USARA Adventure Racing National Championships – Team Remington-Mountain Khakis\Trakkers
USARA Adventure Racing National Championships
Hidden Valley, PA
October 15-16, 2010
Weather: Cold and wet to start, sunny through the day, cold and windy during the night
Race Report by Jeff Dicky
To close out my season, I’ve been doing some long distance racing – the Shenandoah 100, an 18 hour adventure race at the end of September, and most recently, the USARA Adventure Race National Championships in and around Hidden Valley, PA. The national championship race is a 30 hour co-ed event for teams of 3 that included something like 150k of mountain biking, 3-4 hours of kayaking, and a whole lot of running/trekking and orienteering.
I was racing with my adventure racing team, Team Remington-Mountain Khakis/Trakkers, a team I’ve been with for a few years, who had fielded two co-ed and one masters teams for the event. Going into the race, the R-MK/T team was the #1 ranked team in the US.
Unfortunately, the pro mountain bike woman who I was to race with broke her foot a few weeks before the race and we were just able to find a sub for her before the event started.
The race started off cold and early with a short orienteering course around the Hidden Valley ski area (this was after we had less than an hour to plot out all of our checkpoints on two huge maps and try to determine the best route).…
Categories: Adventure Racing, Biking, Nutrition, Race Reports
Post-Season Activity
So it seems my season is officially over. Not my choice, but it is what it is. The dreaded Turf Toe has yet to go away despite the fact that I’ve almost entirely quit running. What to do? Anything but swimming, biking and running, of course!
The first thing I did after Rev3 Cedar Point was an adventure race. This was 3 person co-ed teams and we did things like canoeing, trail running, mountain biking, shooting, strength challenge, speed golf and an obstacle course. Don’t really think the locals liked us city folk coming down and tearing up the competition, but I had good company!
Worst part of the whole deal was that the temperature hovered around 55 degrees and it rained almost all day. There was considerable amount of “down time” during challenges and I could not keep warm even though I changed clothes after every single challenge. The truck we made the 5 hour drive in smelled like a boys’ high school locker room on the trip home. Mix in a little wet dog with that. Everything was sweaty, muddy and soaking wet. Thankfully, none of us ended up injured or getting sick after the event.
Now that was one day, but training takes up a lot of time. Now that I’m not training, what to do, what to do? Ok – Bikram Yoga. The place near my house introduced a “30 day challenge”. You must…
Categories: Adventure Racing
Tags: Yoga
Night O training with new gear
Last night Mike, Dennis, and I headed out to Hemlock after dark to do the fixed orienteering course. We were looking to bone up on our night O skills but also try out some new gear that our sponsors had sent us. Mountain Khakis sent us some newly rename Granite Creek Covertible Pant (Formally Snake River Convertible Pants) and DeFeet sent us some socks. When racing I always wear convertible pants with tri shorts beneath. I find they not only offer the best protection when bushwhacking through heavy undergrowth, but also provide the flexibility of being able to remove the legs in warm weather and not having to increase the load in your pack by too much. In the past I have used both North Face and REI branded convertibles and was keen to see how the Mountain Khakis held up.
DeFeet had also sent us some of their Trail 19 socks. I am a big believer of the new style wool blend socks and was looking forward to testing another brand apart from my standard Smart Wools.
We met at around 10pm and set out to individually clear different sections of the course before meeting back at a central checkpoint. The evening was perfect. It was a warm and clear night, and although there were a few bugs, if I kept moving, they didn’t bother me too much. The wild deer eyes…
Categories: Adventure Racing, Product Reviews
The Perfect Race
After Seven Years of Adventure Racing I have never completed a perfect race. It’s almost an impossible feat. That is why we Adventure Race. The concept of Adventure Racing is making adjustments as new challenges are thrown at you during a race. The team that wins is the team that goes as fast as possible and makes the fewest mistakes. You cross train by trail running, mountain biking, canoeing, swimming, orienteering, map reading, race strategies, and climbing. I now have 75 races behind me and one perfect race.
We have been racing as the Trakkers Adventure Racing team for the last two years and have gained a lot of good experience during that time. We are fortunate enough to be ranked #1 in the USARA ranking in 2010. With good results comes national attention and we have gained new sponsors because of our results. As of last week our team name changed to Remington\Mountain Khakis – Trakkers. We added two new premier sponsor to the Adventure Racing team. The Black Beard Adventure Race in Nags Head, North Carolina was to be our first race under our new name.
I was racing in the co-ed division with Veronica Ivey and Greg Voelkel. Veronica’s is in her 20’s, Greg’s in his 30’s and I’m in my 40’s, so we were representing a 20 year age gap. The race course was…
Categories: Adventure Racing, Biking, Events, Race Reports, Race Results
Team Trakkers off to Checkpoint Tracker National Championship
Team Trakkers is very excited to be heading out to Moab, Utah to take place in the Checkpoint Trackers National Championship on October, 29th. Trakkers secured early entrance after some hard fought racers throughout the season that placed them as one of the top ranked teams in the 2010 Checkpoint Tracker series. Details of the race are still emerging but with the back drop of Moab, the recently announced 350’ Tyrolean Traverse and the strong completion, the weekend of the October, 29th is set to be one filled with lots of fun, excitement and hard core adventure racing.
