Ok, so
Chuck and I are out of shape and overweight, mostly due to current injuries or
injuries we are coming back from. We
knew these facts going into this year’s Thunder Rolls, but that didn’t stop
us. Chuck had not been running due to a
foot injury and I’m slowly making my way back from multiple health issues, plus
5 days before the race I get some kind of super sinus infection and had to deal
with it during the race. Still we said, nothing was stopping us from doing this
race, it is way too great a race to miss. Oh, and I know you are dying to hear
about it. If you aren’t you should be, it was fun, spectacular race.
This is
how the race went, and it wasn’t the outcome we wanted or expected, but I’m
still smiling because it was an outcome that we will take any day. Chuck picked me up in the adventure jeep on
Friday morning and we had a pretty uneventful trip to Camp Benson in Mt
Carroll, IL.
We
pulled up and saw so many of our adventure race friends, it always seems like a
family reunion when we go to these races.
We checked-in, grabbed our gear and headed to our cabin. We just happened to be bunking with Team
Virtus, and there is not anyone we would rather bunk with than them, well unless
we added Team Lederhosen, then there would be mass chaos, whiskey and a lot of
laughing. Note that there was mass chaos
and laughing, but no whiskey in our cabin without them. After dropping our gear
we grabbed our climbing gear and headed to the cliffs for some ascending
practice. Chuck and I climbed down the cliff using a fixed rope to get to the
bottom of the ascend.
At the
bottom we got in line to do a practice ascend because we knew we were going to
be doing one during the race. While we stood in line we took turns belaying
people who were coming down the rappel.
It was
finally our turn to ascend and lucky for me Chuck got the harder rope and I got
the easier rope. Well, there really wasn’t
a difference, the rock face is just unique and I thought the one Chuck had to
go over looked harder. That didn’t stop me from laughing and telling him he got
the hard rope.
By the
time I finished the ascend my arms were shaking so bad I couldn’t unclip my
gear, the volunteer had to do it for me.
Chuck said not to worry, his arms felt like that too. We quickly headed back to camp to grab our
bikes and gear and head to the bike drop.
It was about a 20 minute drive to drop the bikes at the CP, we were also
allowed to leave food and water, which was good, then we didn’t have to carry
as much at the start of the race. And
when we got to the bike drop, it was like another family reunion, adventure
racing friends everywhere. We put our
bib numbers on our bikes, staged our stuff, took a look at the canoe take-out and
then headed back to camp for some dinner.
Dinner was family style with salad, pasta, bread sticks, fruit, yogurt
and milk. After dinner, we tried to get
a 20 minute nap before the race meeting started. We thought it started at 7:30, but apparently
it was 7, because when we walked up to the lodge at 7:10 it was already
started. Luckily we didn’t miss much,
because they were just talking about what Camp Benson was and we had both heard
it from previous races.
It was
standing room only in the lodge and Gerry got through his instructions quickly
and started handing out the maps, there were 8 of them with more maps to come
during the race.
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| Teams picking up maps |
This race
is of the expedition type which means as soon as you miss a CP, your race is
over, that is the last CP counted for scoring, also if you miss the cutoff time
by even one minute you no longer get scored.
In addition to these rules there was going to be 6 mandatory CP’s at the
end of the race, so racers needed to allot time for those CP’s. None of this seemed like a problem and we
would just head in when there was 3 hours left, I mean the last 6 CP’s were all
on the bike on gravel roads, pretty straight forward, so it was easy to plan for,
- “or was it?”.
We
plotted our CP’s and marked our course then went back to the cabin to double
check our packs and maybe get a few minutes of sleep. Well we checked our packs, but we didn’t get
any sleep, it was way too busy in the cabin.
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| Robin getting ready to race |
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| Team Virtus |
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| Chuck ready to race |
It seemed
like just minutes and it was time to line up at the start line and get a group
photo, then the gun went off at exactly midnight and it was time to go.
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| On the starting line |
We ran
to the Fort Benson towers to collect our first maps then headed out into the
woods to start collecting CP’s. As we ran by the racers we heard a “hey it’s
ROCK Racing”, we turned around a guy said, “I recognized you guys, I read your
blog all the time”. We love to hear that and it started our race with a smile.
