Atomic (Rain) Adventure Race

The Atomic is one of the staple adventure races of the Blue Ridge GA area. This is a great place to race and I have loved it ever since the USARA nationals were held there a few years back. The Atomic has also been there for a few years and has drawn a lot of great racers.

Team Florida Xtreme 2 (Erik, Jeanette and I) added Gareth to our numbers and headed up towards Blue Ridge. This would be Jeanette's first race over 12 hours - and she was "bit" nervous. Erik and I assured her she would be just fine - we had 3 experienced male racers ready to come to her rescue.

The race started with a little foot prolog before the first real bike leg. We had a little issue finding one of the bike trails in the start - as it appeared someone had plopped houses down right in the way of the trail. Luckily we were able to go around the houses and find the actual trail.  This entire section of riding was really fun - great single track. The trail network was the Aska trails - and even though for every downhill there is also some uphill - they were wonderful downhills.

At one point we had the option to bushwhack to a bike swim to get from CP12 to CP13. We were with another team (RMR) at this point and they planned to swim, we decided to ride around. We arrived at the CP just as they were leaving - so we pretty much figured the route choices were about equal. A lot of teams did swim it - and even though the time to do either route was the same - we were dry and our bikes had not gotten submersed.

At CP14 we made a strategic move to skip CP15 and head straight to the trek leg. I wanted to make sure we cleared the paddle rapids before darkness and I also calculated that at our current pace we would not clear the course (this was a good call). We reached the trek leg and did all the CP's in order with no real navigation issues. It is so much easier to navigate where there are actual contours to read. The next leg was the paddle.

The paddle turned out to be a lot of fun. There were only a couple of difficult rapids. The most challenging one was just after CP22 (the house). By this point in the race we were getting spoiled. I was able to get a Chili Dog and a Mountain Dew at the Dial TA. They had Chili and bread at CP22. Even though the race was tough - the race organization was at least making it a lot of fun. When you are in a long race - these little things are wonderful.

Shortly after the CP we hit the biggest rapid. I decided that we would portage the first and run the second. This turned out to be a good choice. Gareth and Erik decided to run the rapid and ended up swimming. We fetched a lot of gear from the water - except for the paddle. If anyone finds a black kayak paddle let me know and I'll get it back to Gareth, I expect the folks living just downstream from the rapids end up with a lot of "stuff" from dumped boats.

For fun - we ran the second rapid (which was also challenging). The next big challenge was CP24 - the cemetery. It was completely dark when we arrived, and we followed an entire batch of teams the wrong direction. At the split in the 2 trails leading from the cove we took the left trail. We should have taken the trail to the right which curved straight to the cemetery. This cost us 3 hours, a lot of energy, and many scrapes and cuts from the major bushwhacks we added.

From there it was uneventful back to the main TA. It was now about 2 AM and we headed out in the cold rain for the last bike leg. The ride to Brawley was pretty cool - most of it was road, and we only had trouble with one control, mostly because I was too stubborn to stop and actually read the map. We did get a nice tour of some neighborhoods on the lake (as did some other teams judging by the bike tracks). The correct trail was probably a great ride when it was dry. I discovered that red clay becomes very slippery when it gets wet!

As we started the final climb up to Brawley the sun was coming up. I was hoping that it would start getting warmer, but instead the rain just came down harder and it got windy. It was really windy when we reached the top of the hill and the Brawley TA. Jeanette was starting to get hypothermic and was not able to ride the uphill. At the top there was another big pot of Chili (I was loving this!) - and a lot of cold racers. I took one look at the orienteering map, and decided that it was not going to happen. It looked like it would have been a lot of fun if we were fresh and it was not cold and rainy. In our current condition it was just punishment - but I applaud the teams that did do the trek.

