US National Adventure Race Championship Race Report

November 6-7, 2003

Sierra Summit Ski Resort

Whose bright idea was it to schedule the US National Adventure Race Championship at a ski area in the Sierras in November? Uh, like it might be snowy and cold, especially if half the race is above 8000 feet? And who thought that an inexperienced race promoter could set a reliable course for such an important event--under such variable weather conditions?

Those questions won't be answered here. Instead, I will answer this one: Can four people who have never raced together--and one of whom was entering his first-ever adventure race--survive a day and night of cold, snowy, confusing meandering?

Team Action-Learning.com, led by experienced racer and executive coach Doug Gray, set out to defy conventional wisdom by compressing the group intelligence learning process into a few short hours of preparation and 20 hours of racing. Aided by a tireless and insightful support person (AR hotshot Ralph Pilley), we crammed a year's worth of teambuilding into one race, and finished much stronger and collectively smarter than we began.

Jon Owens, US National Masters Mountain Bike Champion, demonstrated incredible strength to match his resume for his first adventure race, and added savvy and insight at critical moments in our decisionmaking. Navy helicopter pilot and rising AR star Melissa Coombes drove us with athleticism and boundless energy, and put her leadership skills to work at key junctures--particularly as we ran down team after team on the final leg of the race. I brought some nice snacks and told a few jokes.

Setting out just after dawn in a light snow, Team Action-Learning.com joined 30 other teams for the "mountain bike" leg of the race. As a foot or so of slippery snow had covered loose, dry trails, most of the biking consisted of knocking compacted ice and dirt from pedals; riding 100 feet; losing traction or bumping into another "rider" who had just slid out; and then pushing to the next somewhat level spot to repeat the process. Interrupted by a 1200-foot hike up to the top of a 10,000-foot mountain (with a gorgeous view of the Sierras), the "bike" leg continued like this until...the first fiasco.

As we arrived at Checkpoint 4 in sixth place or so, we sensed trouble. We saw two dozen of the best navigators in the country poking through the underbrush in a wide circle around the supposed location of the checkpoint. Not good. We joined almost every other team in spending a futile hour inscribing ever-widening arcs around the location and checking and rechecking our map.

We had been warned at the beginning of the race that teams would be ranked by the number of checkpoints they found, not their finish time. This placed a premium on doggedness, and suggested that checkpoints might be hard to find. But after an hour of frustration, we joined the other top teams that had slipped off. Rumors of teams finding the mysterious CP4 floated all day and night (it was later found to have been set up a quarter of a mile from the intended location), but the tone was set: nothing about this race could be taken for granted.

After 3 more hours of scrambling across talus beds; pushing and falling off our bikes; and letting the missing CP cloud our own faith in our judgment, we finally got to visit Ralph and his hot food and restorative support. We had averaged 4.3 miles per hour over the first 7.5 hours of the race. And yet we were in 8th place! As Jon later put it, we paddled the kayak faster than we traveled on that first "bike" section.

A quick descent down ten minutes of the only actual singletrack on the course, a flat tire, and a stop to check on a racer with a broken ankle brought us to Shaver Lake. More hot tea from Ralph and we set out at dusk for 14 miles of paddling in inflatable, water-filled kayaks, which handled about as well as inner tubes. But the full moon came out from behind the clouds and we spent a pleasant three hours weaving like drunks (well, at least the boat I was, ah, steering) in the mist.

Hypothermia threatened one body mass-deprived member of Team Action-Learning.com as we stripped down for the long, figure-8 shaped 20-mile trek. However, 10 minutes of warming in the heated cab of the support truck (thanks, Ralph) enabled me to stop shivering long enough to change my clothes.

Now in 11th place, we made some navigational choices that paid off with views of what appeared to be a tunnel entrance to a top-secret military installation (but turned out to be a hydroelectric spillway) and a cool boulder hop across a creek. Oh, yeah, and it was a great shortcut. As we power hiked up a long hill to the most remote checkpoint, we could see lights bobbing down the hill towards us: the lead teams returning from a checkpoint high on the ridge. As they passed, we could judge how much time we needed to make up--and how strong each team appeared.

After we topped out at the CP, we stretched out our strides for the downhill run. We passed two teams on the dirt road section before we plunged into a thickly wooded ravine to nab the next-to-last checkpoint. Here we found three things: the checkpoint, Melissa's good friend (from another team) power-puking, and an unmarked trail that might lead in a very helpful direction. Sweeping the puker's team up with us, we headed back along the lakeside trail, across the stream via the boulder-hop, and past the top-secret tunnel—confident that we would bag the last checkpoint and then run the final three miles to the finish.

Checking our bearings, we headed up a low hill, on the top of which we expected to find a checkpoint. Instead, we found...two of the other top teams. Half of those team members were aimlessly circling in search of the checkpoint, another half of were slumped on the ground, heads between their knees.

To make a complicated and potentially libelous (of the race director) story short: we decided quickly NOT to get caught in another downward spiral of futility, and set out for another, similar hill just to the west. There, we ran into the director of the United States Adventure Racing Association, who apparently had seized control of a deteriorating situation and headed out to find confused teams and tell them that ANOTHER checkpoint had been placed incorrectly.

Relieved, we ran to the finish, with Jon and Melissa pulling Doug and Ken up the final hills and back to a cold but appreciative Ralph...and a 7th place finish. Despite the chaos and the randomness, most teams (including us) finished in about the "right" place in the rankings. But it was unfortunate that the exact order of finish (and probably a few other changes) had as much to do with chance as skill. But in the end, the teams that learned on the fly adapted better to the circumstances.

The moral of the story: Fool us once--shame on you. Fool us twice--ain't gonna happen.

By Ken White Use when helpful…with appropriate reference.