If you read my adventure race reports (you do read them, don’t you?), you know that I sometimes, well, embellish a little. This one is different—100 percent true, I promise.
Nestled in the thick forests and steep hills of the Willamette (will-Ah-met, and don’t you dare mispronounce it around the locals) River Valley, Oakridge, OR is a scenic but long eight-hour drive from the Bay Area for team leader Roger Pruett, pro adventure racer Andy Tubbs, and I. Pro triathlete Jolene Wilkerson flew in from Utah to complete our team. Ultrarunning champions Bev and Alan Anderson-Abbs graciously offered their vacation home as a base camp. Rarified company, indeed.
The race started at the shockingly leisurely hour of 10 AM on Saturday. Of course, we had to show up at 8 AM for the shuttle to the starting line, but still….and the van ride took us up about 4,000 feet in elevation—free vertical gain!
In typical bit of adventure race devilishness, the race began with a two-mile trail run to a remote location to pick up our first set of course directions and maps. The gun went off at precisely 10:00:00. By 10:02:35, I was wheezing like a freight train. Hmmm, perhaps my asthma meds need adjustment? Fortunately, Andy put me on tow, and literally hauled me two miles up to the map pickup. Somehow, my oxygen-starved brain managed to figure out our immediate next steps quicker than any of the other teams, and, after three more miles of trail running, we were the third team to arrive at the bike transition.
Remember those “free” 4,000 vertical feet? We used up nearly every last one on a 30-mile singletrack descent next to the crashing, rushing, and finally burbling Willamette River as it (and we) dropped to Hills Creek Lake.
That’s right, 30 miles of singletrack (remember, this report is unembellished). While Roger urged us on from the front, Andy amused Jolene and me with a few comical crashes, including one that flung him halfway down the river bank (stick around, Andy’s was just the warmup for the main act).
Off the bikes, on with the trail running shoes, and more maps and course directions to sort through. After a little splashing around in the braided river mouth to find a hidden checkpoint, we linked arms and forged the main channel, and then ran down the road to pick up our kayaks. Literally. Man, those suckers are heavy, even on a short walk down to the waterline.
The 15-mile kayak segment included “creekteering,” where we beached the boats and meandered up a canyon on foot in search of another hidden checkpoint. It also included an inadvertent meetup with a rather beery gentleman who was happy to chit-chat and offer us directions to a checkpoint that I had (ahem) misplotted on the map.
That little goof cost us more time than we could afford to give up, and we arrived at the next transition just as it got seriously dark. We didn’t bother to stock up on food and water, as I calculated we had a two-mile trail run to our next, provisioned checkpoint.
Sing it to the tune of Gilligan’s Island:
“The team set out that night
for a two-mile run…
a two-mile run.”
Thirty minutes into
the run….
Roger: “We’ve been
running at about a 12-minute mile pace for 30 minutes now, so we should be
getting close.”
Ken (sure of
himself): “Yep, let’s keep going.”
An hour into the
run….
Roger: “This trail
does twist and turn a lot, so maybe it’s more like three or even four miles?”
Ken (less sure of
himself): “Ummm, yeah.”
Way more than an
hour into the run….
Roger: “This is the
right trail, right? I mean, we haven’t seen any intersections.”
Ken (mumbling):
“Umph.”
Finally, I got it through
my thick skull that I had misinterpreted the course directions, and the next
checkpoint (with no provisions) was SIX miles away. The actual transition area
with the hot chocolate and cookies and water and dry clothes was ANOTHER six
miles uphill from that. Ouch.
To their credit,
Andy, Jolene, and Roger resisted the temptation to force me to eat the maps
when I ran out of food and water, and instead bolstered my flagging energy by
sharing some of their own dwindling supplies. But they rightly ribbed me pretty
mercilessly for the rest of the race, and the drive home.
Around 1:30 AM, we
bushwacked up to the Promised Land of egg burritos, music, homemade cookies…and
more maps and course directions. Unlike some other teams, we resisted the lure
of luxury and hightailed out on our bikes.
A few paved and
fire roads (and one steep, occasionally impenetrable bikewhack) later, we hit
the night’s main event. First, we shouldered our bikes and climbed up a muddy,
rocky, darn near vertical (OK, I promised accuracy, so let’s say 35% grade)
trail. What goes up, must go down---another, 3,000-foot singletrack
descent…this one much gnarlier and steeper than the last. Right about this
time, Jolene got that “What have I gotten myself into?” look in her eyes, but
gamely and uncomplainingly forged ahead.
Just before
sunrise, I rounded a bend in the trail and glanced up at the fog coursing
through the
I twisted around to
see if I had any other options, but could not see directly below me, only that
the canyon fell away quite steeply farther down. While we waited for Andy to
run back up with a line, Roger suggested he and Jolene could hold my bike
(which was laying about a foot above me) while I used it as a ladder. Mighta
worked too, had I agreed quickly. Alas, I felt the cliff edge crumble and the
creepers giving way...
…and I fell...
…about a foot...
…and my feet sank
into soft ground!
Whew.
Clambered back up
and kept riding.
The rest of the
race was a rather unremarkable mixture of biking and running, sprinkled with a
couple of more river crossings.
We hit the finish
line after 90-100 miles in 23 hours, 14 minutes, first in our division and
fourth or fifth overall. The crowd (OK, two eight-year-olds and a dog) cheered
as we discussed which diner would host four muddy, smelly, sleepy, and “just
bring the whole left side of the menu” hungry adventure racers.