Dusk 2 Dawn

July 25-26, 2009

I traveled to Lawrence, Kansas to run the Lake Perry Dusk 2 Dawn Adventure Race on July 25-36. This is the fourth and (at least at this venue) final running of the overnight event. I've always heard good things about it, but this was the first year that it made it onto my schedule.

I take most of the day to get across the state, stopping in Columbia to down some pizza while watching the coverage of the Tour de France on Mont Ventoux. I get to the park at 5PM, sort through my gear, and chat a bit with Race Director Jason Elsenraat, who seems a bit frazzled. I've come to realize that he always seems like that before a race and am quite sure that everything is actually well in order. Jason's are some of the best run events in the country. Still having some time to kill, I decide to go for a quick ride to loosen up ahead of the mandatory 7:30 meeting.

At the team meeting, we get our maps. I'm happy that they are pre-marked as I find plotting points a tedious and unrewarding part of the sport. There are 25 controls in all. It looks like the course is a pretty well balanced, with maybe just a bit of bias towards biking (which I'm also happy about). Course designer Kelly Sumner is experienced enough to know that even those of us who prefer deep woods will get sick of tics, chiggers, and poison ivy before the night is done. Therefore, most of the course follows gravel roads and trails. The navigation all seems pretty simple, but this is a night event, so even simple navigation requires some care.

The field is about what you'd expect for a regional event: three nationally ranked teams, a bunch of solid local talent, and a handful of folks who have no idea what they've got themselves into. St. Louis based Alpine Shop (Jeff & Carrie Sona, David Frei, and Doug Nishimura, all who have raced for Carol's Team at some point or another) will be challenged in the Elite Division by the Bushwackers from Peoria, IL and Springfield Missouri's Dynamic Earth. In the Solo Division, I'll have my hands full with last year's winner, Phil Nichols. I don't recognize any of the 2-person teams, but I assume at least some of them are fast.

We start at 8:45. There's still enough daylight to see the terrain without lights, but I turn mine on anyway so I can better read the map. The first 3 controls are on foot and can be taken in any order. The only sane options are 1-2-3 or 3-2-1 and most of the field goes for the former. I run in a small group to 1, take the lead going to 2, and by 3 I'm alone. I get back to the Start/Finish in 32 minutes. The transition to the bike should have been a shoe change and go, but I didn't plan it out very well and end up taking nearly five minutes to get moving again. That's enough time for several other teams to arrive and a few beat me back out onto the course.

The first bike leg is fairly long and entirely on paved roads (except for teams like Alpine Shop, who opt to save some distance with a shortcut through the woods). I hit it pretty hard figuring this is my best chance to get some separation from my rivals. Unfortunately, I miss a turn in the process and lose a couple minutes. I get to the control about the same time as Alpine Shop, with Nichols less than a minute up the road. I bridge across to Nichols and then Jeff Sona pulls the Alpine train up along side us. We're all experienced enough to know that fighting for seconds this early in the race makes no sense at all, so we all back off and form a 6-person pack. The road surface has turned to gravel and while our pace is not exactly heroic, we make good time, getting to the next transition a little after 11PM.

Again, my transition is slower than I'd like; my problems seem to be related to the fact that I haven't been doing much night training lately. As soon as I take my pack off, I have to unplug my headlamp from the main battery. This is no problem if I remember to turn the small headlamp on first, but I'm out of practice at these things and keep switching back and forth between lights. By the time I've got my running shoes out of the pack and stowed my cycling gear, the others are a hundred meters up the course. I have no trouble closing the gap, as their headlamps are quite visible, but in the process I run full speed into a wire fence and open up a pretty good gash on my shin. Fortunately, the damage is entirely superficial.

On the map, the next 4 controls look trivial as they are all on trail. However, the trail itself is very indistinct in places. Alpine's navigator, David Frei, is as good as they come at night. With Phil and I also reading the maps and the other three pace counting and keeping a general eye out for things, we don't lose any time, but it certainly takes more concentration that we had expected. It's nearly 1AM when we get to the boats. We all agree that we're probably about halfway through the course.

I finally put together a decent transition and get my boat in the water at about the same time as the others. Alpine Shop is split into 2 aluminum canoes provided by the race. As soloists, Phil and I get to use our own boats and we've both brought touring kayaks. Our little armada stays together for the first mile or so, but then I decide to lift the pace a bit. When neither team responds, I figure this is as good a time as any to go, so I drop the hammer.

When I started Adventure Racing, paddling was by far my weakest discipline. I didn't worry about it much because the paddling never seemed to make that much difference; the teams I raced with always made up for it in the navigation. But, as the sport matured, all the top teams got good at navigation and the smaller time gaps on the water started to matter. After a disastrous paddle meant losing a podium spot at 2003 National Championships by a mere 5 minutes, I decided I needed to fix the problem. That turned out to be more work than expected, but six years later, I'm seeing some real dividends. Brad Baum and I used the paddle to get away from the field at Conquer Castlewood last month and here I suddenly find myself free after four hours of stalemate.

