The Superhero 6-Hr AR (2014)

The 2014 Superhero was held at beautiful Blue Springs, FL. it was my first time racing at this location and I was pretty excited. Scott and I arrived pretty early, setup our TA, and had plenty of time to go over the maps and plan our routes and strategies. At precisely 0900, off we went...

The Prologue

The race started with a prologue. We were given a set of directions at the start (we did not have time to look at it ahead of time). There were four sets of two bearings (A1&A2, B1&B2, C1&C2, D1&D2). We had to find three of the sets by shooting a bearing and following a specific distance to the controls. All bearings started at a tree near the Main TA.

Scott and I found sets A and B and then tried for D. D1 was easy, but D2 was nowhere to be found. So we had to throw away our efforts for D1 and concentrate on finding C1&C2. After it was all set and done, we headed off on the paddle.

The Paddle (01)

The paddle consisted of a few points along the river. At the far end of the paddle, we had a trekking section at Hontoon Island. We were told we had be out of Hontoon Island by 11:45AM. Because of this time constraint, Scott and I decided to skip the CPs along the river and get them on the way back. We wanted to get to Hontoon as quickly as possible. We did pick up CP03 because it was right along the way and we thought it would be easier to get it now.

The Trek

We started the trekking section along with most of the front teams.  We quickly found CP04 and CP10. We then ran down the road and easily found CP05. When we got to CP06 we ran into two teams there looking for it. One team told me he had been there for 20 minutes and couldn't find it. Scott and I walked almost right to it and helped some of the other teams get it. From there CP07 was pretty easy. But after that is where our race broke down...

The map we had for this section was an aerial map with very little detail on the trails. There were several trails heading down towards the river and Scott and I mistakenly chose went down the first two. By the time we got to the correct trail, it was 11:50. We were now late and the penalty points started racking up. Unfortunately, even though we were on the right trail, the thought of the penalties was weighing heavy on our minds, so we didn't spend much time looking for CP08 and we missed it.

We made it back to the boats at 12:05PM. We were 20 minutes late, which meant 4 penalty points. That really hurt.

The Paddle (02)

CP08 on the trek really put a hurting on our race. We were the last boat to leave Hontoon Island. To make matters worse, I was feeling like total garbage.

For the second race in a row, I started feeling nauseous and dizzy. I had a headache and could barely paddle at all. I had already drank my entire bladder. So the paddle back was completely miserable and very slow. Scott had to basically paddle by himself most of the way as I simply couldn't do anything.

A river patrol boat came by and asked how we were doing. I asked him for water, and luckily they had some water bottles they gave us.

Because I couldn't paddle much, our paddle was slow. Our time was ticking away quickly and I knew we wouldn't have time  to complete the entire race. So I told Scott we would skip the two points on the river so we would have time to get more points on the bike and tubing section.

Our first paddle took us 48 minutes. Our second one took us 1:26. That's how much slower we were moving.

We finished the paddle at around 1330. We only had 1.5 hours to finish the race.

The Tubing Section

I was still feeling like crap, so we decided to do the tubing section first so I could try and rest and feel better. It took us just over 30 mins to complete the tubing section and although it was refreshing, it didn't do much to bring me back to life.

[my watch somehow turned off during this section so I don't have the gps track for it]

The Bike

We had about 50 minutes of racing left. So we quickly left on our bikes. We knew we wouldn't be able to get all the bike points, so I made a decision to skip a few. We got on the single track trails and picked up four points before calling it a day and heading back. On the way back I could barely pedal my bike.

The Finish

This was the worst race I've had in, well, many, many years. We're usually a pretty good team, but my issues during this race cost us a lot. The missed CPs and the four penalty points put us pretty far down on the standings.

But even with all the problems and issues I had, I still had fun. I've said it time and time again, Adventure Racing is simply awesome and just being out in the woods with friends is a good time.

Scott did great! He basically carried my ass the entire race.

So now it's time to start getting ready for the Turkey Burn AR in November. My favorite race of the year!

Here's a short video I made from the race:

The Nocturnal 18-Hr AR (2014)

The 2014 Nocturnal Adventure Race took place in and around Stephen Foster State Park in White Springs, Florida. Located upstate near the I-75 and I-10 intersection.

