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.

​OK, 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. 

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.

​For 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.

by Karyn Dulaney

by Nicki Driscoll

The 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. 

We 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. ​

One day at work last fall, I got a text from Alyssa - “What do you think about racing Expedition Africa next year with Brent and Abby?” I said I’d think about it, but once I watched the promo video, I knew I couldn’t pass this one up. We had a Zoom call a few weeks later, where A & B explained how unfit they would be, due to their six months of travel pre-race and I think tried to talk me out of it, but somehow this didn’t really phase me. I also kind of met Garrison for the first time. We’d had some conversations before, but nothing approaching how well we’d get to know each other over the course of an expedition race. They were leaving to begin their trip a few days later, so they hastily packed their bikes and duffels to leave in their garage in Philadelphia to be pick up by Garrison and me at a later date to transport to Africa. For some reason, carting two sets of expedition racing gear around the world with them wasn’t very appealing.

To start preparing for a race through the desert, I proceeded to ski as much as possible over the winter. At least there were quite a few days where I was carrying a big pack. Once ski season wrapped up, Alyssa had me carrying a pack with a bunch of sand bags in it on most of my runs, hikes, and bikes leading up to the race. Not only did this help me mentally prepare for all the sand we would encounter during this race, but I think the combination of slowing down a bit due to the extra weight, getting the pack-carrying muscles in shape, and making the legs strong was a great combo to prepare for this race, and I think I would definitely do something similar to prepare for a future expedition race. It really sucks at first, but eventually it just becomes a thing you do. But I’m definitely looking forward to doing some faster running with less weight in the coming months.​

Stage 1 was a paddle tour of Walvis Bay, with a surf exit just north of the bay. 
​
Highlights were:

• A nice 2k portage in the classic Rootstock style. Just when I was settling in, thinking the next section of paddle was going to be straightforward, Brent suggested a portage across the mud flats, which came out about neutral on time. I did get to make myself useful by carrying half the boats the whole way.
• Flamingo and seal colonies. There were hundreds of each, and we paddled right through all the seals playing in the water on the way to CP2. Very cool.

Lowlight:

• On the way to the last CP, we spotted the attack point pretty far out. This was our first experience with a change in perspective here. For the next thirty minutes as we paddled toward it, it seemed to keep getting smaller and smaller, even though we were making forward progress.

Comic Relief:

• Getting out of the paddle, there was a bit of surf. Brent and I got dumped immediately, and Garrison came out of his boat not long after. Abby managed to stay in the boat all the way to shore. I had my rain pants on, and they had a small crotch rip at the start. The surf got in there, and both seams ripped down past the knees. There was so much pressure from my now parachute pants I thought I was going to have to take my pants off to get out. Needless to say, these pants aren’t making the trip home.

Another big bike from Spitzkoppe/TA4 back to TA3. The good news was this would be mostly overnight, so there wasn’t much wind, road surfaces were significantly improved, and it was pretty much all downhill.

Highlights:

• There was almost no washboard for the first 20k or so, which was amazing. 
• We had two one-hour ditch sleeps overnight. The first one especially, I woke up shivering, but generally sleeping in the sand was pretty great. I think with a proper ground pad I could have spent the whole night there
• Around 40k, we suddenly rode into some dense fog that reduced visibility to 10-20 ft, and everything was quickly soaked. This was the first moisture we’d seen on course outside of the TA3 oasis and race provided water since we’d left the ocean.

Lowlights:

• Everyone was suffering with saddle pain, by the second half especially. I have no idea how Brent and Abby made it so far with their lack of bike training and riding hardtails. I think Abby rode 80% of the second half standing up.

Comic Relief:

• Day 4 Matt showed up after the gas station stop. I don’t know if any of us remember the details, but I think I was making fun of Garrison for eating 2,000 calories, including a liter of juice, and then complaining about his stomach, and we were all giggling about it. Or could have been Brent and me arguing about whether the hamburger toasty from the station was delicious or disgusting.
• At some point I started to realize that all my teammates started looking slightly like caricatures of themselves. I think in part due to everyone looking tired and puffy, and in part due to my sleep deprived brain being unable to interpret faces correctly.

Stage 8 started through the moonscape, but to the west this time, then out onto the mouth of the Swakop, and finally we got on the camels for a few kilometers before the final ceremonial push to the finish.
Highlights:

• Nailing the nav shortcut to CP46. It was a bit of a risk, but it was a spectacular traverse and we ended up right on top of the point. This seemed like it saved us about thirty minutes.
• Following some leopard or other big cat prints in the wash for a while. It was suggested it was a leopard, but there were two sets and leopards are usually solo, so hard to say.
• The camel ride. While this was by far the most painful part of the race for me, riding a camel isn’t something you get to do every day.
• The finish! Even though we were trying to keep food and water going, I think the wheels started coming off for all of us the last 10k or so. The smell of the barn is real. 

