ROOTSTOCK RACING
by Brent Freedland What a weekend, and, not for the first time, I find myself reflecting on lessons-learned and wishing, really wishing I could pull a Marty McFly and go jump into TA2 to offer one phrase of advice to the Rootstock Racing team. “Stick to the plan,” I’d whisper to me, Abby, and Matt as we quickly transitioned from bike to foot for what would be one of our worst unravelings in almost 130 races. That said, before I go further, let’s jump to the end with a massive congratulations to our second team at this year’s USARA National Championships, an all-women’s team with regular Rootstockers Nicki and Karyn teaming up with biking legend and long-time AR competitor Britt Mason. We had a feeling they were going to do well, and they completely crushed it, finishing fourth overall out of nearly 80 teams, the best finish for an all-women’s team ever, improving upon the sixth place finish our all-women’s team had in 2022. We couldn’t have been more excited crossing paths with them throughout the race and cheering them on, even after we officially threw away our own chance at a bit of Helene-soaked glory. So, so awesome to watch them crush it. It was especially awesome to see thirteen other teams competing in the all women’s division with two teams in the top ten overall (Rootstock and the defending champs, Women of AR turning in their own impressive showing) and another just outside of it in 13th. And then there was the fun of watching a number of new teams jumping on the Nationals podium. Ours is a difficult sport to elevate in, and seeing our longtime friends from Strong Machine take home third, ThisAbility taking fourth, and Ozark finishing fifth in the mixed division was inspiring and a testament to those teams and the thoughtful, smart racing they demonstrated throughout the event. And finally, of course, a huge round of applause for the legends from WEDALI and the Rev3 Endurance Pro Team who flexed their AR muscles and outpaced and outraced everyone all day, finishing first and second overall, with WEDALI being the only team to clear the course. We weren’t sure it could be done (by anyone), but we knew that if anyone could, it would be WEDALI. If my math is correct, that’s 14 championships now between Brian, Justin, and Mari. There’s a reason, or 789 of them, for why they are so good. Sliding DoorsOK, so not for the first time, I’m left imagining a host of different scenarios and marveling at how much nuance plays into our sport. All sports have their idiosyncrasies, but none have the sheer volume of factors, many of which are beyond a team’s control, as AR. For this race, we had several moments. Call them dominos. Call them mistakes. Unforced errors. All apply. Ultimately though, my mind wanders to the concept of Sliding Doors and butterfly effects. A moment unfolds and you have to make a decision. AR isn’t like your typical sport. It’s not about a missed shot, an untimely stumble on the five yard line, a missed call by a referee, or a careening hockey puck. AR is about nuanced analysis and strategy, planning thirty hours of adventure using ten sheets of paper with no firsthand knowledge about hundreds of miles of potential wilderness-based routes, and then being able to adapt to the inevitable challenges you confront while out on the ground in real life, and in this case, in fringe-of-a-hurricane weather. Words simply can’t describe the unique challenge that comes with AR. Considering that Michelle and Liz, from Adventure Addicts Racing, are known for their creative course design that favors strategy ad navigation, we knew we had to be on top of our game, and usually this part of the game is something we do well. Door is Closed
2. The first three points of the overnight trek looked rugged. Some notable distance, some big terrain, and hints that the nav in there would be hard with warnings that mapped routes might not exist. Standard hints from RDs in our sport, but targeted to this section in particular. Skipping these three and moving on would give us a shot at clearing most and maybe all of the rest of the course depending on how early we started the trek. 3. The biking window on stage four, while not ideal to skip, would also save us a chunk of time, and the window of three CPs with its bonus was worth less than the final two windows of CPs and their associated bonuses. We didn’t want to leave these points, but we could.Ultimately, we decided we likely would have to skip two of these three chunks of the course, and maybe all three. We sorted our maps and gear, packed up, and headed out into the foggy, windswept mountain air. Door #1
