Cyclewerx Adventure Racing Team

Ozark Trail

2011-09-26T06:33:00.001-07:00

Well I was up at the Berryman on Saturday, Sept 24 and Sunday, 25th, manning a Checkpoint for the 36 hour race of the Berryman Adventure, and of course, being in the vicinity of "ground zero" for Missouri's finest mountain biking, I HAD to take the bike along for some post-race fun for myself.
The biggest and toughest decision for me was, "Which trail should I hit?" Berryman Trail, Council Bluffs loop, Trace Creek, or Middlefork? Decisions, decisions.
Well it was sunny and cool Sunday morning as I drove from Bass River Resort towards Potosi, and it clouded up fast, really wicked fast. Sure enough, without notice, it began raining. It was not an isolated shower, this was a "socked in and not going anywhere for a while" type rain. Well that made my decision even easier. The Middlefork trail has a really small rock/chat type trail surface with incredible trail design allowing it to resist mucking up during a rain, and sheds water very well.

Despite the constant light rain and 51 degree temps, I was dressed properly and made the most of it. It was a good ride. Looking forward to going back to the Middlefork very soon. The guys and gals who laid out that trail design and cut it in should be put into the IMBA Hall of Fame.

post by Bryan Greaser

Broemmelsiek 'almost' race'

2011-06-26T18:51:00.000-07:00

Well my bud Matt O and I headed to the Lou Saturday morning with the fam's to spend a nice day at the STL Zoo and many other fun things, spent the night in a hotel, woke up to a delightful stlbiking post on the message board that the Broemmelsiek race was still ON! Right on! We stayed in the Brentwood/Clayton area, and it stormed pretty hard on Saturday night, but the race was miles away, so the way summer storms can be, we figured it could have missed the race location. Well about 7:15 Sunday morning we check the board and the race was a GO.

We woofed down some Continental, packed up the bikes (didn't pull into the parking garage with bike on top) and started heading W out 64/40 towards St Chuck. We hit Chesterfield area and it started raining, and approaching the Missouri River bridge, I can't decide if it was raining buckets or cats and dogs? Hmmmm. Still wondering if it was raining at the race location, I decided to check stlbiking and sure enough, Mitch had to pull the plug on the race, noting that it was pouring at the trail.

Oh well, we had a great weekend anyway. Matt and I were really looking forward to riding a new trail we had never done before, especially for 3 hours in the Marathon class. But that's life.

post by Bryan Greaser

And another gravel grinder....

2011-05-30T09:26:00.000-07:00

Stepping up the gravel grinder rides the last few days. Did 42 miles on Saturday, followed up with another 25 today. Legs are feeling oh so good.
I'm not really an early morning person, but getting up at 6 and doing long rides is pretty dang fun! And great training for some fall racing hopefully.

Post by Bryan Greaser

Shawnee National Forest gravel grinder

2011-05-28T12:13:00.001-07:00

Got up early this morning with two friends Jeff Smith and Brad Brown, met at the bike shop at 6:30 am, and the three of us took off for a 30 minute drive across the river into Illinois and set out to do a 28 mile gravel grinder. Legs were feeling good, weather was mild, so we kept going, exploring a little bit, and eventually we logged 42 miles this morning, about 3 hrs 20 minutes or so. Some gravel roads, paved roads, fire roads, doubletrack, you name it. No singletrack though.
I paid close attention to the Trail of Tears State Forest layout, and the trails within it... A race there someday I see. Lots of trails and acreage to work with.
Anyone who thinks for a second that this part of Southern Illinois is flat should think again.... Fun times, good training ride.

post by Bryan Greaser

Man, what is UP??

