Talon Race 2006

This was the 4th time I would be bringing my team to race in the Talon 12 hour Adventure Race. This race over the past years had provided an incredible challenge mostly due to the clever designs of the race director, Jim Hartnett, and the amazing terrain offered by Alafia River State Park. As our team (Greg, Jamie, Jeff, and I) got together at the hotel room the night before the race we had the shared feeling that you get before a race when you feel that things are going to go well the next day. Because anything can happen in AR and even for the best teams there is no guarantee of even finishing there is always a high level of uncertainty to the outcome of any race. Having finished second in this race three years in a row, I was determined to take away a first place trophy this time around, but in adventure racing determination and preparation just increase your chances – they are a far cry from a guarantee. In each of the previous three years our team had tried so hard to overcome mistakes we made early in the race, only to fall short each time to the competition.

Because the premiere division of the Talon is the three person coed, we decided to race as a 3 person team and have Greg race as a soloist. This would be the second time Jeff would be racing with Team Travel Country Outdoors, he had proved to have solid athletic ability and had “seasoned” as a racer tremendously since the last time we had raced together. We grouped together at the start line and listened to the last minute instructions, which basically said that we would have a 4 PM cutoff to be able to start the final bike leg of the race (which looked to be a solid 3-4 hour leg). Jim told the teams the start of the race was single track biking, but to keep the teams from bunching up we would start with a roughly 1 mile trail run and then hop on the bikes. He then pointed south to an arrow sign and said “go”. We had our bikes and bike shoes and bike gear (including helmets) on, but as a team we simply dropped our bikes and started running.

Jamie led the way through the roughly 1 mile trail run that went up and down old phosphate mine pilings and we were the first team to finish and get onto the bikes. This turned out to be very fortuitous as we immediately went into an advanced single track bike trail called “roller coaster” which was aptly named. Getting behind a slower bike team here would have been a problem as passing in “Roller Coaster” would have been difficult. This single track bike allowed us to build some distance on the main pack and only one team (a 2 person male team of strong bikers) was staying with us. As we entered another bike trail called “Rock Garden” we came to an unmarked intersection and lost some time figuring out what to do. The other team passed us and just as I crested a particularly large hill I got distracted and went flying over the handlebars. A quick body check told me nothing was broken, except I had some nasty welts and blood on my knees and my hand hit a rock hard and immediately started swelling and throbbing. I lost some time repairing my bike as my bike seat was facing 90 degrees with my bike frame, and bashing it back into a correct angle was difficult with one hand out of commission.

The bruised hand continued to throb through the remaining miles of the single track ride. We went into some easier single track, and that helped me get my focus back on the biking – but in a race easier single track simply means a great speed and we simply replaced difficulty with speed. Even a mild single track curve is tricky at 15 mph. We came off the bike ride less than a minute behind the only team in front of us and decided we would complete all the special tasks required in the race while we were in the Transition. We bobbed for apples (quite refreshing with the added bonus of being able to eat the apple), completed a Sudoku Challenge, did a blindfolded maze, and crossed a rope challenge that required you to swing from rope to rope transferring to the other rope with each swing. This allowed some teams who chose to skip the special tests (and do them later) to pass us. But we were feeling good going into the next leg of the race – the paddle.

The paddle leg was most aptly described as the portage leg. We portaged to a small lake, punched a control in the middle of the lake, and then paddled to the shore where we repeated this in the next lake. After the third portage I made our first (and only major) mistake of the race. Misreading a part of the map I did not realize that the flags in one area were in water (it was not blue) and we portaged the boats to a wooded area and started on foot for the controls (we would return to portage the boats to the next location). After 10 minutes of an extremely difficult bushwhack we got to the controls – close together in the middle of a completely slime covered pond. Since we were there we decided to swim out to them, but even that proved challenging as the shoreline was basically waist deep muck. We did get the controls but returning to the correct plan – cost us a serious 20+ minutes (we saw plenty of teams go by) and put us back on the intended plan (to use our boats).

The final portion of the paddle was a 2 mile paddle down the Alafia River (a short ¼ mile portage to the river) and then a lake paddle of about 3 miles. With Florida currently in the midst of a major drought, the Alafia River was best referred to as the Alafia series of shallow flowing ponds. The Alafia paddle had never been easy in any race – but this time we never even bothered getting into the boats. We dragged, pushed, pulled, slogged, and carried the boats to the bridge. We learned there that the remaining section of the paddle (where we could actually paddle) had been cut short as teams were way behind the time projection of the race. We would be heading on foot to a single checkpoint and then back to the transition area.

