Thunder Rolls Adventure Race
24 Hour
8/23/13
Mt. Carroll, IL
Team Adventure Capitalists/BDAR Midwest
3 Person Coed
Team Adventure Capitalists/BDAR Midwest
3 Person Coed
Racers: Eric Olsen, Don Bart, Heather Kluch
The Thunder Rolls 24 hour Adventure Race is definitely one
of my favorite races and I’m going to tell you why even if you don’t want to
hear it. :o) Unfortunately I wasn’t able to race it last year because I made a
bad decision to skip it, and have been kicking myself in the ass all year,
until this year when it finally came around again. I was so excited to be
racing it this year as a different team I recently joined called Adventure
Capitalists/BDAR. They are originally based out of the Tennessee, so we
branched out as their Midwest chapter. My teammates are still the same, Eric
Olsen and Don Bart, I’ ve known these guys and raced with them a couple years
now, and we race well together. Ok so back to why this race is a favorite of
mine….for one Gerry Voelliger, the race director, is a character; there’s no
one like him. He’s friendly, crass, brutally honest, and hilarious. I laugh my
ass off in every one of his pre race meetings. He puts on a fantastic (or Gerry
would say EPIC…epic is a Gerry word) course, that’s brutal but fun. Second, the
volunteers are amazing people. There are A TON of them! Every single one of
them is friendly and they really become your friends. Arriving to a TA or
having them assist on the ropes course seriously brings a smile to your face. Maybe
it’s because you’re sick of dealing with your teammates, either way, it’s always
a pleasure to see them. Not only are the volunteers awesome, so are the racers.
The people who do this race seem to be a part of one big happy AR family. You see
old faces and new, and you immediately form a bond like no other race I’ve
raced. Hugs, high fives, sarcasm, and kicks in the asses are all a part of this
happy family. So there you go, epic race director, epic volunteers, and epic
racers all combine to make one epic race. I’ve used the word epic 5 times in
one paragraph, I never use that word and try to avoid it at all costs, so that
should tell you this race is truly epic!
Enter Thunder Rolls Territory
Eric, Don and I planned on leaving my area around 1ish, so
that would’ve put us there at about 4. Of course things always run later than
planned, so our thoughts and dreams of having a long nap before the race were
crushed. We always seem to forget how much time it takes to unpack gear and get
everything prepared. When we arrived at the race, we were welcomed by the usual
sign that said the obvious “Welcome Adventure Racers!” This makes us feel
wanted, like we’re important even if we’re of no significance. We arrive
sporting our custom made shirts…WWWD on the front and “What Would WEDALI Do?”
on the back. For those of you who have no idea what the hell I’m talking about,
Wedali is a team, a very,very good team. They win most of the races, but I have
to say for how many races these guys win, they are some of the friendliest
racers I’ve come across during my racing career. You would think a team that
wins all the time would be a bunch of big headed douchebags….not these guys!
They’re very humble, and when you congratulate them on a win, they’re very
modest, and are more interested in talking to you about how your race went. I
love these guys and love seeing them on the course, because when I see them, I
feel like I’m winning even though they’re half way through the course and we’re
not even close. ;o) Anyway enough bragging about Wedali, to get back to my point,
these guys are excellent navigators, so during a previous 30 hour race when we
were delirious, we came up with idea of what would Wedali do in this situation,
hence the shirt idea was born. They got a good chuckle out of it and so did
other racers that understood where we were coming from. Ok, moving on now to
the actual race.
Pre Race
After unloading our gear into our cabin, and I have to
mention we had some pretty cool teams in our cabin, we headed to the lodge for
our delicious pre race salad, pasta, and breadsticks meal. An hour after we
stuffed our faces, Gerry began his speech of the torture that was upon us. He
explained the routes, let us know what roads were forbidden, and explained that
we were not allowed to skip any of the CPs, that we would be ranked at the last
CP we attained in sequential order. So for example, if we found CP38, didn’t
find CP39 and moved on to CP40, we would only be ranked up to CP38. So this
meant all CPs were mandatory except the “advanced section” up north which most
teams wouldn’t make it to. Gerry also mentioned that the stinging nettle wasn’t
so bad this year, but then Sue Stonitsch, one of the volunteers, immediately
spoke up and corrected him on that. The nettles were bad! I was hoping Sue’s
correction was wrong, but you will see later in this report, my hopes were
shattered. Ugh!
