Race Report: The 2024 Maine Summer Adventure Race 8 Hour
It was scary to say out loud, "we're trying to win the 8-hour race this year." We've raced for two years, but always at a very comfortable, casual pace, and without physically training much ahead of time. This year we wanted to win; I trained my running, Jessica trained her biking. In adventure racing, we'd never tried trying. This was new.
An email before the race said, "most teams in all of our races will not get all checkpoints (i.e. “clear the course”), meaning they will need to make strategic choices throughout the race about which checkpoints to go for and which ones to skip." I asked the race directors if it was clearable, Cliff said, "you tell us." We looked at the maps and it looked like it was. The trick would be a collection of four points in the far southeast part of the map — would we have time to make it all the way there (~10k) and back? We knew it would depend on how clean our navigation was. We made a plan A to clear the course, we made a plan B to get 19 strategic checkpoints. We saw an opportunity to get from one peninsula to another by carrying our bikes across a mud flat/pond instead of biking 5k ... (WHO ARE WE?!?) but race director Kate clarified they were going to make that against the rules for our own wellbeing. Adventure racers only get about an hour with maps before the race — it's probably the most important hour. In the five races I'd done, I'd never felt like I left that hour knowing the plan or how the pieces fit together. This was different, we both agreed on a plan and understood the course. We had time(!) so while Meow highlighted bike routes, I took bearings from one CP to another and wrote them on my maps to make my compass work easier later. These are things we'd *heard* about doing, but never had the time, knowledge and skills to execute until now.
I've had a head cold for a week, and did you know DayQuil liquidgels will melt in your pocket if it's hot enough? They will.
Anyway. The race started on bikes, to get us to the kayaks. We followed the peloton, which was nice to not have to navigate — even after six races neither of us have bought a "bike board" to put a map on, so bike nav for us looks like a map in one hand and hoping we won't need both sets of brakes. We made it to the boats and are assigned a tandem, which is great for us. I got in back to steer, Meow navigated in the front. New Meadows River was quiet, calm, and the tide floated us toward our goals. A Great Blue Heron perched on a white orb buoy, osprey struggled to achieve altitude under the weight of the fish they clutched, a seal poked its head out. A perfect morning on the water. There were no checkpoints on this leg, but we had to paddle down-river to a bridge where the water gets squeezed fast. We watched a single kayak ahead of us get pushed 100 feet backward. We hugged the shore, paddled hard and made it to the easy side of the river. It's difficult to know if you should push the first leg. There's a lot of race left and people who go out too hot often don't do well. We paddled at a moderate pace, ending in the middle of the pack. We're 90 minutes in.
Trekking was next. We needed to get from here to the bike pick-up, nabbing several CPs along the way. While everyone else went right, we headed left. This was Meow's strategy to save time later — a little backtracking now (300m) would save us time later by letting us get a CP by foot instead of by bike. It was scary because this wasn't an easy CP, it was in the woods, off-trail, without a big defining feature (ex: pond, hill). My compass work would need to be clean. It was. From there we had some easier CPs to grab with hints such as "rock wall" and "bridge" nice defined features we could mostly access by trail. Trail meant running. We jogged each trail, and walked the bushwhacks. We were in the woods near the Naval base, which means ... fences. Once we found our last trek CP and were ready for biking, we found ourselves literally fenced in. I saw people walking the road and asked, "are we near a break in the fence?" And they helped guide us to freedom.
Once on the bikes, I took over navigation and headed south. "Everyone else is going that way," Meow said. It's an anxiety-inducing moment as a navigator to see everyone veer from your path — probably more as a woman navigator (it feels like women navigators are always asking, "am I sure I'm right?" which is a strength, imo). I said, "we're going South, and it's that way." We ventured off alone down a long trail to more CPs, and passed a race photographer — surely a good sign. Racers were allowed to bike or hike these points, and we saved some time by biking 80% of the way, then ditching our bikes in the woods to run in and punch the CPs. At one point in here I pointed to an orienteering flag so Meow would go get it while I stood in the woods plotting how to get to the next CP. She yelled that it wasn't there, and that's when I realized I'd instructed her to someone's orange backpack and not a flag. Oops. We found it a minute later, up a re-entrant.
