Mission on the Muscatatuck

May 28, 2005

Those who know me would not describe me as a particularly warm, fuzzy, touchy-feely type guy. While I do think that sports can embody some noble qualities, tenderness is not one of them. The "human interest" stories run during the Olympics bore me to the point where I don't even watch the games anymore. To me sports is about competition. It's great to be freinds off the field, but during the race, you race. Nonetheless, every so often a race works out in a way that even I have to describe it as heartwarming. Of course, a happy ending doesn't mean the race didn't have it's problems.

The first problem is who to enter. As we are normally a four-person team, the three- person format means that we'll have to split the team. Since David, Jeff, and Carrie won the race outright last year, it seems reasonable to keep them together. They enter as Carol's Team/Alpine Shop while I pick up Brad Baum and Doug Nishimura to form Carol's Team/Big Shark.

The format of the race is unique. The race is based on time rather than distance. From the 6:00 AM start, teams will get as much of the course done as they can before midnight. Within each section, we can take controls in any order. Skipping controls within a section results in a penalty, unless it's the last section completed. The transition area for most of the sections is Muscatatuck County Park in North Vernon, IN.

Stampede start

Rather than distributing maps at the start, the race director announces that we will all ride to a remote location for the start. It's supposed to be a leisurely pedal and he encourages us to get to know some other teams along the way. That sounds like a great idea, but after about five minutes, I realize that I left the punch card back at our transition area - I had expected to be going back there with maps. Since we don't have directions to where we are headed, I have to ride full on to get the card and get back without losing contact with the group. We catch back up after a few miles, but a hard effort right at the start is not the best recipe for success in an 18-hour race.

The real hard effort is yet to come. The remote start is at a dirt stock car oval. We will all start together and the first five riders across the line each lap will get pulled. When all the team has been pulled, we can start the rest of the course. This is a great idea for a start, but the rains from the previous night have turned the track into a quagmire. Bikes are useless on the banked mud, so all the teams run instead. Doug and David are both among the five who get pulled at the end of the first lap. The rest of us soldier on for two more laps at which point the race director realizes that running in the mud isn't nearly as exciting as he'd hoped and pulls everybody else off the track.

David, Jeff, and Carrie set the early pace

We plot our points reasonably quickly and get on the bikes about halfway deep in the field. After a few miles, we get to a bike drop and head out to get the first four points on foot. The navigation is not particularly tough, but it's enough that by the end of it, we've moved up to third behind Alpine Shop and the Citgo team from Indianapolis. A plotting error on my part costs us about ten minutes on the remaining bike section and we get to the first exchange about half an hour behind Alpine Shop, still in third.

The next section is a "paddling" section. I use quotes because we were one of the few teams dumb enough to actually try it. The rafts we are given are quite large and we have to take our bikes with us. We pile the bikes in one raft, put the three of us in another, and find that the tiny plastic paddles we've been given are woefully insufficient for propulsion. After about half an hour on the water, we come to the conclusion that most teams reached right from the start: it's faster to carry the boats on the road than paddle them in the river.

Alpine Shop rides with the boats while Big Shark looks for other techniques

Back on the road, we are passed by a number of teams that have spent more time figuring out how to efficiently carry the boats on their bikes. We are also given helpful advice from several motorists who tell us that the river is to our north. We do put the boats back in the water for one half-mile leg that has no road parallel to the river. Rather than paddle, we simply wade along the edge, pulling the boats behind us. At the end of this leg we decide to completely deflate the rafts so we can carry them easier on the bikes. This takes some time, but it's well worth it and we make good time to the end of the section. We turn in our boats and are told we're in fifth place, about 90 minutes off the lead.

Frustrating as the "paddle" has been, we all perk up a bit now that we're able to use our big chainrings again. We hammer out a decent pace and get to the ropes section in third, the lead cut to 80 minutes.

Carrie on the ascender

The first ropes test is a choice of climb or ascend up a 5-meter cliff. As Doug and Brad have very limited experience on ascenders (which are slow even if you know what you're doing), I'm hoping that they'll be able to make the climb. I climb first so that they can benefit from seeing my line. The line I pick turns out to be harder than I expected, probably around 5.8, which is the upper edge of my abilities in trail shoes. I get up OK, but am glad that Brad and Doug have used the extra time to find an easier route. They both get up the 5.7 route without too much trouble and we're off to the zip line.

Alpine Shop paid the price of being the first team through the ropes section when the zip line jammed on Jeff and left him stranded over the river. They've sorted it out for us and we all go through without any difficulty.

Big Shark crosses the river

We wade back across the river and head into the transition just before 2:00 PM to get our next set of points.

Prior to getting the points, we have to fit all three of our bikes through a slot cut into a piece of plywood. We are able to do this removing only the wheels and seat from each bike. We're told that some teams lost quite a bit of time here taking off all sorts of parts.

The next loop gives the option of biking or running, although it's not really much of a choice. The distances to be covered mandate the use of bikes, even if they do have to be hauled through the woods on a few occasions. As biking and navigating are our strengths, this loop goes without a hitch and we make good time. Aside from some short sections of carrying the bikes through the woods, the distance is all on roads. Right at the finish, we get a little bit of single track which is fun, but over all too soon.

When we get to the ropes at the end of the loop, we're surprised to find both Citgo and Alpine Shop there. Carrie is fuming. Apparently, they were given a bad set of coordinates for one of the controls and lost a lot of time searching for it. David is convinced they've lost several hours, but a more objective appraisal would indicate that it wasn't nearly that bad. After all, we had a nearly flawless loop and only took 75 minutes out of them.

