Bonk Hard Chill 18-hour AR Report and Map

Tim and I left Stlouis at 12:30 after doing last minute gear checks and loading equipment. Expecting the usual times of an hour and a half to Kingdom City then another 90 minutes to the lake, the time passed quickly talking strategy and how miserable the race weather would be. Then we both happened to notice a sign stating Columbia Mo, a few miles ahead. We took the next exit off of I-70 and turned around, passing a "Kingdom City 18 miles ahead". Normally I consider myself a decent navigator, but I had already made the simplest of mistakes, by 18 miles! Funny thing is I have made this lake trip over 50 times in my life and have never missed Kingdom City....I was just hoping this would not turn into an omen of our navigation for the weekend.

Arrived at the hotel Country Hearth around 4pm. The pictures on the website must be from a different hotel, because it certainly did not look the same. They were very friendly and a nice continental breakfast though. After checking in and bringing some supplies into our room, we went to the church for mandatory gear check with officials and signing the normal "you are doing this at your own risk" paperwork. We had some time before the race dinner and meeting with map passout, so we decided to drive the road into the State Park and do a little recon before the sun went down. Grabbed a park trail map and tried to mentally mark where all the trail entrances and exits were for tomorrow. We then grabbed some taco bell(too hungry to wait for dinner) and headed back to the hotel.

We then met up with Bill and Claire for some race dinner, spaghetti, before the meeting...Loading up on the carbs. This led up to the standard meeting, got our race maps, Tim happened to grab one of the few chairs that had a surprise hat taped under it...damn I needed one of those! We made our way back to the hotel and started plotting our UTM coordinates and marking our checkpoints. We double-checked our control point placements with Bill, he was a couple of rooms away, then marked and planned our route for the next day. The best part of the race setup was that they allowed us to park the canoe at one or both extraction points (XP1, XP2) and collect the trecking CP's in any order we wanted. This basically gave the option of hitting CP4 thru 13 in any order. We planned to hit XP1 and collect the 3 closest checkpoints (4,5,8), then canoe to XP2 and hit cp's 11,9,7,6,10. We then collected CP's 12,13 on the canoe's. This may have been a mistake....later in report.

As usual morning came too early, due to lack of sleep planning route and last minute gear prep. We woke up at 5:30 for our 7am race start. Got dressed, wolfed down some last minute carbs, and headed toward the race start. It was in the low 20's and I was seriously regretting my decision to do this race. It was brutal taking my hat off for the national anthem before race start...I swear the boombox was set on a slow speed. It was after that the horn went of and we were on our way.

True to tradition is was a mad rush of 100 people fighting for position. The usual sound of gear and water bladders swooshing soon was replaced with expletives and other words as we hit the trail. The first trail we hit on our way to CP1 was frequented by horses. Horse hoof and bike rutts were completely frozen and causing havoc on peoples ankles. Seen many in front and heard behind rolling ankles and hitting the ground. CP1 was up a ridge a little over a mile into it. As we came upon racers climbing the steep hill, I knew they did it too early. We passed them a bit then proceeded with the steep climb. Found it relatively easy as there was so many people still clustered together. Climbed back down to the trail to hit CP2. It was supposedly where a trail crossed with another bike trail to the left. After getting CP2, I did not see any other trail so we proceeded on. Not hitting a trail crossing and getting farther from the water, we knew we passed it along with many other teams and trecked back toward the water, where we hit the trail we should have been on. Not even an hour into the race and I have made a navigational error...ARGHHH

CP3 was a further couple miles down the trail then on an old road. This road crossed an old bouncing wooden bridge...see picture...unfortunately the picture does not show the bridge floor had floating wooden planks with some over a foot apart. So after about 4 miles we reached CP3 and hopped in our canoe. I chose not to carry my kayak paddle with so much treking surrounding the canoe portion, big mistake...It was definately time to dig out all possible wet and cold weather apparel. Unfortunately I had no sealskinz but Tim did. He needed it since I was paddling up front. The paddling was not too bad in the ealy moments due to end of the lake arm being like a river. But soon it opened up to wide open water and the wind was blowing pretty strong. Icycles were starting to form on the canoe from the splashing and soon on my gloves. It was at this point that the valves on our water bladders started to freeze. I thought it was the beginning of a major problem if we were not going to be able to drink. Tim found out sticking the whole valve in the mouth for a minute would thaw it. Great discovery that I had to use about 20 times during the race. After about 4 miles on the water we reached Extraction Point 1 (XP1).

