The Adventures of Team Fire Mountain

Trivia: Which cyclist is way cooler and much more humble than Lance Armstrong?

On our way up to Dupont Forest for a few hours of mtn biking we drove up Caesar's Head on Hwy 276 North of Greenville. As we neared the peak we came across "a guy" in a Columbia jersey and we immediately knew who it could be. But due to switchbacks and the danger of trying to pass without seeing oncoming traffic we drove behind him for a while as we continued to guess if it was him or someone else with all the Team Columbia apparell. Eventually I came to my senses and looked at the speedometer. Yup! That did it. At a strong 15mph pace after 6 miles of climbing at a 7% grade it left little to chance who we were following. We got up along side and said "Hi George!" He waved back. Then we waited at the top looking for a sharpie in the Jeep so Karen could get an autograph on her jersey. After he went in and out of the bathroom we chatted with him for a couple minutes. He was happy to discuss his ride and asked if we were off to Dupont because he saw our mtn bikes on the back of the Jeep earlier. He explained that his shoulder was still on the mend from the Tour so he couldn't do any mtn biking yet. I broached the Tour de France and even told him he was robbed out of the yellow jersey, but he wasn't going there. Dodged that one by looking down at the ground. He stuck around for a picture and didn't leave until I was sure it took OK. Super nice guy. Kind of shy and embarrassed at how sweaty and smelly he was. Karen kept her distance as needed.

Later while mtn biking we were stung by yellow jackets and Karen fell several times, but throughout the day we kept thinking there wasn't hardly a thing that could spoil it for us. We were like little kids who got to meet their hero.

Oh, and we got to hike off trail up to and behind Bridal Veil Falls where some of the movie Last of the Mohicans was filmed. We crouched down under the rock behind the water like they did. Pretty neato.

For more pics click here http://picasaweb.google.com/pedalgrinder/Hincapie#

Bill Jordan and I drove up to Charlotte at 1:00 pm. Maps were going to be given out in New Castle, VA at 5:00 pm. And since map work can take several hours with UTM plotting and strategy planning, it’s a good idea to get there as early as you can. We had to pick up Bill’s teammate in Charlotte who had a speaking engagement up until 1:00 of which he would return sometime afterward. If I had my druthers I would have left by 5-6:00 am to head up to the campground hosting the race headquarters. If I had driven alone that’s what I would have done. But Bill and I figured we could carpool for the company and to save on gas. And Bill is like me in the sense he prefers to be totally prepared. He began packing a week before the event like I did. (There is just so much mandatory gear aside from all the nutrition you have to plan for yourself.) Doug, on the other hand, had everything sprawled out over his garage floor which was no surprise to Bill. He had obviously seen this before. So after arriving to Doug’s home before him we ate some lunch and then packed up all his gear. He’s not the best mechanic either so Bill and I were left to take care of his flat tire which was a whole ordeal in itself. The rim must have been compromised because the tubeless tire with Stans just wasn’t working. The tire would seat itself but then pop off. I suggested we get going and just put a tube on when we got to the race site. When we arrived to the campground the trip had taken as long as I thought it would and more than they thought it would. Bill was getting anxious to proceed with planning and Doug didn’t have a care in the world. No problem, I thought, because I’m on my own now. I can get started with my stuff. But after I got started Doug asked if he could borrow my UTM plotter. I thought he just mean for a brief moment, not for a fricken hour!! It was already like 6:30 pm and I had planned to have been there for a half day by then and have everything plotted. The race meeting was at 8 pm and it’s good to have studied the race course in order to ask any pertinent questions while you still have the opportunity. Doug’s idea was that we could plot together. I just sort of went with it and kept my cool, not questioning why he didn’t bring such an essential piece of equipment. That’s like not bringing your compass!

Anyway, I stayed up until 1:00 am studying over the maps and fell asleep by about 1:30 sleeping in a bag on the ground. Just used a bivy instead of a tent. Worked nicely. Got up at 3:30 am to stage the bike and get all the water I needed to start with. Set up my bike light and made sure it was working. Then had some grits and oatmeal. The grits were disgustingly high in sodium content. They had been sitting in my pantry for months and I only decided to wolf those down because I figured I’d be needing the salt. Gross!