2011-05-23T15:38:00.000-07:00

It's been forever since I have updated this website. The team has been nursing some injuries this season, and while we've normally raced at least three races by now at this time of year, we've not raced at all.
Yesterday I went out and did a 25 mile 'gravel grinder,' as we've been calling them. It is a hybrid ride between a mountain bike ride and a road bike ride. We look at a map, maybe on Map My Ride, and we plot out a route to link up miles on gravel roads at a generally modest pace. Rarely are we killing it. But we do in on a mountain bike.
The gnats and mosquitoes were killing me yesterday, absolutely nearly intolerable. You had to keep moving or it was major trouble. I rode in Southern Illinois, and checked out the Trail of Tears State Forest. Hmmmmm, not a bad place for a race someday....
Anyway, just training as usual. Running and biking when I can. Work has been super busy.
Oh, and after several months when the new Lynskey Ridgeline, love it. As in, REALLY love it.
Not sure what the rest of the season has in store for us. It's just a really funky year with team injuries and crappy weather.

post by Bryan Greaser

Joy's 70th Birthday book

2011-02-14T09:45:00.001-08:00

Click here to view this photo book larger

New bike on the way....

2011-01-03T09:59:00.001-08:00

Lynskey 2011 Ridgeline-29 VF Mountain Hardtail

Ready for Titanium!!!!!!!!

by Bryan Greaser
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well this isn't good.....

2010-11-22T11:59:00.000-08:00

This is what happens when you drive your car into the garage with the bike on top of the roofrack. Even carbon fiber frames won't stand up to the solid brick.
Good thing it is almost december and the 'off-season' for adventure racing.

by Bryan Greaser

12 Hour Berryman Adventure Race

2010-09-27T18:41:00.000-07:00

The Grandpappy of 'em all, the Berryman. If you're looking for a short and dull read, just go ahead and navigate away from this page and click on some silly Yahoo! story about how scientists disagree about the health benefits of almonds. If you actually want to read something about a cool race put on by cool people, and raced by cool people, read on my friend, read on....

The 10th running of the Berryman Adventure took it back to it's roots, the area surrounding the Berryman trail sandwiched between the small towns of Potosi and Steelville in the heart of the Mark Twain National Forest. Nearly 250 racers were signed up between both the 12 and 36 hr races. For the last four or so years this race has been held near Van Buren, MO. We were signed up for the 12 hour race. July and August delivered record heat waves, and I can at least speak for myself when I say that my training suffered greatly, as in, nearly non-existent. So when it came time to decide which race to do, it was a pretty easy call. Momma didn't raise no fool.

Jill was unable to race this one with us. Her high school volleyball coaching schedule conflicts with this race pretty much every year. So, we went on the recruiting trail to find another female who was up for the task. That's not always easy to do. Well as it turns out, it was much easier than I would have ever thought. "Team, meet Missy Phegley!" Missy lives in Cape Girardeau also and she raced the Berryman with a team in 2009 but that was the extent of her AR experience. But don't mistake that for not being battle tested. Ahemmm. How about competing and finishing the Branson Half Ironman just six days prior to this race? This aen't no disco. Now that's what I call a competitor!

So myself, Marc, Ken and Missy head to Bass River Resort on Friday ready to take on the Berryman. I was super impressed with Bass River Resort and Campground. Great place for a race HQ. So the Friday night pre-race meal pretty much rocked, I caught up with my friend Gary Thompson, and then we took our bikes over to the YMCA Trout Lodge about 16 miles away for the bike drop. Yep, we (ok, I) busted off a few bars of our own version of the "YMCA" song, rest assured. After that we hauled back to Bass River for a standing room only pre-race meeting, got the maps, and headed back to our tents and canopies to plot 25 CP's. We plotted the CP's, highlighted our anticipated route choices, filled our packs and probably got to sleep around midnight. Ahhhh, tent camping before a race. Nothing quite like it. Not much quality sleep.

Saturday morning wakeup. About 4:45 am to get breakfast, finished last minute preparations, and boarded the buses which were pulling out of Bass River at 6:05 and were to arrive at the YMCA Trout Lodge for the race start. We were dropped off at the YMCA next to Sunnen Lake where we were to start off on a trekking leg, hitting CP 1-3, then CP's 4-12 in any order. There was a long and steep road hill that helped separate the pack early on. It got the blood flowing right off the bat. No doubt that was by design, right Jason? We hit 1 thru 3 with no problems, then chose to hit CP 8, then down to 4 and the rest went in order. We were nailing these CP's with no problems at all. A minor 5 minute snafu here and there, but no major hiccups. I think we came out of the woods after that O Course in about 10th place out of 60 12-hour teams so we cleaned the course pretty well. We came in to CP12 which was a mystery event. It turned out to be that we crossed a creek and then came upon an artificial rock climbing wall. Awesome! Two team members had to put on a harness and climb to the top and then rappel down. Ken and I chose to do it. With no problems, we came down, loaded up the packs and took off for CP13 where we then received the UTM's for another mystery event, CP14. Yummm, they had Snickers and Oreo's too! Once we plotted CP14, we made our way to it and as we approached it, we could hear what we all agreed sounded like a ZIPLINE! Sweet. We had to wait a few minutes until the line was available, but once it was, Ken and Marc put on the harness and zipped on down. We found out what we had suspected already. We were in first place in 4 person co-ed, but the Tulsa team was pushing and closing fast.