Comic Relief:

• When we got off the camels, Brent said since there were no punches, I could ceremonially navigate us to the final CP and the finish. This was the point in the race when I was suffering the most by far, and I could barely walk. I think the combination of stiffening up on the camel and the body starting to fall apart knowing that the end was in sight was a deadly combination. Incidentally, Brent had needed to get off his camel midway through since it wasn’t walking right, so I figured while he had been walking alongside the camel train, he’d been looking at the maps. The final nav wasn’t hard, but I really didn’t want to get us lost at that point in the race!
• During troubleshooting of Brent’s camel’s (Israel) issues, Garrison’s lead camel was untied from the train. He promptly headed straight for a snack about 10 m away, but there was a brief moment of panic as they headed off alone into the night.

By Brent Freedland

While we may have flamed out, special shout out to Karyn who was lead navving for the first time and racing solo. Not to mention that she continues to rehab from knee surgery back in the spring. Karyn had a great day, winning the women's solo division and finishing 11th overall out of 97 teams! More importantly, even though we were not racing together, Karyn was a terrific teammate, leaving some trail/race magic for Zoe after the paddle, cheering us on, taking our pictures, and serving as Zoe's biggest cheerleader.

Yesterday, Zoe received a text from Karyn, our teammate who won the solo women’s division. The exchange was brief, neither Abby nor I had any influence over it, and I think it shows that Zoe is definitely building a genuine AR identity.

Karyn: How’s Zoe today?!
Me (Zoe): This is Zoe. I am doing good. How are you doing?
Karyn: Hey Zoe!! Glad to hear! Are your legs tired from all that tough riding? Mine are but my shoulders are more sore from carrying a pack!
Me (Zoe): Yes. I am soooo sore, but it is a good <thumbs up emoji> sore.

And that not only sums up AR but also puts a ribbon the 2023 race season. We started with a torn calf and ended by losing all our points. In between, we had some amazing experiences, some good performances, and as always, an awful lot of learning. The Little Rootstockers (and, organizationally, Rootstock Racing) will be out of action for a while as we set off on another sort of adventure. Seven months of international travel, world learning, and, I’m sure, a little bit of adventure.

by Brent Freedland

It was my birthday last weekend, and I was rewarded on the big day with a fantastic National Championship hosted by USARA and GMARA. I’ve competed in this fast and furious race fourteen times now, dating back to 2007, and this year’s race out of Smugglers Notch is up there with NYARA’s spectacular Catskills course in 2012 and Steph Ross’ 2011 beautiful first edition in Kentucky as my favorite USARA Nationals. From various interactions and discussions after the race, it seemed that I was not the only one holding the race in high regard. More on the actual event in a bit.
​
Finishing the race on my birthday was a fun little twist, and a big thank you to all the racers, volunteers, media personnel, and spectators who wished me a happy day in my sleepy stupor. What a surprise every time someone reminded me what day it was out in the woods on Saturday morning, and I was tickled green (pun intended) to share the stage with my birthday buddies, Steph Ross and Chelsea McBride, for a post-race serenade. Thank you.

This year’s Nationals ended up feeling like a capstone of sorts for me as I have been struggling with my relationship (as a racer) with the sport for a while now. I don’t know any experienced adventure racers who don’t have stories of tormented moments on the course. We love this sport and all the amazing experiences it offers, but it takes a LOT to continue to do it race after race, year after year. I started adventure racing when I was 24 years old, and I’m closing in on 20 years in the sport.

​According to USARA executive director Michael Garrison’s quick analysis of this year’s Nationals field, I’m still a couple years shy of the average age of the 180 or so amazing athletes who took on the steep mountains and dense wilderness of Vermont this weekend. I’ve competed in well over 100 events, most of them at a relatively competitive level, and for a while now, I’ve really been struggling to figure out what I want out of this sport and whether I want to just focus on race directing instead of competition.

It's been a complex struggle that dates back to 2014 or so…yep…a decade….

At that point, Abby and I had been racing with GOALS ARA for quite a while and that chapter was closing. The old guard of our team (amazing mentors such as Bruce Wong, Jonathan Neely, and Tracey Roberston) had stepped back from the sport and then mostly retired (Jon has somehow retired 73 times since 2014…). For a few years, the team was in flux, with teammates coming and going and a lot of guest racers. The synergy we had with our original GOALS team wasn’t quite the same, and it was then that we decided to start Rootstock Racing.

Rootstock immediately injected a new energy into our racing, but I still struggled somewhat as I found it hard to prepare the way I wanted to race at the level that we expect to compete. In short, I found myself floundering to balance the frustrations of not being able to put the time in and then struggling at races physically with the rest of life’s requirements: parenting, partnering, working, race directing…

I just wasn’t having fun.