Door #2For eleven hours, we ran our race perfectly, minus our lost time on CP C. We continued to analyze time throughout the bike ride, and then…well… we all seemed to briefly forget about it. All of it. The pre-race discussion. The options we had literally written down on a sheet of paper. The in-race analysis confirming our time projections (spoiler: even after this moment, our projections proved to be spot-on). Despite all of this, somehow, someway, no one thought to say: “Now, aren’t we supposed to skip 21-23 too?” And we set off into the night. To our demise. Based on the race map, we headed back down toward the river we had crossed while exiting Stage 2, looking for a junction. WEDALI was a bit further down the road, also exploring. We didn’t find anything, and Michelle’s warnings from the pre-race briefings came back to us: “A lot of the tracks aren’t there.” This is standard in our sport, especially when using US topographic maps. “No big deal,” we thought. We bushwhacked up from the road and quickly found the old railgrade, now largely crowded with rhododendron and other forest-led reclamation projects. WEDALI soon popped up behind us, and together, we plowed through the vegetation, pace-counting our way along to our attack point. From there, we headed up the mountainside toward the CP. We reset our altimeters before climbing, and we even found the faint remnants of a mapped trail we didn’t expect to actually find. Thankfully, this trail was clear enough to allow easy progress through the thick undergrowth. I had Abby watching her altimeter, and I gave her a measurement that would more or less place us due south of the CP, and I even erred a bit high with the idea that if we missed the clearing where the CP was located, we might hit an old road bed that was on the map… though we didn’t expect it to be there since we didn’t find the junction out of TA. We hit the mark, took a north bearing, and went for it. And the wheels... well, they didn’t really come off… they exploded. Completely shredded, like skin and gear in an endless field of rhododendron… We found ourselves in a brutally thick sea of vegetation. I took us north, trying to drift northeast as well. We pace counted. We turned off our lights, looking for the light of a clear patch of woods. We kept our eyes out for old road beds. We watched the altimeter. All in all, we painted a picture for ourselves that we were east, north, and eventually well above the clearing. We therefore turned west and worked our way down the ridge toward the clearing. (to be fair to my teammates, I probably did most of the rationalizing). And we didn’t find it. And we never would… because we weren’t close to it. In hindsight, and with the help of Instant Replay… or online tracking review… we puzzled out that we had fallen victim to bad altimeter readings. While we had purposely gone farther than we thought we had to for that very reason, we still dove into the rhodo too soon, and the dark, shin smacking, eye-poking, labyrinth of vegetation just proved too disorienting. While not a classic parallel feature, we effectively also fell victim to one of those, reading compass directions and side hills that lined up with where we THOUGHT we were when in fact, we had missed the CP entirely and were now wandering on a different sidehill than we should have been, all the while trapped in a maze of ruthless vegetation. In retrospect, our most notable and inexcusable mistake was not turning back after 5-10 minutes. A classic AR blunder in which the team insists on forward progress, while not being willing to admit that the wasted time cannot be salvaged. And that was our race! We finally bailed on the CP, turned east and “bee-lined” up the ridge to the Allegheny Trail. Except, that took about three hours of bashing away, Abby wondering if we should use the trackers to ping for coordinates, Matt wondering if we should pull the cell phone. They politely told me we were lost. I… not quite as politely… told them we were not. At least not by my definition. While our hypothesis for missing the point was not entirely accurate (we knew the bad weather and faulty altimeters had something to do with it, but the rest of our theories -- no existent roads and being too high -- proved wrong), we turned out to be exactly where I suspected we were once we started working up the ridge to the trail. Not ready to go unofficial with a cell phone check or request for coordinates, I kept smashing through the rhodo until we finally, mercifully found the ridge-top trail. Of course, we wandered right over it in the dark and lost twenty more minutes searching and debating, eyes wide in the never-ending nightmare. Finally, we found it. Dejected, exhausted, race shot, we continued on. And then we lost another 45 minutes looking for a rather challenging CP (Thanks, CP23). And then we skipped just about everything else to get to the end of the stage. And then we skipped an important bike window. And then another trekking window.
