I’m having serious withdrawals from adventure racing. For some unknown reason I got this stupid wonderful idea that I wanted to run a marathon. Ana had already ran a full and together we had completed a half-marathon, but I felt that I needed to do a full marathon to mark it off the list. Well, I can tell you that I am regretting that decision. Marathon training consists of lots and lots of running…go figure. We got this book, Four months to a 4-hour Marathon and we’ve been using it to train for the Space Coast Marathon
The book is fine, it describes a basic running program that will get you geared up for running a marathon. But the training, my god, can it get more boring. Hey big fella, I got a great way for you to spend your Saturdays, go run 13 miles, oh and next Saturday go run 15 miles and the next Saturday after that, well just go out and run 17 miles. Good luck finding a 17 mile route that has anything interesting to look at. Nope, just go pound the pavement in suburbia, check out your neighbors grass, and come back in 2.5 hours. So far, our longest run has been 17 miles. Ana did it on a treadmill. I would rather poke myself in the eye with a flaming stick and wash it out with alcohol then spend 17 miles on a treadmill. I don’t know how she did it.
All I can say is that I can’t wait for this to be over and to get back to adventure racing. So far we’ve missed some really great races like the Pangea LighterKnot AR and the 7 Hills 3 Rivers AR. We’ll also miss the Pangea Turkey Burn AR because it is the same weekend as our marathon.
I don’t know how the Ultrarunners do it. 50 miles, 100 miles of running/walking down a trail…not unless there’s a Krispy Kreme and Starbucks after every 5 miles. Nope, I’ll take my adventure racing, where the course isn’t laid out for you, where there is running, mountain biking, canoeing, dodging alligators, battling water moccasins, getting lost, sometimes crying, always raining, always against the wind, always uphill, always an adventure. You can keep that boring running shit for yourself.
The long anticipated Team Disoriented YouTube Channel is now online. Check out https://www.youtube.com/user/TeamDisoriented for all of our latest race videos, gear reviews and most importantly, links to other adventure racing channels. I have also created a playlist of professional adventure racing videos.
I like to watch these for inspiration when I’m trudging along on the treadmill. If you know of any good adventure racing videos or YouTube channels you think I should link to, please leave a comment or send me an email.
I look forward to adding more content in the future. Stay tuned.
Can you believe that we actually made it to our first Adventure Race with time to spare? Yep, it’s true. We actually arrived early for the 2014 Coosa River Challenge in Wetumpka, AL. Probably helped that it was only 3.5 hrs away and there wasn’t a time change. Race check-in started at 4PM at the Coosa River Adventures with a pre-race dinner starting at 6PM. That’s right, dinner! Chicken breasts with wild rice, pasta, dinner rolls and steamed veggies. Oh and did I forget to mention the ice cold beer on tap. Boom, someone knows how to get a party started right.
Coosa River Adventures
Not only that, but they had live entertainment too. Jason Givens from Montgomery came out to play and he sounded fantastic. Checkout his website and sample his music. I think you’ll be impressed.
It was a beautiful night to hang out with good friends, eat good food, listen to good music and talk about the adventure race to come. Hats off Coosa, you started this off right!
Lacy & Jamal enjoying the pre-race festivities
This was going to be our first race with my buddy Lacy and his friend Jamal. This was going to be their first Adventure Race, and Jamal just bought his mountain bike 2 days prior to the race, so we knew it was going to be a true adventure.
Saturday morning we met at the Gold Star park for a pre-race briefing and a short bus ride to the race start. One of the cool things about the Coosa River Challenge is that they start you off in one of three groups: the “In it to win it” group, the “Competitive but shoes won’t be smoking group” and a 3rd group that I can’t think of the name, but I’m sure it was witty. We were in the competitive group which meant we wouldn’t be trampled by the kids with the pumped up kicks.
The race started with a 3-3.5 mile trail run. Jamal led the way with an 8:30/mile pace and we were feeling pretty good. After a couple of miles of running, we had our first challenge, The Egg Carry, where we had to use a spoon to carry an egg as we went over then under ropes stretched across a bridge. No eggs were hurt during our traverse and we quickly finished up the challenge and the rest of the foot section. The run ended at the starting location and we transitioned to mountain biking. And here’s where the magic began. During the foot section, we passed a good handful of teams, but we gave the lead right back to them on the bike section.
Lacy was the dominator on this section of the race. He bounded over the course but then had to wait for the rest of us to catch up. I never considered us to be bad mountain bikers, but I bet many of the teams behind us considered us to be bad mountain bikers. Perhaps if someone could take out a few of the rocks and roots and perhaps lessen the steepness of some of the uphills then we’d do alright. In our defense, there just aren’t that many hills in Florida to practice on. We tried to pull over and let faster teams through. At one point I think there must have been 8 riders behind us waiting to pass. Our slow train chugged along the trail and we counted the miles until we got to finish the biking section. Truthfully, the single track was amazingly fun and I can’t wait to go up there and ride it again.
After the mountain bike section, we ran down to the river to start the kayak leg. Since there was not going to be a rappelling or bouldering section, the race committee thought it would be “fun” to give us our kayaks and paddles on one side of the river but not allow us to use them until we swam them across the river. You ever try swimming with a life jacket on while pulling a kayak. Words can’t describe how much “fun” I was having. Actually words can describe it, not very nice words.
Once we swam our kayaks across the river, we had to scramble to the top of a boulder and leap off it before being able to kayak down the river. First, I don’t like heights. Second, I really don’t like jumping from anything high. Third, I really don’t like it when the safety guy is telling me to, “make sure you really jump out far because it ain’t too deep unless you get out a ways.” Now, I don’t know how high this rock is but I can tell you that once I jumped I had enough time to think, “Oh Crap!!! This thing is really high…wow it’s higher than I thought…wonder when I’ll hit the water…hmm i’m not so scared anymo SPLASH!!”
