The Longest Race Day Write-Up for The Longest Day AR, by Karyn Dulaney

Pre-Race

​My previous AR race experience with white water rafting was similar in that the raft placement was based on the prologue results. For this race, there was a foot orienteering course that a team member (or any combination from your team) had to complete. Matt crushed it in under 16 minutes and got us a first-place position for the paddle. It felt weird to sit around feeling useless as he worked hard out there, and I prefer full team contributions in races. 

​Before the race, I had packed and organized all my gear, but then the weather forecast changed, so I threw a bunch of extras in addition to what I had already packed. The team made a decision early on that whenever I asked, “Should I wear something to stay warm while paddling?” the answer should always be “Yes.” That is how I ended up looking like Stay Puft on the paddle wearing tights, wetsuit bottoms, rain pants, a race jersey, a wetsuit top, a rain jacket, a borrowed paddling jacket….and later in the rafting, the guide gave me an additional (thankfully sized XL) paddling jacket. Somehow I could still move enough to paddle although moving the legs to get on/off the raft was a little challenging! 

Paddle

The white water rafting was a 15-mile trip on the Hudson River. The mist rising from the river and the mountains in the background offered gorgeous scenery.  The “race” section of the paddle wouldn’t begin until about mile 11 so we had plenty of time to enjoy the views and rapids, which was a very different vibe from any race I’ve ever been in!  We had a great guide, Marnie, who was eager to keep us in our first-place position but also strict on our boat and others for following the pre-set rules and treating the first portion of the trip like it was a standard guided trip they do. We declined offers to jump off rocks or swim in sections and had to hope that other teams would follow suit to get off the river as quickly as possible. There was a mandatory break to allow the water from the dam release to catch up. We were told if we didn’t wait, we would outrun the bubble and get stuck on rocks towards the end of the trip. It was a good chance to stretch legs, chat with other teams, and have a bathroom break (how many layers was I wearing?!), yet it was still an odd space of feeling like we were in a race but weren’t racing.

The rule was that the race officially began about 4 miles from the end when we passed the bridge trestle. We had 7 in our raft, so Marnie had to keep using her oar as a rudder when one side would out-paddle the other, and she was worried it was slowing us down. The initial solution was me flip-flopping between the two sides before she finally decided that only 6 should paddle at a time.  We spent the last ⅓ of the section rotating seats and rest breaks amongst us. Marnie was more excited than we were to maintain our first-place position.  

TA 1: Paddle to Trek

This was a frantic dash of gear changing to get into dry clothes. It's a good thing we did because it started to rain again! There wasn’t a lot of space, but we tried to move quickly and efficiently. We were the second team to leave the TA behind Sic Ubu Sic, a team I had never met. They were a very friendly team that we would leapfrog with throughout the first 10 hours of the race. 

Trek 1

This started with an uphill climb on a road lined with beautiful wildflowers. Fortunately, the paddle's end portion and rushing to get out of the TA had put us back into full race mode. I was raring to go and love long climbs. We chatted with other teams until we reached the top and turned into the woods for several hours of bushwhacking. There were a few navigation bobbles in this section, mainly when we lost time and speed detouring around a cliff band, but Nicki and Matt worked well as a team with the maps to recover quickly, seemingly without loss of confidence or morale. This section entailed a lot of sidehilling, and the wet conditions caused a lot of slipping and falling. Around 6 pm, we took a quick break to refill water and lube up our feet. Strong Machine caught up to us as we made our way onto the trail system for more climbing and we did some leap frogging with them for a bit.  Nicki asked me to set the pace for the team, and I enjoyed getting to do the AR shuffle, which we couldn’t do much of when bushwhacking. Honestly, throughout the race, I felt a bit useless as a teammate. Without having a specific job or punching CPs, I thought I wasn’t contributing much to help the team, so I enjoyed having a particular task to accomplish. ​

After passing through a marshy area, we started to climb again, but Nicki quickly realized the trail wasn’t going in the right direction. Strong Machine had just passed us, and Sic Ubu Sic was trailing closely behind us. We decided to turn back, as did Sic Ubu Sic, descending to find the missed trail. Many of the “trails” were not well defined, all very wet, and some turned into spontaneous creeks or rivers from all the rain! I started to doubt how I would ride on the trails in the next section. As the sun set, we made our way to the top of Gore Mountain. The climbing for this section was mostly done, and now we would spend much time descending. I’ll almost always choose uphill over downhills, particularly since my knee surgery last year, but I tried to keep shuffling down the mountain, albeit a little slower and less agile than I would have liked to have been. Another skill to work on for the next race!  Our next CP, which was the first that we hit in the dark, involved a relatively sketchy scramble up some cliffs to a hilltop point. Thankfully, some other teams had found a much tamer way up so we used that to descend down. Unfortunately, Nicki reached out to support herself on a tree on the descent, impaling her hand on a small piece of broken branch. She ended up taping it up for the rest of the race (first duct tape, then I believe medical tape?) and after she got home for the race ended up in Urgent Care to have it looked at. Since it is a puncture wound, they couldn’t stitch it but she should heal up well by keeping it clean and covered.  My favorite part of this small section of the race was going for a CP off Roaring Brook and finding ourselves at a dam. We decided to go across the dam and scramble up the bank on the other side which ended up working well and not being as dicey as it initially looked! I asked a few times if it made sense to stay on foot to finish the course, mainly because I didn’t want to bike on the wet trails in the dark. But we had our race plan, and headed to the bikes. Later we would learn other teams did this, which explained why we didn’t see many others on the bike section.

