WE FINALLY CLEARED A COURSE

‍ By Tim Clinton

I've been asked to give a quick race report of the 10-hour Frozen Foot Adventure Race, put on by GRIT Adventure Racing on Saturday. Rae and I competed as a two-person team and--WE FINALLY CLEARED A COURSE (with 30 minutes to spare)! We didn't win the overall top podium spot--we lost to our friends Broad Run Off Road by TWO MINUTES--but we are proud of the race we put on and are excited about the next one.

We received the maps the night before, and I planned on reviewing them during the 2.5 hour drive down to where we were staying the night before the race. But it didn't take long to realize that I either failed to print (or forgot to grab) one of the maps! Oh well. I didn't have half as much time with the maps as I would have liked (there never is enough time!), but decided to focus on sleep instead. The next morning, after a massive hug from race director Nick Hurff (love that guy!), I realized my rear tire was completely flat. I had taken it into the shop three days earlier (they thought the tape had gone bad) and they repaired it....but apparently the tape didn't hold. I quickly put a tube in (with some help from fellow racers), but...the tube was leaking, too! Nick suggested I should ask co-director Jesse Tubb to borrow his bike, and Jesse generously agreed! He just brought his bike back from several days racing in the Magnificent expedition AR in New Zealand. The brakes were basically shot, but it was shifting relatively well, so after slightly lowering the seat (DUDE, your legs are so long, Jesse!) and moving my bike repair kit to his spare bag, adding my map board, I was ready to go five minutes before the start. (I also had a chance to listen to the race brief, but no real time to look at the maps.)

So we started off on the prologue basically channeling orienteering race vibes. I would improvise the nav as we went. We started off and, unsurprisingly, Aaron Linville and Broad Run chose to take the prologue counterclockwise (a few easier attacks from that direction), so we just followed them. We were dragging a bit, physically, so did not keep up for too long. But we quickly transitioned and left the TA a little bit ahead of them (I think they had to deal with a flat as well!).

There was a big strategic choice on the first full leg on this race. CPs 15-19 could be grabbed either on Leg 1 (where we bike from the Start/Finish through the waypoint up to the northern side of the park) or on Leg 3 (when we biked back through the waypoint to the Finish area for the final trek). Strategically, it made sense to skip them and go straight to the TA, because if we finished the Leg 2 trek before 1:30pm we would "unlock" two additional points on Leg 3, but we would miss those points if we were late. If we skipped them, we would have to make an extra effort and go out of our way on Leg 3. And since we were determined to clear, I wanted to "tie ourselves to the mast" and provide an extra incentive for us to complete the trekking leg quickly so we could make that cutoff. After we took the left turn towards CP15, I happened to look back and see Broad Run proceeding straight--they decided to skip them and snag them on the way back.

We navigated to those first CPs pretty quickly. There were some interesting bikewacking opportunities at CPs17 and 18 but I decided to conserve Rae's energy by avoiding the bikewacking for now. We rode relatively quickly through the great trails, keeping our eye out for special "unlocks." (Chip Dodd and Andrea Anderson really wanted racers to go through certain wonderful MTB trails, but the park folks did not want racers stopping in the middle. So they set these cool three-ribbon flags somewhere along certain trails, and we could write down the color at the end of the trail, then turn that in at the CP and they would "unlock" a little 4"x4" map with an additional CP on it. You never knew where along the trail the flagging would be, so we had to keep our eyes peeled--especially because the trails were one way! You miss it, you have to do the whole loop again if you want that point.

Anyway, no real issues getting to TA, but we rolled in at 11:39--43 minutes behind Broad Run (but we snagged CPs 15-19, which they would have to get on the way back). We had 1:51 minutes to finish the Leg 2 trek if we wanted to unlock the new points. (Broad Run checked in to the TA at 10:56 and out at 12:45, so they completed that section in 1 hour 49 minutes.)

