An Overdue Spread Your Wings 2008 Race Report November 6, 2008
Posted by riverbrady in : Adventure Racing, Race Reports , 1 comment so farYoutube Video covering the race
This May I found myself virtually thrown into my first adventure race - the Spread Your Wings 2008 24 Hour race. I had thought about adventure races, been trail running with the Austin Adventure Racers, but had never imagined jumping in straight to a full day race.
However, with some prompting from AAR friends, and quick emails jotting back and forth between the Austin, San Antonio, and Houston groups and acquaintances, three weeks before the race a team was born (Trying Not to Die). The four of us consisted of Steve (our navigator and only 24 hour race vet), myself (who has done a couple Ironmans, but never an adventure race), Claudia (a 6 hour AR vet), and Shayne (another 6 hour AR vet). We knew we weren’t going to be breaking records, but going in our only purpose was to have fun and finish the race - preferably in one piece each. Claudia and Steve knew each other, but otherwise we were all strangers - representing the three major cities in the area and simply coming together for fun-filled times.
The race was Saturday. My sleep deprivation began Friday. I had promised a friend I’d be in town that evening so I didn’t head to the race site early to camp out (something I’d change next year, if I did the race again). Between finishing up the double checking of packing, nerves, and just generally tossing and turning, I wasn’t getting more that catnaps. So, about 2:30 I hopped in the truck and started the 4 hour drive to Camp Eagle. Arriving on site I found the rest of my team and we all introduced ourselves to each other. At this point I was simply feeling good and hoping the 1-2 hours of restless sleep since 7am Friday wouldn’t be an issue.
Checking gear, mixing nutrition, last minute maintenance, then it was time for the 8am race start.
Leg 1 - Trekking
Grabbing our maps with the rest of the individuals there who were as crazy as we were, we started the race and began plotting leg 1 and looking at the lay of the land. We quickly realized that we were heading up the biggest hill from the get go, and heading to the windmill. Little did we know that throughout the day we would have fun visiting this windmill again and again. As Garrett put it, the day would consist of:
- Run up the steep hill to the windmill
- Bike up the steep singletrack to the windmill
- Go caving to the windmill
- Swim to the windmill
- Hike and bike to the windmill
- Paddle to the windmill
- Climb, traverse, and rappel to the windmill
- Bike/trek to the windmill a few times
- Trek to the windmill one last time for good measure
:)
Reaching the windmill we found it accompanied a large cistern of water. Floating in the water - lots and lots of tennis balls with team numbers. We debated for a few seconds on jumping in, searched t he sides, and in a stroke of luck I was able to fish our tennis ball to the side with my hat before a volunteer tossed it back into the middle. From there - back down the hill and to transition.
Leg 2 - Biking
We began in high spirits and quickly came to a rest for our first and worst injury of the day. It wasn’t too bad (and we count ourselves lucky it was the only one of the day), but an early turn found Claudia sliding out and banging up her side and both knees. After figuring out bandages weren’t going to stay on she decided to just continue on and take care of it in TA. The rest was difficult for us simply due to relative inexperience and how rough the singletrack was. Many areas of the trail had all four of us off our bikes and walking as the treacherous terrain combined with steep hills combined to make things un-ridable. However,after a loop on the hill rims and reaching the windmill again (where we were thanking the nice cool cistern of water to play in and refresh our water stores), we made it back to transition.
Leg 3 - Trekking
After plotting our checkpoints and choosing our course, we decided to take a counterclockwise route from TA and hit the cave checkpoint first. The first part went quickly - the searching for the cave did not. We knew there was a tree with marking on it, we knew it was in the area, the other 4-5 teams who were also searching for it also knew it was there, but none of us could find it. We joined up with three other teams and compared UTM plots with their navigators and found they agreed. In the end, we all were simply not looking far enough up the hillside and the yell of “we found it” from one of the teams brought everyone running…and then calmly waiting and joking around as team by team, we all headed in, punched our wristbands to prove the entire team had made it there, and enjoyed a couple minutes in the coolness of the dark cave.
At this point the four of us took a look at our time, at how much we had covered, how much was left for this leg, and made a decision. Our first goal was to finish with all of us intact. There was worry that if we went scrambling after all the other checkpoints we would run out of time. Thus, we decided to map out the each checkpoint, or set of checkpoints, from each leg and continue forward. Back to transition it was.
Leg 4 - Swimming
Yay! Simply - yay! We get to play in the river, climb up and jump off a big inflatable iceberg, cool off, relax, and watch those teams that are two legs ahead of us go by while paddling. By this point we were into the middle/later afternoon.
Leg 5 - Ride and Tie
For those not familiar - in this leg, with 4 teammates, we’re only allowed 2 bikes. Normally a team would match up people of similar builds and swap away. Our team had two middle height guys, a shorter gal, and a tall guy. Us sitting there trying to figure out who would swap rides was probably a comedy unto itself. A short discussion later we were off, up the hill with only a slight detour when we figured out we didn’t want to try freeclimbing up a 50-60 foot rockface with bikes (and would rather simply take the road we passed). We found the checkpoint at the top of the hill and realized that the other checkpoints were further uphill - way over there - by the Windmill. Again we made an executive decision to enjoy the view from where we were, and head back to transition to start the paddling leg.
