Raid the Rock

October 15, 2005

It would be hard to top last year's experience at Raid the Rock. The race was well run, the competition fierce, the course fantastic, the finish close, and we won. Pretty much everything you could want. So it was with high expectations that we returned for this year's version.

With Yvonne out due to her pregnancy, we can't return the same squad. David and I decide to enter two teams. David takes Jeff and Carrie Sona, tuning up the trio for their Nationals bid, while I get Doug Nishimura and Vicki Vojak. Each team has it's own strengths and weaknesses, but both should be competitive. David's team is Carols Team/Apline Shop and mine is Carols Team/Big Shark.

Yvonne doesn't want to be left out and actually asks if she can work support. I expect that we'll catch some jeers for making a pregnant girl carry our stuff, but good support is hard to find so we eagerly accept. We also get Amanda, a Little Rock native who helped us last year and she brings along her sister as well. We certainly aren't lacking for support.

We arrive in Little Rock early Friday afternoon and get through the gear check quickly. After getting something to eat, we return to find the Alpine Shop team has also arrived along with several billion mosquitoes. At the pre-race meeting we're told we will start at 5AM (a relief, the race packet had indicated that 3AM was a possibility). With no maps distributed until the start, we head off to get a few last minute supplies, including some more bug repellent.

We get to the start area at 4:30 AM. David is already being interviewed by local TV. Rather than being envious, I'm relieved as I've always come off sounding pretty stupid in TV interviews. David is also no stranger to the camera, but he handles it better. When asked what advice the defending champion has for other teams he states flatly, "Stay behind us."

Since we're near the river and glow sticks are on the required gear list, we had speculated that we might be starting on the water. That turns out not to be true. The first six checkpoints will be found on foot (in any order) and then we'll come back to the start before heading out on bikes.

Last year, plotting the points was a painfully slow process that gave away a good bit of time. We do better this year, although the fastest teams still beat us onto the course by over ten minutes. Not to worry, night navigation is what we do. We head off at an easy jog.

First section map

My confidence is dealt a bit of a blow when we boom the first control (#1). It's actually an easy control, but I'm not at all into the map and misread a raised ride through the field for the road landing us a hundred meters south of the control. By the time we sort it out, we've given away another big chunk of time. We settle down after that and hit the next three controls (#5, #6, #4) without any difficulty.

Then comes the big decision: retrace our steps and then north to 2 and 3 or head north on this side of the interstate and cross at the overpass. We choose the latter and pay dearly. The vegetation is horrible. We spend most of the next half hour crawling on our hands and knees. By the time we cross the overpass, the sun is already starting to rise. We get back to the transition at 7AM, an hour behind the leaders.

Alpine Shop hasn't fared much better. Although they did cross both ways at #6, they tried to go straight from #4 to the road which sent them through much of the stuff we hit. They are about 20 minutes ahead of us. With both teams mired deep in the field after what should be our best leg, things are not looking good.

Although I'm disappointed, Doug and Vicki seem to be in good spirits. Both are excellent cyclists, so we head out at a good clip. After a few miles the road turns to singletack and we are in our element. We rarely go more than a few minutes without catching another team. At the end of the trail, we find ourselves back in the top 10 with several teams around us.

We're fortunate to have company because we misplotted the next control. When we see that none of the other teams are stopping to look, we decide to simply latch on and follow. It turns out we were off by a grid square.

We are approaching the section where we expect the ropes to be. This is often a logjam and we want to be in front of the five teams that are near us. As we turn onto a ferociously steep fire road I say to Vicki, "If you ever wanted to dig deep, now would be a good time." She gamely responds and by the top of the hill we've got about a minute on the other teams. That is compounded when the next two teams follow us onto another piece of singletrack not knowing that we've already punched the control. After a couple minutes they realize their mistake and turn back, giving us some breathing room.

We get to the ropes with three other teams currently working their way through them. Doug swims out to a cargo net and then climbs roughly 30 feet to the railroad bridge. Vicki climbs a somewhat shorter net while I go up a rope ladder. When all three of us are on the bridge, we rappel back down into the water and swim to shore. It's a fun little section and, more importantly, we don't get delayed at all.

Leaving the ropes, Nate Siria, one of the organizers asks how it's going. I express my disappointment that we blew the first section. He says he was surprised that both of our teams had trouble there (remembering how we finished the night nav 45 minutes in the lead last year). "Don't worry, there's plenty more navigation coming." We're not sure exactly what that means as we only have maps to the end of the paddle, but we take it as a good sign.

After another mile of biking, we get to the paddle exchange. Our support crew already has everything laid out so we get into the water quickly. We're basically tied for seventh place. It's 9:30AM and we've cut the lead to about 40 minutes. The Alpine Shop crew is still about 20 minutes ahead in fourth.

The paddle instructions explicitly state that you have to paddle the whole way and not portage. I assume this is to keep us from simply carrying the boat through downtown Little Rock (which would be much shorter). The map shows only one viable water route to the end of the paddle, but there is another that only has very short portages and is shorter. We take the long route, as does the team along side us, but when we can't see any boats behind us, I get the terrible feeling that the other route might have been OK. My fears are alleviated when we get to the point where the routes merge and I see that rather than the small portage on the map, there is actually an airport runway blocking the stream. No chance of anybody getting through there.

Other than the anxiety over the alternate route, the first half of the paddle is uneventful. We work together fairly well and appear to be gaining on some teams ahead. I get a hip cramp that forces us to stop for a few minutes. This lets the teams ahead (and the one we were even with) get out of sight.

That's unfortunate because the river gets very narrow and twisty with all sorts of sunken obstacles. Seeing a team ahead go through would be useful information. We get hung up on a couple logs and generally do a lousy job of steering through the tight sections. We take out at 12:17, now over an hour behind again. We're just happy to have held our position on our weakest leg.

What really makes us happy is what happens next. We're given a map with no less than 16 control points on it. These aren't kiddie controls, either. It will require precise navigation to find them quickly. This definitely puts us back in the race.

Sample of final section,

Our legs are pretty cramped from sitting in the boat for nearly three hours, but after a few minutes, we're moving quickly. We're very glad we kept our long pants in our packs because there are some sections of really nasty vegetation. Fortunately, in the daylight we can see well enough to avoid the larger patches so there's no repeat of the morning's marine crawl.

We have a couple bobbles, but the final section is notable only in that nothing particularly notable happens. Our time for the section (2:24) is the fastest for all teams and moves us up to third place overall. Not at all surprisingly, David, Jeff, and Carrie also fly through the section, posting the second best section time. Their effort moves them from third to first. It certainly was a relief for both teams to redeem the morning disaster. We get our picture taken by a boulder that has the previous race winners (including our team from last year) engraved on it. We look pretty fresh in the photo, but that's just the euphoria of salvaging a good finish covering up considerable fatigue.

Unfortunately, things don't end there. The first two teams to finish the paddle got to the final exchange before it had been set up. They ended up carrying their boat all the way to the supported transition - about half a mile further than all the other teams. This sort of thing happens all the time in adventure racing and, while it sucks, I've never seen anything done about it. This time the organizers grind their teeth about it for a while and decide that the one of the teams, Ozark Outdoor, is close enough to the win that they should call it a tie. While I'll concede that this is a victimless remedy, it also seems a bit bogus. Ozark claims the carry took 9 minutes and they lost by 13. Seems that things could have been left alone.

At any rate, nobody's too upset about it and we move on to the excellent (as usual) post- race festivities. At the awards ceremony, I'm given the opportunity to say a few words about what Carol's Team is doing. By night's end we are all very happy to have once again competed in this great race.