And then my amazing teammates Brian, Abby, and Jim won USARA Nationals, and it was SO exciting and inspiring to see our team of gritty racers rise to the top. You see, I have long said that Rootstock is all about smoke and mirrors. People think we are much faster than we are, much stronger than we are. In fact, when we are at our best, it’s because we are a team of competent navigators who also have a good eye for strategy. We work well as a team. We make up for a lack of true top-level speed and power with teamwork, and when Abby, Brian, and Jim won that race in PA, it marked the beginning of a 3-4 year stretch during which we rarely lost. We could mix and match our teammates, and it didn’t matter as our team was just locked in and essentially interchangeable.

In 2018, after another surprising National Championship (It’s worth acknowledging the reality that the US Nationals race scene has really evolved over the past 5 years, and the competition is so much deeper and elite than it sometimes has been), we were riding high as a team, and we also added two 2nd place finishes at major expedition races: XPD in Tasmania and Untamed New England. A second-place finish at 2019 Nationals in NC to the amazing Quest Adventure Racing team felt pretty good, too.

And, yet…

Day 1 of Untamed New England, 2018. We were running in second place and feeling good as a team, riding along after a strong opening stage during which we kept an impressive Untamed New England team in sight through most of the leg. We were fit and ready to race…and all I could think of was wanting to drop out of the race. I just wasn’t feeling it, and the feeling was familiar. It had waned a fair bit with the team’s success, but something else was nagging at me.

Scroll ahead to 2021. The team was getting ready to compete at 2021 USARA Nationals in Wisconsin. It had been two years really since our peak, but the team had raced well in the couple of races we had participated in coming out of COVID, and many seemed to think we were a logical choice for the podium, some picking us to win. It was a race that played well to our strengths in that there was a lot of navigation and route choice. It was also the deepest field I had ever seen at Nationals at the top (though this year’s race may have eclipsed 2021).
There was pressure. And remember, smoke and mirrors. And when the smoke doesn’t work…

In short, I started realizing I wasn’t enjoying the pressure of racing anymore. I didn’t want to change anything significant, but I wanted to stop worrying about how we did, and I wanted people to stop talking about our team as they would truly elite teams because we are a bit different…maybe more than a bit different, really…than other teams who have won Nationals.

And so, for the past two years, I’ve been working toward resetting. I can’t necessarily speak for the rest of my team, but I don’t think I’m the only one who has been wrestling with some of these questions. We’ve talked about worrying less about how we do, changing the narrative when it comes to goal setting, and not paying as much attention to other teams or what we might learn in TAs. That doesn’t mean we change how we actually want to race in the woods as a unit, but as long as we can look back and feel like we all left it all out there, we made good decisions, executed nav and strategy, etc., that would be more than enough.

We hoped to get in early enough to complete the paddle in the light, and thankfully we did so with ample time to spare. The river was a serpentine waterway full of current and occasional splashes of light whitewater. It was surprisingly scenic, considering it was the most public part of the course, and the river was highlighted with one particular section littered with dramatic boulders and small cliff faces. ​

With the river behind us, the real race began, and things definitely ramped up. The bike ride out of the TA started off well enough, but as darkness enveloped us, we found ourselves traveling with StrongMachine/GMARA along a rugged riverside trail. Bits of it were fast, but large stretches involved steep hike-a-biking, muddy and rooty singletrack, narrow stretches of trails that wound between trees waiting to knock you off your bike, and occasional stretches in which it was easy to lose the trail in the dark if you rode too fast. It was a physical section, and it took a bit of a toll on our collective energy.

​When we came out the other side, we enjoyed a short stretch of trail navigation through the Smugglers Notch bike trails. Until I bonked briefly, that is, on another stretch of trail that required more hike-a-bike than riding. With CP 24 behind us and my energy rebounding, we forged ahead and climbed out of the resort to the next TA for the first of the two monster treks. We had lost some time to a number of the other full-course contenders on this stage but found ourselves navigating well and making good time through the section, closing the gap on several of the teams. It was a wild section with a massive climb and some rocky reentrants, but we navved it well as a team and finished it up with plenty of time to get through the navigation challenge that waited for us at TA6.

Once back on our bikes, we rode up and over the Notch, a rugged, boulder-littered landscape that feels like it belongs in the Misty Mountains, and we bombed down the other side…or rather coasted as some Sleepmonsters started lobbing obstacles at us from the steep Green Mountains on either side. We finally reached the TA to find a party of tired teams, racers, and volunteers in a state of disarray. Teams were largely splitting up to complete the navigation challenge of trying to find nine checkpoints in a maze of trails that was just challenging enough to give many teams a fit or two.

We elected to each take a map and go find the three points each map required, hoping that we could all nail the nav and move on quickly. I took the longest route and did well on the first two CPs, but I botched the third point and lost 10-15 minutes in the process. I ran back to TA expecting to find Joel and Abby waiting, but instead found that Abby was not back yet. She, like MANY other racers, really struggled with the third point of her map, and she came back without the CP. Joel then took off to find that final point, and while he did, it took longer than we expected.

