare. What a great feeling!! What a day!! What a beautiful day!!! It was tough . . . it was frustrating . . . it was cold . . . it was muddy and it was wet . . . it was great!! I actually paid to do this . . . . ABSOLUTELY and would/will do it again. Thanks teammate, Noelle!!!
Toni Dunham
Toad Hollow Enhanced Wilderness Adventure Duathlon
Saturday March 11, 2006
Scioto Trail State Park & Forest
Chillicothe, OH
Team No Idea
Laurent Fournier and Susan Douglas
Laurent and I turned into the parking lot at the start/finish area right around 8:30 in the morning. We had been talking about doing this race for about a month primarily as a training day for the North American Rogaine Championships June 10-11 in Allegheny, New York. It had taken some persistence to convince Laurent that this event would be fun since he is living in the US with his wife while they are completing graduate school and does not have much equipment for events that involve more than strict land navigation. He did have a hybrid bike which we expected would work fairly well on the park trails given there was only a 30% chance of thunderstorms that day.
When we started through the check in process I was asked what my team name was. I had registered first, expecting to be solo, and Laurent had registered just the week before making us a team. I gave the volunteer a baffled look and said "I have no idea." She looked up our number, grinned and said "Exactly - you are team No Idea." Laurent had put "no idea" on the line asking for team name when he registered since he did not know if I had given a different team name. This whole event seemed to flow along like that - troubling moments getting resolved in quirky ways.
We spent the next hour making sure our tires were well inflated, checking over what we had packed in our bags, and talking to other racers. It became apparent by the cloud cover and moisture in the air that we would experience some rain that day. I made sure we had a convenient place at a picnic table with all our mapping tools before the prerace meeting. We received our maps, listened to Race Director Brad Hunt go over the rules and requirements, and then got to work planning our strategy.
Control points were spread out around the park and were to be punched on either a bike score card or a foot score card - not both at the same time unless a team designated themselves as "foot only" competitors. Laurent and I agreed that since our primary goal was to prepare for the rogaine championships and since we knew we were both strong on foot we would begin by clearing out all the foot points, come back to the transition area, do the special "memory o", then set out to get as many bike CPs in the available time left. We decided that since we had taken the trouble to haul our bikes all the way down to SE Ohio we were going to ride at least a little. We worked on the maps well as a team, discussing strategy and most efficient approach and using my map wheel to measure out distances for CPs that would be more difficult to find.
Brad started the race right at 10am and we set off with a small group of teams that apparently opted for the same course we were following. Our route took us up a single-track on a very steep hill which warmed me up right away. We went into the woods at an intersection in search of B. I held the punch card so when Laurent spotted the flag he pointed me in the right direction. Unfortunately I overshot the flag and had to backtrack to get it, surprising a team that had been behind us until then!
Over the next hour we were able to find the flags with little trouble. We could hear thunder approaching and it started to rain. Then it started to rain more. We were soaked and I was grateful to be working hard running and struggling up the steep hills as it kept me plenty warm. We had some trouble finding one point, E, placed in one of many small parallel reentrants - since we misjudged where to cut into the woods from the road. We shrugged off this mistake and got the rest of the foot points and kept moving at a quick pace.
We headed straight in to the memory O event since we had used up more time at that point than we wanted to and didn't take time to eat or change. It was still raining so any dry clothes would quickly get wet again anyway. We received the special punch card from the volunteer, put our regular course maps in a container where the volunteer told us to, and studied the memory-o map for some time - longer than I would have alone. Laurent was a very good team mate and insisted we take fifteen minutes to concentrate since getting all these cps would help us with points. We decided to start with the farthest and most difficult CP's since we would have a fresher memory with more details.
Laurent was exactly right - finding those flags was tough and knowing approximately where they should have been was key to finishing this section. We were supposed to follow the road until we reached a building (or at least it looked like a building on the map) and then take a trail on the left. So we ran under the drenching rain until the building - "wait a minute, there is no building there!" With no map to check we stopped for a while and looked around...just along the road was a small square area of pine trees.....this could have looked like a small building on the map...so we took the next left trail after this "building" and quickly got the first flag.
One problem we had was the continuous rain turned our punch card into a soggy mess of wood pulp. We decided to punch the last two cps on a Luna bar wrapper of mine and hope the volunteer would accept this as official (she did, thank you very much). We did this part in an hour and a half and were back to try the next section. Since it had been raining for most of the event we were concerned that the dirt trails would be treacherous going - especially with the poor traction on Laurent's bike - so we decided to stick to the fire roads and get as many points as we could on the special event.