The Other Side
Sliding doors. We had a huge one. And not one of us thought to even pause before walking through it into the cold, dark night of those West Virginian woods. AR. A humbling sport that never stops trying to teach you something. Why is it so difficult to listen?
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by Karyn Dulaney Michelle and Liz, the event's race directors, promised a “rugged and remote” course, and this race lived up to this. In the pre-race meeting, we were forewarned that the race “will be harder than it appears on the maps.” We were reminded of this throughout the 29.5 hours of racing, although in the end, we concluded that “it wasn’t that bad.”
It all started in a land called Shoeshow Village. After a short prologue through the town square, we seemingly stepped into a fairy-tale forest. This course was indeed one for the senses as we traveled by house-sized boulders and across soft carpets of Shrek-green moss. Dark trees with brightly colored leaves poked their way through the clouds. Of course, every enchanted forest also has its looming dangers and darkness. We encountered mazes of rhododendrons, that tried to trap us with their endlessly tangled limbs catching our hair, packs, arms, and legs as we crawled through them. Smelly bogs and marshes, fit only for an Ogre, tried to swallow us whole. Dense fog wrapped the woods at night, causing our headlamp and bike light rays to bounce helplessly ahead. “Roads” were often abandoned trails, with tree limbs and branches haphazardly strewn about, waiting to catch the wheels and spokes of those who dared ride it. Trees groaned in the howling wind gusts, and rain from Hurricane Helene thoroughly soaked us. It was intense yet mesmerizing, and we persevered against the obstacles, somehow keeping our spirits mostly high. Our team worked well together, with Nicki navigating on foot (occasionally trying the tactics of Hazel and Gretyl as she sprinkled goldfish along the trail 😂) and Britt on the bike. Some early nav bobbles were quickly corrected, and it was reassuring to see some of the top teams having difficulties similar to ours. There were a lot of options for strategy and route choice during this race. We picked up points we thought we wouldn't get and left a few on the course we had planned for but couldn’t find. We saw many of the known top teams on the course but noted that we never saw others. All of this left us with no sense of how we were doing as compared to other teams. My favorite way to race is to keep racing our own race, which, in the end, turned out to be the right strategy for us. Ultimately, we came in 4th place overall and 1st in the all-women division. We also won an award for the fastest time on the last bike section, the climb up Snowshoe Mountain! This race was surely one for the books! The best part about racing is that if you pay attention, you will learn more about the sport and yourself and, more importantly, find meaning in how these messages apply to daily life. The top things I learned in this race are as follows:
by Nicki Driscoll Pre-RaceLeading up to USARA Nationals this year, the Rootstock squad went through what’s become a typical song and dance for us each season: sorting out the rosters to field two teams. Initially, I was slated to race with Brent and Abby, with a second squad of Karyn, Matt, and a third TBD. Early in the summer, Brent and Abby approached me with an idea: “totally up to you” they said, but given that we have 2 men and 3 women in the mix right now, how would you feel about leading the nav for a women’s squad? I’d had a less-than-perfect season on the maps in 2023, and my navigation confidence had suffered a bit because of it, so I decided I’d see how The Longest Day went and get back to them.
Race MorningLeading up to race day, there was a lot of uncertainty about whether we would be able to paddle. A historic drought in the area meant that the river was low, and the race organizers didn’t want us all to be dragging boats over rocks. “Do a rain dance” they wrote us. Little did they know… It rained all week leading up to race day, and hurricane Helene rolling through on Friday meant that we might be facing the opposite problem: if the river came up too much the paddle could become dangerous, especially because lead teams were likely to at least start the paddle in the dark.