The Nocturnal has always been one of the toughest and most fun races of the year. And this year was no different. The weather forecast for the weekend was looking pretty bad. A high of 100F on Saturday (a heat index above 110), with rain later on during the day.

The race started at 1500 hours on Saturday and it was hot. Brutally hot.

The Trek (01)

The race started with a 13km trek from the Main TA at Stephen Foster State Park, along the Suwanee River, up to Big Shoals State Park. For the first 2km or so everyone jogged at an easy pace. But after that most everyone just started trekking, no running. The heat was just too much.

It took us just over 2 hours to complete this section. Jason and I found the 5 CPs without much trouble. But it was during this leg that my stomach started feeling like crap. I was staying hydrated, but I still felt dizzy and just kinda sick to my stomach.

We arrived at the Big Shoals TA in 8th place.

The Paddle (01)

After a short portage with our boats down to the river, we jumped in and quickly started catching up to some teams ahead. Shortly after we started the paddle we hit the Big Shoals. An area of the Suwanee River where the river drops 9 feet in about a 1/4 mile. So it makes for some pretty fun small rapids. But because the water levels are so low, we were forced to get out of our boat for a short portion. I got some great video of it.

I kept feeling worse and it showed because my paddling was barely there. Jason had to do the bulk of the paddling for both of us while I tried to rest and recover as best as I could.

This paddling leg was just under 15km long and it took us about 2:15 to complete. The CPs were all fairly easy to find. And even though I was barely helping Jason, we still managed to finish the paddle tied for second place with Team Mojitos on Monday.

The Bike (01)

On our short walk from the boat drop off back to the Main TA, I started feeling better. Once at the TA I ate a sandwich and drank a coke and I started feeling good again. This was good.

We left on our bikes and quickly caught up to with Team Mojitos. Together we rode to the first checkpoint, CP11. We stopped in the area where we thought CP11 was located and started looking.

The four of us looked for 15 minutes before the rest of the teams started arriving behind us. We could not find it. Shortly after there were no less than 20 people looking for the CP. It started getting dark. We were there for exactly 30 minutes before Jason and I decided we must be in the wrong place. We got back on our bikes and headed up the trail to see if we could located the correct place. We rode up and down the trail a couple times but we could never really pinpoint the exact location of the CP. So after a total of 45 minutes, we decided to give up and move on.

We really hate skipping CPs so we were pretty bummed. Plus by this time I was starting to feel like crap again. Worse than before.

We found CPs 12, 13, and 14 and then headed across the Suwanee River bridge for the rest of the CPs.

As we crossed the bridge I couldn't ride anymore. I felt like complete crap. We stopped for a short while so I could rest and try to eat something. It was then that for the second time in my racing career I have thrown up during a race. The first time was during my 3rd time at the Leadville Trail 100 MTB race in 2009. This was the second time. And man was it a good one. Immediately afterwards, I felt like a million bucks! I was ready to race!

At CP16 we ran into our good friends Aaron and May-Li of Team Endeavor Racing. It was also around this time that the storm hit. And man was it a storm. The lightning was out of control. But the rain was coming down so fast and so hard that it was truly hard to see. I've raced through a lot of bad storms before. But this was definitely one of the worst ones.

CP18 gave us a bit of a hard time. Somehow we missed the Blue Trail we were supposed to be on and it took us a while to get back on track. This entire bike leg ended up being about 30km for us, and it took us about 5 hours.

The Paddle (02)

The second paddling leg was a breeze. I was feeling like a champ and the storm had passed. We quickly found the three CPs along the river and finished the 10km paddle in 1:45.

The Trek (02)

The second trek turned out to be a long one. We only had seven CPs to find on our way back to the Main TA. But CP27 turned out to be a killer.

We spent 45 minutes looking for CP27, to no avail. Like CP11, it was a tough one. Several teams were looking for it at the same time, most had no luck finding it.

We found the rest of the CPs, but we were kinda upset about CP27. The section turned out to be about 17km long for us, and it took us almost 4:20 to complete.

The Bike (02)

After the long trek we were not sure we would have enough time to complete the last bike leg of the race. We only had 2:30 hours left of racing, and we had 8 CPs to find on the bike.