We got on our bikes at 2:40 and had to reach our next goal, the x orienteering, by 3pm before that section closed down. We made it with a little time to spare and received a map with no features, just lines to navigate from point to point on compass bearings. We found the first flag fairly easily and then tried to follow a trail to get to the next one, since the trail was headed in approximately the same direction as the compass bearing. Laurent calculated it would be 250 double paces away and I could hear him counting off steps under his breath in French. This was a clever strategy that did not work! We ended up spotting the flag off in the distance. We finished off this section and found only 4 out of the total 5 flags within the time remaining so missed out 80 more points. We got on our bikes 15 minutes from the cut off and had to rush to make sure we would finish on time. We did have fun on the final, long downhill ride to the finish and got in with three minutes to spare.
In retrospect we would have done better by not biking at all since we passed several bike CPs during our initial, long foot navigation section. We were very successful with what is always my penultimate two goals...we finished and did not get hurt. I could not have had a better team mate as far as companionship and encouragement for the duration of a chilly, damp navigation event (we had great fun by belting out "Singing in the Rain" during the memory O). I'm also assured that we have a great team dynamic and some solid ideas regarding what our weak points are and how to correct for those.
I just received the final denouement for this whole international endeavor when I saw the online race results. It seems that we came in 21st place out of 54 teams overall - however - we were the second place team in our category of coed open teams. I find this amusing because usually I win categories by being among the fastest in the masters (over 40) bracket. Laurent - merci beaucoup!
Dave Diller/Team Die Another Day
Saturday dawned cool and dry. Okay, dryish, but good enough for me. With firm belief that Monday's long-range forecast for race day according to our local chief meteorologist and AccuWeather, using Live Doppler 2X , "the most powerful weather radar in the Miami Valley", had been "mostly sunny, upper 60's", I packed my bags, lubed the chain, and gave the trail shoes a dusting of silicone spray. I simply chose to ignore more current weather information which conflicted with my view of what should be. Regardless, I had paid, so I was committed. Following the deluxe Waffle House breakfast and prophylactic Tylenol chaser with My Team, Our Team, I was totally ready for this, my first adventure race. It was to be a great day in Toad Hollow. It was ripe for becoming an epic.
The pre-race activity was similar to other races I've encountered: a mostly male assemblage of gear, gears, and lycra with the sub-woofers rattling the license plates within a three car radius. To a newbie, the uniqueness of this event hit me as the 10 o'clock countdown finished with an unceremonious "Go!" and over one hundred racers scattered like a covey of quail on foot or bike in different directions. It reminded me of a flock of 5-year-olds racing without knowing where. We were off.
I immediately relished the freedom of not having to follow a herd of heels or wheels. We went where we wanted, or at least thought we wanted. Our route was our own: sometimes with others, intersecting paths or even going opposite directions knowing we were right, but most often just my team. My guys. Our Team. Us. We swiftly sashayed down bramble-lined trails with the wind in our hair...or was that pre-lightning static electricity? Oh forget it. No time for that. We have a race to ride, a checkpoint to punch, a Goo to suck, a thorn to pluck. Did I mention brambles? Onward.
The run/walks were the most memorable. Striving to keep it light, I wore the low cut socks and short lycra. Grams break backs. Ounces add up to pounds. There is no shoe too light. We're the type that cut off the handles of toothbrushes for backpacking. We count out toilet paper squares. The energy used in lifting ankle-protecting crew socks...let's see. That's 45 milligrams moved .78 meters 50 times a minute for 480 minutes, doubled, gives me...well, enough force to lift a Chevy...a 1972 Impala, at that. So, short socks were a no-brainer. Did I mention brambles? Let's just say that as the muscle soreness fades 3 days after this event, the countless ruby red slashes remaining on my ankles are proudly worn! A guy at the gym asked if I have a lot of cats. "Nope, but let me tell you of an adventure I just had..." A Ramble in the Brambles.
This race had it all...and more. Riding ups and downs, paved and rocky, more ups, wiping the rain from my glasses, more ups, and chewing on gritty water bottles. The Team. Our Team. It doesn't get much better than this, I say. Pushing the bike up, over, or across. Jumping the creek...oh heck, the shoes are wet...running the creek. Give it up for the Team. Our Team. There were episodes of hilarity, camaraderie, pathos, complicity, and all those other descriptors we haven't used since Mrs. Janecki's English 9 class. They swirled around Our Team like a cloud. It was a great day in Toad Hollow. A newbie no longer...I'll be back. I love an epic.