A few months ago, Calleva Adventure Racing Team leader, Dima, called to see if I would join him for a 24 hour race. I was hesitant but accepted the challenge. Whether or not I could complete the race was another question. My only previous experience with adventure racing was the 10hr. Calleva Race so I was more than a little nervous. I was worried about everything but mostly about not being able to keep up with the rest of the team. To take my mind off of not being as physically prepared as I would have liked, I managed to fret about forgetting something, what I should wear, being cold, rain, falling asleep while biking, the water being to big, the uniform giving me rashes, not having time to stop to use the bathroom, having too much food, having too little food, not having enough water and the list goes on.
I picked up Dima at noon on Friday and we drove to the New. For 5 hours, Dima entertained me with stories of 100 hour races in the freezing waters of New England and people being so sleep deprived during a race that they were asking directions from trees. By the end of the ride, I was practically paralyzed with fear. Karen met us at our cabin and helped me organize my bag for the race. Dima supplied me a space blanket, a knife and a lighter, items that were required, but in my frantic state, I had forgotten. I started to feel a little better. After the pre-race meeting, Karen and Dima worked on plotting our course. I sat at the table but since I could offer no help, I decided to go to bed.
We woke up on race day to a beautiful day. Rafting companies can only run the New River under 12 feet. It was 11ft on Saturday and we were treated to a 1.5 hour, 16 mile ride down the New's class III-V waters. Then the real work began. We headed up from the bottom of the gorge and along the Endless Wall, a popular climbing spot in the Gorge. We scrambled over slick rocks and waded through fields of poison ivy. I was still very nervous so I tried to focus on the beautiful views of the river far below. The course backtracked three times over one section. We bushwacked while trying to find a trail marked on the map but not where we thought it was on the course. The trekking section was quite long but we found all the checkpoints and were quickly able to move on to biking. This was the part I was most nervous about. It was a hilly 20 mile ride mostly on gravel or asphalt. We were chased by several dogs. We thought we almost ran over a snake slithering its way across the warm asphalt. Although the snake was real, it was dead. Some boys had chopped its head off, tied a piece of fishing line around it and were pulling it across the road in front of innocent bikers. There were some long hills, definitely the most challenging part for me, but we made it through and even made up some time on the other teams.
By the time we got to the O-course it was dark. Dima, with help from Vlad and Karen was able to find 3 of the checkpoints. I just stumbled along behind them. What looked on the map like a checkpoint that would take 20 min. to find often took a couple of hours. Somewhere around midnight, my knees seemed so swollen and sore that I started to wonder how I would make it through the night. Dima fixed me up with some drugs, Ibuprofen and caffeine, and I was able to carry on. We even finished the O-course before our goal of 3am. We grabbed our bikes and headed back up the mountain. After the first biking leg, I was really dreading this but it turned out to be my favorite part of the race. The dirt road was covered in large puddles and was pretty muddy and rocky. Despite all of our lights, it was very challenging but the moon was beautiful and the sky was filled with stars. It was a gorgeous night to be biking. The sun started to come up as we headed down the gorge and headed down the gorge and headed down the gorge. Luckily my brakes didn't go out until we were almost to the bottom and Dima was quickly able to fix them. We crossed over the New River bridge and headed toward the finish.
The race had one last treat in store for us. The second to last checkpoint was up a long hiking trail. We pushed our bikes up the trail and carried them over a steep, rushing creek. A little up the hill was the checkpoint. Was the race over? Not yet. We still had time to get one more checkpoint and that is what we did. Thanks to Dima's vision on the last checkpoint, we biked across the finish line 2nd place in our category! Many thanks to Dima, Vlad, and Karen for helping me get through my first 24hr race!
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