Team Rookie Rampage
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We just found out that Amy Wachsmuth, one of our great training partners and a top choice for a female teammate on Checkpoint Zero -- Rookie Rampage, is out for the 2007 adventure racing season. She and husband Charley Wachsmuth are expecting a baby! I've heard other team captains gripe about things like this, but I honestly couldn't be happier for Amy and Charley. This is something they've wanted, and being a father of two daughters myself, I can attest the Wachsmuth household is in for an adventure much grander than any race could ever give them. Amy says she's still interested in coming out to cheer us on, and that Charley will be allowed to come play with the team when we need him. I'm starting to plan an adventure racing themed baby shower for the lucky new one. It's going to need lots of wicking layers, insulating layers and waterproof/breathable layers to follow the team around. But will those layers be pink or blue? We'll have to wait a few months for that detail! Congrats to the Wachsmuth family!

With the Thanksgiving holiday weekend upon us, the team did not train together this week. So yesterday, I decided to take a hike from my house in East Vancouver, to the Lacamas Heritage Trail in Camas at the south end of Lacamas Lake. I'd driven the route recently and the odometer in my Jeep said it was about four miles. An eight mile hike? Perfect training activity!

I imagined a two-hour hike, out and back, easy as pie. Not so easy, actually. Thanks to dangerous hiking conditions on the side of Lake Road (insane motorists missing my left arm by just INCHES), it took me an hour-and-a-half to get to the lake! Opting for a mellower route back to my house (along the lakeside trail, not the paved road), it took even longer to get back home! I stand by my route choice, though. I lived to train another day!

Because it was a training hike, I carried a pack with all my mandatory gear. It didn't seem all that heavy to me, but my feet sure were sore at the end of the adventure. It makes me wonder what my feet will feel like after the upcoming BEAST sprint adventure race, which is now just six days away...it's likely to include at LEAST 10 miles of trekking. And oh, yeah, elevation gain and loss! I probably only did a few hundred feet of up and down on my training hike.

The weather forecast for the BEAST near North Bend, Wash., is somewhat comical. On The Weather Channel's website, it says this about race day: "Few showers; 41/31; 30% chance of precip.; (And includes this riotous hyper link) Fun Things to do on a Rainy Day." I can not believe "Participate in an Adventure Race" is not one of the suggestions! Whatever the skies unleash on race day, I take great comfort in the knowledge that we Rookies have trained in worse. I bet we could do the whole course in a swamp and come out smiling!

Photo by Jon Ng
Rookie Rampage training group members (from left) Cindy Chastain, Mike Bitton, Scott Markham, Amy Wachsmuth and Charley Wachsmuth, pose at one of several trail heads in Portland's Forest Park.

Rookie Rampage took to the muddy trails of Portland, Ore.'s Forest Park this morning for a 4.5 mile trail run/hike in the rain. Six of our training group showed up, including Mike Bitton, Scott Markham, Jon Ng, Amy Wachsmuth, Charley Wachsmuth, and a new addition to our group, Cindy Chastain.

We certainly do have some runners on the roster. Scott and I are not yet the runners that Jon, Amy, Charley and Cindy are. To try to keep our clan together, Scott led the one mile run, and I brought up the rear. When we all met up together again at the next mile marker, I was a full three minutes back from the leaders! It's a little painful to have my weakness laid so bare. At least this time I didn't "bonk," or completely run out of energy, like I did on our 20-mile mountain bike ride along the Klickitat Trail. I must be getting better at this!

Photo by Cristina Fillis
Team members (from left) Charley Wachsmuth, Amy Wachsmuth, Mike Bitton, Scott Markham, Jon Ng and Ivan Arredondo are all smiles after competing in an orienteering meet on Mt. Tabor in Portland, Ore.

Today Rookie Rampage donned compasses and stormed Mt. Tabor Park in East Portland for an orienteering competition. Record rain has hammered the Pacific Northwest for the past week, but today the clouds broke up and we had a relatively dry workout running up and down Tabor. In for the fun were Rookie Rampage founders Mike Bitton, Scott Markham and Cristina Fillis. First-time navigators joining us for the meet included Jon Ng and Ivan Redondo of Portland, and husband-and-wife Charley and Amy Wachsmuth of Hillsboro, Ore.

We gathered at Scott and Cristina's apartment before the meet to review the fundamentals of map and compass work. After checking in at Tabor, we also listened to one of the event organizers give simple instructions on how to work our way through the course. What I didn't expect was for Jon, Ivan, Charley and Amy to take off running from the start, and only stop to punch control points! They worked Scott, Cris and I over something fierce! To run the intermediate course, we split into two teams, both registered as "Lost and Never Found," same name we used at the Big Muddy Rogaine. When the results were posted, we'd taken sixth and seventh places out of 25 teams on the intermediate course!

After the first few checkpoints, Cris decided to take a break at the top of Mt. Tabor and wait for the rest of us to finish. Scott went on with Charley and Amy, and I kept pace with Jon and Ivan for most of the event. Scott and I "short-coursed" ourselves at CP 9, telling our supposedly rookie teammates we'd meet them at the finish line, four control points later. They ran off to hit their four CPs. Scott and I walked to the finish, talking about how happy we were with our gazelle-like training parnters. By the time we got to the finish line, and our teammates were already there!

Scott, Cris and I are going to be working more on our running endurance. Charley, Amy, Jon and Ivan are going to learn how to tow our slowest team members (My new mantra: "There's no shame in being the slowest person on your team!"). We'll likely do a hike/trail run training in Forest Park next weekend to test out some towing rigs.

What an amazing group of athletes we trained with today! All said they're interested in attending the Dec. 3 BEAST sprint adventure race near Seattle. That will be a great time to further test our team dynamics as we continue to piece together the roster that will eventually become Rookie Rampage in 2007.

I just got back from Santa Barbara, Calif., where I covered the USARA (United States Adventure Racing Association) national championships for Checkpoint Zero. Every chance I got, I mined athletes for information about training, teammate selection and adventure racing strategy. I'm going to need all the help I can get in all three areas as we build our all-rookie team, train for our regional races, and compete.

Especially helpful were Rick Baraff of Silly Rabbits, and the members of Atlanta-based adventure racing team Mighty Dog.