Back on the bike, post-dawn sleepies continued to slow our progress to the point where we stopped for five minutes just shy of dawn. That helped enough and we settled in to work our way through the final trail system in Sterling Forest. It was slow going, more hike-a-biking at times, and we were aware that we had entered the AR time warp during which time seems to all but vanish. It’s amazing how all of a sudden, one realizes that minutes have somehow multiplied into hours, so after bagging the first two CPs, we stopped to discuss options.

​We knew we could get the final two CPs, but we wanted to maximize time on the final big trek, so we elected to skip our first CPs of the race and get ourselves back out on foot. While not an easy decision, once we made it, it felt good to just move ahead on the bike knowing that the goal had shifted from the pressure of clearing the course to just maximizing the remaining trek.

At 9AM, we started back up into the mountains. At the TA, we learned that it had taken Bend almost four hours to make it up to the two mandatory CPs that roughly divided the trek into halves. We had six hours left. Determined to make a final push, we set off, taking care of some water and other needs along the way up to the first CP where we converged with Rib, Dark Horse, and another team or two on a beautiful beaver pond nestled in the mountains. It was obvious that everyone was weighing what to do with the final hours of the race, and the TA staff had been directing people to be careful, nudging the less experienced teams (and, we would later learn, some of the more experienced ones, too) to really be careful with their time. I think everyone was a bit nervous about blowing it.

After that first point, we took off and quickly found ourselves alone. We had decided on a route that would drop the three highest, most remote, and hardest points on the trek. We watched our clock, but the goal was to clear everything else on the first half of the trek and then move point by point through the final four CPs.

With no pressure except the clock, we methodically worked together to spike point after point. I led us through the terrain and manned the compass, navigating an efficient route that would minimize elevation change, Abby kept a firm eye on the altimeter, and Joel focused on pace counting. We made steady work of it and found ourselves completing the first half of the trek somewhere around three hours. We also started crossing paths with a number of other teams, which was the story of the race. We smiled, we laughed, we talked, and then we would take off for our next point.

As we dropped off the ridge and high spurs of the Green Mountains toward the final four points, we still had time to complete our goal, and at the first of the final four points (spaced out in a near linear line along a sidehill), we crossed paths with team VERT, who had been racing in podium contention for the first stages of the race. We assumed they either were still clearing the course or had dropped one or two, having started the trek well before we did.

When we learned they had dropped five points, it was a jolt and a reminder that you never know what is happening ahead (or behind) you in AR. If VERT had dropped five, who knew what the other ten or so teams likely behind the few teams clearing the course were doing? We weren’t focused on VERT, specifically, but seeing them gave us a boost, and we took off, sticking to our one point at a time philosophy, but more determined to move with a bit more urgency to sweep those last points.

Half an hour or so later, we had accomplished that goal and were on our way to the finish five hours or so after starting. It was a satisfying feeling to have nailed the trek as well as we had, only dropping the three points after leaving those final two bike points. In hindsight, we probably could have grabbed at least one of those two, but we’ve pushed things to the cutoff enough times to simply savor the luxury of running down the mountain to a busy, cheering finish line without having to risk a coronary.

Ultimately, we finished in 8th place (amazingly, 3 teams…Tower, VERT, and our team…all dropped five points and finished within about ten minutes of each other), but more importantly for me, it was the first longer race in years that I simply felt focused AND relaxed. We just had a blast. Whatever lows we had were nutritional or from fatigue, rather than being from minor mistakes or from the stress of racing against other teams. I hadn’t had this much fun in this sort of race in a long, long time, and it was a joy not to be stuck in my head, processing some existential crisis, real or conceived.

I’m sure I will have lows again. I’m sure I will question my life choices and wonder if “42” REALLY is the meaning of life or not, but after several years of working to find the joy in racing again, I feel like I did this season. The Faroe Islands and Nationals, in particular, have reminded me of just how special this sport can be. Of course, while I have worked on my mindset myself, I must give credit to my amazing teammates as well who make it all that much more enjoyable.

As always: thank you to the race directors. USARA and GMARA put together a fantastic course, and it will serve as a highlight for years to come. Congratulations to the amazing podium teams, Bend Racing, Grit, and Wedali, the only three teams to clear the course. And a special shout out to our teammates, Nicki and Paul, who raced with guest racer Travis Siendhel. I know it wasn’t the smoothest race for them, but they do what Rootstock does: persevering, making the best of it, and working their way to the finish line regardless.

