Team Ragged Glory – Adventure Racing, Multi Sport, Friends

Excitement came on early as I made my trek from south eastern Wisconsin to Indianapolis. You can easily spot adventure racers and the road was full of them—tow systems on the bikes, SUV’s piled high with gear boxes, paddles, PFDs and gallons of water. The drive is becoming more and more familiar as I put more races with TRG under my belt. I had so much anticipation for the adventures that most certainly awaited us and a lot of time to think about it as I drove with the music of choice: Team Ragged Glory’s pump up mix. I have decided that it is the widest variety that I have ever listened to in one sit, but it just shows the character of the team—we have fun and nothing is ever dull! TRG is family and every time we get together it is a happy reunion—this time was no different. We loaded Doug’s Explorer, watched the tires and car sink down as we put more and more gear in and we were off to Cloverdale.

GlobalX draws together some amazing and fun racers. I have only been racing for a year and love seeing the familiar faces that you bumped into during twilight by a control in a past race, and just know that despite not being on the same team, you share a similar passion that automatically makes you friends. Doug knows everyone and we laughed at the pre-race meeting as we watched Doug scan the crowd and call out hellos.

After the gear check and pre-race meeting on Friday we headed back to our hotel and packed our mando gear, plotted our maps (thank you Steve!), prepared our bikes and settled for our final night of sleep. We woke up early, packed up the support vehicle, picked up our race food of choice (Arby’s) and headed to Wasatch Lake where we would start the race and also use for TA1, 2 and the finish. Kirk, our support crew, met us there.

This year’s PA04 was not disappointing! Jerry Lyons, Greg Arnold, and Joe Lawson put together another incredible and challenging course. The weather was beautiful and warm, no threats of hypothermia this year! We were ready to race!

The race began with a short trail run around Wasatch Lake. Because it was a Greg Arnold race this meant we were going to get wet early and stay wet. Sure enough we had an almost immediate stream crossing, followed by a boulder field and then back to grab our bikes and head out to our first CP. We got to the Boat ramp on Cagle’s Mill Lake where we dropped our bikes and picked up two canoes. Bob and Steve in one boat and Doug and myself in another. The boat choice was phenomenal as we were able to paddle together without any qualms. We picked up a few more CP’s and then landed at Lieber State Recreation Area for the Farsta, a Swedish-style orienteering leg. This was the team’s first time doing land navigation in this style, however, after a minor mistake; we hauled and kept a good clip despite the penetrating heat which kept rising. We had to do two loops with ten common checkpoints and the other ten varied. We took advantage of the water available there and filled our bladders. We were guzzling! I gave the guys a near heart attack as I jumped over a log to almost land on a snake. I screamed pretty loud and I was certain of a brutal attack. The guys laughed as they joked about the two foot long harmless green snake.

After the Farsta we hopped back into the boats for an upstream, into a headwind, paddle which led us to Cataract Falls. This would be the sight of the hallowed Traverse. We were worked over in the paddle while fighting the wind. We tried hooking up a tow, but in the end had to reposition ourselves with more weight at the stern. The closer we got to the falls, the stronger the current and the shallower the water so we got out of the boats, and using our daisy chains we walked them on in. Then we hiked to Upper Cataract Falls where the 300 foot Tyrolean traverse crossing was. It was about 50 feet above the water and just a breath taking view.

This is where things became difficult for TRG and we had to pull together as a team and set the race aside. Doug stopped us and told us that he had some intense chest pains that had been plaguing him since the Farsta a couple hours earlier. This was serious. We knew that it took a lot of thinking and a lot of guts to tell us this. He made the very difficult decision of stepping out of the race. Wow, I can’t explain the emotions that took place. When you lose a member of your team you lose a vital part of your drive, ambition and motivation. It was very difficult to see Doug struggling. For the first ten hours of the race all I could think about was pressing on, scrambling to get the next CP, trying to catch another team, reaching the traverse before the bottleneck, but suddenly everything seemed meaningless. We were able to get help pretty quickly as the race doctor was at the other end of the traverse. He came, observed Doug’s condition and challenged him to make a wise decision. We then waited for the ambulance to come and do more tests. We left Doug and by his encouragement made the decision to finish the race unranked as a threesome. I think a lot of our drive to carry on was to get back to TA1 and hear how Doug was. We still had hours until the first transition.

