2009 Castlewood 8 Hour

I decided to take my off day on Saturday this week. Last week, I checked the control locations for this year's Castlewood 8-Hour which is going on today. So, this week's off-day throwback race report is to the last time I competed in the event.

December 5, 2009

I've written before that the hardest part of Adventure Racing is putting the team together. I don't mean that as a joke, either. Adventure Racing is all about being reasonably good at a lot of things. Excellence is not required but, as David Frei likes to say, "You can't suck at anything." Almost anybody can learn this stuff, but it takes a LOT of time to learn it all. Finding others who are willing to spend the time (or better yet, have already spent the time) is really tough. So, when Yvonne Deyo agreed to team up for the Castlewood 8- Hour after a 5-year hiatus (during which she produced two children) that was cause for celebration regardless of the outcome.

But, expectations can be a tricky thing to manage. Yvonne's last Adventure Race was when she, David, and I took fourth at 2004 National Championships. At the time, she was widely regarded as one of the best female amateurs in the country. Her return has been the subject of continuous speculation and now that the day is at hand there are more than a few teams taking notice.

While she has done an excellent job of staying generally fit through two pregnancies, there's a big difference between being "in shape" and being ready for a race of this distance. Her situation is further compromised by the fact that she had recently injured her hamstring. While it held up the previous week at the St. Louis 3-hour orienteering meet (where she took the Women's title), she still has to be careful not to re-injure it.

So while we cheerfully tell each other that it is just great to be back racing together, the truth is we are both harboring a fair bit of pre-race anxiety. Her, because the crucible of competition often produces answers to questions you'd just as soon not have asked. And me because, let's be frank, my last outing (Berryman 36-hour in September) was an unmitigated disaster and, if I race like that here, she might just accept one of the dozens of standing offers to race on another team.

We are bused from Castlewood to the start at Greensfelder. It's a balmy 17F as we wait for the 7AM start. We're given our maps for the first section a few minutes before the start. We can take the first 11 controls in any order. Then there are a few more down to the bike exchange. Between nerves and the cold I'm shaking so badly I can hardly draw the lines to connect the control circles to indicate our route. Fortunately, the first thing we have to do is run a couple kilometers on road to where our punch cards are waiting. Even though we take it quite slow (no point in risking aggravating Yvonne's injury in the first 10 minutes of the race), it's enough that we both stop shivering.

We're pretty near the back of the field (and at 100 teams, it's a pretty big field for a regional race) when we leave the road to cut straight through the woods to the card pickup. Almost all the teams take the longer route on the road, but the road is so steep, the usual speed advantage isn't there. Plus, by climbing the steeper route, we can use the tow and make better progress up the hill. We end up being one of first teams into the pickup.

Now the real navigation starts. By orienteering standards, the controls would be considered a mix of intermediate and advanced. That puts them in the "Super Hard" category of Adventure Racing controls. Although the map we're using is old, it is a real orienteering map as opposed to the usual USGS quad. This all adds up to a big advantage for the teams like ours that have considerable orienteering experience.

Another such team is Alpine Shop. While we're technically not competing against them (they're in the 4-person division), as the #1 ranked team in the country, they provide a pretty good standard to measure by. They've all raced for Carol's Team at one point or another and we're all good friends, so when we meet them at the fifth control, I can't resist throwing a few taunts their way. Not to be outdone, they fire back just as quickly. Tempting as it is to lock horns with them in our favorite discipline, prudence dictates letting them go. Out game plan is "easy pace, no mistakes" and we have no idea what is in store for us after this initial section is done. Yvonne continues to use the tow on the climbs and we run at a steady, but conservative pace the rest of the time.

A couple controls later we get to one where the bag is hung from a tree growing out from a nearly vertical embankment. Getting to the control from above isn't particularly tough, but rather than slide down the embankment, I decide to climb back up. As I twist and grab another tree to swing back up to the top, my shoulder decides to pop out of the socket.

This isn't exactly a novel maneuver for my right shoulder. This is the third dislocation to match an equal number of separations. I let out enough of a yell that another team comes over to assist, but there really isn't much to be done. It appears our race is over. Then, as I move to get back up, it suddenly snaps back into the socket with an audible pop. Perhaps it's just in contrast to the pain that preceded, but it really feels OK. Yvonne looks for a cue and I just say, "Let's go."

We take it easy for a while since the footing on Greensfelder's steep ridges is spotty and a fall in this state could be disastrous. Still, the navigation is sufficiently technical that even at a slow pace, we're doing well by being accurate. Accurate enough, in fact, that we end up meeting Alpine Shop again. David is handling the maps as usual and he is despondent. This technical nav section was his chance to get them a clear lead but an error has set them back.