Once we finished the CP 14 zipline, we then made the short trek back to the start where we transitioned to the bike. While transitioning, we heard a couple of male racers next to us talking about how they forgot to get a CP punch at 14. One of them said, "No problem, Jason and Laura saw us up there, they'll know we were there but that we just forgot to get the punch." Ken couldn't help himself, and tried to kindly inform them that they needed to go back and get that CP 14 punched on their passport. Rules about getting your passport punched are pretty strict, and I would NEVER count on trying to explain that we were there but just forgot. Well, the old phrase about no good deed going unpunished rang true. It seems that two guys thought we were trying to mess with them and cause them to lose time since we were both at the same point in the race. I suppose they can draw whatever conclusion that they want, but I just hate seeing or hearing a team make a mistake like that when they were so close to the CP still. It is always the right decision to go back and get it. Anyway, we learned after the race that they thought we were trying to just make them go back frivolously and lose time against us I guess. I think they went back and got it, and I think they also finished ahead of us. Good for them. If you ask me, we saved their race for them. I would be surprised if Jason had made an exception and gave them the credit for the punch if the passport didn't have it. Maybe he would have, but I don't think so, and I would never chance it, being so close still to the CP to where you can still just go back and get it. They were gonna not go back and get it. I think they would have found out the hard way that they would have been ranked behind all teams who got it. If you guys are reading this....you're welcome. We would never practice crappy sportsmanship like that to deceive or mislead another team. We don't want a reputation for that because that is not who we are. Alright, enough typing wasted on that stupid subject anyway.

Off on the bikes in great shape, first place in our division after having just done a great job on the Rogaine style O course. We hit 16 and 17 with no problems, climbing up and descending down pretty big hills on gravel roads until we then got onto the Berryman Trail. CP 18 was a little more challenging. Reading a topo map on the bike presents more challenges than being on foot. Despite being on a cable on a tree, trailside, we blew past it but not too far. I realized it pretty quickly and we turned back and got it. It was at that moment that the Tulsa crew came up on us. I knew they were giving chase all day long, and there they were. Good group of folks though. It was fun to Yo-Yo with them back and forth throughout the next hour or so. CP 19 was at a natural spring, and we quickly refilled water bottles and then got back on the Berryman Trail where we linked up with a gravel road for a few miles, then got back on the Berryman Trail near the Berryman campground and hit CP 21 with no problem.

After CP 21 we headed through the Berryman campground and linked up with the Ozark Trail section that descends down to Highway 8 where we hit CP 22. The night before the race we had the Shirley Ridge Road highlighted as our route down to Hwy 8 from the Berryman campground right after we hit CP 21, but Jason had said at the Saturday morning last minute directions/rules that the ONLY time we could be on Hwy 8 was between 22 and 23. Obviously this meant that we could NOT be on Hwy 8 between 21 and 22. WHile this important detail was not on the cluesheet, nor was it covered in the pre-race meeting, we nonetheless heeded his rule that was mentioned Saturdy morning. I now know that many teams went ahead and descended down that gravel road (Shirley Ridge Road I believe) to Hwy 8. This was a big time saver for them. I shouldn't have listened so closely to Jason at the Saturday morning start. Anyway, we all agreed that that section of the Ozark Trail that we took instead was super fun, fast, good surface, and just plain fun. We were still rockin' in first place in our division but the Tulsa crew was minutes back, having just stopped briefly on the trail to deal with a bike issue.