The race began at 4:30 am with a prologue run around part of the 500 acres owned by the family who lives there and runs the campground. Pretty neat place which is mostly used for kids. It has ziplines and climbing walls and such. I had partnered up with another solo guy who Bill and Doug knew from the Charlotte area. He was a really strong climber. We started out in the middle of the pack for the run and worked our way through the rest of the 91 teams while climbing for about 1.5 hours up Bald Mountain. I was sweating like crazy, but the view at the top once daylight started to come around was just amazing. I was glad there was a checkpoint we had to stop for at the top. It was tempting to stay up there and just breathe in the mountain air and admire the stunning views. But it was time for some serious downhill action. And unlike a road bike I have found that I’m actually pretty darn good at descending on a mtn bike. With roots, rocks, and eroded areas especially I tend to pass tons of people. My solo buddy Mike stayed with me for the most part, but we just flew past the last few people who we hadn’t caught during the climb. At the bottom of the descent we made a wrong turn and realized it after a couple miles. Turned around and made another wrong turn. (These maps aren’t like road maps for those of you who are used to clarity). You can throw that out the window. Often adventure racing comes down to home field advantage and knowing certain roads and trails which aren’t even on the map because the map was designed back in the 1960’s. So often you’re just sort of winging it with only direction guiding you. If your compass shows that a logging road is heading East and you know you need to head West, then you find a different road. But if it’s heading Southeast or Northeast it *might* be the one you need. You sometimes just have to trust that it will begin to point correct itself rather than going further off course. And when there is no road you have to bushwack off road/off trail or what the term we use when you have a bike with you is “bikewhack”. Luckily we found the road we needed and spent some time biking down a pretty well maintained gravel road which lead up to our turnoff for a suspension bridge we crossed on foot. Barely enough room for ourselves let alone our bikes and other people. It was fun. We bounced all over with just two of us on it and there was a team of four behind us. We had some good rollers for a few miles as we passed other teams who got up ahead of us when we made our wrong turns. Mike was crushing the hills again and I was feeling the weight of my pack. I probably felt similar to Lance this year trying to climb with the young punks. Alas, I was able to stay on his wheel. Didn’t have an ounce more in me than that, but at least I could stay with him.

The trekking section was located all over Pine Mountain. I enjoyed this leg because I found that I could easily keep up with Mike now. He let me set the pace since I was at a good tempo for him. It kept him humming along. I slowed down or stopped once in a while to make sure I wasn’t going too hard for him and he ushered me onward so that told me he wasn’t hurting. We picked off a few points as we traveled pretty steady with Team Shake-A-Leg Miami. Their navigator dude had a strained IT band and since Mike was a therapist he gave him some advice. Later he even had the guy lie down and he worked it out for him. That was one happy guy! He quickly looked at his teammates and made sure they saw how Mike was applying the pressure. They made note of it. We decided to attack points 6 and 7 which were both optional. I’m SO glad we did. They were very scenic and some day I’ll get over there to show Karen the countryside around that area. We’ll probably recreate the exact course just because it was so cool. That’s the great thing about AR’s. They spread the points over some of the best terrain, lakes, and rivers to give you the best taste of any given area. You could plan for days and not get it quite right. That to me is part of the reason for entering these things. They are well worth the money.

We biked over to the canoe put in under the hot sun. It was really growing into a scorcher by then and the brief winds only offered a temporary cooling effect. The canoe leg involved each of us paddling solo with our bikes in the boat. For several months they intended for solos to use a kayak, but a week prior to the race a course change due to permitting made it imperative for us to have our bikes with us the entire time. That meant paddling a canoe with the bike’s clogging up your leg room -- as if paddling a canoe solo wasn’t difficult enough. Teams of 2 or 4 people had the power of two people to keep the boat moving forward and perhaps more importantly to keep it STRAIGHT! We spent 5 hours paddling while some teams were able to finish in 3.5 – 4 hours. And it’s not like I don’t paddle for fun while some of them do nothing outside of races. That was not my highlight of the day. I used up a ton of energy and my minor leg cramps after entering the James River grew into massive debilitating pain later downstream. I had to stop paddling and just massage the legs at times. Mike gave me two e-caps and that got rid of them very quickly. It was incredibly lucky for me that he had them. I thought I had some buried deep in my pack, but I had forgotten to bring them along.

At the canoe take out I was able to hear my shout-outs read to me. There were 4 at that time. One from Karen, Pete, the Bennett’s, and my parents. I would later get more from Karen’s parents and Beau & Freya. Those are pretty neat to hear. Reminds you that someone is watching in their own way.