Leg 6 - Paddling
I write paddling. In reality it felt like a little paddling with a lot of portaging. We started with a choice of going upstream or downstream and chose up with the intent to head downstream if our light held out. During this trek we: portaged over a 6-8 foot dam, a lot water area, the camp road river bridge, and another 3 foot dam - each way, with a pair of tandem kayaks. We found our checkpoints and headed back to TA just as dusk was setting in.
Leg 7 - Climbing & Ropes
A chance to rest, relax, have a bit of fun and mix up the race. Trekking to the base of the cliffs we found out we’d be climbing, then traversing, then rapelling back down. The beginning found us hanging out with a few other teams while waiting in line for the ropes. The ten foot rope ladder to get to the start of the climb seemed to give the most problem to the most people, twisting and throwing people into the rock and generally trying to make us with desperately for a couple bolts to attach the thing to. Thankfully for us (and the teams in front of us), Steve and another larger guy acted as counterbalances and helped people scramble up. A quick traverse, wandering around wondering if we were on the right path, a late night run-in with other campers on a night hike, and we finally found the rappelling are. The rest of my team made it down…and I sat there waiting for another figure 8 to make it back up. Finally it was over the edge where my legs screamed at me that they missed the padded harnesses of my earlier life and I insisted and cajoled things through to the bottom. Back to TA.
There’s is nothing quite like climbing and rappelling in the dark with no more light than your headlamp. Granted, we were running pretty significant headlamps. But…climbing into darkness with only your teammate’s lamps shining above you, traversing across a dark cliff (yes, we were clipped to lines), rappelling into what is effectively a black hole until you reach the bottom and the pool of lights from your mates…and through it all the soft glow of the moon and stars swirling about. It’s times like those that make this time so incredibly unique and enjoyable.
Leg 8 - Biking and/or Trekking
We took account of everyone, debated, and finally decided that we were going to trek this leg. A couple of us were stiffening up and none of us looked kindly on biking up the hill to the windmill…yet again…as our best set of checkpoints lay that direction. Up the hill, past the windmill, and finally to the checkpoint at the 10 foot with crazy-scaffolding-on-each-side fence. We sat there for a few minutes watching, and helping, another team get there bikes and themselves up and over the fence. Then it was back to the windmill, where we saw a folding table by it’s lonesome. Not wanting to leave it feeling unused or unloved, we spent the next 20 or so minutes simply sitting there, or laying down, staring at the stars, chatting, and enjoying the fact that it was nearing 1am, Sunday morning. We’d been racing for close to 17 hours…yet for a time we were able to forget it all, forget the other teams, and enjoy the immense solitude and peace in that place before heading back down.
Final Leg - Trekking
Our final leg found us again trekking. We mapped the checkpoints up toward the windmill, and those closer to the river, and decided a change of scenery would be good. Heading out of transition we jogged along with anther couple teams for a bit before splitting. Our goal was one checkpoint and then calling it. By this time most of us were working through blistered feet (though remarkably nothing worse) and were simply getting to be dead tired. We thought we could simply follow the riverbank up to an inlet and streambed we needed - until we found out we’d be scaling vertical walls. There was some debate about simply jumping in the river and swimming, or hacking through the underbrush, and in the end we hacked our way to the streambed. A couple hikes up and down with no luck and, thinking about the cave,we made one more trek further up that we figured we needed to go (as in a lot further) and finally found our checkpoint…and a hole under the fence…and a nice easy path back to the road from which we’d started (and had missed the path by a mere 20-30 feet). There was a bit of a scare and quick scrambling over a fence when we realized we were actually inside the fence with the cows/bulls (couldn’t tell in the dark - but weren’t taking chances). A quick hike back to transition and we were able to turn in our passport and call the race done just before 3am - 18 hours and 55 minutes after the race start.
We’d made our goal - finishing the race officially (with all four team members). We soon found out that we made our other goal of not coming in last.
Thinking back, I should have headed back to transition and slept. Instead I decided to pack it up and head back, hoping to make Austin in time for a friend’s race. I was wide awake and having a blast. I was not, however, considering that by this point I had effectively been up for 44 hours. The drive back was my first (and last) bout with NoDoze. The amusing part is that I was thinking 1 pill = 1 cup of coffee, but am used to my caffeine in a mocha form when it happens at all, so I thought nothing of popping 3-4 pills for the drive home. Now I know what it’s like to be wired out of your mind…
Overall the race was an amazing experience. I knew I’d be able to cover the distance, just not how fast or how well. I hadn’t been training much except for running and some random biking and was mainly pulling from what I could do on any standard day. Combined with how the race went - that make me very happy with where I am right now. Shawn, Steve, and Claudia were wonderful. Throughout the day we were keeping each other up, refusing to go on without the entire team, and remembering & reminding each other that we’re simply here to have fun, know we’re under-prepared, and looking forward to a fun time. Nutrition-wise I went with my standard Ironman formula of Infinit for most of the day, with a bit of real food tossed in here and there. For future races I’ll bring more pizza and other assortments of real food 
I felt great throughout the entire day and got everything my body needed, but there’s nothing like something substantial when you’re sitting at hour 16 in the race.