The Howl at the Moon 2006 – Team Travel Country Outdoors
It is an annual event that has its own cult following. It is a chance to stay up all night long and race through the darkness and cold that makes even the simplest tasks a true challenge. Teams from Maine to Key West lined up on a cold afternoon in White Springs to see what the worst of the Suwannee River area and the Adventurous Concepts could dish out. I had been looking forward to the race and was racing with long-time team-mate Greg and also new racer friend Melissa.
A cold front moved through the area the morning of the race promising to make it a cold night. Melissa and I made very quick work of the usual preparing the maps for the race and we got all the gear ready. We would start with a bit of orienteering – but not until the race directors ran (yes ran) us to the intended start location. We had different ideas – our intention was to do the orienteering in reverse (an action that had been declared OK by the race director). Unfortunately we (and some other enterprising teams) took out a bit earlier than intended and by the time the race officials found us and ran us to the real start we were 20 minutes behind the pack. Oh well.
After about 2 ½ hours of running and bushwhacking we came back to the race start around 6th place and prepared to split up. Because Greg and I were racing 2 person and Melissa was racing as a solo, she had to paddle to the next Transition while we had to bike. We hoped we would be able rejoin – but the split did have us worried. Greg and I headed out on the bike where we immediately overshot the turn for the Transition by about a mile, doubled back, turned onto a dirt road that headed to the transition and promptly dead ended, bushwhacked, and finally found a good road. We were the second team out on the bikes and we became the 11th team to hit the water. Oh Well again.
As Greg and I hit the water we knew 2 things, we would be wet and we would be cold. We were carrying the bikes in the boat with us and had been warned of submerged rocks and very shallow water. We had those and were able to add 40 degree weather, wet clothes, thick fog, and failing lights. We were a lone boat on a dark winding river. Any time we stopped paddling we would start shivering. We were in and out of the boat to pull it off of sand bars and rocks.
After a few hours of paddling we reach a point where we had to get out and visit two checkpoints. As I stepped out of the boat I started shivering uncontrollably – literally quaking with chattering teeth and flailing hands. I wanted to take my shoes off so that I could put on a pair of dry long packs I had in my pack. After much effort I was able to get them on and retie my shoes. I knew that once we started jogging I would warm – but at the time it was the misery of going towards hypothermia. I forced myself to prepare and hollered to Greg and we were off. As expected I quickly warmed and regained my senses. We quickly found both controls and also ran into Melissa as we headed back to the boat. She had a single control to find and would be able to catch up to us quickly on the boats. With my brain once again working I noted that I had beached us on the south tip a peninsula, seeing the other boats on the same sand bar. My original plan had been to pull out at a location 400 meters further on and that would have saved us quite some time in bushwhacking. These small mistakes were beginning to bother me, but in the middle of the race – all you can do is keep going and try to do better.
The white fog had that had been “bad” before we had our CP7/8 stop was now basically a wall of white. It was like being snowblind and the lights were absolutely no use as they simply reflected up from the fog. I turned my headlamp to face sideways instead of forward and found that at least we could navigate by seeing the large limestone walls on both sides of the river. This of course made it nearly impossible to see anything in front of use – but as we figured, if we hit it hard enough it would probably move anyway. It’s a good thing is those aluminum canoes are nearly indestructible!
As expected Melissa quickly finished the orienteering and caught up with us on the paddle. With 2 boats and the ability to use the shallow draft of the kayak to help Melissa spot the shallow water we were able to stay off the sand-bars, mostly. We still had a few scares as we slammed into rocks, and we still had a few sand-bars that we simply could not get over without hopping out of the boat and dragging it. As with all sections of all races – this one finally came to an end. Checkpoint 9 and the conclusion of the paddle was a welcome sight.
Here we would portage our boats and put them on the racks. We were once again cold – but I had dry socks and my bike shoes in my pack and they were a luxury (dry feet). We were about an hour behind the leaders and were determined to make it up in the tricky navigation that would follow on the bike. It was not long before we learned that our maps were not going to be entirely useful as we found the first road that we planned on using to get to the next CP (10) was simply not there. We tried north, we tried south and eventually simply went around and made our way to Suwannee Springs. As we arrived another team relayed their misery of having been there for an hour and not finding the control. We set up a search pattern – and after 10 minutes of searching, the obvious came to mind. We were at Suwannee Springs, we simply needed to find the Spring. I called to Greg and Melissa – and sure enough Melissa had figured it out, we quickly located the Spring and in a cubby along an old Coquina wall – the control point.
After looking at how sandy the direct route looked I decided we would try an indirect route by road. We headed first west and then south to find the “cutover” road that would take us towards CP 11. It dead-ended into a house. We tried a southern road, it dead-ended. We doubled back to the main road and tried the next road south. It seemed to go through, but quickly came to a 90 degree turn – heading south. We wanted north, but I decided to try south and sure enough the road turned east again, and then south, and then east. We finally came to a solid marl road that appeared to go due north with no end. After a quick debate “it goes the way we want to go” we decided to take it and after a mile we came upon a T-intersection and the river. At that point I knew where we were and we quickly found CP11. With two solid navigators we made quick work of CP 12, 13, and 14 with relative ease (also we could see the tracks of the teams in front of us). It was about 8 miles from CP 14 to the finish and mostly paved road – so we formed a bike line and put our heads down. Greg proved his worth, pulling the bike line at a brisk pace.
We came to the finish line at 3:46 to find four teams in front of us (who had finished at 3:30), who as we had guessed from the tracks had traveled much of the course together. We were a kind of second place and we were only 16 minutes back. It was also great to have the other teams cheering our little band of three into the finish in the darkness. After some Olive Garden pasta around a campfire and a short nap – we felt much better.
We had overcome it all and also had a great new team-mate in Melissa. After the misery, the frustration, the mistakes, and the triumphs it was a great race and a great experience.
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