TA 2: Foot to Bike

Once again, we tried to be quick and efficient but did want to put on some dry gear, re-lube our feet, fill water bottles, and use the bathrooms. NYARA had some hot food waiting for us, and I was stoked to discover that Kate had once again made her famous meat pies! 

Bike 1

I have tried to increase my bike training, but due to the amazing amount of rainy weekends this year, I have not gotten out on single-track as much as I usually do before a race. In addition to this, since my knee surgery, I have been a little more apprehensive about mountain biking and activities in general, as I just don't want to get injured and have to sit out again! The rain and wet trails had already gotten into my head on the foot section and I felt apprehensive as we headed to the trails looking for unmapped CP’s that matched the trail names. Luckily for me, there were numerous sections where no one on the team wanted to ride, and we did some bike walking and pushing. In particular, the last trail we ended up on had some very technical portions, and the rating of “expert” I saw on the sign didn’t help my confidence. I pushed my bike more than I would have liked to in this section. I was a bit relieved to get off the trails and onto the roads. 

I was feeling a lot more confident about how I would do once we hit the road as I trained to match the course mileage and elevation gain estimated by NYARA. This confidence was quickly derailed when we hit the road and the team took off in a pace line that I just felt like I had to work WAY too hard to keep with. The voice in my head started to tell me there was no way I could maintain that pace the entire time. On foot, I have a strategy to stay in the moment of the race and not get ahead of myself by looking for the smaller details of where I am. In this race, tiny orange salamanders (not newts!) served this purpose and I counted them instead of the miles (29 in case you care). On the bike, I couldn’t see the salamanders and the toads I did see seemed 50-50 whether they were dead or alive, which was too depressing to count. I think I drove Matt, who was now the main navigator, crazy with the “how much further do we have” question. 

​Around 11pm, I took a “preventative” caffeine pill and shortly after experienced some GI issues. I’m not sure if this was related but will have to keep it in mind for future races. 

​We were surprised that no team passed us in this section. We saw a handful of teams going the other direction but we had no idea of our position in the race. The rain continued but luckily it wasn’t too cold, and at some points it was even a bit humid and too warm. We got a good laugh at a tiny stream crossing that somehow felt impossible to get across. I was pleased to make it through the night without feeling sleepy at all, although time did seem to slow down between 2:45am and 3am! I usually ride with a light on my bike as well as my headlamp but had some issues between the rain and fog with visibility, so was running my headlamp on a higher setting than usual. To be fair, some of my “how much longer” questions were to decide if I could run my bike light at a higher setting to reduce battery use on my headlamp but a more ideal solution to this problem is to buy a second battery for my headlamp. This section was otherwise pretty smooth and a good mix of gravel and paved roads. I was happy to get through it as I knew this was my biggest mental hurdle of the race.  

TA 3: Bike to Foot

They had warm mashed potatoes!! I think this fully remedied my GI issues and quickly caught me back up for the needed calories. Nicki retaped her hand and we were on our way.

​Trek 2

We started the long trek up the ski hill as the first hint of daylight popped through the clouds. The rain had stopped and I was happy to see the sunrise atop the mountain. Both rain and our route choice prevented us from seeing many of the course's views so I was grateful for this one. Nicki kept a strong pace as we bushwhacked for our final 3 CPs on foot.  Matt felt a little queasy from getting behind on nutrition, but he slowly worked his way out of it. Garrison also had some GI issues that luckily also seemed to pass. Nicki nailed the nav and soon we found our way to the final trail. Matt seemed to have fully recovered and took the lead jogging down the trail as we descended to the TA. 

TA 4: Foot to Bike

This was quick because we didn’t have much racing left!  We were surprised to see Adventure Enablers there, as we had predicted they and a few other teams were far ahead of us. Despite not knowing what our race place/position was,  they didn’t seem to have a sense of urgency when we saw them, so we began to wonder if they had cleared the course.  As we left the TA, Matt called out to us that he had seen Strong Machine entering the TA, and that was all we needed for a full “game on”  mood!

Bike 2

We quickly jumped into a pace line with Matt pulling us along. This time, I didn’t struggle to keep up and could easily give myself some positive self-talk. It helped to know that we had some extra time from the prologue, which was a nice mental buffer,  but we also wanted to physically cross the finish line first.  It's funny how the mind and expectations work.  At the beginning of the race, as we ascended the first climb on the road, someone mentioned that we would be biking back up for the second bike section, and I was secretly looking forward to this the entire race. I hadn’t planned on having to race up it, but somehow I felt ready for that challenge and while it was tough, I enjoyed it in a strange way.  Nicki felt the effects of the sun, warmer weather, and from leading the way for most of the race. We added a second goal of getting to the finish line without her vomiting! We made our way to some trails that were more smooth, rolling, double track than what we had experienced on the first bike leg, which further helped my confidence.  After hitting several CPs with Adventure Enablers, we made a decision to go for a CP that we later realized should have been the last one to be more efficient, and finished up on our own. We made it to the finish line and finally learned what place we were…..first place overall! As it turned out, only us and Strong Machine cleared the course. 

Summary

I loved how the team worked together. There were some quiet times but a fair amount of jokes and laughter sprinkled in throughout it all. It was fun hearing stories of Matt and Garrison's recent AR and travels in Africa.  I always enjoy courses that involve strategy as well as getting opportunities to see a variety of teams on the course. I also enjoyed racing against so many strong teams. A huge congratulations to Strong Machine and Sic Ubu Sic for rounding out the podium.