Training Log Archive: glewis

Shenandoah Epic - 2nd Coed 3/4 and 3rd Overall with Kate, Evan, and Tom.

Too many iterations of this team to remember over the last year, but we finally settled on this only a week or so out. I drove Tom down where we met Kate and Evan at Downriver for a bike drop before converging on Caroline Furnace, serving as HQ for the weekend. A summer camp might be the perfect place to stage a race. We got the maps in the evening and had a chance to go over them a few times. We had prepared for an 18 hr race, but the maps made it seem like it might be a bit longer than that. Our plan had always been to push hard to try to maximize the daylight that we got for the bike legs. If we sped up more than the estimates, we would have daylight to start the final bike leg.

With 2 sets, I took the lead and Tom took the backup. The race was laid out rather linearly, with only a few sections where route choice was available. The nav itself didn't seem very challenging, but there were a few spots where newer teams would definitely struggle. I headed to bed in my tent around 10, but my sleep was rather poor. I was not prepared for how cold it was, and I shivered in my puffy jacket and sleeping bag all night. When I woke up the next morning, I felt rested enough for the race. Some putzing, breakfast, bin and paddle bag dropoff, and we were ready for the prologue right before 9. Thankfully the temps had warmed to where a jersey and arm warmers were perfect.

Prologue
We got a map of the camp and had to visit 7 different fire areas to retrieve an item. We returned those to the start area afterwards. We crossed paths with 100s of people here, and found ourselves leaving after ~30minutes, following the "nature trail" out towards the main road.

Leg 1 - Trek
This leg took us up and over the Massanutten Ridge to the Shenandoah River. The estimate was 3.5 hours, but the leg itself seemed shorter. We moved with as much purpose as possible, trying to no overexert ourselves on the big climbs this early. We arrived at 1-01 five minutes back of the lead teams, and traded places with Full Send and UNE for most of this section before letting them pull a bit ahead at the end. We worked well as a team and navved it cleanly. Kate was feeling her first race in 18 months, but did a great job offloading some gear and receiving a tow. Our pace wasn't hindered at all. The only mistake in this section was descending from 1-05 straight down the steep hillside, which probably cost a few minutes in that it was incredibly inefficient. Looks like the teams ahead of us returned to the trail by a quicker route. It did feel like Rootstock and Jesse Spangler were a bit further ahead, but I was surprised that we were a full 20 minutes back at the next TA. From my perspective, it seemed like they had already put an insurmountable gap into us - it's tough to catch them when you can't see them.

Leg 2 - Paddle/Trek/Paddle/Trek/Paddle
Quick transition to the boats. Evan and myself in one and Tom and Kate in the other. I navved from the stern with the topo map, and Tom did the same from his stern with the river guide. This strategy worked really well for us. We realized quickly after we got on the river that there was a speed imbalance, so we set up a tow between the two. It took quite some time to get it sorted out efficiently, but once we did it was a good strategy and we were significantly faster with it. Kate was excellent about disconnecting and reconnecting it during the larger rapids. Of note during this section was the cramps that I was getting. I had foolishly only brought a small quantity of salt pills, and I hadn't been taking enough. I tried to full and hydrate, but I knew that I was slipping into a hole despite the sun hiding behind the clouds. Thankfully I was able to hold it together well enough to steer the boat. We arrived at Compton Rapids and let Lupine run it ahead of us, which is good thing, as they took my predicted line and fully swamped. I quickly readjusted to the shoreline, and thanks to Evan's strong paddling we just skirted the sketchiest area. Kate and Tom took a much more conservative approach to the rapid and stayed out of harms way. We tucked into the first take-out just afterwards, and geared up for a trek. All of the boats of the leading teams were still here when we arrived.

Tom and I split the nav 50/50 on this section. We hit 2-01, 2-02, 2-03 in order, quickly figuring out what was and was not accurately mapped. 2-04 was slightly more challenging, but we hit it fine, if not slowly, after I convinced Tom that we were in the correct spot. We had crossed paths with Rootstock early on and made up a bunch of ground on Full Send, putting back into the water just under an hour after we arrived. We had taken the section methodically, which helped me recover quite a bit during it.

We arrived at the next takeout just under an hour later. The only boats ahead of us were Rootstock, Jesse, and Full Send. I felt like poo again, and worked my best on refueling during this leg. I let Tom take the lead on the first CP; we ran into Rootstock on the way up to 2-08. The allure of the trail that we were on got us pulled to the north, and we ended up on the wrong spur. Looking at the gps, it seems that many teams made that same error. I took over on the map and we made our way to 2-08, and then to 2-06 and 2-07. I took us a bit high into 7, which involved a sketchy sidehill down to the CP. We also ran into Full Send here, coming from the wrong direction, which let us know that we had passed them on this section. Tom took us well on the road towards 2-05, and we nailed it before heading back to the boats. There was a veritable armada at the take-out now, but we knew that we were in 3rd place. Another quick transition back to paddle and we made our way downriver. I was feeling much better on the paddle (having fueled very well on the trek), about 90% recovered by the time that we arrived at Downriver about 45 minutes later, just after 4PM.

