2010 Bonk Hard Chill 12 hour Adventure Race, March 13
Hi. My name is Emily. I'm a Mid-Rivers newbie, and a rookie to the sport of adventure racing in general. Somehow I was recruited for the Castlewood 8-hr, and liked it enough to take on the 12-hr Chill with Gary Thompson. Here's the race report!
I drove down to the race headquarters in Osage Beach, MO on Friday night for the pre-race meeting. The meeting revealed there would be a pre-race bike drop at a park about 30min away. We also received course maps (2 1:24000 USGS and 1 8.5x11 trail map detail) and coordinates for 13 checkpoints. After bringing our bikes to the bike drop, a covered park pavilion, we headed back to Gary's house to plot maps, strategize, and eat brownies. From there it looked like we would start with a short road run, a 10-mile river paddle with no checkpoints, and then a 25-30mile bike mostly on roads with checkpoints located roadside. There were a few miles of trails shown towards the end of the first bike leg, but Gary has trained on them since birth so he anticipated the conditions would be very sloppy and subsequently devised a bike-whack shortcut for that section.
The next morning, I woke up slightly groggy at 4.45a but ready to tackle a day in the woods. We left Gary's house at 5.30, grabbed coffee at the local McD's before heading to race headquarters for a 6am bus pickup. Busses were late, but the short drive meant the race still started off at 7.15am. We set out on a 2mi out-and-back paved road run to CP1, which we completed in a very, ahem, relaxed manner. When we returned to the start, we punched CP2 and immediately got into the canoes for a 10mi paddle along the Osage River. We were one of the last boats in the water, but we passed 13 boats over the next two hours. With no CPs to punch on the paddle, we just put our heads down and worked. Take-out was an obvious boat ramp, the site of last night's bike drop (Tuscumbia Park).
A quick change of shoes, donning of helmets, and ingestion of snacks brought us and our bikes onto the local roads for CP4 through 7, all located roadside. Gary navigated from memory as we compared distances on our bike computers. It was a math-lovers dream as my computer is in kilometers and his is in miles, but we managed to find all the checkpoints, no thanks to the metric system. Towards the end of this leg I started to feel pretty uncomfortable, I think due to waning calories and a low, heavy pack, but the gas station at CP7 soon emerged over the horizon. As a bonus, Jason of Bonk Hard arranged for each racer to have $1.50 credit in the store - I eagerly spent mine on a hot dog and washed it down with vanilla Ensure for the lunch of champions. We completed the ironic refueling and, with significantly improved spirits, hopped back on our bikes for the second half of the leg.
CP8 offered the first route choice of the day, and we opted for the longer option with less climb. The checkpoint was at a hilltop cabin that made us hunt for the punch (it was hidden on the back porch) but we found it quickly and got back on the road. CP9 was located at a trailhead, and was accompanied by volunteers and a 10(!)-item gear check. Thankfully they had a sign with all required items and we were able to show everything pretty rapidly and headed out onto the trails. As we discussed last night, trail conditions were indeed very sloppy and only about 50% rideable. We executed Gary's wicked bike-whack plan without a hitch. We had mistakenly divulged to some teams that he was a local, and they tried to follow us into the brush, but we hustled and were able to drop them. In short order, we emerged from the woods with all checkpoints and rode the small distance to CP13, which was the end of our maps as we knew it.
Indeed, as we entered Camp Pin Oak's dining hall we were presented with coordinates for an additional 13 checkpoints, 12 of which would be on a trekking section. Gary and I quickly plotted them on our existing map, and Gary strategized the best route to minimize climb. I'll summarize the trekking section in just a few words because Gary handled all of the navigation and I followed, punching our passport as the checkpoints magically appeared in front of us. If there was any mistakes, I have no clue. In a little more than two hours, we set our sights back on Camp Pin Oak for the penultimate checkpoint. Since we knew it was a short (20 min) ride to the finish, we hustled through transition, our fourth for the day, and speedily biked homeward. The finish line greeted us with a siren, cowbells, a huge inflatable arch, and most importantly, hot baked potatoes.
Our overall finishing time for the 12-hour adventure was 9 hours, 17 minutes, which was good for 9th/36 place overall and 3rd/5 in the 2-Person Co-Ed division. Overall, we were very pleased with our race. The weather was 40-50F and cloudy all day. Rain tried to start but we never got more than a few seconds of showers. We didn't make any major mistakes that ate into our time. Our slowest transition was definitely canoe-to-bike, but we rebounded with efficient transitions, including plotting, for the rest of the race. The bikewhack probably saved us 15-20 minutes and Gary killed the trek which definitively pushed us into the top 10 teams. Gary had bike mechanical issues throughout the day which limited our climbing speed, but it wasn't a mistake per se, just something to deal with. I almost screwed up my nutrition in the first bike leg, but was saved by a timely hot dog.