The Raging Russell Adventure Race - Cornelia, GA - Nov 15-16, 2003

Chapter 5 - Technical Performance Review

As I write this, it is now Friday evening, five days after making it home. I have nearly caught up on my sleep. I can tell my body is ready to start exercising again. I have passed through the depression phase that comes after an exhilirating but challenging adventure, and I am now ready to start looking for the next adventure race!

But before I do another race, I'd like to make some notes about what worked for us in this race, and what didn't. After all, part of the reason for doing it is to learn something new.

First of all, let me congratulate my teammates on accomplishing this feat. None of us had ever hiked/biked/paddled/etc continuously for this long a period of time. I think Daron had been closest with about 13 hours. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to move myself foward like I did for 19 hours straight (I won't count the map marking time). Even better, I am amazed that I felt as good as I did when we stopped. I can see myself doing a longer race in the future.

I did not experience the mental fatigue that I thought I might after going so long without sleep (about 30 hours straight by the end of the race). I think the physical activity helped keep me alert. I did not notice any drop in mental alertness in the others during the race, with the exception of them not catching some turns, etc (which very well could have been due to them being navigationally challenged to start with - no offense intended).

The one mental "problem behavior" I noticed in myself was the lack of attention to what other teams were doing, who they were, what time it was, and making use of the written checkpoint clues. I'm guessing that part of this behavior was due to my being so focused on the task of map reading and navigation. When we were marking the maps at the beginning, I did not notice until we were done that all but two other teams had already left the start area, even though they were all right there with us. I did recall a few faces from other teams as we passed them on the course, but I did not notice team numbers. Looking back, I would love to have recorded the time of day/night that we punched each checkpoint, but that was not required or deemed important at the moment. Most important of all, the checkpoint clues offered information that could have saved us much time if we had paid attention to them prior to needing help finding a checkpoint.

On the energy level perspective, I think doing a better job of eating during the race would have helped boost my energy level towards the end. Figuring out what your body wants or craves under these conditions is important to make the eating easier. The peanut butter and honey sandwiches were good in the early part of the race, but when the temp's dropped, the honey wouldn't flow and a peanut-butter-only sandwich is hard to swallow. The turkey and cheese sandwiches were good too, but again, with a harder cheese, like the real swiss we had, getting it to go down quickly was a problem for me.

The soups were good, although I skipped the noodles in the chicken noodle soup because they were not drinkable. The brothy beef and mushroom soup went down great, but may not have had the fuel in it that I needed. I'm guessing that a creamy-style soup might be ideal - thin enough to drink, but thick enough to carry calories into my system. I'll have to experiment with that at home.

The gel packs went down pretty good, except the one that I tried to eat in the dark while walking, quite a bit of oozed out of the container and covered my fingers and pants leg. Let me tell you, that stuff must be designed to stick to your ribs, because it sure makes your fingers and clothing sticky!! I had a small pouch on my pack strap that I could easily reach , and that's where I kept gel packs. Being able to get to them easily helped me eat them as often as I did. Even so, I'm sure I didn't eat one as often as I should have. Remembering to do so would have helped. It's too easy for me to get into a masochistic trudge mode, because that's the way I backpacked most of the time in the past.

Regarding hydration, I never emptied my 100 ounce Camelbak bladder on any one section. JPQ and/or Kayla refilled it with Gatorade for me at every transition. KLK did a good job of reminding us to drink on the course, and I did, but I'm not sure I drank enough. The hot cocoa went down well at the transitions, when it wasn't getting kicked over by accident (I'm not naming any names here, but you know who you are! :) ).

Doing a better job of rehydrating after the race ended would have helped me feel better that evening and the next day. As it was, I was tired of drinking Gatorade by the end and quit because I could.

As far as gear goes, the only issue I have with any of my clothing was that it was cool/cold when it got wet. And it was always wet due to my ability to sweat so well. The only way for me to address this, other than changing a lot, is to race when the temp's are warm enough that wet clothing doesn't matter. They haven't invented a cloth yet that can dry faster than I can sweat, and I doubt they will! Being able to put on the rain jacket while biking with a wet shirt helped tremendously, especially in the wee hours when it was coldest.

I wore lightweight tights under nylon hiking pants for most of the race. My legs never got uncomfortably cold,perhaps because they were always working. I also wore some lightweight gaiters on the bike sections, to keep my pants legs out of the chainring, which may have helped to keep my lower legs warmer.

My shoes did well. I wore both my Salomon shoes (for biking) and some New Balance running shoes (for hiking and biking). The rubber boots I wore for paddling were not necessary, although the risk of soaked shoes is important enough to make separate paddling shoes almost necessary, especially if it's cold outside. Changing socks at every transition probably helped me too, as I did not suffer any hot spots or blisters during the entire race.

Navigation gear: I came with a yardstick for marking off UTM grid lines on the maps. Several other teams did too. But the maps they gave us had already been marked that way, so it wasn't necessary. The little UTM plotter tool I got from TeamXperience worked great. Our biggest difficulty was dealing with the checkpoints located at the edge of the maps, and there were plenty of those. We just had to remember to flip the tool over and subtract the numbers.

We attempted to use the distance wheel on the map once, at about 3 AM, and didn't have great success with it. That may have been due to the time of day and our condition, as much as for any other reason. I'm also not sure about the reliability of my cyclometer, or KLK's. That could be fixed for the next race. Since the map was gridded off with 1000 meter lines, we should have switched our cyclometers to read in metric, instead of miles. Doing a mental meters to miles conversion takes too much brainpower when you're in a race environment.

I only used my compass a few times, primarily on one hiking section where we were following a trail that went around a big ridge and I wanted to know when we were headed in a particular direction. I never used it to take a bearing, although with so much time spent in the dark, there was plenty of time when doing so was not possible anyway. The rest of the time, even when we were bushwhacking, reading the topography and land contours was sufficient for navigation.

I do think that having two map cases, one for the map and one for the checkpoint clue sheet, would have been helpful. Because we had two adjacent maps, we would often put one on one side of the case, and the other on the opposite side, which meant we couldn't display the clue sheet.

We did notice that a lot of other teams spent a lot less time on the maps and navigation stuff than we did. Or they spent time taking bearings when the topography was very obvious in front of them. I think our navigation saved us time that other teams lost. And we could have done even better on navigation than we did.

Other than Daron's seat post on his bike (actually Kayla's bike) slipping down under him, we didn't have any mechanical problems (knock on wood). One team discovered a broken seat bolt at the start of the first bike leg. I have no idea what they did. That's not a part that most people carry a spare around for.

Our bike lights did pretty good, except for eventually dying out from extended use. I didn't quite get the full 6 hours from mine, but since it was so cold, I think that's understandable. The headlamp alternative worked fine for me when the bike light was gone. The fact that we were on gravel roads most of the time helped. If it had been mostly singletrack, it could have been a different story.

Trail running/jogging at night was a new experience for me. I tried both my 4AA headlamp, which worked well as a handheld, and my LED headlamp, which I just wore on my head. For anything at jogging speed or greater, especially on a true trail, the handheld option would be best, in order to see the bumps on the ground. I didn't try that with my smaller LED light. For fast walking, the LED headlamp on my head did fine.

So I've listed lots of things that I/we could do differently. But this was just our first true adventure race, and I think we did a fantastic job of it!!! Way to go Adventure Family Race Team!!!!!!

May the adventure continue ......