Race StartThe race started with a short foot-O prologue around the Snowshoe mountain resort. It was raining, windy, and foggy. The hurricane conditions definitely added an element of intensity that I thought was actually pretty cool. After making quick work of the prologue we set out on the first trekking leg. We knocked-off CPs cleanly and encountered the other RR squad at CP4 - we’d bushwhacked straight to the point, while they’d run the road around. We headed up toward the first “window” of points neck and neck with Rootstock coed and WEDALI. We had a little trouble with CP6 finding the correct gully, but were able to reorient and find it without too much time wasted. Then we headed into the first window of the course, which we’d been warned had some of the toughest navigation on the course. The windows were a cool strategic feature that Adventure Addicts racing often has in their courses: a trio of checkpoints that netted you some bonus points if you collected all three points in the window. Given the bonus points, we were planning to try to get all the windows on course if time allowed. We made quick work of the window, carefully following bearings and pace-counting, netting all three CPs without much trouble. We ran into TA1 well ahead of our own time estimate for the first trek, and while we readied ourselves for the big bike leg ahead, we called an audible and decided to go get CPs 8, 9 and 10 after all. Britt had a route in mind to minimize our time on the sloppy MTB trails, and stick mainly to fire roads with short out-and-backs on foot to snag CPs 9 and 10. Garrison came over to chat while we were in the TA, which led to a pretty hilarious exchange: Garrison: “How are you guys doing?” Karyn: “We’re crushing it!” Garrison: “What’s your plan from here?” Karyn: “To keep crushing it!” Garrison: “No, I mean where are you going next?” Karyn: “To the crushing zone” Garrison, shaking his head: “I guess I need to go talk to one of your navigators…” We told Garrison we were ahead of our time estimate on the first trek, and decided to go get the bike points. The Monster Bike LegWe shot off uphill in gusty winds toward CP8. In this section of trails on the Snowshoe property, we saw teams going in all different directions, constantly passing groups of bikes left on the sides of the trails. I am sure this was an interesting section for the dot-watchers at home! Britt’s route choice through this section was excellent, and unbeknownst to us, we rode out of Snowshoe sitting in 2nd place, about 20 mins behind WEDALI.
As we neared Mower basin and a big section of points on single track, Karyn was starting to feel low, both physically and emotionally. She was upset with herself that she was feeling bad physically, given how hard she’d trained for this race. I knew she’d bounce back, given a bit of time to recover, so I took her pack for a bit. Another thing I know about Karyn from my years of racing with her: she bounces back like nobody’s business. She might feel awful on a bike section, and as soon as we get on foot she’s running up hills faster than anybody else. I did poke some fun at Karyn about whether she had rocks in her pack given how heavy it was, and luckily the break did seem to allow her to recover. We set our sights on the next window of points, looking forward to the chance to get off our bikes and run around on foot for a bit. Coming into window D, E, F, we saw Rootstock coed and WEDALI biking out together. It was awesome to see them, and to know we weren’t all that far behind. We made quick work of the points, and as we headed back to our bikes from CP E the setting sun peeked out from behind the clouds, illuminating a beautiful scene - the first time we’d seen the sun all day. Just minutes later it was dark and cloudy again, but we felt fortunate to have been on an open high point at just the right moment to see it. As we grabbed our bikes and headed out, I noted Women of AR’s bikes on the side of the road, and knew they couldn’t be far behind us.
