For a few weeks I kind of gave up on doing the race since we couldn’t pull a 4 person co-ed team together. Finally about 3 weeks out from the race I called Ross and said “Hey man, let’s just go do the race for fun as a two person team.” We hadn’t been spending much time training in the heat but we decided that it would a good chance to get away for a day or two, make it a ‘training event’ and hang out with some fellow AR folks. And so we did.
We were up early the morning of the race and had set all of our gear up the night before. Just like the previous year, we decided to TA out of our room which worked out rather nicely. At 7:30 a.m. Robyn and Art went through the pre-race meeting and were emphatic about the need to hydrate hydrate hydrate. Temps were expected to be in the 100s with a heat index of 110. It was going to be a scorcher.
Above: My pre-race set up of 'stuff'
This year the start of the race was a little bit different. At the word “GO” a map was flashed on the big screens in the pavilion. The map had 4 or 5 checkpoints that were scattered around the ‘play area’ of the camp itself. This first leg is really just designed to spread the teams out a bit. It didn’t matter what order you got them in so we set off on foot and quickly rounded them up.
The second leg was a biking leg and was essentially navigating a series of trails to pick up a few checkpoints. They’ve been reworking a lot of the roads and trails at Camp Eagle so this wasn’t as straightforward as it may have seemed. At one point I took us down the wrong road and we ended up having to bikewhack (that’s bushwhacking only you have your bike too) up the side of one of the rocky hills. As hard as this was, it would prove to be one of the easier tasks of the day. Towards the end of the bike leg we did a little more bikewhacking to shave time off of the leg. When it’s blazing hot outside, there’s a lot to be said for working smarter, not harder.
Next leg up was the swim leg. I thought it was a little odd that this was so early in the day. Even though it was already 95 degrees or so outside, I was thinking they’d save this for later in the day when it was 100 plus. Anyway, we hit the big water slide and flew down into the cold Nueces. Man that water felt AWESOME. We made quick work of swimming to the 3 checkpoints and were back at the Pavilion in no time for our next set of instructions.
Above: Sunrise at Camp Eagle
The fourth leg turned out to be a rather interesting leg. This leg consisted of a number of “fun camp” type things to do. Ross and I both had to take a turn on a “Mountain Scooter” It’s like one of those Razor Scooters that the kids use only it has mountain bike wheels. At one section I had to shoot 3 cans off a rail with a 22 caliber rifle. I’m an ok shot but these weren’t the best guns in the world. Probably the toughest thing on this leg was what they called the “Mine Maze”. This is something new that they have recently put in at the camp. When we arrived at this leg, there was a girl standing at the entrance to the mine. It quickly became apparent that we would need our headlamps which we had left back at TA. Ross suggested that we skip the checkpoint which wasn’t something I wanted to do. Even though we were just racing for fun, my logic was that if we somehow came in with the fastest time and skipped a checkpoint and were beat by a slower team that got all of the checkpoints that he’d be pissed. Long story short, we ran to the room got the lights and came back. Now, to enter this ‘mine’ you had to crawl through 20 or so feet of drainage pipe. This was a little weird. For anyone who is claustrophobic, this would have been a nightmare. Once down inside the mine, you could tell that the ‘mine’ was really a series of large buried railroad car sized containers. A couple of problems down here showed up right away. The first thing was that there was absolutely no fresh or moving air inside of these things so it was oppressively hot and hard to breath. That caused us both to sweat profusely and get ridiculously hot in a hurry. Not only that, but this truly was a maze and it wasn’t nearly as easy to get out of this thing as we thought. We probably spent 20 plus minutes in this thing and it just sucked the whole time.
Above: The "mine" entrance and the tunnel. Claustrophobic much?
Once we finally got out of this damn thing we grabbed another checkpoint nearby, then one in a mud pit and then ran over to do the rappel. We timed the rappel pretty well this year and got there when plenty of ropes were free. This year they had us use the figure 8s to control the decent. For me it’s a little easier to move quickly down the face of the cliff. The only problem with doing this is that the friction of the rope in your hands gets hot pretty quickly. I only had my bike gloves so it was a little challenging to move fast and hold on the way I wanted to. Once I got to the bottom, I did a fireman’s belay for Ross and that was it. Rappel done. Check.