When Gerry finally stopped talking to us, our team captains
went up to collect the race instructions and the maps. The maps were small, but
there were many of them. We had to plot only a handful of checkpoints, since
most of the nav sections were pre plotted on different maps that we would
attain at the transition areas. We were able to plot during the meeting and
plan our routes pretty quick. We headed back to the cabin to arrange our paddle
bag and bike gear. Eric and Don left to go stage the bikes and bike gear about
20minutes away while I stayed back to figure out my outfits for the next 24
hours. I get cold very easily so this was some tough planning for me! When the
boys got back, we finished getting gear ready and decided we actually had some
time to take a short nap. We set the alarm and we snoozed away, or at least tried.
Race Start/Orienteering/Ropes
It literally felt like 5 minutes later and the alarm went
off. Wake up! Time to race! We changed into our race gear and headed out to the
starting line. Race started at midnight but we lined up around 1130 for a group
picture taken by the amazing photographer, John Morris. Gerry then played the
National Anthem and when the clock hit midnight, we were off! We ran to the fort
to get the O map from the volunteers. This O section was rogaine style so that
meant we were able find the CPs in any order we wanted. This is where strategy
comes into play. Teams scattered in every direction as soon as they got the
maps. We decided to head straight to the ropes course. We wanted to get that
out of the way as soon as possible since we didn’t want to come into it later
with a huge bottleneck. When we arrived at the ropes, our plan worked out well.
The ascent |
We saw Wedali on the ropes, they might have gotten more CPs than us already,
but it was still nice to see them! We waited only about 20 minutes before we
got on the rope to ascend up it. Ascending is definitely a workout. Imagine
doing a bunch of one legged squats..my left butt cheek burned after that! When
we got to the top of the cliff, we rappelled down. I slipped as I went over the
cliff, swung out, and smacked my ass on the rock. I guess my ass wasn’t sore
enough, it needed more abuse! I recovered quickly and flew down the rope. Eric
flew down after me. I swear it’s like this guy wasn’t even attached to a rope
because he flew down so freakin’ fast! After Eric, Don rappelled nice and
smooth into the water below. We left our harnesses on and headed out for the
rest of the O section. Things were going
smoothly until we attempted our last CP, CP1. Night nav is always so much
harder because you can get turned around easily. We followed a ridge line from
CP2, which we thought was the correct direction. We ended up hopping over a
couple barbed wire fences and then came upon a CP. What’s this??? CP2 again?
Did we really just walk in a circle?? Yes. Yes we did. Dammit! So we looked at
the map again and followed the terrain much closer. If we ended up at CP2
again, I would’ve thought we were all losing our minds or that Gerry was
messing with us. We finally came upon CP1, which made us feel sane again, and
then headed to CP6, which was a cave. This is awesome, the only race I’ve even
done that has a cave! We had to cross the river to get into it, and it was
deep! It was past my waist and it wasn’t warm! We headed into the cave and a
bat flew in my face! The cave was cold and part of it was flooded with ice cold
water.
The cave! |
We got to the end of the cave and we didn’t see a CP. Wait, what? Were
we in the right cave? I don’t remember there being another cave. I asked Eric
if there was a turn off to another section of the cave behind us but he didn’t
remember seeing anything. So I walked back and sure enough, we were supposed to
make a left. We walked down the super narrow hole and there it was! We started
to head back out and Don smashed head on the rocks above. Luckily he had his
helmet on, but the bash hurt his neck. He had to take a couple minutes to get
his brain back. Good thing it wasn’t anything serious! Next we made our way to the river for one more
CP before we hit the next section…..Coasteering! This was to be my first time
ever doing this!
My cold face! |
Coasteering
Some people never heard of coasteering, so what is it? It’s
orienteering, but in a river, so you’re orienteering in the water along a coast…coast
+ orienteering = coasteering. Ahhh now it all makes sense! We hopped in the
Waukarusa River, it was pitch black so we couldn’t see much, only what our
headlamps illuminated. We had to walk in the water the entire time since the
land on both sides was private property. I later heard some other teams took
the high and dry route, but oh well, at least we know we did it right. Walking
through this river was tough! Footing was totally uneven and rocky so we were
either tripping or banging our shins and knees on rocks. In some sections, the
water was up to our waists! I felt like I was walking like a newborn baby, or a
drunk, or a drunken baby, either way, it was a long, wet stumble! I’m not
complaining though, it was pretty freakin cool and for once I wasn’t freezing
my ass off! When we got to the road, it was our exit point. It was time for a 2
mile run along a paved road to get us to the paddle section. Don was wearing
some crazy orienteering shoes with mini spikes on the bottom. These are awesome
on dirt and trail, but pavement not so much. Luckily there was a small shoulder
of grass and dirt that he could run on, and when he couldn’t, he toughed it out
on the pavement. As we made our way down the road, we could see Boom Boom Pow
ahead of us. They’re an all girls team, and they’re pretty awesome! We kept
pushing our pace and ended up passing these lovely ladies who were missing a
usual team member. Their third teammate contracted Lyme disease. We all hope
she recovers quickly! We finally got to our destination….the ADVENTURE paddle,
and oh man, an adventure it was!