Eric on the diagonal ascent

At any rate, the race is on, but we have to sit helplessly and watch Citgo complete the ropes before we can go. The parallel set of ropes is being used by another team that decided to do the ropes prior to the rest of their bike loop. This is a bit of a snafu from an organizational standpoint - the leading teams really shouldn't have to wait on teams nearly 3 hours behind. Making everybody do the ropes at the end of the loop would have been fairer.

Citgo and the other team finish at about the same time, so both Carol's Team entries are on the ropes together. The drill is an ascent on a diagonal line followed by a rappel. The ascent isn't particularly difficult, but it finishes on a rooftop that is a bit awkward to climb onto because the ascender won't go past the lip of the roof. The trick is to put a leg over the ascending rope and then pull up with your hands. We had the benefit of seeing the other teams do this so we don't waste any time figuring it out.

The rappel back off the roof is more problematic. Since the rope is anchored below my harness, it is difficult to get into the proper position before stepping off the edge. The exact angle of how far you can lean back before flipping inverted would make a nice freshman physics problem. I figure it's around 45 degrees and am about to jump off from there when the guy working the ropes tells me I should lean back more. I do and quickly find myself not only inverted, but also smack my head pretty hard on the steel railing of the porch below the roof. Of course, I had me helmet on, so I'm not hurt, but it's still pretty annoying. Upon seeing my shattered helmet there is some discussion among the organizers as to whether I should be allowed to continue. Figuring a judgment can only go against us, I preempt the ruling by jumping off the cliff and rappelling the rest of the way down.

Doug going inverted off the roof

Doug and Brad follow. Brad does fine, but Doug is also told to lean too far back and flips over as well. He scrapes his leg rather badly on the roof, but suffers no other damage. I'm told they changed the rappel shortly after we went through because so many people were going inverted, but what they really needed to change was the guy telling people to lean back too far.

We head back to the transition and get our next set of points. Much to my dismay, the segment is labeled "paddling." I don't want anything to do with those rafts again. Closer inspection reveals that we don't need to take a raft, but we'll have to skip a point if we don't. While we're plotting points, we see Citgo leave without a raft. We overhear David and Jeff debating whether they should take a raft. I tell them that since Citgo didn't take one and this is clearly a three-team race, we should just all agree to leave it. Everyone immediately agrees; the morning death march still being a miserable memory.

We break camp shortly after 7:00 PM, about the same time as Alpine Shop. As we have an all-male team, we have an advantage on the road run coming back. Alpine Shop will need to ditch us in the woods going out. When we get meet up at the first control, it occurs to me that pushing too hard and taking weird routes to get separation isn't going to help us catch Citgo. It's at this time that I do something I've never done in a race before: I offer a truce.

My feeling is this: Alpine Shop has already been reamed by the bad coordinates. By rights they should be a good distance up the road. We could follow them around the course and then hammer them on the run back in, but where would the satisfaction be in that? On the other hand, with both David and I navigating and six sets of eyes looking for controls, we should be able to put the hurt on Citgo. Surely a tie for first is preferable to a 2-3 finish.

The other five agree without any debate and the mood immediately lightens. David and I run up front while the other four strike up a fairly animated conversation. They've met before, but Doug and Brad don't really know the rest of the team all that well so this is a good chance for some bonding. By the time the sun sets at 8:00, we've hit the three most technical controls. I'm beginning to like our chances of sweeping the loop (minus the paddling control); David is still skeptical.

One of the controls is supposed to be on a stop sign. The point we plotted is in the middle of a field and we're pretty sure we've been given another bad plot. When we get to the area of the control, it is clear that there have never been any stop signs within half a mile of the location. We don't spend much time looking around and console ourselves that at least this one was more or less on the way to the next, so little time has been lost.

At just after 9:00 PM, we meet Citgo doing the loop in the opposite direction. I'm pretty sure they won't be able to finish the portion we've completed (it's reasonably technical and they'll be doing it in the dark). On the other hand, if it took them two and a half hours to get here, we might have a stretch finishing as well. David is concerned and wants to consider dropping the furthest control. After some debate, I convince him that if we get it by 10:30, we'll be safe.

We actually get it at just before 10:00. From there, it's a long road run back to town and a couple easy controls right near the finish. We're all pretty charged up and set a good pace on the road. To get the control in town, we have to find a historical sign that says when a big fire was and make a rubbing of the sign. This turns out to be a fairly lengthy task as there are a number of such signs in the vicinity of the control. We finally get it and then head back to the finish.

Running back into the finish, Brad's girlfriend Paula passes us and holds a pizza out the window of the car. That's pretty much all the motivation we need to run up the final hill to the finish. We cross the line all together and convince the race director to list us as a tie.

The question is whether the score will be enough. There is another loop we could go out on. If we take the coordinates, our current loop won't be our last so we'd get a penalty point for skipping the paddling control (the organizer admits that the stop sign control is messed up and gives us credit for it). That means we have to get at least two controls on the last loop to improve our score. With only 40 minutes left on the clock, we decide to sit on our score (the presence of the pizza may have influenced our decision). Our decision is vindicated when Citgo shows up at 11:56 having skipped three more controls to get in on time.

As mentioned above, I'm not a big fan of complicating competition with friendship issues. I'm sure that if we had fought it out with them, there would be no hard feelings on either side. But, if we had beaten them on the last loop (which is not a given), the win would have been a hollow one. Instead, by banding together we made an otherwise messed up race enjoyable for both teams. Rather than a bunch of post-race complaining about bad coordinates and some bogus segments, we sat around eating pizza, joking with other teams, and generally coming to the conclusion that we'd had a lot of fun. That seems worth turning off the killer instinct. At least until the next race...