On the way back to TA we guessed that we’d be doing a paddle section next and we were right on the money for that one. It was sofa king hot at this point that I spent as much time in the water getting wet during the paddle as I did actually paddling. There were only 2 CPs but they were at opposite ends of the river. The hardest part here was portaging the kayak UP the dam. I’m certain that kayak was full of water. It probably weighed 300lbs to 400lbs. Other than that, it was great to be in the water and cool off again.
Back at TA, we picked up the coordinates for what would be our 2nd biking leg. This looked to be fairly easy as we only had 3 CPs to get. We knew exactly where the first one was….the windmill. The freaking windmill. It was probably 2 p.m. or so at this point. Blazing hot. Those of you who are unfamiliar with Camp Eagle, the windmill is a well known location as it actually has a water tank and potable water. It’s also one of the highest points at the ranch which means lots of climbing on the bike…in the heat. Anyway, we saddled up and moseyed on up to the windmill….slow and steady. Once we got there we both felt like we were going to die. How hot? Sofa King hot. I kicked of my bike shoes, dropped my pack and just jumped into the tank of water to cool off. I didn’t even give it a second thought. Damn that water felt amazing. We probably hung out in the water for 5-10 minutes to get our core body temperature down and put some life back into us. Once out and with our gear back on, we started heading to CP 17 which was just down the way a bit.
As sort of a psychological game I was hoping to play with myself I said to Ross: “Hey man, it’s like 90 degrees outside, with this breeze and the wet clothes, it doesn’t feel so bad.” To which Ross said: “Wrong. The temperature on my bike computer says it’s 109. It’s sofa king hot!” Thanks for that little kick in the nuts there my friend.
So we made it over to CP 17 and found that rather quickly and then took off to CP 18. CP 18 was in the same general area where we had trouble with another checkpoint last year. This whole area is essentially a dry draw/creek bed that runs northwest to southeast. The whole thing is probably a mile or more long with several minor draws that shoot off of it. It’s one of those spots where everything looks the same and unless you’re really freaking good with a map, you can spend all day looking in the wrong spot. When we rolled down the corner into the creek bed, we saw a series of bikes beside the trail and I fell prey to a common racing mistake that goes a little like this: “Hey…here’s some bikes….these guys must know where the CP is at.” The problem here is pretty obvious. It’s the assumption that another team knows what the hell they’re doing which, a lot of the time, they don’t. So we stopped and looked around for a minute and it just didn’t look right to me. So we went farther down the creek bed to an area that looked a little better to me but it still wasn’t right. At this point I wasn’t exactly sure where we were on the map and blind guessing while you navigate is just a bad bad bad idea. We were spending way too much time on this CP and Ross mentioned skipping this one as well. We then had the same conversation that we had earlier about missing one CP and having some slower team beat us because they had all of the CPs. In my mind, we had been moving along rather nicely, not having any big issues and thought that we might actually place. I mean if we were hot, having minor issues and we sort of know what we’re doing; there are plenty of other teams that were probably completely lost, having problems with heat or just generally not doing all that well because things just weren’t going right. I remember passing one team with this guy was sitting on a rock and all he could say was…”It doesn’t exist.” I asked him what didn’t exist and he said “CP18 doesn’t exist.” Awesome motivation.
Anyway, at this point Ross decided to head on down the road to a trail intersection and count the distance back as a way to hopefully find the CP. I rode down to follow him and then stopped in a large open area to look at the map again. As I did, it hit me. This open area corresponded exactly to a large clearing on the map. A double check of the peaks in front of and behind me and I knew exactly where we were. As Ross rolled back up with his distance calculated, I let him know that I knew where we were….only he didn’t believe me. He was certain that we couldn’t navigate off of terrain features alone and told me as much. I told him we needed to go about 100 meters back up the trail and then veer off into the draw for the checkpoint. Still he wasn’t convinced. We hopped off of our bikes and I shot the bearing I wanted to travel and had Ross flank me to the right. 100 meters in and…BINGO….checkpoint 18! Maybe it was just luck on my part but it was nice to nail that one down.