Overnight TrekWe rolled into TA2 excited to leave our bikes behind for a bit and head out on foot. We found ourselves in TA with the REV3 Endurance Pro Team of Jesse, Jesse, and Amanda and were pretty excited to find ourselves with them - we knew that team was incredibly strong, so to find ourselves neck-and-neck with them more than 12 hrs into the race and having cleared the course up to that point felt great. We were still doing well on our time estimates for the course, so we decided to aim to clear this leg. We set out on a gravel road up to CP 21, with thisABILITY and REV3 Pro just ahead of us. We nabbed 21 without issue, but struggled to find the gravel road that was mapped heading Northeast out of 21 toward the Allegheny trail. Instead of wasting time looking for that road, we decided to head back the way we’d come and bushwhack straight East to the Allegheny. We saw the Women of AR team heading to CP21 and knew they were close on our heels. Things got interesting at CP23, which was mapped less than 100m off the trail with the clue “West edge of boulder field.” I recalibrated my altimeter at the high point along the Allegheny trail, just Northeast of the CP, and had Britt pace count from the high point. When the pace count had us far enough to attack, my altimeter was still 100 ft high or so. I was a bit thrown that my altimeter would be so off given that I had recalibrated it not 5 mins before. This turned out to be a theme for the rest of the race: given the hurricane and stormy conditions, the barometric pressure was all over the place, and altimeters were not very reliable. We waded into the boulder field, which was covered by thick vegetation and rhododendron. We found the West end of the boulder field and headed downhill, me convinced by my unreliable altimeter that we were still uphill from the point. The boulder field seemed to peter out, and Britt noted that it had seemed there were larger boulders uphill from us. We decided to pop back out to the trail and re-attack, and on our way out we encountered REV3 (actually just as I took a stick to the eye, yelled “ouch” and Amanda Bohley was there to ask if I was ok). We hit the trail and re-attacked. This time we had an easier time following the West end of the boulder field as we headed uphill, and found the point without too much issue, though it was buried in thick vegetation. On our way out, we saw the headlamps of REV3 still in the woods, and knew they hadn’t found the point yet. We struggled a bit with CP24, having bushwhacked to it and encountered an old road bed in the woods that we took to be the mapped road just East of the CP, which turned out to be something unmapped. Luckily we got back on track pretty quickly, thanks in part to seeing the headlamps of several other teams, which turned out to be REV3 and thisABILITY. From here, things got wonky. We’d intended to shoot a bearing and bushwhack Southwest straight toward CP25, which was mapped in a swampy area. Coming out of CP 24, we got pushed by the vegetation more and more West than I wanted to go, but there was a road mapped along the stream that headed toward CP25, so I figured that even if we walked straight West we could hit that road and follow it South toward the point. Unfortunately that road didn’t exist, at least not where we would have intercepted it. We hit the stream without having encountered any hint of an old road bed. We started following the stream south, trying to pay attention to when it turned into a broad swampy area rather than a flowing stream. Here, we encountered some of the thickest rhododendron that I’ve ever battled in a race, and we also found ourselves alongside the Women of AR. We bashed and crawled through rhodo, feeling like we were barely making forward progress. We tried walking in the stream instead of on the banks, but the vegetation growing over the stream was just as impassible. At one point, I crawled through a little opening in the bushes, sat down on the ground, shone my headlamp around me, and saw nothing but an impenetrable wall of rhododendrons. I honestly thought we might need to call for a rescue and have someone come cut us out of there with a chainsaw. We’d lost a lot of time, and I knew we were probably still a good 200m North of CP25. I could not imagine trying to bash through another 200m of the vegetation, and knew we’d continue to lose time if we did. We opted to bail out to the West to find the other mapped road, and thanks to having seen the headlights of a car pass by while we fumbled in the bushes, I had confidence that that road did indeed exist. We hit the road, opted against making another attack on CP25, and instead decided to make an attempt at CP26, which was mapped at the South end of the swampy area on a “treeline”. Heading into CP26, Britt made a great call: “let’s not spend more than 15 mins here. If we don’t find it in 15 mins, we bail and move on.” We waded through the swamp, following several lines of trees and vegetation that each felt like they could have qualified as a treeline. We didn’t find the CP, and sticking to our plan we decided to bail and not lose more time. In looking at our tracks after the race, it turns out we were really damn close to CP26. Our RR teammate Matt also told us after the race that this was the only CP flag that was not reflective, so we might have been right on top of it and just didn’t see it. Oh well.
