Guide to Your First Pangea Adventure Race

 
So you would like to come out and do your first adventure race. This is a little step by step guide that will make your experience a fantastic one. This will take you through what to expect in your first race and what to do to prepare for it.

1. Find a buddy - Adventure racing is a team sport, and team can be anywhere from 2 to 4 persons. For your first race it is best to have a like minded buddy that wants to head out and have a great time. If possible your partner should have a similar level of fitness, though this is not necessary.

2. Get some gear - You won't need a lot of gear for your first race. You will need a bike and helmet (mountain bike is definitely best), a pack, something to hold liquids, and the mandatory gear (whistle, compass).
  
If you have these two things - then it is time to sign up for your first race. If you have not done an adventure race you should sign up for the sport class race. Many very solid athletes decide that they are ready for elite in their first race - they aren't. Sport races are a bit shorter (3-4 hours) than elite, and the terrain and navigation will be easier than you will face in an elite class race. Just trust me here.

About the race

So now you have signed up for the race and it is a 3 hour race. Adventure Races are typically (but not always) measured in time. The race will involve visiting as many check points (orange flags) as you can within a time limit (the race length). You will visit some of these on foot, some on bike, and some by boat. The locations of these will be on a map given to you at the race start, and you will have written instructions describing the locations too. Each checkpoint has a coded punch that you will use to punch a punch card that proves that you visited the point.

When you arrive at the race site you will want to set up your gear in the transition area. Some team will have very elaborate setups with tents, bike racks, tables - and some teams will simply show up and drop their bikes on the ground. You will drop off your gear and then check in and get your maps. For most races you will also be assigned a starting discipline; bike, foot, or paddle. This keeps teams separated and also makes sure that all teams have boats when they get to the paddle. You will also usually have about an hour to plan your race, and also before every sport race Pangea holds an Adventure Racing 101 to help you know what to do.

The Race

At the allotted time the race will start and all the teams will head off in different direction on their assigned discipline. As you go through the course you will punch your passport and usually come back to the transition area for a punch card for your next discipline. You will want to manage your time - the time limit is a hard limit and after the time expires you will be assessed point penalties. That is pretty much how the race works, but of course there will be all kinds of strategies, some transitions from discipline to discipline, and a lot of fun.

The Scoring

So how is this scored. Unlike most races, this one is about collecting as many points as possible within the time limit. Going over the time limit will cost you points. The team that gets the most points wins the race. In case of a tie the team that got the points in the fastest time wins. It is actually quite simple. As you get better at racing, the first goal is to "Clear the Course", this is visiting all the control points inside the time limit.

Moving Up

A laudable goal for adventure racing is to clear an elite course. Typically a race is designed so that only 3-5 teams will be able to clear the course. This keeps the format fresh in that there is always a challenge.

Further Challenges

One of the beauty of adventure racing is that the challenge really never ends. There are always longer and harder races out there. There is always more extreme terrain to explore - the adventure never really ends... (here are some scenes you will not see on a mud run...)

learn more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_racing

Pangea BOAR Adventure Race

About a week after the Sea to Sea Dave Brault called me and asked if i wanted to do the BOAR, since I had a pretty much free Saturday - I was definitely game. This race seems to always be on a weekend that is cold and extremely windy and this year was no exception.

 Trek 1


The race instructions were kind of confusing at first, but we figured them out and decided that we would trek first and then head to the paddle. The one control that gave most people trouble was CP - it was a bit off the trail with a very subtle attack point. We actually attacked from the bend in the road just west of the Orange blaze trail. Once in the woods - we used the clue that it was on a wetland to help us narrow in on the control. The map showed the wetland as being relatively open with a different vegetation type- we were a bit north on our attack - but were able to spot the actual wetland and zoom right in on it. Here is our track for CP4.

Important to be able to spot areas of different vegetation and understand what vegetation types look like in the woods.