​What’s next? Pure AR joy as I get to race with Zoe at VentureQuest, her second adventure race of the year, as Little Rootstockers. For the rest of the team, we’ll be watching and rooting for Bend Racing and all the other American teams at Worlds. And I’ll be remembering this birthday for a while.

by Abby Perkiss

Still, as we packed our gear, coordinated childcare, and sorted out travel logistics, I began to wonder whether we’d ever actually get out the door. First, Mark had a family emergency that almost precluded him from traveling. Then, the many viruses circulating through Philly this summer seemed to be closing in, and I was certain that one of our kids would get sick and we’d have to withdraw. When we finally made it onto the plane, I kept waiting for the text asking one of us to fly home.
 
After we arrived, our transition to race mode was mired by gear hiccups. First, one of our duffels got stuck in Copenhagen. We helplessly watched the AirTag, anchored in Terminal Three, as the airline kept telling us they were trying to locate it, and we wondered if we would see our packraft, PFDs, drysuits, and other assorted mandatory gear before the start. As we worked to source replacements from the teams we knew at the race, we joked that we would get to enjoy a six-day tour of Faroese pubs. Despite a certain appeal to that scenario, I couldn’t justify the familial resources not to line up at the start. Finally, on Saturday morning, 24 hours before the race began, Brent and I borrowed a car and drove to the airport to claim our bag. 
 
Meanwhile, as we were riding down a sharp hill on a meander through town, I heard a loud pop and discovered that I had blown a spoke in my front wheel. We rode gingerly to a local bike shop, the wheel wobbling all the way, to learn that no one in Denmark carries Mavic parts. After fifteen minutes of frantic calls, the shop owner’s wife agreed to lend me her front wheel for the week.

By some constellation and luck and grit, we were ready to race. We had very little information about the course logistics; we would have to wait until Sunday at 6am to start our deep planning. So, Saturday night, we all went to bed early in preparation for the 4:30am wakeup – and proceeded to toss and turn into the early hours of the morning. It turned out that many of our North American friends had suffered a similarly restless pre-race night – a combination, no doubt, of jetlag and nerves at the unknown journey before us.
 
The race began promptly at 9am with a fast and fun orienteering course around Torshavn. Brent’s navigation was dialed and the points passed quickly; at some point, as we found ourselves racing ahead of Estonia, he joked that he should retire then and there. At the end of the prologue, we transitioned onto bike for the start of Stage 1, an 80km ride that would take us from the capitol east across the island of Vagar. The ride included almost 10,000 feet of climbing, made possible by the rugged trails we traversed up and over two mountain passes. The ride was spectacular. We transitioned from road to trail to overland hike-a-bike and then repeated the cycle two additional times. The sun was uncharacteristically bright, offering us our first views of the jutting peaks of the Faroes. It was a true journey of a stage – one of the most varied bike legs I can remember in an expedition race.

It also took us through our first of several tunnels that we would encounter throughout the week – extended stretches of travel under the ocean and through mountains to get us across the island chain. There was novelty in that first tunnel, which would gradually be replaced by a sort of sensory-overloaded terror as the fumes, jet propulsion exhaust fans, and heavy traffic weighed on our mounting fatigue.

It was one thing for me to have a hard time; it was entirely different for my nimble rock-hopping husband to lose his confidence. Too much – we had hit that point. Over about 45 seconds, I went through all the possible scenarios that would get us off this exposed cliff face – the best I could muster was a roped rescue, and the worst was, well, unrepeatable…

Eventually, Brent found the line through to the other side of the scramble, and with several deep breaths, I was able to follow his footsteps. We traveled to a higher elevation and continued to the waypoint without issue, but by the time we dropped to the road and our paddle gear, I was totally spent.
 
Of course, this is adventure racing, and what choice do you have but to keep moving with the recognition that this, too, will pass? As we inflated our MRS Barracuda Pros and set up our sprayskirts (such a game changer in the frigid North Atlantic waters), I looked out onto what we were told were the most dangerous currents in Faroe Islands, bracing for what was to come.
 
Ultimately, the crossing was completely benign, whether because the tides and winds were in our favor or because the ocean was less susceptible to RD hyperbole. We scanned for whales, saw our first puffin, hit the sea cave checkpoint, and made our way to the second waypoint to drop off our gear and continue onto the second half of the stage.

***

I recently listened to a trail running podcast, and the guest – a top-level competitor – noted that every time she runs an ultra, she spends the first ten kilometers questioning her decision to race. This was a terrible idea. I’d rather be doing anything but running up this hill. Why am I out here? Then she settles in and enjoys the ride – the inevitable peaks and valleys that take her to the finish.
 
It was in this proverbial first 10km that I found myself for the next 24 hours – in adventure racing, what I now call “The Long Day 2.” Our trek continued up and over a series of exposed ridges, and as my nerves continued to fray, I was utterly overwhelmed. Will every checkpoint be this high consequence? There’s no way I can keep doing this for five more days. Why am I here? Why am I asking so much of people to allow for me to take part if I’m not having fun? And how am I ever going to get to the finish line?

