Written by Scott Bourgeois & Erik Fuentes
Hiking: 47.4 miles, Rowing: 48.83 miles, MTB: 104 miles - 70 hours and change
I’ve been thinking long and hard as Erik and I drive home from Florida about how to write up a race report for this event. I’ve had plenty of people (maybe 3) reach out and say they couldn’t wait to read it. Listen, I have no idea how to do a race report on this event. Let’s face it y’all, I am already way to wordy on my race reports. For this I think what I am going to do is give some first impressions of this sport compared to triathlon and also share a few stories of things that happened along the way. Through this I am going to try to paint a picture of what an insane and incredible event this was.
A little comparison to start. Both the tri community and the AR community are top notch. Both are filled with inspirational people doing things that seem impossible. But after a short time, you find yourself doing these things that were once “impossible.”
There was a 13 year old out here doing this event, this 72 hour Adventure Race, with his dad. Wow! Just wow. Oh yeah, by the way, he did it last year too. 😳 The AR community skews more military than IM. Navigating and orienteering come with the territory for those in the military as it is part of their training. I can’t tell you how many military or former military, ex-Rangers, cops or what have you, we ran into out on the trails. Helping other teams out is just how it’s done for the vast majority of the teams.
As you’re wandering around the wilderness at night, lost. You spot another team. You both pull out your maps and ask where they think you are and share details and explanations of which I don’t understand. They are using terms I don’t even know how to google. Guys! These navigators, are just so impressive. Erik and I are both going to sign up to learn orienteering and take some classes. At different points in the race, some of the teams latched on to us or we latched on to them. Depending on how secure we were about our position, which varies wildly depending on how much sleep your navigator got. Also, there were 26 maps I think. Some things you pass like an island or a trail are not on the map. You can imagine how this comes into play when a wrong turn can add hours to the current leg you are on. Consider what a few more hours does to morale or even the physical deterioration that each team mate was battling. It’s just bananas.
Over the last 3 days, I have gotten very little sleep. We added it up. My total came in under 4 hours. I am amazed at our bodies and what they can do. However, I am also amazed at the physiologic limits and safety backups your body has. We tested those limits during this event. I learned that hallucinations can and do happen to almost all of us at some point during many legs of this race. Especially at night. At one point I saw a purse on the side of a trail I was hiking on. I went over to open it to see if there was any cash. When I bent down, which wasn’t easy, I noticed it was only a small branch with a lone pine needle on it. The guy I was walking with didn’t seem bothered at all when I told him about the purse. I learned that stopping mid bike ride and laying on the side of a trail, the side of a river, or on the concrete of a bike trail and sleeping for 15 minutes has an amazing outcome on your mental acuity. However this doesn’t last. I also learned that after an extended period of exercise without sleep, your body can and will override you and you fall asleep while standing, paddling a canoe, or even riding a bike. All of these happened to me for brief periods. Good news, no bad outcomes as it was only briefly. At one point during the final leg of this race. We had 22 miles left to go. It was dark. It was foggy.
I was calling out the miles to try and stay awake and keep the other guys involved by having them repeat it back to me. We are now 2 teams of 3 who joined and started working together. So we were almost to that crucial half way home point on this 40 mile bike ride. Just before we got to that 20 mile distance of half way, one of our team says “Guys, I can’t go anymore, I am falling asleep riding.” He proceeds to stop his bike, drop his back pack, lays his bike over and he lays down on the side of the paved bike path. He was asleep in seconds. None of use argued or said anything. We all just stopped and repeated exactly what he did. We all dropped our bikes and laid down on the bike path and all rapidly went into deep sleep. Like it was the most normal thing in the world. Nothing to see here. Just 6 men and their bikes on the side of the trail SLEEPING!
Other groups rode past us like it was totally normal. 15 minutes go by, I get startled awake by some screeching disc brakes from a passing group and I jump up! I thought I was going to die y’all. I woke up everyone else and we were all back riding within 5 minutes. All much fresher. Ready to finish this thing! Wild. Just absolutely wild.
As far as comparison goes. In the area of transition, guys AR beats triathlon in every way. In transition in triathlon, you’re in, you’re out. Record time. In AR, there are bodies lying everywhere like they had been shot by a tranquilizer gun. Volunteers cook on grills for the athletes to refuel. Ramen, chips, quesadillas, hot dogs, hamburgers, cookies, sodas, Gatorade and every imaginable snack. All there for you to take as many as you need to sustain you through the next leg or until you make it to your next transition area or TA. And gear, so much gear!! I loved being in transition!
As in Ironman, mindset is key. Going into this race, we when we finally got the breakdown, we all saw that 40-45 mile paddle section. Which was gonna take 11-13 hours. We estimated 12 hours for our team. Getting into that boat at just before sunset with the right mindset was tough. Plus you better have the right gear, food and water to make it that long. We knew we were gonna have to paddle through the night. That was plan A. About 7 hours into it. There was a water stop so we planned to get out fill up and sleep for one hour so we could continue on. On the final leg of the first half of the paddle I got wet. I brought hiking pants and a long sleeve shirt and also a fleece top. All were soaked. I started shivering. I was cold and incoherent. All I could muster was to stand there and shiver when we got out of the boat at that half way point. Luckily Erik let me use his safety blanket as I didn’t pack mine because “I shouldn’t need it because the temp was only going to be in the high 50’s”. What a dumb ass mistake that was. He also helped me get my wetclothes and gave me his nice warm, dry fleece top and helped me collapse in the dirt on the side of the river. I used my life jacket as a pillow. It was a blissful 1 hour sleep. Considering Erik uses a blanket at my house when we meet to watch movies, I’m sure Erik was really looking forward to his nice warm, dry fleece. Selfless. After an hour, we woke up. They then put me back in the canoe.
I could not row yet. So we used a tow cable and the other teams (Erik and another guy were in a canoe together at this point) towed me and Doug for a good hour. Then I regained my snap and started rowing again after some encouragement that I need to move to generate body heat. Also Doug gave me some 80 year old men’s deodorant tasting caffeine gum and I was back baby! Making jokes, paddling, encouraging, feeling good! That’s the thing, everyone is gonna be down at some point. The other guys on the team are there to pick you up. You have to accept it. You have to know when you’re feeling bad, it won’t be forever. You have to just slow down and correct whatever needs to be done and then keep moving forward. Anyway, so after all this we checked the map and noticed our 12 hour paddle leg was going to be more like 18 hours! The mindset needed to digest that piece of information and keep going with a positive outlook and just grind is unbelievable. And we all just adapted and moved forward. Side note: none of our legs worked very well as we tried to stand after sitting down in a canoe for that many hours. We looked like baby giraffes walking for the first time as we turned in our canoe.
Honestly, I am so proud of us. None of us checked out. All of us were down at some point. There were blisters, ticks, chaffing, dehydration, sunburn, hypothermia, hunger, lack of sleep, hallucinations, navigation errors, and self doubt. In addition to this, there was team work, vulnerability, sacrifice, camaraderie, encouragement, dedication, friendships started, focus and memories made. All of us kept moving. Epic. Inspired. Just so grateful.