Photo by Colin Ness
About an hour before the start of the BEAST adventure race, Duncan Sailors (right) and I looked excited to take on the challenge.
On Wednesday, April 12, 2005, I completed my first adventure race! It was the BEAST race in Seattle. It was hard and fun and scary and fast and slow and frustrating and I had the time of my life! My teammate was Duncan Sailors of North Bend, Wash. We completed the course in just under four hours. The race began shortly after 7 p.m., and ended at about 11 p.m., so most of it was in the dark. Our team name, a salute to my current phycial appearance, was Round Man Running.
After a quick orienteering course to thin out the crowd, members of roughly 30 participating teams began a mountain bike section that had everyone cris-crossing what seemed like dozens of narrow hiking trails around one of King County's remotest parks. Duncan and I purposely started the bike leg after all the other teams had left. Because it was my first race, we decided to start slow and taper.
I took a fall almost immediately on an exposed root that crossed the trail. Just as I recognized that the root might be large enough to pose a problem, my wheels were out from under me, and my right shoulder was slamming into a clump of ferns. "Are you OK?" Duncan asked. I was. It was a question I'd hear many more times during the next four hours as I crashed into an endless series of boulders, trees and mud puddles. Duncan was right to make me wear trail running shoes instead of my bike shoes that lock in to my pedals. I would have been miserable at best, and seriously injured at worst.
Many teams struggled to find checkpoint two of the bike leg. As we rolled in to a trail intersection, we saw dozens of bikes lining the trail, and dozens of racers zig-zagging around on foot in the woods around the intersection looking for the marker. Duncan ignored the mayhem and kept his head in the map. After a minute or two, he quietly said, "Mike, get on your bike and ride that way, nice and slow." I did, and I don't think anyone saw us leave. About 20 yards later, out of sight of the confusion at the intersection, we found checkpoint two. Duncan guessed we'd just passed about 10 teams, teaching me that navigation can trump speed in adventure racing.
With my limited mountain biking skills, about a fifth of the super-technical bike section was unridable for me. I'd hop off my bike to slog through 10 yards of 10-inch-deep muddy water, then hop back on. Then there'd be a huge pine tree down across the trail, so I'd hop off to lift my bike over that. I'd hop back on, and soon come to a hair-pin turn I could not negotiate, so off I'd jump again before crashing.
When the trails opened up a bit, I could build up speed. It's a bizarre sensation to zip past trees with nothing but a spot of light 30 feet in front of you to show the way ahead. I alternated between terror and bliss during those "fast" times. Terror because I knew a crash would cause serious pain, but bliss because I felt like a 7-year-old kid on the run from bad guys, and I sensed I was pulling away. At one point, the headlamp Duncan let me use was shorting out, so the light flickered on and off like a strobe light, and often didn't come back on for five or 10 seconds. "I'm doing disco mountain biking!" I shouted to Duncan.
After the bike section came the trek. Usually, this would just entail careful navigation and thoughtful selection of the quickest routes between checkpoints. The BEAST organizers added their predictable twist by requiring teams to answer mind-bending questions at some of the stops. Depending on which multiple-choice answer you chose, you were sent to a different checkpoint. Supposedly, if you ansered the questions correctly, your course would be shorter. The first question was a stumper that teams were wasting 10 and 15 minutes to solve. Duncan and I decided any guess was better than wasting time feeling stupid, so we chose an answer and left. We hit several more checkpoints, only a few of which had similarly rediculous questions. The others simply sent us to other checkpoints and finally, to the finish.
Duncan towed me up a final hill, and made me run the last three or four minutes to the finish. "We're going in hot!" he told me. "You're crossing this finish line as Round Man Running!" And we did. The cheers from the other racers and the race organizers were deafening. We did it! Camera flashes lit up the dark parking lot. Everybody hugged me. Duncan said he was proud of me. It was an awesome moment in my adventure racing life. We beat the 11 p.m. cutoff by just a few minutes. Many other teams had missed checkpoints, so "Did Not Finish " (DNF). We did finish, hitting all our checkpoints in the allotted time. We had a lot to be proud of, and, thanks to Duncan, I had a solid first race to put on my new adventure racing resume.
BEAST Director Roger Michel sent me an e-mail the day after the race to congradulate me. Here is some of what he said:
"Congrats again. This was by far the hardest BEAST race. The added length, tough navigation and technical trails all made it a '2-hour-plus' winning time compared to the usual hour-and-a-half. Looks like you bagged your first one, hopefully not your last!"
I want to wish Duncan and his team, MPGear.com, lots of luck as they continue to train for the Primal Quest expedition race to be held in June and July. As I prepare for my role as writer, photographer and media escort on the Primal Quest media team, I will always look back on my first adventure race to add some personal insight into what the athletes go through in just four hours of their five- to 10-day Primal Quest race.
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