Big Chill Race Report by:JDog

“We are going to milk it for all it’s worth,” I kept saying after every mistake or misfortunate we ran into or plunged upon ourselves. We were four hours into the paddle when the pain began to arise from our arms and back on the paddle leg of this race. At this point we were about six hours and forty five minutes into the entire race; a race that would prove to conquer us and drive us back to our wits faster than a horse running back to the barn.

Race starts at 10am sharp with the sound of the female race director bellowing through the megaphone. She warns us to pack enough food to last 15 hours so we know this first leg is going to be a monster. The morning is a crisp cool morning with gusts of wind reaching well over 30mph and producing a bone chilling wind chill factor on any exposed skin. She begins by giving us an envelope with our first set of directions inside. We stand there with our teams of four waiting in anticipation for the horn to blow. The count down begins and race is on. Each team shreds through their envelope to discover the start of the course. In the envelope there are Bastrop City Maps, Tourist Guides, and tourist maps, with one clue on the place we need to go to get our next clue. This type of start is fun in adventure racing because you have to think quick and get there before everyone else. If not there could be a bottle neck at any special test the director might throw at you. All at once like a wild buffalo stampede each team is off in the same direction to make it to the next clue. At this clue we have to catch a goat in an arena and bring it to the volunteer in the middle. So without even thinking about it I jumped the pipe fence and took off to catch a kid. This was easy because I just corned the goat herd as other racers frolicked after them aimlessly. Now for the next clue; we had to find the opera house and take 4 canned goods. Then, we had to complete a puzzle for the next clue. This section of the course took us about 1 hour and 45 minutes because we were not able to run due to an injured teammate. It wasn’t that big of deal that we couldn’t run because after all this was a 24 hour race and we needed to conserve as much energy as possible. So we raced for all the clues and locations in town so that we could advance to the next leg. The last part of this leg we received our large water proof topo maps, the first two legs of the race, and the coordinates to go with them.

The next leg is the paddle leg. We launched our two kayaks at about 11:45am Saturday morning. We paddled down stream in on the Colorado River for about 20+ miles. This is where most of our problems began. We started out ok and feeling pretty good. We only had 3 check points to find on this leg but they are really far apart and when I say far apart I mean about 2-2.5 hours apart. Crazy! Our paddling vessles were not the right equipment for a race of this distance. One kayak weighed about 95lbs and the other about 70lbs with beams of about 32inches wide. That’s huge for a paddle this long. The more weight you have and the wider the beam the more drag you have. The more drag you have the more work you do and the more work you do the more pain you feel. Our kayaks were our remedy for being miserable on the water. At CP2 on the water we did have to get out of the boats and go find 4 quick points that had special letters on them that we had to spell and bring back to the boat docking area at the CP. The word we had to spell was duet. This was good to do because it warmed our bodies and gave our shoulders a much needed rest.

Now it’s off to CP3 of the paddle. The end is in sight, or is it? The map that we had used a datum of like 1983; so what that means is that the map hasn’t been updated since 1983. As we get closer to our final paddle CP we know to look for a bridge that crosses over the river. You can’t miss it, it is an obvious bridge. Finally we see it, but something isn’t quite right, it is way too close to a power just north of the bridge, but I don’t think anything of it and begin to paddle stronger to reach the bridge. About this time it is getting dark and it’s time to break the glow sticks and bring out the headlamps. Come to find out the area, Smithville, had added a new loop and that first bridge that we saw was the loop bridge. Talk about depressing! So here we are in a miserable situation with our 95 lb kayak that I am ready to sink at this point and still not there yet. This leg ended up taking us about 7 hours. But to our surprise at the end of this paddle were to angels waiting on us cheering us on. These two angelic, shadows gleaming in the dark where next to CP3. They were Katrina and Diana our support crew, two of our spouses. We could not have gone as far as we did without them. We love you guys!!! Your support for us kept us going and we needed it!