Categories: Adventure Racing
Two Busy Weekends
It has been a busy two weekends on the bike. Last weekend I took part in the EX2 Cranky Monkey race at Fountain Head and this weekend Spiller, Manning and I went and pre-rode part of the REV3 Epic Adventure Race scheduled for April 2011.
The Cranky Monkey was a blast. I have never raced at Fountain Head but ride there all the time. I consider it my home course. Because this is such a technical and probably most challenging course out of the three race series (other locations were Shaffer Farms and Wakefield) the field was smallish. There were 23 racers in my category and I figured I’d try and get in the top ten. After a few rain scares the race went off as planned. There was a prolog on the road to split up the field somewhat before hitting the single track and I got into the single track relatively close to the front so I didn’t have to worry about passing only being passed. I rode fairly well. I didn’t feel like I was crushing it but making good time. I had a few mechanicals along the way with my chain and I lost my saddle pack and had to stop and get it. I also had a couple of minor wrecks. Clipped a tree once and took a slow tumble of the bars at another point. I figure I lost about 4 minutes along the…
Categories: Adventure Racing, Training
LionHeart 2010
On August 8th Team Trakkers competed in the 3rd Annual LionHeart 24-Hour Adventure Race at Ohiopyle State Park, PA, hosted by American Adventure Sports. I was teamed up with Dennis and Cassie for a great weekend of racing that was filled with many highs and lows.
Dennis picked me up on Friday and we headed up to Ohiopyle, a very cool little town that I had never been to before. The trip took about 4 hours, and when we arrived we hooked up with Cassie at Falls City Pub for some food and to chat about the race. I had never raced with either Dennis or Cassie before but had trained with them both, saw how they raced with others, and was excited to be part of such a great team. Dennis is multi-talented: a great climber, kayaker, mountain biker, and adventure racer. Cassie, ranked the number one mountain biking female in West Virginia, is just an outstanding rider and over the next 36 hours humbled both Dennis and I with her fitness and mountain biking skills.
After food we checked in at our lodging, a single-wide setup at the top end of the town owned by a friendly old man who told us a few of his life stories as we watched about 50 hummingbirds fly around a nearby feeder. The digs weren’t called the Humming Bird Nest for nothing.
At 7pm we headed down to the Wilderness Outfitters…
Categories: Adventure Racing, Race Reports
Ready for Lion Heart
Today I finished up my last training run before the Lion Heart race this weekend (http://americanadventuresports.com/lionheart.htm). A short 3 miler around the monuments practicing and experimenting pace count. I have found that taking 3 days off from any type of training works well for me before a race. I do stretches and maybe some light yoga but stay of the bike and away from running.
I have been putting in around 15-20 miles in on the feet and around 125 miles on the wheels each week for the past few months and with two other 24 hour racers under my belt in 2010, I feel pretty good going into this race. Dennis and Cassie are both strong so we will see what we can do come Saturday.
Looks like word press works with the iPad so posting from the road just got easier.
Categories: Adventure Racing
Odyssey Sprint Adventure Race
The Trakkers Adventure Racing team sent two team to the Odyssey July 24 race. Our 24 hour team finished second in the One Day Race and our sprint team finished 1st in their race. It was a great family friendly activity for both teams. Michael, Greg, Timm, and Veronica raced in the sprint race. The race consisted of a two mile mountain climb prolog run followed by a quick transition to an eight mile run\trek to find two checkpoints. After the trekking section we ran to the river for a three mile paddle. The river was really low so we had to drag our canoes over the rocks at least 10 times. Once we exited the water we were still in the top two teams. We jumped on our bikes and pulled ahead of everyone. We hit the first checkpoint and then head back down the mountain for a river crossing. However the map had a road crossing the river that was torn down 20 years ago and we were now on private property. The owner tracked us down on an ATV and let it be known we were on private property. We let them see our maps and let them know about the race and asked their advice about routes and they decided not to shoot us and let us mover along to the next checkpoint. We got to a rail to trail path and arrived at checkpoint 9…
Categories: Adventure Racing, Family & Friends, Race Reports, Racing
1Day Roanoke Adventure Race
If one of the races I have done describes all facets of Adventure Racing, this is it! Our team experienced the lowest low and the highest high in 24 hours. Nothing of this race could be described as easy and nothing was predictable, which made the race an interesting challenge.
The 1 day Odyssey Adventure Race started on Saturday, July 23rd at 12pm and went until Sunday 12pm. It was about 96 degrees at the start time, no question that the heat was a determining factor how well teams will do. 41 teams signed up for the race taking the challenge to survive heat, 100mi racing, and an elevation change of 25,000 feet.
After we got the maps at 8:30am on Saturday, we planned our race. The race looked like the following: 2 miles running prologue, 40 miles mountain biking, 27 mi trekking, 15 mi paddling, 19 mi biking, orienteering. The numbers are estimated because as I will describe later, we never made it to the paddling section! The race director gave us a cut-off time for the first mountain bike part. We had to be done with the first section at 2am; that meant 14 hours to bike 40 miles. We thought that was plenty of time to bike 40 miles. But we learnt soon enough that a lot of team struggled with that cut off.
Our team started with the prologue running the 2 miles and we…
Categories: Adventure Racing, Race Reports
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