Adventure Paddle
Gerry had told us that we were in for an adventure for this
paddle and that was an understatement! First of all, it’s still dark, so it’s
hard to see branches, logs, and debris until they’re pretty much right in front
of you, or when you’re ramming into them. The adventure paddle began on Plum
River, a very twisty river with a ton of debris, strainers, logs, trees, and
anything else that could block us. As we were paddling along, we kept running
into obstacles. We would run over a log, and get stuck on it. Having three
people in a canoe was a disadvantage, the more weight, the more stuck you got.
We came up
with “synchronized humping” in a previous race so we tried it out
with this one. What you do is a back and forth humping motion, and you have to
time it just right so that you and your teammies are in sync. I know it sounds
perverted, but it’s the only thing that works! You could always have someone
get out and pull the boat, but the water we were in was deep in most spots, and
having someone get out all the time, greatens the risk of tipping the boat. So
we humped away for about 8-10 miles. We also got stuck in what looked like
beaver dams. I swear Gerry went out the day before and just threw trees in the
river to make it more difficult for us!
At some points, we were snaking through tiny gaps using our humping
mechanism, along with pulling on branches above us, or pushing our paddles off
of logs and rocks just to make it through. When it finally reached daylight, Eric
mentioned that the weird scraggly things in the trees looked like ghosts (they
totally did and I still have no idea what they were). We came upon Boom Boom
Pow and they were struggling to get through something nasty, so we waited. Don
had to pee really bad, but there was nowhere to go, so I said just whip it out
and pee over the side of the boat since no one can see anything! So to our surprise, he did just that. All of
a sudden we see a pee stream arching over the side of the boat. Holy crap it
was like a neverending sprinkler! It never seemed to end and when it did, it
would just start up again. Little spurts here and there, pisssss, silence, piss
piss, silence, piss. Eric and I were laughing our butts off. Eric’s laugh made
me laugh even harder, I was pretty much crying because I was laughing so hard! I
hope Boom Boom Pow didn’t think we were laughing at them. If they read this
race report, they’ll know why we were in hysterics. I’m even laughing while
typing this!
When we would finally
make it through an obstacle and have a nice and easy paddle, we would hit
another obstacle. Out of nowhere Team Rage Against the Cutoff came flying past us.
These guys were animals, tearing through the debris like it was nothing. They
passed us as we were trying to hump our way off of a log. There were so many times we thought we would
dump but with our amazing teamwork, and with Don calling out everything he
would see, we managed to make it through without any carnage. (Carnage is Gerry’s
favorite word so I had to use it.) I did almost lose my shoe during a portage
around one of those beaver dams. I stepped in some quicksand-like clay mud and
it sucked the shoe right off of me. Not only did my shoe disappear but it
smelled like rancid poo. I had to dig in
the poo goo to get my shoe back. It was nasty! This paddle definitely wasn’t
easy, it was scary, it gave me mini heart attacks and got my adrenaline pumping,
but I had a smile on my face through the entire ride. I thought it was torturous
fun! It definitely wasn’t boring and kept us awake! It was a total body
workout!!! Screw Insanity or all those other workout gimmicks, all you need is
Gerry’s Adventure Paddle!