The trek would take us north about 2 miles through some tough terrain (waist high grass in an old phosphate mine). A couple of teams followed with us but soon dropped off as we proceeded northward – it was all full sun and the 90 degree heat was starting to take its toll on teams. We reached the location of the checkpoint (it was not difficult) to find a ribbon in a tree. We searched the area and I decided to call in to let Jim know the flag was missing (or possibly misplaced). After he described the ribbon and its location (including a detailed description of the tree in which it was hanging) I was more sure that we were in the correct location (I was already at 100%). We marked the ribbon to prove we were there and headed west for a bushwhack back through the river basin to the canoe launch. It was a due west bushwhack and we came out exactly at the launch as expected and then headed by trail back to the main TA.

At the TA we switched to bikes to do a fairly short bike to 2 easy to find control points. This was an easy and uneventful ride and took us back to the main TA and the most challenging leg of the race – the orienteering leg. The passport had the not so cryptic message “good luck” for the teams as they started this leg of the race, and it proved to be an apt message. We would be navigating from an aerial photo that basically had 2 pieces of information – water or canopy (trees). The water was also not a good description – water meant duckweed covered, shallow, muddy terrain.

As we entered the woods looking for CP19 (which was a bit too far west of the mapped location, but all the other flags were perfectly located) – I quickly shifted my time estimate of this leg. The first 200 feet of travel took us a solid 5 minutes in the thick hilly terrain. As it turns out the area was a long abandoned phosphate mine (now overgrown). The hills were old phosphate pilings ranging in height from 30 to 70 feet and steep. The majority of the terrain consisted of crawling, pulling, and dragging up to the top of the hills and then sliding down the other side. Add in the spiders (plenty of spider nests), the thorn covered vines, and the waist deep mud at many locations – the going was quite slow. We did controls up to control 31 in order, after control 31 I decided to use a trail in the area to exit for a while and re-attack control 36 from an actual trail. We had been working with another team up to control 28 – but they decided to bail out when we decided to swim the lake section between control 28 and 29. We met up with them again at control 36 going the opposite direction. We gathered controls 36 through 32 working backwards and decided to swim the last lake near control 37 before heading back. We had debated skipping some of the controls as it was nearing 3:30 PM and we knew we would need to make the 4 PM cutoff for the bike leg. In the end we got them all and even rejoined with the team we had been working with at CP37. We were running at that point because we could – we were happy to not be fighting up and down hills. We ran back to the TA, about a mile and it took less time to run this than it did to go from the CP’s that had been separated by 500 feet.

We arrived back at the TA at 3:45 PM and prepared for what I knew would be a 3+ hour bike ride in full sun on sand roads. Bladders and water bottles were full and the team had re-hydrated and eaten. We headed to the TA checkout and then learned that the bike ride had been shortened to a single checkpoint. It was 3:55 PM and there were only us and one other team in the TA, the one we had traveled with on the orienteering. They were still in the TA and looked like they had no intention of leaving any time soon (one team-mate was obviously hurting and they were working to get recovered). I looked at the new course and quickly figured that we would have at most 30 minutes of riding to be finished. We were disappointed (a little) as we had psyched up for the ride, but at the same time relieved. It took us little over 20 minutes to visit the single final CP and return to the TA and finish the race. It was a nice ride and knowing that there were no teams right on our tail (we would have seen them in the open terrain) allowed us to complete it without pushing ourselves too hard. After finishing we quickly debated visiting some of the other CP’s on the bike leg for fun – but decided that we had had enough (8 ½ hours of racing) and would relax. We cheered in the other teams, and chatted for a while – and we all had time for cold outdoor showers in the bike wash.

In the end the race was excellent – the course was challenging and required strength, skill, and endurance. All of the race sections were excellent. The orienteering – as hard as it was – was one of the highlights of any race I had done. I was glad our team overcame the mistakes we made by continuing solidly through the challenging course. I finally got that 1st place trophy (sitting next to the three second place trophies). All of the other adventure racers that were out there I am sure are feeling the bruises that are an inevitable outcome of race terrain like this. The bruises fade quickly – but the memories and the stories last a lot longer – and get better with time.