We awoke more than 24 hours into the stage, still with two more checkpoints to push through – one mandatory and one pro (an optional point that keeps you on the full course – in this race, once you skip one pro point, you’re no longer permitted to visit any additional pros, so diverging from the full course has the potential for substantial implications for the standings). I was fine physically, but still not quite reset mentally. It’s a hard feeling to put into words. I was totally willing to keep pushing, but I had absolutely no desire, no drive, to do so. In that moment, I would have been completely fine to end our race and head for the nearest hotel. So, when we reached CP 49 (mandatory) and had to decide whether to commit to CP 51 (pro) and the full course or take the conservative route down to the TA and preserve our cushion to make the upcoming time cutoff, I made myself completely absent from the conversation. Willing, but not driven.
 
Who are you writing letters to? Brent asked as we headed to the TA, familiar with my AR brain. What are you telling them? Until that point, my efforts to stay inside myself had held, but his question cracked me open. I sobbed on the side of the trail.
 
Why am I here? Why are we doing this? How am I ever going to make it to the finish? And why did you have to ask that damned question?
​
You’re too hard on yourself, he told me. You can do this if you want to do it. No one is judging you or questioning you. You just need to get out of your own way.
 
The pros and cons of racing with your partner…
 
In truth, it was exactly the release I needed. As we descended the last hill, crying gave way to breathing, and breathing gave way to a sense of calm – finally.
 
This probably won’t be the last time I cry this week, I told Andy.
 
That’s okay, he winked. I’ve already cried five times in my head.
 
What a gift this team was.

From there, the race entered its flow state.

The end of the paddle was noteworthy for its battering headwind and, at TA3, our introduction to the wonder that is the Faroese hot dog baguette – a grilled footlong hot dog nestled inside a warmed and hollowed out baguette, and filled with the sauce of your choosing (spicy mustard FTW). In the warmth of the Effo gas station, we refueled and gathered ourselves for the short ride to Stage 5, which included a cliff jump and dive for two underwater CPs, and then the challenge of navigating through three peaks, including the tallest mountain in the islands, on a wooden relief map (it was a beautiful piece of art – each team got one to take home as a memento). We had some sleepmonsters to contend with on this ride, but stuck to our strategy of getting through the water CPs and then crashing until daylight. After a few minutes of wandering through the quaint town of Gjogv, Andy and Mark set up the tent, and Brent and I slid into a shallow cement cavern with our ground pads and sleeping bags – what we discovered in the morning was a mercifully-unused septic tank – for a few restless hours off our feet.

​When we arrived at the TA, we found that Stage 7, the packraft/trek, had been shortened due to deteriorating conditions in the mountains, and that Stage 11 had been canceled altogether. The two cutoffs on the course had been pushed as a result, so our decision to skip CP 51 was for naught, and we were now entirely on our own course. Every other team had either gotten 51; skipped the first pro point (47), putting them on the short course earlier; dropped mandatory points; or lost a team member. For the next 48 hours, it would just be us against the course as we made our way to the finish.

For as daunting as this stage was in anticipation, it ended up being among our favorites of the race. It was wild and rugged, remote and expansive. It included five transitions, from sea to land and back again, and required us to go up and over three towering ridges with some seriously technical terrain to navigate through. In the boats, we paddled past endless salmon fisheries, watching the schools of fish leap into the air, a well-practiced dance. We saw puffins skim along the water, flapping their pointed wings ferociously against the wind, and we watched seals pop up playfully, urging us to follow them. In the mountains, we trudged up steep pitches of rock and grass as the tops gradually came into focus. We traversed windswept ridges, finding checkpoints just as darkness descended and fog rolled in. We hopped boulders, slid down scree, and picked lines through heather-covered cliffs. It required deep focus and a commitment to staying in the present, not forecasting ahead to the horizon. We all did it together.

On our descent from the first peak, we found ourselves edging along cliffs that, like that headland on the morning of Day 2, gradually became impossibly steep. Deep into Night 4, we had no choice but to stop on the bit of level ground we could find and climb into our tent until sunrise. At first light, we sidehilled left and were able to pick our way down to the coast, where we came across East Wind. They told us that they had overshot the CP and were climbing back up to reattack. I teared up after hearing about their plan, inspired by their dogmatic pursuit of an official finish. We gave them a few tips from our trip down, and then took note of a big red blot on their map.

I feel validated in how technical that descent seemed, I joked with the guys as we got back on the water.
 
As we came to the final crossing of the stage, we started to plan for the last stretch of the race.  Our few hours in the septic tank were only marginally better than our pre-dawn dozing on the cliff’s edge, and we were all getting a little bit stupid-tired as we completed the final kilometers into the TA. When we arrived, Mark ran off to order food, and Andy, Brent, and I found consensus around a brief hotel stay in town before setting off for stages 8-9-10-12 (essentially one long bike with a short embedded trek). The timing wasn’t ideal – we’d be sleeping through the final hours of daylight and then biking and trekking through the night – but it was guaranteed to be warm and dry, and especially after Olof, Whitney, and Erik extolled the virtues of their long hotel sleep the previous night, we were sold.