I left the take out after hauling the canoe up a short steep hill (by myself – ugh!) and loading it on the trailer. Mike waited for me after arriving ahead of time due to some issues I had at the class II rapids we hit just before the take out. I got hung up on some rocks and had a bugger of a time getting out of that. We started to bike away and I realized I never had my passport signed so I had to go back. After correcting Mike’s initial decision to turn left on the road after the take out I told him to go on without me while I went back to take care of the passport. I had already gone through 6 bottles and two full 100 oz. bladders of water. Two of the bottles were Gatorade Endurance. I had been eating all day so far also and still I was just drained after that paddle. The sun was really getting to me in a bad way. I knew I had to make some water or find some soon. The two towns after the takeout did not have a single store or restaurant on hand. They were merely little “communities” if you can even call them that. But still, one thing you can always find is churches. And one thing Mike taught me is that churches always have spigots for water. The first one I checked had a fence on one side of it and it was right near the home of the pastor, reverend, priest sort of dude so I thought better of hopping the fence to look for the spigot I didn’t see on the other 3 walls. Too bad I had to bike up a steep hill to get to that one. I had to get off my bike and push due to the grade. The next church was a bit off the direction I was heading but it did turn out to be a winner. I called Karen to say hi and felt energized mentally by hearing her voice. It was great to surprise her with a call. We chatted for a bit about the race and local wildlife, including the little fawn I was staring at while speaking to her. Then it was back to biking. Only this time I was biking at my pace and didn’t feel the pressure to keep up the intensity Mike was able to hold on the climbs. Now it was just about me being alone on my bike in a peaceful mountain region. The sun was setting and soon I’d have to turn on my light, but I enjoyed every bit of that distance toward the town of Fincastle. I stopped at an Italian joint to get a couple big cups of orange soda. That felt good. In fact I didn’t think I possibly could have drank any more, but 10 minutes later, while cycling again, I found myself wanting another big gulp. I kept spinning at a moderate pace and went around Caldwell Mountain while climbing up to the pass between Broad Run Mountain and Price Mountain. Checkpoint 12 was waiting to be punched. I ate some Pringles and turned on my headlight now that it was getting to be quite dark. Next was an orienteering section which you could access from an off road trail along the ridgeline of Price Mtn or you could fly downhill on pavement and head East for 7 miles on a logging road. I think most people chose to take the roads although when I get back there to visit I’d love to check out the bike trail along the ridgeline. Could be great views during daylight.

I descended down into 40-50 mph gusts of wind as a thunderstorm hit suddenly, just since I had reached the top of the pass. It was a strange sensation to have that much wind hit you in the chest after you already gathered so much momentum while descending. It felt like it could just drop me 10-15 mph in a second, at will. It was crazy. And the rain made visibility extremely difficult. I was squinting to try to keep my eyes open without suffering the sting of the drops. The temp was plummeting now after the sun was totally gone and the storm rolled in. All of this occurred just a few minutes after being soaked in sweat from the heat and from the climb up to the pass. But that’s adventure racing for ya.

The next 30 minutes or maybe more involved a decision I made to go back to camp to ride out the storm before heading on the O-section. I got within probably 800 meters of the camp but there was no road that went directly to it from the location I was in so I gave up after donning my rain jacket and just decided to take another lonely ride over to the O-section about 10 miles away. There were several water crossings on the way to the O-section and some rollers, but nothing bad for terrain. Lots of little eyes glowing in the dark and scurrying into the forest upon spotting me.

I got to the O-section and was surprised to see multiple teams studying over their maps instead of being out in the woods on the prowl for points. Some had probably just arrived there but I think many of them were trying to regroup after realizing how difficult the navigation was. The woods were extremely dense with tons of undergrowth. You could fall and the vegetation would catch you. It was that thick in most places. It was also very wet and sloppy so the hills were interesting to gain footing. Very difficult nav work. I was about to go for my first point when I heard Team Action Learning’s name being called out. It turned out that Bill and Doug were just checking in to head out also. We decided to team up and work together. That lead to 2-3 hours of trying to find a single point with a lot of head scratching and re-strategizing. We were able to verify our location in just a couple places, but beyond that was extremely difficult. There simply wasn’t enough detail on the map to work from. In hindsight there were two other points that would have been easier to attack, but I had chosen a certain point based on a trail shown on the map which in reality had probably disappeared from lack of use about 20 years ago.

I was beat and very fatigued. I knew that I needed to start hydrating and eating if I were to keep at it for another few hours but I really lost the desire to stay out there. I said my goodbye’s and biked onward toward the camp, going almost completely around it before I found a road heading into it. I took a shower at the facility and stuck my dirty, wet clothes in a bag while changing into some capilene. Then I pulled out my sleeping bag and bivy and fell fast asleep.

By sunrise, 3.5 hours later, I was awoken by a dog running downhill toward me through the dew covered grass. I looked up to see a big smiling brown dog with a halo of sun come up and sniff me before taking off on a sprint in another direction. It was a great way to wake up. I had no regrets from the night before and was ready for breakfast inside the shelter.

What a beautiful place that was!