On April 25, Team Quixote (RR's own Mark Sells, Patrick Gallagher, Chris Couldrey and Matt Dunn) once again set out to conquer Odyssey Adventure Racing's Endorphin Fix, what some consider the toughest two day race in America (what can you expect from a company's who's motto is "Your pain is our pleasure"). The race starts at midnight Friday night, but 'Hey, we can sleep all day, right'? Wrong. We start the day driving five hours to Cliftop, WV.
Race check-in starts at 4pm, and of course it rains as we move through lines showing race officials our boxes of equipment. Check-in takes over an hour, then we get our maps, did I mention we have to find our own way around the course? Patrick and I start the map study while the others pack their gear. As it starts getting dark we finally have are maps plotted, gear packed and, our bikes ready; time for rest. Nope, time for the carbo load dinner starting at 8pm. We chow down our last real meal for a few days and get ready for the race brief at 9pm. At 9pm we get our brief, course conditions up dates/warnings and are told to be at the starting line at 11:45 pm. Finally we get to rest 30 minutes before the start.
At Midnight the gun goes off, we elect to take a time penalty and skip the orienteering points to get to ensure we make the first time cut off. We start out on a trail half marathon. It's a long race so we run the down hills and trek the rest of the New River Gorge trail. At 2 am, last year's winners, Cowboy Up pass us on the run. We continue our trek through the woods, up a creek bed and up a long dirt road to arrive at the bike transition around 4 am. We meet our wonderful crew (Angie Brown and Jody Dosen) who, in the rain, have our bikes ready. They give us food, refill our hydration systems and send us out into the rain. The first bike leg is 23 miles, most of it on fire roads, I say most, because about half way through we hit Tank Hallow. Tank Hallow is a three-mile down hill through routs and creeks, it's a blast. Patrick and I lead the way taking turns to see who could peddle through the water crossing. We made it down with only one crash and every little blood (mine). At the bottom of Tank Hallow is a ravine. We form a line passing our bikes down one side and up the other side. As we get to the other side we hear a team moving fast behind us. It was Cowboy Up, they missed a turn and added two hours to their bike ride. Now the fun part, a long down hill to the river.
We arrive at the river at 8:30 am, way before the 11 am cut off. We met our crew, who has our wet suits, swim fins, life jackets and boogie board standing by. After a quick pit stop to eat and refill the hydration systems we start the five-mile whitewater swim. This is without a doubt the most fun part of adventure racing. The swim took under an hour, and then we switched to the paddle. The paddle was 18 miles in a rubber ducky. Ducky's are great for whitewater because they are hard to flip, but they're also slow, and have opening in the bottom to let the water flow through. Did I mention that the water temperature was in the low 50s? We finish our paddle in the rain around 1 pm. Our crew warms, waters, and feeds us in no time and sends us back out into the rain.
The next section is a 20-mile trek, which has an 80-foot rope climb 17 miles in. We told our crew the next section would take eight to 10 hours. Our goal was to hit the climb site before dark. Of course it rained on us most of the way; however, we made the climb site around 7:30 pm and it had stopped raining. After the climb, it was a long three-mile trek down the side of a mountain to the next checkpoint and our bikes. We arrive to the cheers of the checkpoint around 10:30 pm.
We estimated the next section to be 40 miles of rolling hills and a 15-mile flat section down by the New Gauley River. We had been waiting for the flat ride for over 24 hours. We told the crew we would see them in six hours, mounted our bikes and headed out into the dark. In the first two miles we gained 1000 feet of elevation to start the rolling hills. The only problem was once we made the climb which way to go? We chose correctly and headed out to look for a gray house were we were to turn right. Needless to say, in the dark we missed the gray house and added a couple of miles to our ride. We corrected the navigation error and were off. Again, we make what we think is the correct turn and end up lost in the West Virginia countryside.
After approximately 26 hours of racing and 43 hours without sleep, Patrick and I could hardly ready the maps. He suggested a 15-minute nap to clear our heads. I thought he was out of his mind, but agreed. We set our watches and crashed, 15 minutes later we were back reading the map with clear minds. I would never have believed that it would have helped. We decided to go back to our last known point and start again; that was 5 miles in the other direction. As we started retracing our path we hit the jackpot. A car was heading our way and we decide to flag it down and ask where we were. This kid, I still don't think he was old enough to drive much less be out at 2 am, stopped. The kid said we were only a couple of miles from where we wanted to be and pointed us in the right direction. What luck, wrong road, right direction our sprits were lifted.
At around 3 am we hit the flats, 15-20 more miles of biking!!!! Once we hit the flats we quickly found out it wasn't everything we hoped. In the dark with no grueling up hills or thrilling down hills to keep the mind active, the sleep monster hit Matt hard. He was having trouble keeping the bike upright so we were forced to walk. We were now averaging 2 miles an hour and getting discouraged. We walked/rode, until we reached an unsupported checkpoint. At this point Matt made the decision to drop. We left him there to be carried back.
We then faced the last of our biking climbs; it was two miles and 1000 feet up. We made the top, checked our maps and headed down hill to the assisted checkpoint. Two miles later we biked into our last transition arriving at 8:30 am. Wanting to finish as quickly as possible we made a quick pit stop, left our bikes with the crew and trekked uphill again for three miles.
After checking in at the last checkpoint we were now four-miles from home. We thought about running, but changed our minds and kept walking. At 10:44 am Sunday morning, 35 hours and 44 minutes after starting, Patrick, Chris and I crossed the finish line. We completed the pro of the course, approximately 125-130 miles with time to spare.
Anyone interested in adventure racing please contact me, Mark Sells