The traverse was severely bottlenecked by the time we reached it. We had time to sit down, look at our sadly damaged feet (someone told me that my feet were the worst they had ever seen, I was so proud), shake the sand out of our shoes and prepare for the traverse. Bob went first, followed by me and then Steve. So we glided across the falls, or at least part of the way across and then had to muster up all the strength you had to hand-over-hand pull yourself across the rest of the way. It was absolutely amazing, but exhausting!

After the traverse we went back to the boats, divided up Doug’s gear and food, left a boat flipped and restrategized with Doug’s absence. We had three in one canoe now; this meant that paddling had to be perfectly in sync. We were able to enjoy a beautiful sunset as we headed back to the boat ramp. Bob and Steve were being pretty facetious at this point!! At the boat ramp we passed off Doug’s bike and pack minus the first aid kit and team gear. We jumped back on our bikes for the dark up hill climb to TA1. It never felt so good to reach a TA—it had been a long day and we still didn’t know what was ahead of us.

We took a break; saw a revived Doug that seemed to be in much better condition. We were greeted by Kirk and GlobalX volunteers. We ate our Arby’s and Pringles, reapplied hydropel to our feet, lightened our packs, and got our new maps and coordinates. Doug helped us plot our next section. It appeared that we were going to be on the bikes for a long leg. We headed out on bike a little exhausted but pumped to finish. We made our way up the big climb of Sand Hill Road for the second time and headed to Cataract Falls for a CP and the Rattlesnake Campground for another CP. This is where we met up with Team Gaylans and partnered up with for the next CP. It was the feared and dreaded CP of Hale Hill, a very large and continuous gravel climb that was home to “Eddie” the warned about dog. I don’t know if Eddie feared numbers or if he was asleep for the night, but we all breathed a sigh of relief to be up the hill and past Eddie. We had a little difficulty finding the next CP, but upon finding it were one CP short of being back to Wasatch Lake. We were thrilled to drive on in and think that we were nearly done with one section left; however, our excitement came on a little too soon. We were greeted with the news that we had to do a single track leg around Wasatch Lake to collect two more CP’s and then we would get the next leg of the race. We pulled ourselves together and grabbed the controls more easily than we thought. Then we pulled back into TA2 and got our next leg and maps.

This was the most difficult part besides losing Doug. The third section was a lot longer than we had anticipated with about four hours left. It was the middle of the night and my butt was raw from a mixture of sand, a wet bike chamois and miles of biking. It wasn’t exciting to know that there was still biking left and some Orienteering. In the words of Bob, “Like the rest of you, I was really surprised that we had three to four hours of racing left after we got off the bikes coming back from our tour of Owen County. What was most impressive was to watch Steve and Julie fight through the discouraging news and recommit to finishing the race. I know that I was bummed but really wanted to finish it out and I appreciate the commitment from the two of you.”

Riding out to the orienteering section seemed like an eternity, but we got there and in determination to finish (for the sake of completion, rest and food…) we kept on trucking. It was just before dawn, Steve had a double shot of espresso and was alive and well, Bob and I were drifting into mindless sleep. Bob had to hand over the map to Steve. That is when Steve pulled two Snicker bars from his pack in an effort to wake us—it worked. We came back to life, the sun began to rise and we were rejuvenated. We looked at our clocks and had a new drive to finish within the 24 hours. This meant we had to move! We quickly found our control and decided that we were going to run back to the final CP. Jim Dill told us that we were the first group to come in running so fast. We completed this leg in a stellar time!! Our orienteering was right on and somehow despite fighting sleep, we moved quickly. We jumped back on the bikes not really knowing how long it would take us to get back. Bob’s tire had a leak though and time was required to change that. We rode off quickly with determination; we were fiery to get back. As we rode down the gravel roads, I kept telling myself that the pain in my rear was momentary and soon it would all be over. We pulled into Wasatch Lake and smiles filled our faces, we were done and there was Kirk and Doug!