We passed several teams on the way out and acted like we couldn’t find the CP so they wouldn’t just go right to it. As we moved away from CP 18, we had a little mini-celebration on finding a CP that so many other teams were having trouble finding. We picked up the pace on this Jeep road as we were making our way back to TA. We crested a little hill and started to pick up even more speed on this nice little downhill that led back to the main road. Riding downhill is way more fun than riding uphill. Anyway, we were chatting it up and probably rolling along around 20 mph or so when Ross started to yell something and slammed on his brakes. Instinctively I started to grab my brakes when all of a sudden what he was yelling about came in to focus. Stretched across the road and locked tightly to two steel poles that were cemented into the ground was a ¾ inch rusted steel cable that was serving as a “gate” to keep people from driving up the Jeep road. At this point, we’re totally screwed only we don’t know it because everything is happening so fast that we don’t have time to process it all. I was on the left, Ross was on the right and we hit the cable FULL FORCE at the same time. Our bikes stopped instantly. We didn’t. I was lucky enough to be flipped and launched over pretty quickly and I landed pretty much flat on my back. Unfortunately Ross landed mostly on his head and right wrist. What made matters even worse was that when I went over the cable, my bike was still attached to me and it ultimately landed on Ross. Sweet mother of pearl it hurt.
Above: The Cable of Death from two different angles
To say that this sucked is an understatement. I don’t think either one of our lives flashed before our eyes before we hit the cable but time definitely seemed to slow down. Fortunately it happened super fast. If we actually had time to think about it and really brace for it, we probably would have been way worse off. We rolled around on the ground for a bit and managed to crawl out from under a pile of bikes. After we did a guick “you ok” check, we stood up and dusted ourselves off. Ross had taken a good chunk of skin off of his left leg and put a good sized dent in his helmet. The back of my right shoulder and the inside of my right forearm were scratched up a bit but more bruised than anything else. The bikes were scuffed up a bit as well but nothing on them was broken either. We gathered ourselves together and then made our way back to TA. We let Robyn and Art know about the cable and they rushed someone out to mark it or take it down. Most everyone somehow or another heard the story about the cable and without fail they asked us...”You mean you hit the cable that was marked with all the flagging tape?” To which we said…”We’re the reason it was marked with flagging tape when you got there. There wasn’t any flagging tape on it when we hit it.” Yeah, we’re trendsetters like that.
So after we licked our wounds and tried to make light of the cable incident, we grabbed our clue sheet at TA and found out that the last leg would be a long trek leg right in the heat of the day. On the map, the checkpoints looked to be fairly close together. In the real world it was probably 4-5 miles of trekking and navigation. We decided to shortcut the route to CP 19 and at the top of the first hill we came across a 2 person female team (Wendy and Jennifer). They asked how to get to the windmill and we pointed them back up the hill they just came down. Dejected doesn’t quite cover the look they had on their faces. Apparently Jennifer had been throwing up and was having some serious heat issues. We admired their determination and offered them help but they seemed to have a firm grasp on their reality which was a good thing. They made the call to head back to TA to see if they could get to any feeling better. The next morning we learned that they unfortunately had to DNF right after they made it back to TA. The heat was just too much for Jennifer and she couldn’t keep any food or liquids down. That heat. It’ll freaking kill you if you don’t watch it.