We blasted down Highway 8 for about a mile and a half until we came to the Hwy 8 bridge at the Curtois River where we dropped bikes, did a gear check, and transitioned to the paddle. The Tulsa crew pulled in and were putting on PFD's as we launched our canoes. Now something I haven't mentioned yet is that around CP18 when they caught up to us, I noticed that they had double bladed kayak paddles sticking out of their packs. I kindly asked them how many they had, to which they replied, "Three." For a second I thought that he had said that they had a 30 horsepower outboard motor in their pack. One and the same at that point, really. Either way, I knew we were doomed on the final leg. 11 miles of canoeing against a team with three double bladed paddles and of course a regular single blade, to our 4 oar type single blade paddles, and it was all she wrote. We held them off for about 20 minutes or so, and then they came by in a fury, and off they paddled into the sunset and on their way for the 1st place prize in the premier 4 person co-ed division. They earned it though. They put around 25 minutes of distance on us on that final paddle. Some people don't take any solace in losing to anyone, but if you are going to lose, personally, I'd rather lose to good teams with cool people, and they are both. Despite losing our lead on this final paddling leg, the paddling leg nonetheless offered a surprise as we encountered none other than my friends Jim and Wendy Davis. What a treat to see them at this manned CP!

We came into CP 25 at the takeout within Bass River, parked the canoes and made our way across the river and ran through the finish line at 8 hrs 52 minutes, good for 2nd place in 4 person co-ed, and 5th out of 24 in 4 person overall teams, all male and co-ed. It was a solid race for us. The weather was phenomenal, trails and course were great, mystery events added some unusual elements to the race, and it's always great to get together with my teamies and camp, hang out, and race.
Everybody on the team pitched in and we all performed well with no performance issues of any kind. No cramps, no bonks, crashes, etc. It was just a really good day to be alive and racing. Can't wait for the next one. Man, such good times....I am one seriously lucky dude.

by Bryan Greaser

Katy Trail 50

2010-09-22T08:26:00.000-07:00

Saturday, the 18th was the second annual running of the La Sportiva Katy Trail 50. I decided to participate in this run for a couple of reasons. One, perhaps a bit of redemption due to my recent DNF @ Leadville, and second, I really wanted to test out my newly implemented shoe wedge with a legitimate trial before I put myself into a race situation with the Cyclewerx team. I really didn't want to hit uncharted waters with my joint history, & an entirely new running strategy.

Friday evening we drove to Boonville. Upon arrival, we dined at Glenn's Cafe in the Hotel Frederick. The food was fabulous, so we enjoyed our meal & retired to our quarters for the evening. In retrospect, I so wish I had arranged to stay at the Frederick, but live & learn- I will stay there next time. We picked up my pre-race packet, bib, shirt, the usual fare, & had the pre-race evening freak-out.

I woke up early Saturday for the run & went down for the "continental breakfast." Read, Dolly Madison donuts & coffee...sort of. I didn't even care, but they promised me hot water for my oatmeal & there was none. :(

After a luke-warm breakfast of hearty oats, we loaded in the car & zipped over to the trailhead. First the countdown, & then we were off. We ran out about 2 1/2 miles so we could end at the right spot, then turned & came back. I picked up a full water bottle @ the start & took off. I was having a wonderful run, reminiscent of my PR on the Frisco Trail. The trail was the same, & I felt the same, so what the heck. I opened it up, & abandoned my run 25 minutes, walk 5 strategy for the run run run run run strategy.

I zipped through several aid stations & the turn-around, picking water at each of them. I had on my fanny pack full of gels, so I was good to go there. I met some nice folks, & Tom & I played cat & mouse all day. When we reached mile 30, we were both cooked. I had yet to pee, & Tom wasn't in much better shape. That's odd for me, as I usually pee at least every 10 miles.

We spent about 10 minutes in that area, longer than we wanted, but it was much needed. As we rolled out, our walk/run strategy had been reversed to run 5/walk 25, but at least we were moving. The temps kept climbing with the humidity...someone even passed out on the trail.