It’s dark now and we land our kayaks and start getting ready for the bike leg of the event. At first we aren’t quite sure where we are but we quickly figure it out. The reason for not knowing exactly where we were was because the CP coordinates for CP3 the directors gave us were wrong.(COME TO FIND OUT THEY WERE RIGHT ON, sorry to blame the race director, it was us again) We still have CP4 and CP5 to get in this first leg but we get them on the bike. The bad part about this is we remember that for the second leg, the bike leg, the directions say NO TRAVEL ON HWY 71 IS PERMITTED. So because we are on the bikes we automatically, without looking at the stupid clue sheet, conclude that we can’t travel on Hwy 71 to CP4 and CP5, so the road we need to get us to CP4 must be in this parking lot. Right? Wrong! We wheeled around the stupid area at night looking for this stupid road that doesn’t exist thinking it has to be there because we can’t travel on 71. We decide we will just get in the grass beside 71 and if we get disqualified then oh well! So we start out doing that, but being the good, rule abiding racers that we are we feel guilty and decide to turn back around one more time just to double check. The grass was a HUGE mistake. We ended up getting three flat tires on our bikes. Lesley, Chris and Rodney all got flats at the SAME time. To top it off our brainless CO2 would not work correctly and it wouldn’t completely fill a tire up. And guess what, none of us brought a mini hand pump so we were OUT of air. We were just about to give up when another team came to our rescue with a mini hand pump. So we aired up our tires and headed for 71. This time we said forget it, we are getting on 71 whether or not it is allowed. So we did that and then I had a brain flash. Duhhhh!! the clue for leg one didn’t say anything about not traveling on 71 just for leg 2 you couldn’t travel on 71. And we were still on leg 1. AHHHHHHH its times like that, that make me want to scream and yell like I did when my brothers would shoot my GI Joe men into orbit with bottle rockets. I was mad, not at the race directors, but at myself.

So now we are off to Rocky Hill ranch where there is superb single track bike trails. We have several points to get here at night then we are headed back to the transition area. I went ahead and transferred the approximate location of the CPs from the topo map to the Rocky Hill Ranch trail map so that it wasn’t a total guessing game with the location of the CP and which trail we should take to get there. This proved to be a success. We struggled with some points but for the most part found everything without any problem. Good job Rodo! Once we found all the CPs it was off to the TA, then suddenly cccsssshhhhh…. We have another flat tire! And no air to fix it with. So I get my phone out and call Diana, “Hey we just had another flat and can’t fix it so we are going to drop out, wait what’s that I think I see a light in the distance. Let me call you back later we might still be in this.” Team 118 pulls up and offers some assistance and loans us a co2 pump and some co2, awesome! We fix the tire and we are off again. We travel on park road 10 I think or it maybe park road 1. I didn’t have the map at this point so I don’t remember exactly. This road is long hilly and brutal. Towards the end Rodney is shot but, Chris is feeling good because this is his strong point. Lesley is hanging on with Chris because she just finished an Ironman and is in excellent shape. I’m just trying to hang on and so is Rodney. About 2 miles before the TA my front tire goes flat so I decide to just roll down the down hills and walk the up hills. This worked and we finally made it back.

We checked in and we had to put together a puzzle that was a map of Bastrop State Park. On that puzzle map there were four CPs that we had to transfer to another map and then trek/run to those CPs. Before we got those CPs Katrina had the best meal of our lives waiting for us. It was exactly what kept us going, it’s what helped us “milk it for all its worth.” Diana was there giving support to us also and the good Lord knows I couldn’t have made it without her. So now we are off to get the CPs. We make several mistakes here but like I said, at this point “we are going to milk it for all it’s worth.” And that we did! Up to this point we had gotten all the CPs and were going strong but running out of time.

We make it back in and the director gives us the wrong sheet, she gave us the final leg sheet and I thought we actually might have a chance when she did that, but she raced back to me to get it from me and give me the right leg. Another mountain bike leg! WE decide to give up getting all the CPs and just get the closest one which ends up being the ropes course CP. We do that and come straight back hoping that we can get at least one CP from the next leg so that we can be officially ranked.

She gives us the last leg sheet and we only have 1hour and 30 minutes to finish. We plot the closest point and….. You guessed it too far away. So at this point we realize, in utter disappointment that we are not going to be ranked. It would have taken us 2.5 hours to get the closest CP on the last leg. Oh well…

We learned a lot during the course of this race. I realized even more so that I really do need a new kayak if I’m going to race that distance again. Chris learned that 24’s just aren’t his cup of tea and right now I wouldn’t disagree with him myself. But I’m young and dumb and want some more. Lesley is a great racing partner because she is strong and offers good advice. She also isn’t afraid to speak up amongst a bunch of guys. Rodney is always fun to race with as well. We normally do a really good job of navigating together. This race we just didn’t have it. Maybe next time…

We had fun, but what killed us was poor equipment, direction misinterpretation, a bad decision making, but what kept us going was each other and that is what this sports all about.