As luck
would have it the first CP was across the river, so 5 minutes into the race we
were knee deep in water. Gerry did post
that we would get wet in this race, so it should not have been a surprise. We
were doing really great picking up points and soon we were at the rappel, it
didn’t take us long to get on a line and rappel down, Chuck went first and I
was right behind him. I think that was
the biggest rappel I have ever done, but it was also really fun. I think I do better in the dark, because I’m
afraid of heights and when it’s dark I can’t see just how far down it is. Chuck is never afraid because he is insane and
will do anything.
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| Rappel |
Next we
headed to the ascend, the line was long, but we decided if we went for another
CP and came back the line could be worse, so we stood in line. There were 5 lines one per team at a
time. Our line seemed to be the highest
one of the five, but it had a really nice rock ledge near the top and I think
it helps when you can put your feet on the wall, so I was happy about getting
that line. Chuck was having problems
getting up the wall, it was slow going, and after he got up, I had even more
problems, it seemed like the ascenders kept getting stuck, but we both made it
up. The ascent was a lot higher than the one we did in practice.
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| Robin Ascending - Photo Credit - Bob |
After
the ascent we headed for CP 5 and it was not an easy CP to get. We were with another team both of us looking
for 5, we found it, but to get to it you had to jump off one rock ledge to
another, when I jumped I landed on my knees and oh my, did it hurt. Chuck
grabbed my arm and pulled me up, he asked if I was ok, with this pained look on
his face, it sounded really bad when my knees hit, I just said “lets keep
moving”, I was afraid if I stopped, I would start crying, my knees hurt so bad
so I just started limping along. We
found where the CP was, but at first Chuck said “it can’t be there, it’s too
dangerous to get over there, Gerry wouldn’t put one there” well, yes, Gerry
would and he did and of course we went and got it.
Our
next stop was the cave and we had to walk across the river in chest deep water
to get to it. I had a really hard time
climbing out of the water and into the cave because my knees were still
hurting, but the cold water really helped.
We were with another team and we dropped our packs at the opening because
the cave is very small and it would be hard to maneuver with the packs on. We were so caught up in the cave and all the
bats that were flying around us, that we got all the way to the back of the
cave and found out that we missed the CP.
We went back and found it, in a long cavern off to the left, we had to
also punch our wrist bands here, but since the cavern was so narrow, we had to
walk back one at a time. It was so
narrow that I had to turn sideways at one point to get my shoulders
through. We were wondering how some of
the bigger guys on other teams were going to get back there. I guess they would
have to figure it out.
Once
out of the cave we had to walk down river to get to the next CP, but since the
nettle was so bad, walking in the river was much easier than walking through
the nettle.
At CP7
we had to climb up a re-entrant that was covered in large down trees, it was so
hard, but we just kept pulling ourselves up from log to the next and the trip
back down seemed just as hard as the trip up, but we got the CP and could move
on.
To get
to the next CP we had to Coasteer, meaning walk in the river along the shoreline/coast,
it was really hard to do. I felt like I was
drunk, every step it was a challenge to stay upright and some places the water
was moving so fast it almost pulled you downstream. In fact we were walking along and another team
of guys who just happened to be a S.W.A.T. team from Kentucky were walking just
behind us, I took a step and started to fall in the river, but one of the
S.W.A.T. guys grabbed my arm and pulled me back up. I was sure glad he was there or I would have
been floating down the river.
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| Coasteering |
As we
headed for the canoe leg, I really had to pee, I told Chuck to head to the
canoe and not look back because there was no place to hide and I was peeing on the
side of the road. So as I’m squatted down peeing another team comes along as
they approach I’m just getting my pants back up, I just looked at them and said
“sorry you had to see that”, of course they are adventure racers, they
understand this stuff and just laughed.
Our
friend Brian from WTFAR was volunteering at the Canoe CP so he gave us an update on all the
teams and where they were, we were happy to find out we were one of the earlier
teams through the CP. We pulled our
canoe down a muddy hill and dropped it in the Plum River. We quickly understood Gerry's pre-race statement about
the canoe being a real adventure paddle, there were log jams everywhere, we had to
carefully choose our lines and many times muscle our way over logs.
We are
usually slow paddlers, so we kept waiting to all the teams to catch up with us,
but it was over an hour before we saw another team behind us. It seemed like we would drop the other teams
in the open water, but they would catch up when we were in the log jams. One log jam was so thick we decided to
portage our canoe around it, we saw muddy footprints so we knew other teams had
done it. I got out of the canoe to see if we could pull it through and I sank
to my knee in the mud. It took me a long
time to get my foot out because I was trying not to lose my shoe, the mud was
trying to suck it off. We decided to go
forward with the portage and pull the canoe through the mud and over a tree.
