Okay, so I put this on the Commie schedule a long time ago. Good friend Mike Serro was putting this on in Deep Creek and you got to support our local community. I knew it was falling 2 weeks from the World Championships but it can work, right??
Well on one hand I was really fretting doing this because it took me out of the World Championship office for a whole day but on the other hand was looking forward to busting out a good workout here in the epicenter of adventure sports....
Rucking up with me was Eric Lapp who's been an amazing addition to the team and roster. Newbie Joey DiSimone rounded out the third and this was his first adventure race.
I served as captain and gave the navigation duties over to Eric who has performed superbly this season. Joey (as a newbie) was team mule.... carry the passport and punch the points. Plus carry any gear TCOPE says to.... :)
This week was hectic but we all showed up at the pre race meeting at the Mountain State Brewery. Great choice. Plot maps and drink beer.... A Commie favorite....
We got done early and headed home. Eric had homework to make the navigation plan from home after looking at satellite views and terrain analysis. There were three options for routes as I saw it....
5am...... up and going to the start. I get there. Eric and Joey were dropping paddle gear at the put in. Seem Joey has forgotten his helmet! It's 15 minutes to start and I do a mad dash to the house to grab another helmet. Thank goodness I lived so close. I hate starting like this.
Of the 3 routes and strategies, we settled on an early paddle. The weather looked like it was going to turn and we wanted OFF that lake before the weather came in. Some other teams chose to nail the bike first but we settled in on our plan.
the race started with a mile prologue. Usual run like hell to a point then back and get your heart rate into super human zone.... We took our time and nailed the point and got back to the bikes. From there we nailed one point enroute to the boats. Once at the boats we sorted our some gear and hit the water. A tandem kayak and a single. Eric was in the single and we soon began out pacing him. We then ran a tow line and that helped. We had about a 9-10 mile paddle and we did it in fairly calm water. No issues on navigation and we nailed the whole thing and all four points before getting back to the take out.
At the takeout we got back on bikes and headed north the way we came in for the brutal climb up Marsh Mountain. We know this place like the back of our hands so this was the logical (yet tough) way to get into the field of play. We climbed this and actually headed up past my office at the whitewater center and dropped into Fork Run.
No matter how many times you've done Fork Run, I always seem to get turned around. We nailed a point up high at ASCI and then dropped in and got to the bridge to nail point two. We wandered around a bit but got all the point there. Two sections (paddle and mountain bike) and we were 100% on points.
Next was the road slog on bike to Swallow Falls. We hit the road and crank hammered into the State Park. Here we dropped bikes and circumnavigated the park and the waterfalls to get all the points here. Back on the bike we headed out the park the back way.
First navigation error.... The back way was not actually the "back way". Eric had plotted a single track trail but we rode out a fairly innocent forest road. We decided to head on a Tolliver trail looking for CP 15 and it became apparent we were a long ways off because of the error. No worries. We continued on and got us placed on the map and made our way to CP 15. A lucky spot of a trail sign got us out of the stream bed and onto the trail to nail the point.....
From there it was a bit of a single track slog back out to the road. Once there we turned north and made our way to the Snaggy Mt Road and onwards to the rock maze for CP 16. We did a bit of a bushwack on foot to the rock maze to nail the point.
From there onward north and into the Cranesville Swamp. Eric had expertly taken satellite imagery and drawn out a perfect illustration of the trails in the swamp. We got there and single tracked out thru the swamp to the boardwalk to now the Pleban point. The Pleban point was the furthest point away from the finish and also in the State of WV. It was named after Scotty Pleban who was a great adventure racer that got hit by a car and succombed to being in a coma. Scotty was loved by all and it wasn't till I got to the point that I made the connection....
Now............... DECISION............
How to get into the Piney Mountain Reserve. We had three options.
1. ride the road north for a long ways then come in on the forest road and climb up again.
2. Ride the road north for a short distance then bushwack up a pipeline to gain the road to climb up
3. BUSHWACK like a mother with the bikes STRAIGHT UP THE HILL TO THE KNOB........
We chose 3. Sometimes when i'm done with races I wonder what people really think we do on adventure races. If I said push/carry your bike up 700 vertical feet over 1 kilometer thru deep vegetation i wonder if they even understand what i mean. I'm talking about dragging your bike thru sections...... We were smoked but popped out right on top and gained CP 23 before anyone coming from the bottom. From there we continued the bushwack down looking for a road. We passed a couple racers that looked incredulous that we were there with bikes.....
We got down and after a brief navigation error again nailed 22. Once on the trail we got down to 21. Rode a bit out to nail 20 and then back to the main trail down to the power line.
We had heard CP 19 was impossible. We tried anyway. We dropped bikes and went in and started navigating through HEAVY, HEAVY rhodendron thickets.... basically crawling to find a slight hilltop at 2900 feet elevation. I found the uprising but it took me a half hour to go 300 meters. I was trying to get to the north side where the map had plotted the point. Eric and Joey waited for me. I could not penetrate the thicket. After 1 hour of searching we decided to pull the plug.... Up to this point we were 100%.
Back to the bikes we had an hour and a half to travel back to the finish. Two points were right on the road so this was a piece of cake.....
Of course in adventure racing everything goes to shit.....
I flatted immediately. We changed my tire in virtually 30 seconds.... I'm a pro at this. I pulled out the CO2 cartridge and......................................... IT DIDN'T WORK! Now panic sets in. I'm sitting on a flat rim and we're 7 miles from the finish.
I start pushing my bike down the trail looking to see if there are other adventure racers that have a pump.. Nothing. I get out of Piney mountain and start riding down a paved road on a flat rim with a tire on it. The road descends greatly to the Yough river and I have to keep it under control.
3/4s of the way down a race official comes by and I ask if he has a pump. He does!!!!!!!!! I pump up the tire thinking it might have failed since I rode already 2 miles on it flat. It holds!!! I'm off.
We finish the descent and then we still have a long, long climb to the finish. The first part is gradual for 2 miles or so and the last 1.5 miles is vicious climbing.
Panic.... Joey, says he has flatted. There is no time to change a second tire. It appears to be a slow leak so we pump it up again and go. It's dark now and we have no lights. We're battling to hit the cut off time at the finish. We hit the base of the last climb with 25 minutes to go. We can do this....
thru a combination of pushing, walking and peddling we make it to the top and cruise into the Mountain State Brewery 15 minutes before the cut off.....
Team Commie Bar cleared the entire course except point 19. For that effort we finished 3rd! The field was tough.
special shout out to the Adventure Sports Institute that finished the race with 1 minute to spare....!
Pics to come....
TCOPIOUS MAXIMOUS...
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