The first paddle control is back where we left the bikes. Every so often a team can be seen moving along the trail above the lake. Paddling back out from the control, I pass the other three boats and note that I've got a 5-minute lead. Alpine Shop has to stop to load their bikes into the Canoes, losing another five minutes and splitting them from Phil. Phil's bike and mine are shuttled by car, since lashing a bike to a kayak and then crossing a 1-mile wide lake solo in the middle of the night is a bit more risk than the race staff is willing to accept.

For the next hour, I keep the pressure on as best I can. This is the only paddle section and there is no rock climbing or ropes on the course, so the fact that I'm blowing out my upper body isn't a big concern. While the effort hurts, it can't fully mask the fact that this is a truly spectacular night to be out on the water. The sky is cloudless (with the big dipper conveniently obviating the compass to stay on bearing), the temperature is a perfect 70 degrees, and there's just a hint of breeze. I turn off the headlamp so I can better see the outline of the hills against the sky. Crossing the main lake, I see another team heading along the shore to the bike pickup. I assume it's Bushwacker and.it looks like they're only about 10 minutes behind Alpine Shop, so that race is still on, too. After hitting another control in an inlet, I get to the takeout at a quarter to 3.

The next section is a short bit of navigating on foot. The three controls are all fairly close to roads, but enough into the woods that some careful map reading is required. I run it hard, sticking to the roads as much as possible and ducking into the woods to take the controls. I hit them all cleanly and as I'm running back to the transition area, I pass Alpine Shop just heading out. I've been on the foot course for about 20 minutes, so I'm pretty happy with that lead. Back at the transition, I'm told that Phil is about five minutes ahead of Alpine Shop.

The first hour of the bike back to the finish is on roads. I ride it firm, but hold back a bit because I know the last hour will be on those horrible rocky trails. I'll want to be as fresh as possible for that because, once fatigue sets in, it's really hard to maintain good technique. And if technique goes on technical single track at night, well, 15 minutes isn't going to be nearly enough.

After checkpoint 23, I'm on the trails. I quickly decide that it's too bumpy to be reading the map while riding, but that's not a problem as there are no trail junctions prior to the control. The control is at a crossing with a gravel road, so I don't figure there's too much chance of missing it. I put the map away and focus on getting through clean. After 25 minutes, I'm at the control and thinking that this isn't too bad.

The next 500m causes a significant revision of that view. Whereas the earlier trail was technical by Adventure Race standards, this one is just about the nastiest stuff I've ever ridden on. Strike the qualifier - I've never ridden on such a gnarly trail and am a bit surprised that anybody would want to. It's not so much that the rocks are big, they aren't. There's no single obstacle that's at all difficult to get over. But they are relentless; an endless rock garden as far as you can see (which isn't that far because the vibration is sending the beam from my helmet-mounted lamp all over the place). Some of the sections are faster to run, and I'm happy to use the excuse to hop off for a bit, but most need to be ridden. I figure my lead is probably still around 15 minutes. If I can just get through another 20 minutes without breaking my bike or body, I'll be fine.

Twenty minutes pass. Then 30. I'm beginning to panic; I should be out of the nasty stuff by now. Is it possible I blew a turn? There are no junctions on the map and I didn't see any on the ground, either. I get to a gully that looks like it might be a trail. If I've got on the wrong trail, I need to be heading up the hill away from the lake, so I follow the gully. At the top of the hill, I hit private property. The only property boundaries on the map are uphill from the trail I want to be on, so I guess the trail I was on was OK, but where on the trail am I? I decide I'd better get back to what I do best: reading the map. I pull out my compass, get the map in my hand, and run along the trail, dragging the bike in the other hand. If I have to run the rest of the way, I will, but to lose on a nav error at this late stage would be too bitter a pill to swallow. After a few minutes of running, I've got my position sorted out and hop back on the bike. While the junctions in the last half mile all look right, it's still with great relief that I spot the control at the trailhead.

From the last control, it's an anti-climatic 9-minute ride back to the finish on paved roads. Even less climatic is the finish itself as the entire race staff has decided that 5:26AM is a good time to be asleep. I take that as a good sign (the possibility that Phil had passed me while I explored the gully was looming in the back of my head). The one volunteer standing duty confirms that I am first in. Phil arrives 10 minutes later. He had ridden his heart out on the trail to close down the gap (and gone down a couple times in the process), but it was just a bit too wide. Alpine Shop arrives at 6AM to take the team title.

After a quick trip to the campground showers, I get a little sleep before breakfast is served. By the time the food comes out at 9AM, a dozen teams have finished and we all sit down to swap war stories from the night before. The uniform view is that the course was outstanding, but nobody particularly cared for that last bit of mountain biking. At the awards ceremony, Jason lets me put in a few words about Carol's Team and what we're trying to do for those with ALS. It all adds up to a pretty great weekend, the only disappointment that this race will be no more.

This just in: I got an email from Bonk Hard indicating that they are going to try to find another venue for this race. Hopefully we'll have another fun night of racing next year!