It turned out that the biking was much easier than we had expected, thanks in large part due to the fact that the sun was now coming out and it was no longer pitch dark outside. This really helped a lot.

None of the bike points really gave us a hard time and we managed to finish the 13km bike in about 2 hours.

At 0823 on Sunday morning we finished the race in 8th place overall, after missing two CPs. But as always, we had a great time racing!

Thanks as always to Pangea and all the wonderful volunteers!

Thanks to May-Li and Aaron!

And mainly thanks to my teammate Jason for carrying my slow ass through another awesome race!

See you all at the SuperHero AR in a few weeks.

Here's a short race video I made:

----  Race Photos  (click here) ----

The Luminescent 8-Hour AR (2014)

The 2014 8-Hour Luminescent Adventure Race returned to River Breeze Park (where it was held in 2012). Having raced there before, I knew the paddle would be pretty tough, and I was not really looking forward to it. But things turned out much better than I had expected...

The Paddle

The paddle was going to be long. We knew that going in. There were a total of 15 CPs to find and we actually had a 4-hour time limit. In other words, we had to finish the paddle in under 4-hours or risk getting penalties.

Paddling Mosquito Lagoon requires some good navigational skills. There are tons of small islands everywhere. So you have to stay on the right track in order to find the one you want. To make it worse, the race takes place during a 'new moon' which means there is no moonlight to help you navigate. Without moonlight, you can not see the islands until you are basically right on them.

We knew we ween't going to be able to get all 15 CPs in the 4-hour time limit, so we decided to skip the five furthest points.

We ended up finding all the 10 CPs we went after, and with little issues. Finding CP4 was probably the only one that gave us a hard time, but even then it was only a few minutes lost. Also CP1, in the middle of the island, was kinda hard to find, but again, only a few minutes lost.

We ended up with the fastest paddling split of the race (3:40). And we tied a few teams for the most points in the paddling section (10).

The Bio-Luminescense

This race is called the Luminescent because of the possibility of experiencing the bio-luminescent effects in the water. And I will tell you, it was amazing! We noticed it really well on our paddle from CP05 to CP06, and again on the paddle from CP03 to CP02. Each paddle stroke stirred the water enough to produce this bright, florescent like color. The wake of the boat did the same thing. But the best part was the fish. They were swimming just below the surface, and they would leave a bright fluorescent trail behind them. It's hard to explain, but it really was incredible to experience.

The Bike (part 1)

After returning to the TA off the paddle, we quickly transitioned to our bikes and went off on a 2-hour bike ride looking for CPs 16-21.

We did very well in this section. We were the only team to get all the bike points, including the very hard to find, CP20.

Then we biked down to the Grove TA to start what we knew was going to be a very tough trekking section.

The Trek

There were a total of 17 different points on this trekking leg. We only had about 2.5 hours to make it back to the finish line, so we knew we would have to skip a few.

We did not get the trekking map at the start of the race. It was handed to us at the Grove TA. So I only had a few minutes to look at it before we took off. I decided to attack the points in a counter-clockwise fashion, only because I knew exactly where CP38 was, so I figured better start off with an easy one and go from there.

After quickly finding CP38 we struggled looking for CP36 and 37. Spent a good amount of time looking for the right trail, but eventually decided to skip them and move on.

We ended up teaming up with Jeff and Hunter (Team Florida Xtreme/Hunter) for a few of the points in this section. Because of our limited time we only ended up collecting a total of 9 points before we had to get back to the Grove TA as we still had an 11km bike ride to the finish line.

The Bike (part 2)

After leaving Grove TA we only had one more point to collect on our bikes before heading to the finish line. This point was the same as CP13 on the paddle, so we knew exactly where it was and getting it was very easy.

The Finish

We finished the race in 7:46 and ended up with 2nd place overall. We were very happy with that!

So thank you to my teammates, Scott, and Chris. And thanks to Pangea and all the great volunteers!

See you all at the Nocturnal 18-Hour Adventure Race next month!

The SCAR 6-Hr AR (2014)

This year's Father's Day SCAR Adventure Race took place in the Kings Landing/Kelly Park area around Rock Springs. It was a great venue which provided some great trekking, paddling and biking...