From the bike-trek, we had to head to another nature preserve. It was 200m from us, but it was a classic Maine "you can't get there from here" where we had to bike 5.5k around the Naval base instead (this was the mud flat we'd wanted to bike-whack through). Our later bikes — if we could manage them all — would be 10k and 5k, so this was a good time to find our pace to time out future legs. This would help us determine if we could clear the course or not. It was approaching noon and we had 11 CPs left but they were in sets of three, four and four in three far'ish flung locations. We were running low on water, and there wasn't much (any?) freshwater available to filter. A volunteer at the nature preserve gave us some more, which put us back into safety. We ditched the bikes and ran on flat, grassy paths to oceanside CPs. Between CPs I ate a sandwich. We walked for a bit so I wouldn't lose it. But we felt we were beginning to run low on time, despite clean navigation. The weather approached 90*. We had less than four hours left, and had to hit our farther-flung areas.
This was the part of the race I felt strategically torn by. We had two locations left — one far away, one near the finish line — both had four CPs. Our ideal was to go far away, grab four, then grab the four near the finish line (easing panic about being late, because it was a 3 minute bike ride). But what if we only had time for one location? If that was the case, it would be smarter to get the nearby four and just finish early. We decided to be brave. We were going to try to clear the course. We would only know if this was the right choice after it was all said and done.
We've had to really suffer in some adventure races on the bike — including last year's 24-hour Maine AR, where we biked from Bath to Popham (30-40 miles). This year's 24-hour racers had to bike 70+ miles. Riding a mountain bike on a paved road is incredibly unpleasant, if you ask me. As we approached our "long bike" of 10k (6.5 miles), it was a little stressful due to time constraints, but also laughably manageable because of how pleasant, flat and short it was. We were probably both thinking of our friends on the 24-hour who were biking to Lisbon Falls for Moxie Fest and Bradbury. Biking was literally breezy, allowing our bodies to cool a bit.
We arrived at an oceanside meadow, where we'd have more orienteering. Meow nav'd the bike commute, so I got to nav the fields. It was the hottest point of the day, and we were exposed. We started jogging, but our hearts were beating way faster than was warranted (~190 bpm). I jogged as my diaphragm cramped, a new sensation for me. It was odd ... my fitness was there, but for some reason my heart rate would spike at a moderate jog. Surely there's heat/exercise science behind this that some of you can explain to me. I'd been training my running, and "should" have been able to go faster, longer, but we also knew heat stroke would kill our race too. So we walk-jogged. This leg felt like the most effortful, physically. Two of the four of these CPs were tricky for us. One was one a spur (clue: ledge), and after circling a big ledgy spur for a bit, I went back to the field, saw footprints and followed them to the CP. It's not honorable, but it counts just the same. The other was at the tip of a peninsula. The map indicated it was in the woods, but the clue was "ledge" again ... and what's more ledgey than Maine's coastline? One woman jumped in the water searching for it. I backtracked into the woods while Meow looked by the ocean. Then I heard, "RICHARD. RICHARD. RICHARD!!!!!" .... a good clue that these men put their CP passport in Richard's hands. I followed the loud men to the CP. Again: Was it honorable? No. Would I have found it in a couple minutes without the loud men? Yeah. But hey, if you want to save me a few minutes I won't fight you. We walk-jogged back to the bikes. We'd agreed we needed to leave this place by 3:10 — it was 2:30. It looked like we could do it. If we kept clean navigation, we could clear the course.
