Rev 3 Sprint 15 April 2011
As usual I found myself trying to find something to do while on a weeklong business trip. In the last minute I borrowed my friend’s wife’s bike and my friend’s son as a partner, signed up for the Rev 3 Sprint and headed to Shenandoah State Park. Everything was looking promising except the weather that ended up being torrential downpours. Lucky for us most of the race was only a light rain if anything.
Rev 3 made the difficult decision of pulling the canoe section out of the race at the last minute. This was the best decision because, it would have been a nice white water rapid going down and no way possible to paddle back up the river.
The race started with a one mile run as the prologue. Since running is my weakness due to my back injury I was not looking forward to it. We still finished the prologue in the top ten teams and quickly transitioned to Mountain Bikes. There were several teams ahead of us but by the time we got to the first point, an optional challenge, we were in second.
The challenge was interesting. We wore wristbands that we put a rope through. We had to follow the rope through a small obstacle course of picnic tables, barrels, and trees. We quickly got back on course and headed to our first of four mountain bike points.
The mountain bike section was fun and our strongest part. I quickly realized I was out of shape as we headed up those hills. We got the first point as one of the top three teams. One of the other teams was rocking ahead and I knew it would be difficult to catch them. On the way to the second point one of the racers on the lead teams broke his derailleur. That was the last time I saw them. That left another team and ours to lead the muddy mountain bike portion. They were stronger going up hill so they always got to the point first, but we rocked the downhill and always made it to the bottom first, even when Hunter did a front flip over his handlebars. We cleared the mountain bike portion in 2.5 hours only minutes ahead of the other team we had been neck in neck with since the beginning of the race.
We all transitioned to foot and headed out to get the trek points. This was my weakest part. I cannot run fast due to my injury; YET, I will be working on that. Once I can run again watch out. I took a shortcut to get one point, but since the maps did not have contour lines I did not realize even though the trails were next to each other on the map they was a 200 foot elevation difference and we were on the wrong end. We had no choice but to climb this crazy steep hill. By this time were getting spent on energy. We climbed on our hands and knees to the top of the hill and grabbed the point. We got the two mandatory and only one of the four optional points then headed back.
The last 30 minutes felt like a week, like I was stuck in a dream unable to get closer to the finish line. Each bend in the trail only reviled another bend to go around. On the second to last bend we were neck and neck with two other teams and we decided to run across this swampy area straight to the finish line instead of staying on the road. The short cut worked, we finished before the other teams we were running with, but we were three minutes late.
For each minute we were late we lost one point. Since the race was only a total of 15 points, we missed three trek checkpoints, and minus our 3 point penalty we received a total 9 points. Overall we rocked it and had a lot of fun. The biggest lesson I learned is to make sure you manage your time and strategize to figure out what points you actually need to finish in time. We each gave it 100% and never stopped for a break during the entire four hours. I recommend any sprint adventure race for people who are trying to figure out the sport. Great Job Hunter!
