Left Coast Low Down
Adventure Racing in the land of fruits and nuts

In my last post, I mentioned some of the most debilitating and shameful events that inflicted me while racing, and threw out a call for additional tales of woe. Jody Zwicky, one of the Original Gangstahs of AR, has given me a terrific recount of a race she slogged through in Brazil.

I'll forward that ugly memo in our next installment. But today's breaking news is this report from Rebecca Rusch. She just got back from Scotland, where 49 teams lined up for the Adventure Racing World Championships.

To say the race was brutal is to indulge in pale language. Only five teams finished. Rebecca, one of the top racers in the world for years, was a member of the gallant Swedish Team Bjufors. They did finish, but just barely. Check out what nearly a week of racing in the moors will do to you:

"I got up a bit early to get my ankle and shin taped. I had rolled my ankle on the first day multiple times and was suffering from some pretty serious pain in my ankle and shin. It only hurt when I walked though! Anyway, the medics did a great job of immobilizing it for the remainder of the race. While I was getting my ankle taped, the medic commented on my nasty cough. She listened to my lung sounds and concluded that I indeed had a lung infection and should go on antibiotics for the rest of the race. As I was finishing up with the medics, my teammate Per came over and informed me that we had to check out of that transition within 15 minutes or we'd be cut off of the long course. We were all in shock and rushed to get out of the transition. Normally race cut off times are for the middle and back of the pack teams. Being in the top five, we never even took note of the cut off times and were totally unaware of this one when we went to sleep. It's lucky that we didn't opt for a 3 hr nap or we would have slept straight through the cut off. Many other world class teams behind us were also unaware of the strict cut off and ended up missing it.

We set off on what we estimated to be a 20 hr trek with a brutal amount of elevation. Shortly into the trek, I ended up losing my lunch, so to speak and was struggling to keep food down. I was able to eat a little, but not enough to come close to match the calories we were expending. Needless to say, our pace on the uphills slowed dramatically with me feeling less than 100%. The descents felt better for me, but worse for Per. He was starting to suffer from tendonitis in the front of his shin and the downhills were extremely painful for him. Our combined ailments along with the fact that we were out there alone with no one to race, seemed to slow our motivation. About 3/4 of the way through the trek, we came across a checkpoint with a large tent. I think it was 2 am. It was howling wind and we were just about to ascend onto another long ridge walk. They allowed us into the tent, so we opted to sleep until sunrise at 3:30 am. As we were waking up, Per was talking about how much his leg hurt and if he should tape it. In mid sentence, he laid back and started twitching. His eyes were unfocused and he did not recognize us for about 10 seconds. My first thought was that he'd had a seizure. The checkpoint person called a medic and we waited there about 30 minutes to have the medic check him out. In the meantime, we were keeping him warm, he was coherent, but felt nauseous. After a thorough, hour long exam, some hot food, more rest, Per was officially released by the medic and told he could continue on. I think it was 5 or 6 am by the time we finally left that checkpoint. We left there pretty scared about Per, but he was determined to finish the course.The remainder of the race was just to finish and maintain our 5th place ranking. Obviously, we were all worried about Per, but the medic assured us that he had literally just fainted from the pain, low blood pressure and the physical exertion."

Fainting from pain, low blood pressure and exertion, and then finishing the ARWC? Hats off to Bjufors, and a good reminder that no matter how much you think you're suffering your next race, it's all relative.

In the glowing cone of my headlamp - a couple hours after the midnight start of the Cal-Eco Kernville in 2000 - about all I could see were Austin's shoes, obscured by the many motes of dust kicked up by the racers we were chasing. I could also see Austin's backpack, which I held onto desperately, and his hand as he reached behind him to pass me yet another small chunk of carrot cake ClifBar.


But that's as far as my vision went. I was in the Pain Cave, big time, and it took every ounce of concentration that I had to hang on to his backpack, keep my legs moving, and fight down the giant bolus of nausea that the Clif chunks inspired.


My pained, narrow world view was caused by many things. It was my first 24-hour race. We were at 7,500 and running up to 9,000 feet. I was poorly trained. We were a rookie team trying to stay in the top 10. My elbow hurt, a bee stung me, the moon was in a weird phase. Who knows? But as Austin hauled me up the mountain, all I knew was that the Clif bar was coming back up.


I couldn't really talk, so I started quietly yakking on Austin's shoes without warning. I was too dehydrated to even get a manly puke going, so really all I did was spit chunks and make crazy retching noises.


Most people would get a little ticked about being sprayed with vomit. Austin was amused. We kept going. And the worst part is: this wasn't my low point in my adventure racing career. It wasn't even my low point in this particular race.

Everyone who's done a race has had these moments. Moments where you're embarrassed for yourself, where your careful construction of hard-case racer is completely shredded, and you're left to beg for help from your teammates.

My most ignominious moment ever came later in this race. You have to understand that Barger's Cal-Ecos were majestically cruel. This one had us bike-wacking at midnight for an hour and a half, then barfing on foot until 5 am. Then we set sail on a 40-mile mountain bike ride that included three crashes, four blown tires and over 20 miles of singletrack. When we did all that? We were less than half-way done.


Barger sent us down the Kern river, through Class III rapids in those crappy inflatables. We got dunked twice, almost drowned and popped the un-poppable Sevylors. After hours of paddling and a confrontation with a boat-borne Sheriff, we washed ashore at 3 pm.


Still ahead of us was a Bargerian Death March. Eddie, our friend and navigator, wouldn't even venture a guess as to its length. When asked, he just flipped his topos over and over, tracing a route that went the entire length of several 1:24000 quads.

Hours and hours later, after surviving the 108 degree heat and moving into our second night of a 24-hour race, we begged Eddie to give us some sense of how long it would take to get to the TA.

Ed finally pulled out the maps, did some AR math, and said with carefully flat affect, "Probably another two hours. If we do some running."


This was when I hit my low moment. I took off my backpack, slammed it on the ground, shouted profanities at the sky and sat down on the trail.


Petty, childish displays of emotion are not super-helpful in adventure racing, and as I sat on the ground, IT bands popping like pine cones in a forest fire, I realized I was being really, really stupid.

We were miles from a TA. I had signed up for this misery. These two men, patiently waiting for me to take the pacifier out of my mouth, were my good friends. I stood up and we staggered to the TA, withdrew from the competition even though we were in 7th place, and fell into a coma.


Both Austin and Eddie raced with me again, and they still do. I haven't embarrassed myself like that in seven years of racing - mostly because I still cringe with regret every time I remember my lameness.

But what about you? What's your shame? Your low moments that led to low comedy? Email me (gordon at outsidepr dot com) your worst moments from your race career, and I'll wrap them up for a future blog segment. The most embarrassing (and hilarious) will get a nice bit of schwag from Sugoi.