Adventure Race, July 27th, 2013

Canoe staging area

The RockStar Adventure Race at Bark lake (in the Haliburton area) was once again a great adventure!

A perfect place in the wilderness for such an event, at a wonderful facility, with amazing organization.  There were two races taking place ... the 8 Hour Race (from 11am - 7pm) and the 4 Hour Race (from 2pm - 6pm) which ran like clockwork.  Hats off to the organizers and volunteers who made this happen so efficiently!

These are team events for teams of 2 or 3 in the Men's, Women's, and Mixed categories.  Our team of 3 men included me, Andy Shutler and Keith Colwell.  Although this was our second year at this event, none of us train for endurance events like this.  We don't regularly bike long distances on roads or rough terrain, run long distances on roads or trails, or practice our paddling skills.  We simply participate in the event to challenge ourselves and to put our regular training to the test.  And it's a lot of fun .... I highly recommend it!

Drop off area for bikes

Our 8 Hour Race started with a 25km mountain bike ride.  To get to the start of this ride our bikes were loaded on trucks and we were loaded on buses.  We were brought out to the starting area in the middle of nowhere, where we were lined up for the 11:00am start.

The first section was on rough ATV trails which were hilly, rocky, wet, muddy and generally punishing ... especially for guys who are not skilled at riding them!  Aside from minor slips and scares, we managed to finish the section without incident and in reasonably good time.  The rest of the ride was on gravel and paved roads in the Haliburton hills leading back to the facility, finishing with a 4.5 km stretch uphill.

Transition area after bike ride

Back at the Transition area at the main site, we changed gear for the canoe and trek portion of the race. Earlier in the morning, at breakfast, we were given an area map with which we planned our route for getting to as many checkpoints as we could in the remaining time.  Once our gear was switched over we started on that plan, which consisted of canoeing to different sections on the lake and then setting out from those points on foot to get to the various checkpoints.  Some were close to where we landed by canoe, some were much deeper in the woods.

Andy and Keith at Checkpoint 34

The longest trekking section took us away from the canoe for about 2.5 hours and was a mix of hilly ATV trails, smaller indistinguishable trails, and "bushwacking" through dense forest to find some well hidden checkpoints. Other trekking sections were shorter in distance, but were mostly "bushwacking" all the way.  Many thanks to our Chef Navigator Andy, who is a wizard at navigating through this terrain and getting us directly to the checkpoints.

In the end we were exhausted, but very happy with our performance.  Despite not training specifically for this event and not having done it for a full year, we did better this year!  Our riding had improved, our paddling had improved, and our endurance had improved.  We ran far more this year than we did last year and covered a greater distance.

We didn't win the event by a longshot ... there were a lot of very hard core endurance event competitors there ... but we weren't that far behind most and weren't the last.  For us it was a big WIN!

Personally, I feel our performance proves that "training for life" the way that we do allows us to challenge ourselves in unusual ways and manage very well.

Sure, I am tired and very sore today.  I don't train for more than 1.5 hours at a time (other than the occasional training seminar or workshop), so an annual 8 hour event like this will be hard for me and is going to "hurt".  But I have no injuries, just some minor scrapes and bruises, and feel great otherwise.  A few days of proper recovery and soft tissue work and I will be "as good as new"!