Leg 3 - Trek

Rootstock and Jesse were both in the TA transitioning to bike when we arrived, so we assumed that we were about an hour back. Our transition was quick, and we ran out of TA right behind Roostock, heading towards the small foot loop in Shenandoah River State Park. I had my most significant bobble of the race here as we worked our way to 3-02. It was a small issue, but we corrected it by taking trails around to the point. Probably less than 10 minutes of error, but we weren't moving that quickly here. I was low on food, and my stomach had started "boiling", a feeling that didn't go away until after the race. Most of my food looked gross to me and it felt like I was full of sloshing water. I made some small recoveries, but the overall feeling of being very low on salt and way too high on water never fully subsided. From 3-02, we worked counterclockwise to 3-03, 3-01, and 3-04. We crossed paths with Untamed and Full Send in the middle, but they both ended up making up 10+ minutes on us here and beating us to TA. I don't think that we moved too slowly, but maybe we weren't as deliberate as they were. We could have been a bit more efficient with direct route choice.

Leg 4 - MTB
This was planned to be our longest TA of the race. We got geared up for the first bike ride (MTB around SRSP) and headed out. I took the topo map and Tom took the trail map onto which we had drawn the cp locations. We rode out with Full Send, but didn't see them after 4-06, which was our first point. We decided to travel out via the mtb trails and then return via the flat river trail. We passed Jesse on on the way out and Rootstock soon thereafter; they warned us about the existentiality of the climbs. We settled into a nice rhythm on the ride, with Tom and Evan taking the lead and me riding behind Kate. I thought we did a really good job with this whole section. Tom did most of the nav. The trails were fun and we rode efficiently, but I assumed that we had lost a decent chunk of time on Full Send due to their mountain biking prowess. We were very happy to see them in TA when we arrived. We just punched, filled up a few water bottles, and got out ahead of them after Glen Gibson verified that we had our lights on.

Leg 5 - MTB
Oh boy. The sun officially set within 10 minutes of our exit, and I found myself back in the pile-of-crap-feelings soon after we started our first climb on gravel roads. I had run out of salt earlier and was trying to eat whatever I could get down. The time estimates had been way off and I didn't have enough food for this section. We began the ride up Veach Gap with Full Send, but they ended up a little bit ahead of us after a short bit. When it came to hike-a-bike time, I was in a bad place. I don't recall slowing the team down, but I was not very happy with myself (or Mark Harris). It seemed that Nicki and Kit weren't doing much better when we met them at 5-01, so there's that. At the top of the pass it took a moment to get found on the correct trail, but once we did we ended up "flying" down the backside of the mountain, trying to avoid certain death as we rode through creeks and rock gardens. The nav for this section was very simple; the real challenge was the terrain at times. We followed roads/trails up to 5-03a where we crossed paths with Full Send and Untamed. The whole team was hurting, and our pace was so monotonous that it seemed like we might not see any of them again. By the time we finished the push up the second hike-a-bike, I was so gassed that I had to sit down and eat something while Tom punch CP 5-04a. But he couldn't find it, so we spent 20 minutes hunting for it before finding it hidden rather well right where we stopped originally.

What ensued here was the craziest section of mountain biking that I've ever seen in a race. Much of it was unrideably rocky. I did take solace in the fact that I was getting my head back (not my stomach) by sipping some Heed and eating as much food as I could. The parts that could be ridden were so sketchy that I ended up waiting for the rest of the team. There was one section of about 1-2km that was nice riding, but it returned to rocks right after that. Finding 5-05a was fun - not hard, but would have been easy to miss. From there, we rode out to 5-06, finally getting off of the ridge. We had spent almost 2 hours up there. It was after 1AM, we were starting to get cold, and I had used up nearly all of my food. The ride downhill from here was freezing. We passed loads of short course teams coming up the fire tower this way. After finding 5-07 in a thorny pond, I had to break the news to the team that my casual glance at the map earlier had been incorrect and we were about to start riding uphill for the next 6km. Ugh. The ATV trail was horrible. Wet sand and huge boulders. My drive train was screaming at me and our brakes were all screeching. The highlight of this section was passing a team pushing their bikes who had lost a teammate. I found the missing teammate almost a full km ahead on the road and relayed their message to her.

C • Race report? 5

My legs felt like they needed some movement

Beautiful day out. Ran the flat trail loop at Cheslen (it does exist). Wasn't planning on a hard effort but I just let it happen and then pushed to keep pace. Maybe a little much? Felt great though.

New core workout - brutal.

Decent paddle that would have been much tougher a few months ago.