But there's one leg that's been traditionally very difficult for us and it's mountain-bike navigation. The trails are squiggly and close together, not marked by colors. On our USGS maps, three mountain bike trails squish into one blurry bold line. It's also pretty impossible to use a compass on these trails because they purposely weave left right and up and down. I suggested we ditch the bikes and treat it like a bushwack, ignoring the trails. We didn't. We took two long, flat bike trails to two easy CPS. We saw Lou and Lael who were wrapping up their 3-hour race and yelled a jovial "WOO." Lael woo'd back. The last two CPs were going to be tricky. I found a local, non-AR map of the area posted on the trail and cross-referenced it. One CP should be on the blue trail. We were burning time now, it was 3 p.m. Meow suggested we just ride the entire blue trail; we did and we found it. Our last CP was tricky and we disagreed on where we were. I checked a nearby road, saw a creek (the clue was creek); we walked the brook and that led us to our last CP. Meow brought us back to the finish line by biking roads and we wrapped around 3:35 p.m. It felt wildly different than 365 days before when we'd biked across the same green to the finish line, arriving an hour late, grumpy and tired. This time, I was thinking, "did we win?"
That's a fun and difficult part of adventure racing: Because you choose your own course, and because you can skip CPs, you often can't know if you're doing well compared to other teams until the award ceremony. Maybe it looks like they're ahead of you ... but did they skip a CP? The team with the most CPs wins (and after that it goes to the most CPs in the least time). Lael and Lou were sitting in shady grass, having finished their race. Lou let me know I had a heat rash, while I picked two ticks off my ankles. They also had insider info: We didn't win the 8-hour overall. A mixed-gender team finished earlier. We'd later find out they finished nearly two hours earlier than we had, which seems absolutely ... aspirational, verging on impossible. "How could we have shaved 2 HOURS off?" I asked. Be faster everywhere, I guess.
We wanted to win overall, and we didn't. But there was still our division. When they announced third place in the women's division, the team didn't clear the course. Neither did second place. We were the only women's team to do it, winning the division. I'm not sure how we did overall because the results haven't been published yet. We gave a full effort.
This was my first time on a two-person team. It changed the dynamics a lot. On a traditional four-person team you tend to have one lead navigator and a back-up — all four people shouldn't be weighing in on the maps, that would make every decision take so long. But, in my heart, it feels like navigation = owning your race. I think better racers would disagree with those feelings. Us splitting navigation, and both being back-ups to each other, made it feel like we were both equally invested in decision-making, strategy, nav. We both knew the plan, the back-up plan, how to execute it all. We both had our cut-off times for sections in our heads; one person didn't need to take on the stress or nagging. "Flow," I guess. We were in flow. In roller derby I've always said that it matters if friends are on the track together; friends take care of each other on a team far better than 'just teammates' whether you mean to or not. There's trust there. Rings true.
I feel the race was an accurate reflection of our skills and our fitness. Our navigation was mostly clean, with minor errors on maybe four checkpoints (but even so, only ever about 50m off), our biking and running was as fast as our bodies would allow given the heat, our nutrition including electrolytes was great. It was challenging, but fun. It turns out knowing things and having stuff really matters. We still don't have bike boards, or the fancy watch that helps you navigate, or really nice easier-to-ride bikes. Last year we both invested a lot into this sport — literal stuff (bikes, water purifiers, knives, dry bags, clothing, backpacks ...), and time (AR development team, orienteering meets, reading, mountain bike practice, map work, training how to fuel while running). This race felt like we finally got to reap the rewards of those investments. When we packed up the car, the woman next to us (also on an all-women's) team said, "I didn't know you two were the elites."
Meow and I agreed this is the most fun we've had in a race. Intuitively, walking an adventure race and taking it easy and eating snacks while gabbing on a beautiful course *sounds* more fun to me, even now ... but fun and satisfaction aren't quite the same thing. I'm incredibly satisfied with and proud of this race because of the work we put into it for months (arguably two years?) leading up to it, and the exhausting effort on the actual day. We walked in wondering, "are we good enough to clear this?" We were.
Thank you Strong Machine Adventure Racing for the great race, and for training us up for the last year
(If this sounds fun to you, you should sign up for next year's 3-hour or 8-hour 2024 Maine Summer Adventure Race.)