I was glad to start running again to warm the body up. We found a trail that would take us close to CP4. Once getting that point we had a bushwack to hit CP5. We took a bearing and headed straight for it which unfortunately had us headed up a steep hill. Once at the top it was relatively flat to the orienteering flag halfway down a reentrant. At that point there we still a few teams in the area around us. We were all together heading for CP8 which was at a hiltop overlooking the cliff down to the lake. Others teams started to migrate more in a easterly direction and I told Tim to stay on our course that they were wrong. We ended up finding it quicker and tried to move as quickly as possible back to our canoes. One orienteer section down and our navigation was right on. To avoid getting our feet wet back at the canoes we chose to climb down and jump from rock face to rock face till we could get down dry. Somewhere in there, I lost my compass. We backtraced to those rocks and could not find it, finally we had to give up the search. Luckily Tim also had a compass.

We headed out on the canoe for about 3 miles to reach XP2. At that point the canoe got right down miserable. Wind and snow were blowing crazy. The current at some points would almost stop us completely. It was then that I was thinking maybe we should have just done all the land checkpoints from XP1. We arrived at XP1, which was also CP11. It was nice to get back on the feet and warm up. We headed up the road till we hit a couple houses which would be our marker to start bushwacking due south to CP9 in a creekbed. We took a bearing to another creekbed a km away to CP7. Instead of heading straight to CP6 at a road and tunnel, we chose to head south to hit the road then use the road to find the tunnel. From CP6 to CP10 there was a creek on the map that carried the 2km distance so we chose to run along the creek. We then had another 2.5km bushwack back to XP2 to the canoes. Luckily the teams before had made a nice little trail through the grass that we followed back. Second orienteering section went good with no mistakes or misqueus.

We had another 2 miles on the canoes back to CP14. On the way we needed to collect CP12 and CP13. CP13 was an interesting 100 yards on foot out of the canoe. It was covered with down logs and trees. Had to traverse the logs to keep the feet dry, unfortunately I slipped and one foot sunk in the mud to my knee...unbelievable...luckily new socks were within an hour. We got out of the canoes and had to portage them to the trucks. At that point in the race they felt 500 pounds, that may have to do with a complete sheet of ice on the floor of it. We then had a mile hike back to transition and CP15. Road was steep and I just didn't have the energy to run after that canoe portion. We spent about 40 minutes in transition eating, drinking, and filling our packs with fluids and food for the second portion of the race. This included a complete change of clothes, which built up the morale feeling dry again. We headed out around 1:20pm.

For the next 4.5 hours we would be on the bike. I was so bundled up I would hardly lift my head all the way while riding. The first 2km's were the same as the start of the race. CP16 was at CP2. From there we had to ride a hilly single track trail for 4 miles. It was brutal and much worse than the berryman trail or counsel bluff trail. Constant up and down with many rocks. Didn't do an endover until I decided to lean forward to remove a noisy leaf from the front brake, something turned the wheel and I was airborne. Tim had a couple nasty spills due to new clips. Overall he was a monster on the bike waiting on me at the top of some hills. After CP17 we had another 1km till we hit a dirt road to take us to another trail to hit the hilltop CP18. After that it was a nice relatively flat and down hill fast riding all the way through CP19 to CP20 on fire roads and trails. Unfortunately we had to pay for the downhill and go back up the trail 2km to CP21. Then it was a technical last km to CP22 and on to pavement.

After CP22 we had a 4 mile ride on pavement to CP23. I was feeling relief but soon relized the major lactate acid buildup was to come. The ride to CP23 was a constant up and down. Not long uphills but very steep. So steep on the downhills we were reaching 30mph without pedaling. Couldn't catch a breath due to the extreme rush of cold air, but we dare not slow down so we could use momentum on the next hill. We arrived at CP23 and saw some teams walking around with their hands tied to together and soon relized it was a mystery event. CP23 was at a campsite with 20 or so cabins. With our hands tied to together we had to find our assigned letter orienteer flag in the cabins. We had to look into so many cabins. This was the worst mystery event I have ever done in a race. No skill required, and I was wet and cold and it was getting late in the afternoon. That held us up for an hour. We then set out for CP24 about 4km away by road. Again nothing but constant up and down. We found CP24 off the side of the road at a hilltop.