So yeah it’s hot. Sofa king hot. We started to hoof it pretty steadily and knocked out CP 19 quickly and then started the climb up and out of the draw towards CP20. At this point during the race, everything was difficult and slow. In the cover of the trees there was no breeze at all and it was just exhausting to move. Every 20 meters or so worth of climbing we would have to stop because we were both hypoxic and getting light headed. We’d catch our breath and keep climbing only to have to stop again. Once we were on the ridge and the breeze was on us, we were ok. On CP20 Ross helped get us in the right spot so we could find that one without too much trouble. Even with that, CP19, CP20, and CP21 were all basically the same. Start at the top of the ridge, descend nearly a couple of hundred vertical feet into the bottom of the draw and then climb back out. CP21 was on the way to the windmill…yes the windmill. We took a pretty big chance on grabbing CP21 before we actually got to the windmill itself. At one point Ross said he was getting the chills (not good when it’s 108 outside) so he took a quick break in the shade while I worked my way down into the draw to the CP. Climbing back up and out sucked sofa king bad but all we could think about was getting into the water at the windmill. Once we got there, we duplicated the routine from earlier and just got into the tank to cool off. Cool water has never felt so good. We stayed in for probably 10 minutes to bring out core body temperature down so we didn’t die on this last leg. There was a girl there taking pictures while we cooled off and I’m sure she thought we were about to pass out.
Once out of the water, we filled up our camelbaks from the tap under the windmill. After only 3 of the 5 CPs on this leg, they were almost empty. Ah….fresh water straight from mother earth. Damn we were drinking a lot of fluids. After that, CP22 and CP23 looked to be repeats of the first 3. Descend from the ridge to the bottom of the draw then climb back out. At CP23 I took a good look at the map and decided that I didn’t want to climb anymore. The descent from the ridge into the bottom of that draw was the steepest and hardest of all that we had done and it would have been a total kick in the ass to have to climb out of that damn draw. I took a another look at the map and decided to take us northeast down the draw and towards a road. Thank God for old Jeep Roads.
Once back on the road it was fairly easy navigation back to TA. Simply head southeast and follow the roads. As we walked across the suspension bridge I looked at my watch and it was almost 6:30 p.m. I remember Robyn and Art guesstimating that the winning team for the 12 hour race would come in around the 6 hour mark. Based on that and our 10:21 finish time I figured we were middle of the pack out of the 20 teams racing in the 12 hour race. We handed over the passport and I glanced at the finish log to see that 6 or 7 teams had already finished. Someone asked how many of the checkpoints we collected to which we replied “All of them.” Sure enough they double checked our passport to verify that we had indeed punched all of the checkpoints. After that, someone off to the side said, “Congratulations! You’re the Overall Winner of the 12 hour race.” What? How can that be? Our time was 10 hours and 21 minutes. Ross and I gave each other a nice high five and then started asking questions about the other teams that had already made it in and how we won. Sure enough, 6 or 7 teams had come in already but they had all missed at least one CP. Most of the teams that were already in simply had enough of the blistering heat and were literally exhausted and beaten down from being in it all day. It’s not that we were shocked that we won the race as we’re certainly capable of performing extremely well. It just wasn’t something we were trying to do as we were just there to have fun and brush up on some skills. We weren’t fast at doing much of anything because of the heat. I guess if we were anything during this race, we were consistent and didn’t make any huge mistakes that we couldn’t recover from. We also paid attention to how we felt and tried really hard to manage the heat and hydration all day long.
Above: Post race carbohydrate infused recovery drink and one well worn race bib.Just out of curiosity I figured out how much food, water and liquids I consumed during the course of the day/evening. Here’s how it worked out: 400 ounces of water/Heed, roughly a full gallon of just plain water, one Coca-Cola, one A&W root beer, and one Monster Lo-Carb. These were all specifically for the sugar and caffeine. I ate two Chick-fil-a sandwiches, a small pizza, a large brownie, a small Clif Bar, some Chex mix, some Pringles, a Stinger Honey Wafer and some sport beans. Right after the race I had a huge double cheeseburger, fries and two Shiner Bock beers. Still, after drinking nearly 5 gallons of liquids during the day and eating all of that food, at the end of the night I was still hungry and still thirsty. That’s just crazy.
All in all, we really had a great race. We really went just to have fun, practice a bit and enjoy Camp Eagle. Somehow we managed to win the thing. Thanks to Ross for working with me on CP 20 and trusting me to find CP 18 even though he was certain I was just guessing where the hell we were at the whole time!