The Trek

The race started at 0745. There were four legs to complete (bike, run, paddle, tubing) and teams had the choice to do them in any order they wanted. This was really nice. So Jason and I decided to trek first and get that out of the way.

The CPs were plotted on the orienteering map, but there were no clues as to their location. Also, the punch card did not have the usual CP numbers printed on it so that one could cross reference and make sure they were at the correct control. Plus there were several control flags for the other races placed close to some of the Elite controls. You had to know exactly where you were, and be confident about it. Otherwise, you could end up punching the wrong control. In other words, this was true orienteering, and Jason and I loved it!

We found all controls without too much trouble, except for CP6. CP6 was plotted on one side of the trail, but was actually placed (as we found out much later) on the other side of the trail. When we arrived at the plotted location for CP6, which was a very deep depression, Jason went down into the depression while I ran around the depression looking for the control. We could not find it. We then started looking around the area at some of the other depressions. But after consulting the map several times, we knew without a doubt that we were at the correct place and that the control was simply not there. So after about 15 minutes of looking, we made a decision to go on without punching this control.

This map show my GPS track while looking for CP6 (coming in and exiting from below):

We finished the trekking section in about 49 minutes and quickly left the Main TA ready to paddle.

Here's our entire trek:

The Paddle

We decided to do the paddle leg as our second leg. So picked up our paddles and headed to the Boat TA.

The paddling leg was great. There were no other boats in the water (except for a couple of park visitors), so Jason and I had the river to ourselves. The CPs were all right along the river and very easy to find. It only took us about 40 minutes to get all the CPs and get back to the Boat TA.

The Tubing Section

After returning to the oat TA we decided to head off on the tubing section of the race. So we grabbed a couple of inner tubes and ran down to the put in spot (CP24).

This was a great section. The water felt awesome and it was pretty relaxing. The CPs in this section were once again right along the river, so very easy to find.

Every race should have a section like this. :)

We finished the tubing section in about 48 minutes and headed off on our last leg of the race.

The Bike (01)

The bike section was basically along the same trails we had already trekked. And thanks to all the rain we've been getting lately, the usually nasty soft sand was nice and packed, which made for some great and fast riding.

Once again Jason's navigation was 100% spot on, and we were able to quickly find every CP without any issues.

The Finish?

We came into the Main TA at 1030, having just finished the 6-hour race in 2 hours and 45 minutes. We talked to Greg and told him to maybe add another section in. We suggested he make us go back out on the bike, but this time pick up the points we had picked up on the first trekking section. Since it was just a few minutes to the start of the Sports race, he asked us to wait and he'd get back to us.

The Bike 02

At 1055 he gave us the go ahead to go pick up the trekking points on our bike. At the same time the second place team (Doc-n-Neers) finished the race and Greg told them the same thing. So off we went, both teams leaving only a few minutes apart to do one more bike section.

Since we had been to the points before, navigation was very easy. So it was just a matter of riding well. This time we did find CP6 (as we had been told by the volunteers where it was actually located).

Throughout this section we kept running into team Doc-n-Neers who were right on our tail. But we managed to hold them off and finish the race ahead of them.

The Finish?

This time the race was actually over. We had officially won with a time of 3:25:37. But since it was still fairly early and still over two hours until the awards ceremony, Jason and I decided to go back out on foot. This time we went to find all the bike points, but on foot. When we finished that, we crossed over to Kelly Park and went down to watch the rest of the racers start the tubing section.

All in all we had a great and fun race.

Race video:

See you guys at the Luminescent and Nocturnal!

Florida Orienteering (Lake Louisa April 2014)

On Saturday Jason and I did the Florida Orienteering event at Lake Louisa State Park.

We did the Blue course which was marked as an 8.2km course.

The course was fairly straight forward and the points pretty easy to find. It helped that both us of have a home field advantage as this park is 30 minutes from our house. Jason did the navigation and led us directly to every point. Only one point gave us a small issue that costs us maybe 5 minutes. Other than, it was all smooth sailing!

We ended up in second place, with a total distance 10.4km of and a total time of 1:18:25.