The optimal route through the controls seemed pretty obvious to me, and apparently David agreed as we are hitting them in the same order. However, there are certainly differences of opinion on that. At each control, teams are coming and going in all different directions, so it's very hard to know where we really stand. We hang with Alpine Shop for a couple legs, but they are clearly on a mission to get back in the lead and we have to let them go.

We arrive at the exchange area at 8:45. While it's obvious from the nearly 300 bikes lying around that we're doing well, that's as much as can be derived. Alpine Shop is still in transition along with three other teams, but we don't know if anybody is already out on the next section. Ordinarily, I'd just ask, but I'm afraid that doing so would turn up the pressure on Yvonne who is moving well, but still clearly holding back. There's not really anything I'd do with that information, anyway. The way to win an adventure race is to get through the course as fast as you can. Thinking about what other teams are doing is a good way to make a silly and costly mistake.

At the transition we plot the points for the remainder of the course (which must be taken in order). With Yvonne calling out the coordinates and I plotting, we get done in eight minutes, which is reasonably speedy considering how long it's been since we've done this together. I can only assume that we then hit a rift in the time-space continuum, because a full ten minutes disappears while we are changing our shoes and getting our bikes out of the pit. We are definitely out of practice in transitions.

The first part of the bike is on roads and the first big descent reminds us that it hasn't warmed above freezing yet. We get to the spot where we are to leave the road, but we can't find the control anywhere. I try to find our coordinates sheet in my pack to see if the control clue has any additional information, but I can't find that either. After about five minutes of frantic searching another team comes along and confidently turns onto the trail. We decide to follow and get to the control after about a quarter mile. It's an annoying mistake, but not terribly costly. One of the nice things about racing with Yvonne is that this sort of thing doesn't rattle her at all. We push a bit and soon the other team is out of sight behind us.

The trail turns to singletrack on the Meramec flood plain. With everything frozen, it's pretty quick going. Not long after 10AM, we arrive at the next exchange. We are going to have to paddle with our bikes in the canoe because we'll need them for the final section in Castlewood. Fortunately, Yvonne's bike is so small, simply removing the front wheel is enough to fit the entire thing under the thwarts. We then wedge my rear wheel under a thwart and use our tow cable to secure the front. It's a decent exchange and we're underway in just a few minutes.

The first control is upstream and it's a fair current. After getting that, the rest of the paddle is downstream to the takeout at Castlewood beach. It's still around freezing, but the sky is clear and the sun has cleared the bluffs along the river, so the conditions are borderline pleasant. The whole thing takes about an hour and it has us wondering if there might be a surprise extra section waiting for us at the "finish". If not, this race isn't going to be anywhere near 8 hours.

The canoe to bike exchange takes longer than I'd like because we have to haul the boat a few hundred meters from the beach to the parking lot. Normally, this would be an easy portage with me carrying boat overhead while Yvonne ferried the rest of our gear. However, my shoulder certainly isn't going to stand for that (I'm still amazed it made it through the paddle without complaint), so we're stuck with lugging it with one of us on each end and then going back for all the rest of our stuff. Team Bushwacker passes us in the transition, but since they're another 4-person team, we're not too worried about it. It does occur to me that if we're still seeing nationally ranked teams at this late stage, we must be doing OK.

The final bike leg might hold some challenge for an out-of-town team, but for the locals, it's trivial. Castlewood is the most popular mountain biking venue in St. Louis and everybody has the trail network pretty much memorized. I even consider leaving the map in my pack but that seems a silly risk. Riding with the map clipped to the front of the pack isn't really any slower and it eliminates the chance of skipping a control due to late race brain fade. We zip through the course, noting that the ground is starting soften and later teams might have some mud to deal with. With a mile to go we catch Bushwacker; one of their members has broken a chain. I'm surprised they stopped to fix it, since it's almost all downhill to the finish. Seems like coasting/running it in would be a good deal quicker than getting out the tools. At any rate, we're happy to have the place back.

We get to the finish at 12:30 and Alpine Shop (having smoked the second half of the course to finish first) is there to greet us. We don't see too many other folks around, so we go ahead and finally ask where we stand. Fifth overall, first 2-person co-ed. Well, like I said at the start, I would have taken just about any result but a division win makes it a pretty sweet reunion. Yvonne is positively beaming and after a while I realize that I am, too. The hardest part of next season has already been taken care of. Carol's Team is back.