We transitioned quickly, ate the most delicious burgers, and then rode up the hill to the one hotel in town, where we booked two rooms (at a generously discounted rate, when we told them we’d be out by midnight) and slept luxuriously for a few hours, interrupted briefly by the arrival of Strong Machine – great minds!

​At that point, there were 60km of roads between us and the finish line, and if we were going to get there before dinner, we knew we had to regroup. That, combined with a punishing headwind – at one point we were pedaling downhill at 8km per hour – gave us the nudge we needed; we spent the last few hours in a paceline, swapping pulls every half kilometer. Aside from a few bus stop shelters to flip maps, and one brief pause when Mark and Andy decided to help a farmer load hay bales into his truck, we maintained our rhythm all the way into Torshavn, navigating the final kilometers into Faroe’s biggest city as residents offered cheers, thumbs up, and horn honks of encouragement. It seemed the whole country had followed the race that week. We turned onto the road for the finish and were greeted by pounding dance music and a couple dozen friends and race personnel, cheering us over the line. As we crossed, my eyes brimmed over with a few more tears – this time, of gratitude and wonderment.

Day Two is the worst. Every single time. I just have to remind myself that if I can push through that, I’ll find what I need on the other side.
 
That’s why I do it. Because getting to the finish opens me up to possibilities. There are great things along the way, but really, it’s what I gain at the end that keeps me coming back.
 
It’s hard to feel okay taking the time away from family, to ask for so much when you know you’re going to be suffering through a lot of it. I’m so grateful for the support they give me to pursue these silly things.
 
My belief is that your kids and my kids will be enriched in their own lives as they pattern some of this wild dream chasing and balanced thoughtfulness of their parents. A life philosophy of "moderation in all things, including moderation" leaves room for experiences like this once in a while.
 
I’m retiring! After the next one…
 
Five years ago, I knew exactly what I was getting myself into when I stepped onto a start line, and I had the resources to pull myself through it to the finish. Since then, so many things have happened to chip away at those reserves. In the Faroe Islands, I found why again, and I reclaimed a bit of myself again, too. It may sound silly, hyperbolic even, but in the context of our sport – and probably a little bit in life, too – there are few things that will test you more than the depths of the Long Day 2, and few things more affirming than finding your way back out.

by Paul Miller

Wow! No race reports since 2021!

Well, 2023 hasn't started off according to plan, so maybe it's a good year to start recording the ups and downs of the race team once more after another terrific Adventure Addicts race down near Appomattox, Virginia. If you aren't doing Michelle and Liz's races, you are missing out on some of the most enjoyable races out there. They are well designed and directed, and they offer some of the best route choice, strategy and navigation. We may be biased as such events play to our strengths, but we also love Michelle and Liz as fellow RDs because they design creative events that really offer something for everyone, regardless of level. This year's Chill Adventure Race was no different!

OK, let's get the best part of the race out there first: our new teammate Paul Miller is terrific!

We already knew this, and Paul has raced several times with the team over the last 12-15 months, but he was eager to get to work during the off-season, and his commitment to preparation and racing hard paid off. More importantly, he is just a great person and teammate, and it's always wonderful when you find a new friend who fits in with the team dynamic and culture as seamlessly as Paul does. So, regardless of everything else, the weekend was a win!

Now, the...downright awful...Abby tore her calf LITERALLY 200 meters or so into the race.

We left the start line on foot on a short trail run into the woods. We had to leap a small stream, and upon pushing off, something popped. And that was that. It didn't take long for us to determine that this wasn't a twisted ankle that would calm down with a few minutes of deep breathing and gentle walking, and Paul and I carried her and helped her hop back to the start. Obviously not the way you want to start a race, but more importantly, not the way you want to start a season. With a handful of races, an ultra, an expedition race in the amazing Faroe Islands, and more on the horizon for 2023, we are just crossing our fingers the news isn't absolutely terrible. (and word just in, it sounds like she avoided a season-ending injury. It's torn, but she should be able to bounce back within a month or so. PHEW!!)

The silver lining, for me and Paul, was that the injury happened at such a time that we were able to essentially just restart the race. Since we were within earshot of the start line and hadn't made it to any CPs, we were permitted to shift into the two person all-male category. Racing officially wasn't the most important thing, but it was nice of Michelle and Liz to recognize and allow this. We lost 15 minutes of race time, but we were able to then go out and race our race.

This year's course was essentially broken into two segments: a foot and bike loop from the start. There were also nine "wildcard" CPs that could be attacked anytime, anyhow. We laid out a foot loop that would incorporate two of these wildcard points, and we planned to tackle the rest from bike. After a fair bit of debate, we decided to run first as we didn't want to get stuck out on that foot section if time ran out...and because it was VERY cold, which just didn't sound all that fun on the bike to start.