Bike-O
The next section was something new for Gerry’s race, he called
this the Bike-O. During this section in the super steep hilly mountainous
terrain of the Mississippi Palisades, we were able to attack the CPs in any
order by riding our bikes near the CPs, then obtaining them on foot. This
section was very strategic, some teams dropped their bikes and got all the
South CPs on foot, as others obtained a few CPs in the nearby area, then get
back on their bikes and rode closer to another group of CPs. We chose to ride
near a group of CPs, snag them, and ride again, and so on. It was working out
well except for my feet didn’t agree with leaving my bike shoes on as we
stomped around on the uneven steep terrain. I mentioned my feet hurt, but still
kept going. Since I left my bike shoes on, my trail runners were clipped to the
back of my pack, and they were still caked with poo sludge from the paddle take
out. This made my shoes feel like bricks, so as I ran, it felt like someone was
tugging on my pack and pulling me backwards. It started to wear on me, my back
was starting to hurt and it was wearing me down. So since we weren't switching
shoes every time we got off our bikes, Don came up with a plan. Eric would
unclip my shoes for me whenever we got off our bikes to navigate on foot, then
clip them back on when we’d get back on our bikes. This worked out well for a
while, until my feet were finally ready to give up. They were screaming at me, “Take
these damn bike shoes off!” My feet are very picky, I need support in my shoes
and these things gave me none. It was starting to affect my knees, and Eric
started having the same problem, so we finally decided to switch shoes every
time we got off the bike. A few seconds to switch shoes was worth not killing
our feet and possibly affecting the rest of our race.
As we attacked the CPs on foot, there were a few events that
made this section memorable. One of them being my spider attack. As we dropped
our bikes, I walked in between a fence post and a trail sign, not seeing the
spider web sprawled out between the two. The web stuck to my face (this
happened a lot throughout the race), but this time the spider must’ve been
still on it because out of nowhere if felt like I got stabbed in the back with
a knife! I screamed and started walking
super fast down the trail, trying to speed walk off the pain. I could feel my
back pulsing with pain like someone kept punching me repeatedly. Just then, my
teammates came to my rescue. We all walked over to a gazebo, I pulled my top
layer off so they could check my back. Sure enough Eric could see where that
sucker decided to sink his teeth in me. It was red and a little puffy, didn't
look too bad but I could feel throbbing shooting pains through my back and
shoulder. Eric whipped out some Afterbite, we weren't sure if it would work but
anything was worth a try at this point. The pain stayed with me for about 2
hours until it finally disappeared. I had Eric check the bite later and he
couldn't even see it, so maybe the Afterbite worked, or it’s quite possible I
have superhuman healing powers! After that fiasco, and after we finally grabbed
the CP in that spider infested area, we headed over on our bikes to the next
CP. As we pulled up to our destination, Eric yelled out “My wheel is wobbling! My
spoke broke!” Broken spoke could mean non rideable bike which could’ve meant
the race was over for us. With Eric’s quick thinking and McGyver-like skills,
he busted out some duct tape and started wrapping his spoke with it. We weren’t
sure it would work but we didn’t want to quit the race, so he gave it a try. He
tested his duct tape bandaid out and the wheel wobbled a little bit, but it was
still rideable. This is proof that duct tape fixes everything!
As we headed in to attack more CPs, we noticed we were neck
deep in stinging nettles. For those of you that have never heard of this, the
name says it all. It’s a plant, and it can grow taller than me, which in some
cases it was up to my chin, and the leaves have needles. If you hit the leaf
and it gets you at the right angle, it feels like someone is giving you huge
paper cuts. Yes, that would freakin’ hurt, but wait, there’s more!
After you
feel like you’ve been sliced, it then starts to itch, and the more you scratch
it, the more it itches. The itching lasts for about 10 minutes, and when you
look at the affected area, you see nothing. Sounds fun doesn’t it? I think they
should have this form of torture for prisoners! So anyway, we trudged through
this land of itch since there was just no escaping it in some areas. I got “attacked”
in one are so badly that my entire body itched. I ran out of the woods, onto the
trail, frantically scratching myself. I know you’re not supposed to, but I
couldn’t help it! It was driving me crazy! Just as I tried to pretend it wasn’t
happening, we see another team….our friends of Team Cairn, Kim Heintz, Donovan
Day, and Chad Hannon. This was Donovan’s first 24 hour race, and I hear he was
pretty much a machine! We gave them a little tip about the CP we had just
attained but didn’t directly tell them where it was. They were in our same
division so that means they were our competition so we couldn’t give them all
the answers! We hauled out of there, finished up the Bike O,
and then headed on
our bikes to the next TA for our nav section…without the bikes this time.
