3-day adventure race: 335 miles and 2hrs of sleep

[Chris] I'm currently having an academic writing block, so I thought I'd write about the 3-day adventure race my team did in the summer of 2010 in and around Black River Falls, WI. It may not be surprising, but it is kind of difficult to keep track of the details in chronological order--I guess 3 days without sleep will do that to you--so I'll do my best to recount the miles and the hallucinations. 

Me, Will, Paula, Pete

This would be my first multi-day race; up to this point I had only done races between 8 and 30 hours long. My teammates Paula and Will had both competed in multi-day races before but this would also be the first multi-day for Pete. The four of us had all raced together before and we seem to get along fairly well, which is obviously important during long races.

Will on the rappel 

The race started at noon on a Thursday, so we woke up and started to get ready around 7am. Ok, so I really don't remember the order of most things but I remember the main points. The race started out with a relatively short orienteering section that we did pretty well on. This first section was really meant to break up the field and for the next 3 days we'd only see other teams occasionally and usually in transition areas. The race had 2 canoe sections and numerous sections on foot and bike. During the first night we started out on a 32-mile section on foot. We jogged some but mostly hiked. About an hour before sunrise we passed a park shelter and decided to take our first nap. We slept for 30 minutes and awoke as the sun started to come up. This is always the best time to sleep in a long race because your body wakes up a bit more with the sun and you can trick yourself into thinking you slept longer than you did. After we woke up we continued on this long leg of the race, completed a rappel, and eventually got to get on our bikes. My feet hated those last 10 miles.

Traverse

There were a few long bike sections, which I always prefer. Our team does fairly well on the bikes I think. Cycling is my strength and so I end up towing using the tow ropes we all attach to our bikes often to help keep our pace steady and relatively high. There was some great single track and a lot of riding on country roads. During the second night we completed a traverse across a river gorge in the dark. The first half is like a zip-line and the second half is pulling yourself hand over hand up the other side. After a long bike section that second night we got to the second canoe stretch and decided to sleep. This time we slept for about an hour--in the drizzling rain--and again awoke with the sun, feeling rested and refreshed, HA!

No set routes- just a map & compass

The canoe section ended up being shortened because of low water levels and was about 35 miles down the river. That made 55 miles total in the boats with the lake section we did before this at some point- but I have no idea when. At the end of this river paddle was one of the greatest moments of the race. When we got to the landing where the canoe section ended there was a little bar and grill type place. We all ordered big, greasy burgers and a couple pizzas to share. I sat on the floor in the corner, worked on my blisters, and waited for my food- sound appetizing? Eating can be one of the hardest parts of long races; you can't just eat powerbars and gels, you have to eat real food and a lot of calories. The burger did the trick. We couldn't finish the pizza but put it in a bag and took it on our bikes. (You'd be surprised how long it really takes for food to go bad. Paula sometimes brings cheeseburgers from McDonalds and eats them a day later- they taste so good when you're hungry!)

At the beginning of the third night I think we took our 3rd and final nap because the No-Doz wasn't cutting it and it isn't fun to fall asleep on a bike. After 30 minutes of sleep--bringing our grand total to 2 hours for the race--we kept moving. At this point, the hallucinations had already started. Pete and Paula saw a water tower on a hill (it was the moon in the clouds), Paula reported that our bike taillights looked like a dragon, and Pete started to see people in camouflage hiding behind trees trying to take our picture. He didn't say anything about these people for hours but near the end of the race he said something that made me laugh with the realization that he had been seeing them off and on for over 8hrs. My only hallucination was when a guy scared the crap out of me by standing on the side of the road at 3am- it was just a bush.

By the last few sections my feet had swollen and I had bandaged my blisters so I could not comfortably fit in my cycling shoes. So I rode the last 75+ miles with my feet on top of my shoes. The last bike section was brutal. We were tired and ready to be done. We had to ride over 50 miles, before sunrise, through logging roads made of sand. It was painfully slow.

"If my feet could punch me in
 the face, they would"

Will and I had just enough energy at the end of the last section on foot to race each other up the driveway to the finish line of the race. We finished in second place. We ate a lot of food, washed up in a water pump, and struggled to drive 15 minutes back to a friend of Pete's house to sleep before driving home. In total, we slept for 2 hours in an 80 hour period, raced for 72 hours, and went 205 miles on bike, 75 miles on foot, and 55 miles in the canoes. It was a great race- definitely something I will do again.