Once we were off for real, we made steady work of the foot loop, and we slowly roped in some teams, though it was difficult to really tell what anyone was doing since there were so many different route options and strategies. We stayed positive and focused, and despite sub freezing temperatures, we weren't bothered by the cold. Roughly halfway through, we caught up to Bash Brothers who we knew were one of the favorite teams to win overall, and we crossed paths with TanZ, another team we expected to be dueling it out for the top spot (though, I don't think they saw us). As it turned out, TanZ was looping in the opposite direction, while we ultimately ended up leap frogging with Bash Brothers for the rest of the stage.

As we wrapped up the trek, we felt great. We had an efficient stage, we had made up the lost time it seemed, and we also benefitted from TanZ having skipped a CP by accident. They lost some time running back for it, which gave us a much needed cushion considering our own lost time. 

With six hours or so to go, we felt confident in our ability to clear the bike stage, but unfortunately, we were not able to move the way we wanted to through the stage thanks to yours truly and a few factors that slowed our progress.

• For starters, while I felt great on the foot stage, my quads just weren't having it on the bike. Maybe chalk it up to early season training and racing, but I just didn't feel like myself. Paul was strong and steady, and I just couldn't quite GO. That said, it might have been...
• ...residual from a long week in which I was sick and not sleeping well, but...
• ...the primary issue was my bike. My rear shifter just was not engaging efficiently, and often wasn't working at all. I either was spinning madly or able to get it to shift up right as we hit a hill. Ultimately, for 80-90% of the ride, I wasn't able to get much or any power to really ride harder and faster where possible, so I couldn't take advantage of flatter and downhill riding effectively. If I did have the gears up in the rear, I'd often keep them there on uphills rather than downshifting which just compounded fatigue. All told, this may have been the problem for my legs... 

In the face of these issues, we just moved steadily and, we felt, efficiently. Our nav was sharp all day, and we had a blast cruising around the bike course. Halfway through, we still felt confident that we would sweep the bike course. We had been inching up on Bash Brothers for the first hour of the stage, catching up to them at bike drops for CPs, but our paths finally diverged and we largely rode on our own for a couple of hours.

The highlight of the ride was our bikewhack from CP 16 to 17. We actually were able to more or less ride our bikes off trail, pedaling...albeit slowly...for 90% or so of the whack. We saved several miles of road riding, and the journey was a beautiful one. Not long after that, we saw TanZ for the first time in several hours just as we headed in to drop our bikes and take care of a loop of four wild cards (A-D). 

And here we entered a time vortex.

We nabbed the points without any real issues, but I think we went through our one real lull, feeling some fatigue. The loop took a bit longer than we expected, and once out of it, we found that time had melted away. As we left, TanZ was getting started, and we had also seen Bash Brothers' bikes, so we knew things might be tight. That said, it seemed clear that we all had done different things, and we had no idea where things stood.

We set off for the final 90+ minutes of riding, and when the clock ticked down to 60 minutes, I really started analyzing time estimates as it was increasingly clear that it was going to be close. Also knowing that tired legs and an inefficient bike would make it hard to maximize speed and really be able to turn it on, it became evident that we were likely going to have to drop one of the finals CPs, an out and back for CP6.

This is often one of the roles Abby take on: timekeeper. She checks the team on big picture decisions if time is tight. As the minutes slipped by and we conducted periodic time checks, her voice became louder and louder that there just wasn't time for fortune and glory. Disappointed to drop it, but knowing it was the right thing to do, we rode in to the finish having cleared all but one CP. Knowing we lost 15 minutes to start and probably another 15-30 minutes from what was essentially a six hour mechanical, we were at peace with that. And we only had six minutes to spare, so it was a wise decision for us.

As it turned out, both TanZ and Bash Brothers did clear the course, but they both came back several minutes late meaning we secured the overall win after penalties were factored in. It was a bittersweet win knowing Abby was hurt, and it was frustrating not to be able to ride efficiently on the bike, but it was fantastic to build more rapport with Paul.

We worked well together, and even without a second set of maps, he contributed in meaningful ways to the navigation, catching a couple of issues and putting in the extra work to punch most of the CPs. Our route, as it turned out, seemed to be dialed in. I think bits may have required some slower travel, but it seems we traveled 5-6 miles less than Bash Brothers, and 18 miles or so fewer than TanZ. We knew those two teams were likely to be faster than us anyway, but considering our limitations on the bike stage, this ultimately made the difference.

And Abby's voice, telling us to skip that last CP!

Huge thanks to all the volunteers working with Liz and Michelle to make it happen, and as always, it was so great to see so many friends, old and new, playing in the woods. Special shout out to our teammate Joel Ford who raced with team TBD and took third place in the mixed gender division. Here's to a great 2023!