O Course
Our motivation to get there was we knew a cooler filled with
watermelon awaited us! We were so hot and drenched with sweat, that watermelon
seemed like the cure for everything! We
were still in the Mississippi Palisades which of course meant the steep hills
didn’t disappear and neither did the stinging nettle. Hills I can tolerate,
nettle can go punch itself in the face…if it had a face. This was a pretty
decent sized nav section. We were to obtain CPs 35-42 in order, all on foot in
the mountainous, nettle infested terrain. We’re we worried? Of course not! We
knew watermelon would be waiting for us when we got back to the TA! We headed
out on our run/jog/trek….during nav sections, every team tends to do all three
at some point. We were attacking CPs and not having any issues until CP39. I
have nightmares about CP39, and I now hate that number. I’m 36 years old but
when I’m 38 going on 39, I might skip it and go straight to 40. That’s how
traumatized I am by this thing! The clue for the CP was a rock outcropping, and
we attacked this annoying thing twice with no luck. After almost two hours, we
were all getting frustrated, it was seriously demoralizing. I walked over to
Don to take a gander at the map. We decided to attack it from a bend in the
trail that we ended up on since we were pretty much out of any other attack points.
As Don took a bearing on his compass, we saw David Huntley from Tardy Rooster
heading towards us.
Team Tardy Rooster nav-ing with us. |
They were in the same situation, so it made us feel better
that we weren’t the only ones having trouble with this one. We collaborated with Tardy Rooster and they agreed
to attack it the same way. As we marched for a while in the snarly terrain,
suddenly we heard Don yell “Got it!” Holy freakin’ crap, that immediately
brightened our moods! We were so sick of looking for that stupid thing so it
was a huge relief to find it! We then decided to finish the rest of the section
with Tardy Rooster. Sometimes two nav heads are better than one and they weren’t
in our division anyway. David and his teammate Woody, I think it was Woody but
if not, that’s what I’m calling him, are great guys to race with. We ended up
finishing the course without any more annoying CP issues and headed back to the
TA for…yep you guessed it…WATERMELON!!!!
Bike O to Finish
After we devoured our watermelon for the second time, we had
a little pow wow on what to do next. We knew team No Sleep would be coming in
soon, and they were our competition, so we had to decide quickly. Just as Eric
went to fill up our water bladders, I saw John Farless rolling in with the rest
of his No Sleep-ers. Oh no! We gotta go! Don rode over to Eric since the water
wasn’t at the TA, and let him know that we had to hurry out of there. No
offense John, you’re a great guy, but we didn’t want to hang out with you! Eric
hurried back and we made our decision. There was an advanced O course up north which
we knew we wouldn’t have time for because CP39 took a huge chunk of our time. We
were contemplating riding up to get CP44 which would’ve put on about 16 more
miles to our route back to the finish. We knew that would cut it really close
to the midnight cutoff, especially since we didn’t know the conditions of the
roads, were they paved, were they gravel, were they dirt? We had no way of
knowing. Also we were worried about Eric’s spoke. If we got out that far, and
something happened to his spoke, we were done. We would have to be picked up
and we wouldn’t be considered finishers. So we decided to play it safe, and
head back to the finish, picking up the mandatory CPs along the way. Just as we
got near a bridge, I noticed Eric slowed down a lot. I thought he was
struggling, that maybe his legs were fried because of the insane hills we were
heaping over. As we approached a bridge with the first CP, he got off his bike
and said “No wonder why that was so tough! My rear tire is flat!” We were on
gravel so he couldn’t even tell it was flat while he was riding. He quickly
flipped his bike over and started changing tubes. I was impressed with how
quick he did this. Tardy Rooster and
another team passed us while he was changing the tire, but we were leap
frogging them, so we weren’t too concerned. After the fix, we got back on and
pedaled like monsters. After racing for so many hours, and battling insane
hills, we all still felt really strong. We just hammered our way back on our
bikes. It was dark, I tried to ignore the weird hallucinations that kept
popping in front of me every so often, but I felt like I could’ve raced for 12
more hours. I credit this to proper training, nutrition, and a product I’ve
been testing out called Vector450 which helps with muscle recovery and performance.
Since I’ve been taking this, I don’t feel the extreme muscle fatigue that I had
in the past. Anyway, we all hauled ass to the finish, Don and Eric were
machines, and luckily Eric’s tire and spoke held up for the rest of our ride.
We crossed that finish line and felt a sense of accomplishment even though we
didn’t make it to the advanced course. Sure we had our downfalls, but we did
our best to make it through them and came out strong as a team, and no one
hated each other at the end! We took our team finish photo with Gerry and then
headed straight into the lodge to stuff our faces with delicious pizza and
corndogs! Looking back on the race, this is still definitely one of my favorite
races throughout my racing career. I love the racers, the volunteers, and of
course Gerry, the race director. It is alwasy so well organized and just an all
around great race course! I will definitely not be skipping this race next
year! Bring on that nettle!!
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