Immediately, my nav was off. There was not a super-clear-cut obvious attack point, so I pace counted until I thought I was at the right spot, took a bearing, and headed towards CP29. The problem was, either my strides were much longer than usual, or 100m was getting shorter. I overshot my attack point, took the right bearing then overshot the CP but did not realize it until I hit the backstop. Got a little confused, turned around, found the CP, just feeling a bit flummoxed to have flubbed that first CP so badly. The next CP had an obvious attack point, but I was feeling a bit anxious, reading my compass too closely and not looking up to get a clear bearing, so I bore off to the south a bit. Overshot CP35 (one of the unlocks). Rae had to tell me to calm down, stop rushing off, and encouraged me to show her the map and talk through my strategy. She got me focused. I realized maybe the pace counting was the problem so I used the next section of trail (to an obvious bend) to calibrate our paces. I told her to just count strides until I said stop and tell me where she was. We went 200m (on the map) but were both at exactly 90 paces. That's WAY off from usual. (We usually are each about 55 paces/100m.) I didn't know why that would be--the map was 1:10,000 and my 1cm measure lined up perfectly with the legend. But I went with it, and started using 45 paces for my 100m count. Took us directly to CP31. But then--costly mistake--I failed to notice the newly "unlocked" point at CP33, which I had hand-written onto my map. So instead of taking the efficient approach (CP31-33 then an easy approach from 33-27), I went straight to 27. I realized we missed it when we got back to the trail. I was worried about how much time we wasted, and concerned that if we did not pick up the pace we would not be able to clear. Rae and I debated for a few minutes, and she said she was down to pick up the pace. We came all the way out here. Let's go big before we go home.

So we retraced our steps and went and grabbed U33 on an out-and-back before going to get the next CP. With my nav dialed in and our confidence increasing, I also had to account for our team composition. I love running through the woods like a moron; Rae tends to pick her way bushwacking a bit more, but she can push the pace on trails. So a lot of my navigation choices had us taking slightly circuitous routes because I believed the pace would be faster. CP30 was a nightmare--super thick thorns, no visibility. Had to crawl on our hands and knees in the HOPES that when we eventually got through, we would see the CP on the other side. We ran into another team that had just decided to bail on that one. My knees and forearms were pretty bloody already, but we decided to go for it. This was a new thing for us--in years past, we would have bailed as well. Let me tell you, crawling through thick vegetation to come out and find that sweet, sweet, CP. Such a great feeling.

We pushed our way through to the last two CPs that booked it back along the trail towards the CP. We finished just in time. According to my watch "lap" we took about 1 hour 40 minutes to complete the trek (including the time mapping out the "unlock" points at the beginning). We got the two "unlock" clues at, I think 1:27pm--3 minutes before the cutoff.

The ride back was pretty uneventful. Straightforward navigation, really lovely MTB trails, super fun rollers and ledges. Except for one descent where Rae stopped suddenly in front of my and my brakes took a LONG time to engage....but otherwise, it was just a great ride. In the final, slightly rockier set of trails, I made a judgment call that we might be faster taking the longer route where I could put Rae on a tow so I could move us along faster without worrying about the trails. This was more distance, but I think we MAY have saved some time. (In hindsight, probably not.) Navigation was relatively easy, then we got to the final trek.

Here is where I made another big mistake. This final trek was a "dogbone" style. There were eight "A" checkpoints on the map (50-57), but you could not punch the "A" checkpoint. At the "A" checkpoint would be a small map that showed the location of a corresponding "B" checkpoint. To score the points for both, you had to go directly from one "A" checkpoint to its corresponding "B" checkpoing without getting other checkpoints along the way. This made us zig-zag back and forth across the course. But my first big mistake as that I assumed the two "unlock" points on this section--U58 and U59--operated the same way. I.e., they would be "A" points with maps to "B" points. I was wrong. They were just traditional points. So when I took us to our first CP, 51A, I knew it was right next to U59. The right move would be to grab U59 then go to 51A before going to 51B. But I thought it was an "A" point so if we grabbed 59 we would then have to go to an unknown 59B....Ugh. (This meant that near the end of the leg, we had to make a special out-and-back to grab U59 even though we had been about 40m away from it right at the start of the race.) Most of my navigation was pretty strong for this section. Unlike Aaron Linville and Broad Run (who mostly navigated directly on a bearing from every A to B), I chose routes that maximized our team's strength and avoided thick vegetation with a preference for trail running. So you can see on the map we would often go from a point to a trail and then attack from the trail. It was a little bit longer, but for our team, it meant we could get there faster and more reliably. I struggled a tiny bit with 51B, but every other point was pretty much a straight shot.

By the end, we were feeling pretty fatigued--we did not fuel as well as we should and were dragging. We knew we were going to clear by the end, but we worried that the Broad Run boys might have picked up the pace and be finishing ahead. Sure enough, when we came to the TA--where there was one final "team challenge," there were Broad Run still working on the challenge! We had a hectic second to try and figure out how to do the challenge, tried to finish it before they could punch, but they ended up beating us...by 2 1/2 minutes! Couldn't have lost to a better group of gentlemen. We finished 2nd overall and first in the coed team division.

It was a fun race, Rae and I are so happy to have finally cleared a course after over 5 years of trying, and looking forward to the 24-hour Shenandoah Epic in a few weeks!