Leap of DeathBottom of Leap of Death
After the jump of death, we got in our kayaks and set off down the river. Since there wasn’t an orienteering section in this race, the organizers had us stopping along the river at certain locations where they posted signs guiding us to the next point. The first stop was Blue Mushroom Island where a map directed us to kayak upstream around an island and then downstream to Dead Beaver Island. Let me tell you, paddling upstream against the Coosa River current at this particular location was impossible. When we rounded the corner to head upstream, there were 3 or 4 teams in front of us, pointed into the current paddling as hard as they could and going nowhere. It was comical. To cross this particular section we all ended up jumping off our kayaks and walking across the channel. Luckily, it was only thigh deep, but it was grueling walking up current pulling our kayaks. We rounded the corner and could get back on our kayaks and head downstream.
On the way to Dead Beaver Island, we had to go through Moccasin Gap, the only Class III rapids on the Coosa. Check out this pamphlet that describes the river and rapids.
Lacy and Jamal hadn’t kayaked in years, if ever, and here we were throwing them into Class III rapids, cue evil laughing BWAHAHAHA! After Ana and I ran the rapids, we would turn the boat around and wait for Lacy and Jamal to run the rapids hoping for a capsize…I mean to cheer them on. Unbelievably, they crushed Moccasin Gap.
Moccasin Gap, Class III
But then they capsized on the Pipeline, a smaller Class II rapid further down the river. Downstream we went, on towards Dead Beaver Island where they had us get off the kayaks and run to a spot where we had to crawl through a pipe that was 3/4 submerged in muddy water…yum! Back on the boats, we headed to our next checkpoint where we got to do some CrossFit games; monkey bars, log run, and 20 box jumps.
Back on the boat one more time and our next stop had us doing a small jog to a set of obstacles; a balance beam crossing, a wooden pyramid climb, and scaling an 8 foot high Berlin Wall. After these obstacles we went back in the water but this time without our boats. Instead they had us swim the final leg, passing under the bridge and ending in Gold Star Park. I have never known Ana to be a swimmer but on this section she was gone. I was doing everything I could to catch up to her but every time I did, she just took off again. There I was banging up my knees on the submerged rocks scrambling to catch up and she’s sailing down the river offering advice to me on how to go faster. What a sweetheart!
On to the finish line and a post-race reception at Gold Star Park where Ms. Lew Sievers and Ms. Muriel Belmont had provided sandwiches, fruit, Gatorade and cookies for all the race participants and volunteers. Thank you ladies!
For this race, they group your team by combined age and have 2 divisions 0-79 and 80+. Since we’re both in our f..f..f..forties 😦 we fell into the 80+ group and got 2nd place. On stage, we received our awards, two very nice hand painted tiles. We weren’t out racing for results in this challenge. Since this was Lacy’s and Jamal’s first race, we just wanted to make sure that everyone had a great time, which we did. You can check out all the race results here:
I can’t recommend this race enough. It was an awesome experience. The race committee did a great job laying out the course. The volunteers were excellent. The pre- and post-race were top notch. We loved the mix of events. We only wish that they would have been able to keep the rappel and bouldering and I really wish they had an orienteering section. Other than those small gripes, this is an A+ event and we plan on going next year as well. Hope to see you there.
This blog post blatantly stolen from The Adventure Blog. Go checkout their site after you read this post
Gold Rush Expedition Adventure Race to Air on Universal Sports Network in October
Adventure racing fans listen up, you’re going to want to set your DVRs to record soon. The Universal Sports Network will begin airing a three-part documentary focused on the Gold Rush expedition-length adventure race in October, bringing the sport into the homes of millions of viewers across the U.S. Each of the three self-contained documentaries is 90 minutes in length, and captures some of the top adventure racing athletes from across the globe as they take part in one of best races in North America, and a qualifying event for the AR World Championship.
The first episode will air at 6PM ET on Thursday, October 16 and will feature the 2012 Gold Rush Expedition Race. The following week, at 6:30 PM ET on Friday October 24, the network will premiere the 2013 edition of the Gold Rush documentary. Meanwhile, the film for the 2014 edition of the race, which was greatly shortened in length due to wildfires in California, is currently in post-production, and will air in May of 2015. Additional airings will be announced at a later time.
If anyone has ever been a part of the team that produces adventure races, you probably already know how difficult it can be to capture all of the action out on the course. There are simply too many teams, spread out across too much territory. Throw in the fact that these events usually take place in remote and rugged locations, and it can become a logistical nightmare. But, the team behind these documentaries have taken a unique approach to how they are made, and that is a great story in and of itself.
For the past three years, the Gold Rush AR event has been filmed by a team of University of Cincinnati students, who are studying media production. For the 2014 edition of the race, 16 students, under the direction of professional television director and U.C. alum Brian Leitten, and E-media Professor Kevin Burke, traveled to California to shoot the documentary and witness the incredible sport of adventure racing first hand. As a result, their work is now going to be shown on Universal, and we’ll all get the opportunity to see the Gold Rush as well.
I’m trying to remember the last time adventure racing was on television here in the U.S. It has been many years since we actually saw a network air anything AR related. This will be great exposure for the sport, and hopefully introduce a new audience to what adventure racing is all about.
To get an idea of what to expect from the documentaries, check out the promo video below which was shot at the 2013 Gold Rush.
teamdisoriented.com 