Final Monster BikeComing into TA3, I was feeling pretty dejected, assuming a handful of teams had passed us while we battled the rhododendrons in the swamp and dropped 2 CPs. As we prepared to head out on bike, the RR coed team came into TA and told us they’d blown up on the trek, losing lots of time battling rhododendrons and dropping many points. They told us they thought a lot of teams had struggled out there, and they thought we were actually in a pretty good position. I wasn’t so sure, but we had a lot of race ahead of us still, and I was glad to hand the maps over to Britt for the biking ahead. We hit the window of points G, H, and I and saw REV3 and Rib Mountain on this section. We had no idea if they were ahead of us in points, but were encouraged to find ourselves not far behind them on the bike. From here we had a gravel ride to TA4 in Durbin, where we were treated to walking tacos! The hot food was an incredible boost, and we were feeling good as we headed out on bike again for the alternate route around the paddle section to TA 5, where there was another short trek section. Initially, we planned to grab 2 CPs, 32 and 33 on this trek, and skip the window L, J, and K. Looking at our time estimates for the final bike leg as we came into TA5, though, we decided we needed to skip that whole trek to give ourselves enough time to clear the final bike leg and another window of bonus points on the way back to the finish. We saw RR coed in TA5, and they told us they heard a rumor that we might be sitting in 3rd place overall. We couldn’t believe it, but were so stoked to hear that we might be in podium contention. Preparing to leave TA5, we had a LONGGG hill climb ahead of us, with about 2000 ft of elevation to gain. We didn’t even have it in our minds that there was a special award for this section, dubbed the 4848’ award (formerly known as “King of the Hill”) for the elevation that we were to climb to. We set out on the climb, and chugged away steadily. We rode the whole thing, never stopping for more than a few seconds at a time to put down a few calories and hydrate, and we passed a handful of teams. Heading out to CP N, which was the Bald Knob observation platform alongside the Cass scenic railroad, we encountered some tricky riding along the railroad. After consulting the rule book, we confirmed that we were allowed to ride alongside the railroad, as long as we kept clear of the tracks. Britt found a little section of trail near the top, and we were rewarded when we finally topped out at the observation platform and were treated to sweeping, beautiful views of the valley below. We paused for a moment to drink in the views, and it was a beautiful sunny day - in stark contrast to the hurricane conditions we’d raced in the whole day before. I made sure to point out to Karyn that we’d just biked up from that valley wayyyy below us.
“She is a slightly above-average mountain biker,” Mark joked. We were rewarded with more amazing views at the fire tower at CP 34, and I found myself feeling relieved about our decision to get these final points - Mark Lattanzi is one of the most experienced navigators in the game, and I figured if he assessed that their team had enough time to get these points without finishing late, we were probably in good shape. Heading out from CP 35, the final point on the course, we saw REV3 Pro heading in for the point. Having no idea how many CPs they had, I knew there was a chance we were tied on points, and we could give them no opportunity to sprint past us on the final ride into the finish. We booked it to the finish, crossing the line with 35 mins left on the clock, to a raucous finish line crowd and the cheers of our RR teammates. In the end we dropped 2 CPs on the long overnight trek, and the 5 CPs of the small trek from TA5, but otherwise cleared the course. We thought we might have landed in 3rd place overall, but Strong Machine AR managed to sneak past us in points by executing a smart strategy to clear all the bonus windows on the course and drop other CPs along the way. We landed in 4th place overall and 1st place in the Women’s division, which truly exceeded all my expectations. We were also very surprised to learn at the awards ceremony that we’d won the 4848’ award for the fastest time on the long bike climb from TA5 to CP N. I was especially proud of the bike award, because we’d proven an all-women’s team could hold their own with all the coed and men’s teams on a purely physical section, and also because I now have a very good retort for Karyn any time she tries to claim that she’s not strong on bike. Final ReflectionsThis race will go down as one of my favorite AR experiences. We had highs and lows, but kept positive mojo throughout and just had a lot of fun. It was my first time racing with Britt, and oh boy was that a treat. She’s an incredible teammate, and an excellent navigator. On the bike, I rode harder and better than I have in any previous AR because I was following Britt’s wheel. I rode lots of things I might normally walk in an AR, because Britt showed me I could.
Another highlight was crossing paths with Kit, Ash, and Una of Women of AR so many times throughout the course. We could tell that they were crushing it, and were so stoked to see our two teams battling it out not only for the women’s division title, but for an overall podium position. Having two women’s teams finish in the top 6 overall at Nationals is unheard of, and I’m so incredibly proud of both our teams and all the bad-ass women who fielded teams in the biggest and most competitive women’s division in the event’s history. Go Women of AR!!! |
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October 2024
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