We headed back down towards the main TA, stopping at the Iron Bridge Cafe for coffee and hot chocolate. From there it was an easy road ride to the TA. After that a few hot showers and on the road back to Florida

My impressions of the race was that Jeff did a great job with the course. The local teams did have a big advantage knowing what trails and routes are better than others - but that is normal. I really enjoyed the paddle - but also realize that other teams really struggled with it - especially at night. The weather turned on us - but there is no control over that and I have raced much worse conditions as have most of the teams there.

In the end - the fear Jeanette had turned into determination (you could see both in her eyes). I think she is now hooked - and is looking forward to her next 30 hour. For me, another fun race - and yes even when we are in cold miserable wet conditions - I somehow am still enjoying myself. I think only other adventure racers can understand this.

Great thanks to all the great racers we met along the way and talked to. The people you meet in adventure races are the best! I'm looking forward to the next Atomic - and now on to the next race which is Father's Day - with my kids!

Here is some video of the race to enjoy and the full map as a PDF (with my markings)

Here is a link to the Atomic Map on Scribd with all my markings.
Atomic Map

Missing River Adventure Race

3 years ago I went on a camping trip an ended up at O'Leno State Park. I went for a run in the trails around the park and had the first idea of the Missing River Adventure Race. What really intrigued me about the place was the river sections that simply disappeared into the group, just to appear later at the "rise". A river that alternated between above and below ground seemed like a great idea for an adventure race. After talking to the park rangers who enthusiastically embraced the idea of an adventure race - the Missing River AR was born. The first 2 times the race was offered I had other commitments, but this time I was able to make it.

Team Florida Xtreme 2 was Ron Eaglin, Erik Wise, Jeanette Ciesla, and Junos Reed. This was going to be an interesting race as we would also have Florida Xtreme 1 and 3 racing along with a lot of other great teams. A cool part of the race was that we would start with the sport course trek and the sport course bike legs.

We started with the run and blew through the run leg in 32 minutes coming in just behind FLX3 and Paw Pawz. We lost the lead at CP5 where we overshot by about 200 meters, but quickly came back around. The mapped "wetland" was actually a series of connected sinks - and it took us a while to figure this out. Once we did we quickly moved to the most southeast of the sinks and found the flag.

We transitioned very quickly to bikes an the bike course was essentially uneventful, though we did have a lot of chunking through sand. We biked well, but still were 6 minutes behind Florida Xtreme 1 when we got to the boats. We proved to be a strong paddling team - and finished the paddle in 1:43 and made it back to the TA feeling strong.

This is the map as I marked it before the race. Note that I measured and marked the locations of CP24 and CP23 given the bearing and distance information from CP22.  The route choice was tricky, had it not been for CP21, we would have gone from CP25 along the faint trail and done them 23 - 22 - 24. Instead we went north from CP25 to CP24 - CP22 - CP23.



We elected to do the elite trek first,  except for the one long course bearing bushwack section the trek was pretty straightforward. This sections was not. I had preplotted the 2 points on my map - and we used all available clues to find these. The spur was very subtle and the bushwhack forced us off our bearing. In this section we saw one rattlesnake, and entire family of turkey, a sleeping baby deer - it was wildlife central. To fin CP25 we followed the trail north and just followed the ridge (contours) to the control. We knew we had overshot the CP22 - but had to get to the wetland boundary on the south side of the spur to retrace our steps back to it. That worked and we found it. We did a reverse bearing to CP23 - just missing it and also missing the faint trail. We bailed out to the road, and went to the waypoint WP1 where we were able to follow the faint (nonexistent except for ribbons) to the control. We lost a little time, but not as much as most teams.

The last bike ride was punishing with lots of sand. Erik alternated towing Jeanette and Junos. Junos was suffering from some severe heat issues, but when we got to CP28 we were able to immerse him in the river which helped a lot. We had a small issue with a flat tire about 3 miles from the finish - we were able to change it in about 5 minutes (usually takes us 3)   In the end we came in 2nd in a great race

Results are at http://pangeaadventureracing.com/event-details/events/2012-missing-river-ar