The usgs maps we were given did not show a road going to the town of Kaiser, but showed a 300m bushwack to a road that we could hit on our bikes. Bill had showed us a map of the trails he got from a bike shop that showed that road extending to somewhere near CP24. So we road another half mile looking for a trail or road to no avail. We went back to CP24 and Tim noticed bike marks heading directly due west toward that road so we decided to hit it. It must have been an old atv trail because it was rideable through the woods. We came upon an old house and barbed wire across the trail were we could see civilization and the road we were looking for....this is where it got interesting!

As we passed the abandoned houses we came upon trailers and barking dobermans. We were upon what I call hoosierville. Cars on jacks, more appliances in the yard than in their trailers. Then a man came running toward us cursing us saying we were trespassing, it was then that I saw the large confederate flag waving and the first thing that came to mind was the movie deliverance. The guy came up to us and he was armed. Tim and I did the smart thing and agreed with him completely and apologized for being on his property. We couldn't make a brake for it on our bikes because of a large pipe about chest high across the road (private driveway). By the time we got off the bikes to get under it either bullets or the dogs would get us. Finally we were able to calm him down and allowed to proceed, then another couple hoosiers came screaming up in their pickup. They were armed and proceeded to berate us for being on his private road that ran parallel to the one we were on. Finally I had to yell back at him and say we were not on his damn road. So we then started out of there as quickly as possible. The next morning I found out that everyone ran into the same issue. Unfortunately I think an early faster team may have ignored them and flew the bird causing grief for the following teams.

After leaving the private dirt road, we got on a public dirtroad and headed south to hit CP25, it was hidden 50m in the valley off the road, wasn't too hard to find. We then had a 3 mile ride to CP26. That was where we dropped the bikes and headed on the last trekking section. We could hit these five orienteering CP's in any order we wanted. As soon as we headed out for the first CP27, it turned dark. After about 1 km on a trail we easily found CP27. The next CP to hit was 31. We would follow a trail north about 500 meters then when it crossed another trail we would head due west and bushwack to the reentrant where CP31 was hidden. Not sure if tiredness or the dark caused us not to find the supposed trail crossing, we decided to bushwack west with some other teams that were looking for that crossing also. After about an hour searching for CP31 we found with some other teams. We proceeding back to trail with some other teams and we all went to CP28 together. It was at another trail crossing 1km north and was not hard to find. It was their that the other teams went to hit CP29, but we decided to bushwack 400 m to another trail to head north to CP30. CP30 was another 1km up the trail. According to our compass the trail turned south for a while, which the map did not show. We were just about to turn around when we came upon it. We then followed the trail another kilometer to CP29.

At CP29 we had two options to get back to CP32, which was CP26 where we dropped the bikes off. We could follow a trail that sort of went out of the way or we could bushwack southwest to hit the road 134 that would go down to CP32. We chose the bushwack option and after about 2km bushwaking in the dark we hit road 134. We then had 1500m jog on the road to CP32. We checked in and got on our bikes for the last 3 miles on road to the finish. It was dark, I was wet and cold and did not feel like getting on the bike, but with only 3 miles left in the race it did not matter....I knew in 20 minutes I could get warm.

Again the road was up and down and 30mph downhills that were sucking the breath out of our lungs. It is a shame because a couple of teams passed us on that last ride due to my lack of ability to climb the hills fast. We hit the finish with the race organizers cheering us on. They also had some spirits, food and a warm fire. We didn't stay long as I wanted a shower and warmth as soon as possible. It was at the finish that I was finally glad that I did this race. The feeling of accomplishment at that point after 14 hours and 19 minutes overrides any pain or cold. We finished at 9:19pm in 32nd place of 52 teams

I want to say thanks to Jason and Laura of Bonk Hard Racing to putting on a great race. It is a shame that Tim's first priority is triathlons and this was just "base training" for him. He would be a monster adventure racer. His Ironman distance endurance acted as "carrot on a stick" for me to push on through the lactic acid buildup. Overall our navigation was good with the exception of CP31, and I was having to do most of the race with Tim's non-baseplate compass which I am not accustomed to.

My calculations show total distance of 17 miles on foot, 25 on the bike and 9 on the canoe. Tim's training watch showed over a mile of elevation change and about 8000 calories burned for him....that means over 10,000 for me.