By the
time we pulled the canoe out, there were teams lined up behind us.
We got
back on the river and headed to the takeout, finally making it there and
pulling our canoe up the hill to the CP, which was the bike drop.
We sat
down on the ground rearranged our packs, changed into dry socks and shoes and
ate some food before leaving the CP on bikes.
We were
then on our way to CP 14, where after punching it we would start a large bike O
section, we figured it would take a lot of time in this section. Most all of the CP’s were in the The
Palisades Park. It is a giant and very
beautiful park, with lots of stinging nettle and also beautiful outlook points
over the Mississippi river.
We did
really well up to the point where we were looking for CP 17, it took us about
45 minutes to find it, even after another team told us where to look. We just kept getting our heads wound around
the placement of the property line. So finally
we did what we should have done first and shot a bearing from a known point on a nearby trail and found it immediately.
We continued
to move through the CP’s one after the next, we were having the best race of
our lives, and Chuck’s navigating was spot on.
Remember
a few pages back when I told you the nettle was awful, well I can’t say it
enough, it was awful and it was so tall that Chuck would put his arms in the
air to keep them out of it, but if I did that it just got the backside of my
arms, so I just left them down.
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| Nettle up to my neck |
It didn’t
stop us though, we just kept moving and found some of the CP’s in really cool
places like under big boulders.
We had
all the CP’s in the Bike O section except for 29 because we thought it would be
easier to get it from the bottom of the hill rather than the top, but come to
find out, the road at the bottom was banned from use for the race, so we had to ride back up
one of the longest steepest hills I have ever seen, to get to it. We did it
though, the only thing we had to look forward to was that after CP 29 we got to
ride back down that hill.
The last
CP on the Bike O was CP 34 and when we got there, they had ice cold watermelon
for us, it tasted so good, I ate 3 pieces.
While there we got another map for a trekking O section, we grabbed the map and
calculated how long we could stay out before we needed to head to the mandatory
bike points on the way to the finish line.
We gave ourselves plenty of time because we understood it was a very
hilly ride.
As we
rode out we picked up CP 43 then CP 51 and CP 52 and by then it was pitch black
out, it was a good thing that Chuck and I both have really good
headlights. Things were going so well
for us, but then we hit a road and were confused as to where we were. Based on the map we would have been at the
intersection of Ridge Rd and Heer Hill Rd, the problem was the street sign told
us a different story.
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| Stupid Street Sign |
It told
us we were at Heer Rd and Derinda Rd. We
kept riding back and forth looking for ridge road, thinking we missed it in the
dark, but we couldn’t find it. Finally
time was getting short and Gerry the race director told everyone to call him if
they were not going to make the cutoff. So
we pulled out our phone and called, Gerry said stay put, he was sending a truck
for us. As soon as I hung up Chuck figured it out. We should have just ignored the sign and
turned left, we were in the right place, the sign was just not as it was on the
map. We called Gerry back to say we were
riding in, but he said, “No stay put the truck is almost there”. We contemplated riding in anyway, but we
would have had to have the ride of our lives to make the cutoff time, in
hindsight both Chuck and I wish we would have rode in anyway.
So the
Enviromark truck showed up and we were loaded in the back with our bikes and
other racers that had already been picked up.
We then rode around picking up CP’s and one more team. It took an hour to get back to the finish
line. I think we were half dead or half crazy when we got there or it could have
been both.
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| Don't we look insane - truck ride after being awake for 44 hours |
Once
back at the finish, we looked at the results, the team that won our division
had 18 CP’s. We had 38, if we would have
finished the leg we would have had 41, so what’s the moral of this story. Even when things look grim and time looks
short, take a few minutes to rest, eat,
drink and get your mind back, then look a the map again, it may show up in a
whole new light.
All and
all, it was still the best race we have ever had, it was a perfect day, a challenging
course, we overcame so many obstacles along the way, we spent time with old
friends and made new friends and best of all, it was a TRUE ADVENTURE. We have
no regrets, well except maybe not winning the shoes.
A BIG
THANKS goes out to Gerry, Camp Benson, and all the volunteers who made this race a great
memory.