We got back to the foot TA with one team - and I think only Nature Calls was before us. We biked to the boats and were in them very quickly taking a counter clockwise route to get the very challenging paddle controls.

we made very quick work of the first few paddle controls and you can see in our track above where we used 2 strategic portages to shorten the actual paddle. Portage 1 was quite easy with shallow mud, portage 2 was a bit more challenging, here is a little video of Portage 2 it tells it all.

We were doing well, and my strategy for CP17 and CP18 were to try to do most of the travel for them on foot. This did not work out so well. We were forced to go far east of CP18 by the terrain, though we were able to run most of this as it was wide open to the east. CP17 was a disaster. I failed to take a good bearing from where we put the boat (directly across from where we attacked CP18) and we spent over 20 minutes looking on the wrong peninsula. I finally called to bail - and that we would paddle to CP17 - wich took us all of about 6 minutes, a much faster option, but we had already wasted the 20 minutes in our fruitless foot effort. Still it could have been worse and it is always a good idea to know when to bail on a plan and move to the alternative plan (in this case paddling to the CP).

The rest of the paddle was uneventful at least in the navigation. Of course the intense headwind made getting back to the TA a struggle. In one section we faced a strong headwind and thick sea lettuce. We resorted to poling the boat through this section which was preferable to the other option of portaging through the thick grass on the side of the channel. If you do not know how to execute poling technique ask me, I will help you out. It is useful in these situations.

Bike 1 and Bike 2

A little bike ride and we were back at the TA. In the end the foot/boat took us 3:37 - which was just a little off of the best clearing time by Nature Calls of 3:22. Of course I would love to have the 20 minutes we wasted on CP17 back - but that is adventure racing and Rule #4 of AR is "Anything Can Happen". I have 5 rules of AR that help me - they are spread out through these blogs. Rule #1 "Race Your Race", Rule #2 "If you don't have it. you don't need it", Rule #3 "Know when to bail", Rule #5 "Race as a team"

We switched to bike shoes and did 2 back to back bike legs. I rode hard and by the end of the second ride I was cramping in pretty much every major leg muscle. I had to use stretching and full extension to keep the cramps from slowing me down - and I think we did pretty well. We did bike 1 in 56:00 and bike 2 in 41:00, second fastest time in bike 1 behind Nature Calls (43:00), and tied for fastest time in bike 2 with Nature Calls. Pretty impressive time for NC on Bike 1, especially through the cow pastures.

Final Trek

We new we had 45 minutes to complete the final trek and I also knew that we could do it, if our navigation was good. Unfortunately it was not, on the second control I made a stupid mistake and took us in too early. I realized the mistake and took us back to the trail to re-attack - but not until we had lost 7 precious minutes.

We could still make it - but I made 2 more minor mistakes that cost another 3-4 minutes and then as we headed to CP22 (middle of cypress dome) I simply ran out of steam and had to move to a faast walk to prevent the cramps that were pretty much continuous now.

At CP23 we took a bearing 293 degrees, 60 meters. When I paced at 60 there was no control. Dave had the CP descriptions so I had him read the out loud. When I get very tired I like to have someone on the team (me if I have them) read the instructions out loud. 133 degrees at 60 meters. Oops - I am not even sure where the 293 degrees came from. Just another dumb mistake.

As we left CP23 - I made a strategic decision. I knew we could get CP21 and CP22 - but we would likely go over time. We could also skip those 2 and head back immediately with no penalty, but we would be skipping 2 CP's. This did pay off as we got 2 control points and finished 4 minutes over for one penalty point. More important to me is we did clear the course. This was at least a good decision and it did land us in 2nd place. Final congratulations to Nature Calls for running a great race, and it was also nice to see Canyoneros on the podium.

 Final note: Greg - I love the new shirts, great fabric.
This race was both challenging due to the course and the weather (mostly).
Nice to see some folks forgo obstacle courses (I like them too) for a real challenge!
Results at http://pangeaadventureracing.com/event-details/events/2013-boar-ar 

Here is my track - if you click it, it will also let you animate our course.