Training Log Archive: Bash

After midnight, as we continued riding down the slimy road in pouring rain, I noticed that I didn't have rear brakes on my bike anymore. Aieeeee. We had to stop to refill our Camelbaks at a creek (adding water purification drops), and Hound Dog dug out his tools to ensure that I wouldn't kill myself without brakes on the speedy paved road section.

We arrived at the bike drop around 1 a.m. and continued on foot to the top of the rappel. We met a couple of teams who had comments along the lines of "...the scariest thing I've ever done in my life...". In other words, exactly NOT the sort of thing you want to hear on your way to a 200' rappel site in pitch blackness on a stormy night. We hiked up and found the ropes people. Bad luck - there were two rappel ropes and we were assigned to the one that ended 10 feet above the bottom of the cliff. (Not that we realized that until we got down there!) The rappel would have been really beautiful in daylight, but at night I just focused on not kicking any of the loose rock onto my teammate below. When I got to the bottom of the rappel rope, the cliff didn't end and there was a knot in the rope. I had to climb up to detach myself, then Shifty helped me from below so that I didn't go sailing off the slippery cliff into oblivion. It was a poor excuse for a rappel rope - it cost us 45 minutes compared to what it would have taken on the other rappel rope - the one that went all the way to the ground. Luckily, nobody got hurt.

After a steep bushwhack down the hill and a brief road hike, we were back at our bikes. The next section was more snowmobile and ATV trails, then we arrived at the TA after 21 hours and 125 km of biking, definitely ready for a nap and some hot food. It was a great TA location in a state park, complete with laundry and overheated restrooms. Our support crew had hot ravioli, coffee and hot chocolate for us, amongst other things. Absolute heaven!

After a restless nap, we headed out on our trek. At last a chance to relax a bit and enjoy each other's company. After a short bushwhack, we were on a road that we could follow for a long time. We jogged, we walked, we chatted, we told jokes. Oh, and we walked 4 km out of our way before we met a team who told us they'd left the TA just twelve minutes ago. We'd been out for two hours - aaaack. We snapped back into attentiveness and retraced our steps. The next couple of CPs went well, then we had a nasty, steep bushwhack up the side of a big mountain with a fire tower. There were medics and race volunteers camped up there in the rain, and we learned that we'd dropped a couple of places. There was a road nearby and a trail to the top, so most teams had missed out on the tiring bushwhack that had taken so much out of us. It was now just after midnight. Rats.

I'm not sure if it's fair to enter an expedition adventure race into Attackpoint, but WOW it sure felt like a lot of training, so here goes...

Appalachian Extreme is a 78-hr, 200-mile adventure race that travels through northern Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. I raced with the Terranauts, a team we've known since we started adventure racing. Their regular female teammate had surgery and they needed a sub. When they first talked to me, I suggested several other women, i.e. faster ones. Eventually it became clear that the serious female athletes were all busy that weekend, so it was back to me and I finally agreed to do it - with more than a little trepidation. I needn't have worried as much as I did. Skidder, Shifty and Hound Dog were great fun to race with, and they took excellent care of me out there.

The race started at 8 a.m. with teams running to the Connecticut River with heavy canoes and kayak paddles. We jumped in for a 4-hr whitewater paddle. Our Trayling-trained team was passing people on the straight stretches and holding our own in the whitewater. I kept waiting for the rock that would finally tip us, but luckily we just kept sliding over them. After a couple of hours in the stern, I got a sharp pain in my forearm which I now know is Intersection Syndrome. It's a tendon inflammation that comes from turning your wrist down and in, which doesn't happen in normal kayak paddling, but I did that when I steered the canoe around river bends and into rapids, which took a lot of my strength. This may turn into a big problem because I'm supposed to keep it immobilized for several weeks, but I have two adventure races in that time. :-(( For now, I'll keep my fingers crossed - or at least I would, if I could move my right hand without intense pain.

We got off the water 11 minutes behind the leaders and had a reasonably efficient 20-minute transition to biking. We were heading out to spend the night in bad weather on a maze of ATV and snowmobile trails, so we needed to be sure that our food, lights and clothing layers were all in our packs. Our awesome support crew (Bent and two partners of other teammates) had things well-organized and booted us out of there as quickly as they could.

The rain started almost immediately - and continued for most of the next 3 days. Not that there wasn't any variety in the weather - sometimes it was windy, sometimes it was cold, sometimes it was $%&*!# cold, etc. We headed into the poorly-mapped network of ATV trails. At first they were gravel tracks, but they eventually deteriorated into the usual deep muck with rocks. There was plenty of bike pushing and carrying, interspersed with a few pleasant bouts of actually sitting on the seat and turning the pedals. What a concept!

The good news is that Skidder aced the nav in this section, so we were on track to get out near roads by dark. Yahoo! One of the final CPs before the road was at the top of a windy mountain pass and we made the mistake of changing into our extra layers there, which made us cold before a long descent. On the positive side, the steep rocky mud on the trail down was scary enough to keep our hearts pumping faster, which warmed us up some. At midnight on Saturday, we were riding in driving rain on a slimy dirt road, eternally grateful to the blessed inventors of Goretex and fleece.

Appalachian Extreme 4-day expedition adventure race

Final test of my bike before Appalachian Extreme. The new Geax Mezcal semi-slick tires climb hills pretty well but slip around more, so it takes more effort. However, a couple of times when I thought that a particular hill was much harder to do with these tires, I reached the top, then noticed that I hadn't changed into the small chain ring. So the tires should be fine for the race.

As perhaps the only cyclist on earth who has completed more engineering degrees than successful bike repairs, I was very proud to get my new bike seat installed and transfer my old seat bag over. It's a tricky balance to get the seat tilted just right - somewhere between "oh no, all my weight is on the handlebars" and "yikes, over 4 days, that position is really going to cause friction on my, um, anatomy".

A long "to do" list today! That's OK, I needed the rest.