2009 Thunder Rolls Adventure Race, Oquawka, Illinois, August 29
Sandy, windy, flat, challenging, and up-in-the-air are descriptions that come to mind after finishing The Thunder Rolls adventure race. This part of western Illinois is right next to the Mississippi River, and nearly all the single-track trails were more sand than dirt. It was like racing on the beach sometimes! The wind was most apparent while canoeing, especially when we crawled upstream in the swollen Mississippi. Flat? You bet, and it made for some fast biking on roads. That same flat terrain, though, led to some long searches for checkpoints in woods that had very little in the way of substantial landmarks. One of the highlights of this year's race was the rope traverse over a wide stream with our bicycles. It's always fun to use the climbing gear to get your feet and tires off the ground!
Okay, now to the details... Racer check-in Friday night was really quick, with no gear check involved. Active Endeavors was there and sold us the extra prussik loops we'd need for the race. I'll give the Oquawka Diner three stars out of five for the pre-race dinner: the food was tasty but just average, and the buffet line was in an awkward spot in the dining room in a high-traffic area leading to the kitchen. It did give us a chance to sit down and relax with Matt and Bill, the other Mid Rivers team who would be tackling the 24-hour race starting at midnight. The pre-race meeting lasted less than an hour, with just the usual rules and sponsors and map hand-outs. We also got the clue sheet booklet, but there was one map that we wouldn't get until the beginning of the race.
A short drive took us north to the Big River Campground, where we had pitched our tent earlier in the afternoon. This location happened to be the site of three transitions we would have throughout the race, so all our paddling gear, extra food, and extra clothes stayed here. Most of the checkpoints were already plotted on the 1:24,000 scale maps, but a few required the map tool to spot them on. With the checkpoint routes marked, we double-checked our gear and went over the race plan for the next day. A few hours sleep led to an early rise Saturday morning. We had to bring trekking, biking, and ropes gear to the start for what we figured to be about 5 hours before returning to the TA.
With barely a glimmer of sunrise in the sky, we arrived in Oquawka and added our bikes to those in the roped-off area near the start line. At 6:00 am sharp we began a 2-mile prologue run to spread out the teams. Up one street to pick up our team's passport, then across to another street to get the missing map, and finally a dash back to the start area. We returned in 2nd place, which allowed us to use a picnic table to plot CP1, the only check point on this map. Bike shoes replaced running shoes, and we were soon pedaling east toward a bright horizon. These headlamps wouldn't be needed much longer. The pavement and level terrain made for some fast speeds, with the only exception being a few low hills here and there. All those days of commuting to/from work on bike really paid off for us! After punching CP1 we made our way along a rough road that included a couple fords across creeks. The first one was relative shallow, and it must have gotten my confidence up, because I went non-stop into the second, deeper one. Almost to the other side was an area that swallowed my front tire, forcing a dismount to wet legs up to the knees! Mike quickly decided that wet feet were better than risking an entirely wet body, so he smartly walked across. CP2 was just as easy to spot as the first one, and we were soon on our way north to the rope traverse at CP5.
It's worth noting that the check points were numbered 1 through 47 for both the 24-hour and the 12-hour racers. We were simply instructed to skip many of them to make the course fit into half a day. So, we never saw CP3 or CP4.
On the way to VOO DOO bridge (CP5), I made the mistake of talking Mike out of a turn we should have taken. Luckily there was an alternate road that stayed paved longer, so in the end we didn't lose too much time. At the ropes, several teams were donning their climbing harnesses and rigging up their bikes. That's where we saw some familiar faces: Ken and Laura of the Dream Team. (It was the last time we saw them on the course, since they moved right along and were the only ones to get all the checkpoints-way to go!) The bike rigging went like this: one prussik loop was girth hitched to the seat stem, one loop to the top of the fork, those two loops into a locking carabiner, and then two more loops tied to each other and then to the fork as a tow line. Our harnesses had two slings hitched on, each to a biner, one of which connected to the bike tow. The next challenge was hooking all three biners to the traverse rope, because it started out about six feet off the ground!
I gotta say that the ropes volunteers were THE BEST. Not only did they ensure we weren't going for a swim and they hung on the rope to help us get hooked on, they endured some of the most tenacious mosquitoes on earth. The racers only had to deal with the bugs for a few minutes, but the volunteers were there for hours. Mike forgot to latch his pack back on and was lucky not to lose it in the river (as you can see by the picture).
Now that we were off the rope and on our bikes, we went through a field and down a road to a single track trail head. CP6 and CP7 were along the sandy trail, and then we took a jeep trail so sandy that we had to walk our bikes at times. This led to CP9, a manned spot where we dropped the bikes and picked up a pre-plotted orienteering map. The first point, CP10, was labeled hill top, but given the terrain it could have been called a mole hill. The elevation contour lines on the map were marked every 5 feet, to give you an idea how flat it was. Well, finding the hill top proved difficult with the trees and undergrowth, and it took us two tries from road landmarks to get the passport punched. Ditto for CP11, losing more precious minutes. Frustration was mounting when we thought we were going to nail CP13 and missed it, having to try it from a different angle. CP14 was much easier to find, as was CP16, which was very close to the bike drop (CP17).
A few miles of mostly paved biking brought us to CP21 at Big River Campground. It was TA time, and Mike and I had only used up 5 of our 12 hours. There were no more rope sections in the race, so we lightened our packs by taking out the climbing gear. A change of shoes, bite to eat, and topping off of water in the packs took only a few minutes, and then we grabbed the canoe gear and headed down the road.
CP22 was about a mile and a half away, and plastic canoes awaited us. The seats had backs, which helped a bit for comfort. The comfort ended there, though, because the Mighty Mississippi was moving fast, even in this little slough off the main channel. To make matters worse, the wind was strong from the north, the same direction as the current. Let's just keep this paragraph short, because it was the least fun of the whole race. We battled our way upstream about 2.5 miles to a checkpoint, at times not making any progress with respect to the shoreline. Turning south we had two choices: stay in the main channel and be careful about finding the next checkpoint, or follow a slough on the Iowa side and have no trouble navigating to it. We chose the slough, but we think the current was slower and it ended up hurting us on time. After the second water checkpoint it was another struggle to cross the river and head north a ways to get back to CP28 (same as CP22 put-in). For the short 12miles of paddling we were on the water 3hours and 45minutes due to half being upstream.
The volunteer at the take-out was stewing some beans over the fire, and a bowl sounded great after battling the river. We downed the snack, then headed back to CP29 at the campground TA. There we learned that the trek section would be cut in half, due to time constraints. So out we went to get three of the six check points: one hill top, one reentrant, and one at the top of a fire tower (lots o' stairs). After that we hit the TA one more time (CP38) to pick up the bikes for the last race segment.
Still under the gun for time, the volunteers told us that the bike section was also cut short. So we figured there was enough time (an hour) to get CP43 and CP47 before dashing back into Oquawka to the finish line. The first was a trail head on the main road, and the second was hidden near a boat ramp. Mike and I were still pedaling in high gear, passing a team on this final bike leg. Crossing the finish line felt great, with a time of 11:44, and the Amber Lager and pizza hit the spot!