As we approached mile 38, Tom suggested we continue the death march to the finish line together. I told him I was sorry, but I would not be going on at this point. I bid him farewell as he filled his bottles & hit the trail. Since my 9 hour time goal was blown, I asked how long I had until the cut-off...& when will I be pulled from the race? The guy @ the check point said I had over 3 hours, & that was all I needed to hear. I pulled my phone from my pack & called my wife, and then I explained to her, I needed 5 minutes to fall asleep, & then a 30 minute nap before she was to call me back. After some smart aleck comments about the tortoise & the hare, she agreed. I told the guy running the table, "I am fine, don't let anyone bother me, I just need a nap." So I laid down in the somewhat shady spot in the middle of the road & passed out. Exactly 35 minutes later, my phone rang. I jumped up, thanked Tammy for the call, & spent another 6-7 minutes doctoring my new blisters.
As I left the checkpoint, I know they were all betting against me. None of them thought I could even finish the race. My gait was pretty ridiculous, if I do say so myself, but on I went. After about 5 minutes, I was actually able to run again.

By the time I had reached the next checkpoint, they told me I had gained 15 minutes on Tom, & they thought I might actually catch him. I only had 12 miles to do so from my napping point, so I doubted it. 30 minutes later, the hail & lightning started; dime size hail & lots of lightning. I ran as hard as I was able, & finally crossed the finish line in the rain & storm. They told me Tom beat me by about 7 minutes, even after my 41 minute side-show, but it didn't matter. I had another successful run.

It reminded me of what I believe to be true about running, every run is a great run, some are greater than others.

Get the Lead Out!!

2010-09-02T20:43:00.000-07:00

We {Tammy the crew} & I arrived in Denver on Wednesday, drove on up that night to LV. We checked in to the Innd of the Line, which is now my personal B&B in Leadville, so stay away, they're booked! J/K, they were fabulous. Better care than Mom could give you. Thursday, we attended the evening "dinner" & basically spent the day trying to relax. I knew I couldn't relax if I were at home, so we planned that day on purpose. Friday we awoke to attend all of the mandatory meetings. The pre-race meeting was pretty much not helpful, as well as the mandatory crew meeting. All information which had previously been covered, & would be covered again in multiplicity. At any rate, we put our time in & picked up the BEST race bag ever. Too much good stuff to mention, but it is to say, I would pay good money for that bag. We took a couple of trips to the HQ, where we bought some clothing items. Both times we were overcharged, & received no receipt, but I didn't raise a stink...I figured why not help out my new favorite event.

Part 2 of the crew, Randy & Libby didn't arrive until I was already in bed on Friday, so they weren't really able to review my race plan with Tammy, which I had only obsessed over for about a year. At any rate, when Randy arrived about 10, he & Tammy did the pre-race freak out so I didn't have to. I was in bed with earplugs in.
3:30 came sooo early, but Jane & Mary Beth made steel cut oats, bagels, fresh fruit, coffee, yogurt, eggs, the whole deal. It was amazing. I sauntered upstairs & popped on my gear, which I had laid out 2 days before. Time flew so quickly, I blinked & it was 15 till...YIKES! I jogged to the start to check in, the official check in table turned out to be roving clip board folks. Nice. Lucky for me I found one. Luckier for me, I had my wrist band on, but Tammy had my bib. I ran back up the street, borrowed a cell to call them, Tammy's phone was {shocker} not on. Panic.
As I ran down the street looking like Paul Revere, Libby shouted out to me, & I was back in with my bib on my shirt. Again, the time flew, the gun went off, & I was jogging down the boulevard.

I kept smelling something, I knew the cat in front of me needed a shower, & I thought to myself, "what will you be like 24 hours from now" but I kept running. I hit his calves with my headlamp, & knew in an instant it was Barefoot Ted, the legend. A quick glance to his home made Huaraches, & it was verified. One of the coolest moments in the race for me...to be running behind this urban myth, if only I'd had my flip. Either way, it was cool, so I followed him for about another mile, smirking to myself at his self bantering & comedy.

Soon, we veered off onto the trail that parallels Turquoise Lake. I had asked my crew to wait @ Tabor Boat ramp with 2 water bottles as I left the starting line, purposely light on water. I was going as slow as possible in an effort to conserve energy for later. Well, they determined that they missed me, so they left before I got there. When I didn't see them, I rocked on. About a mile or so outside of May Queen, I found someone's water bottle on the ground, un-touched. Yep, drank it all.

Into May Queen, Tammy & Randy were there, I picked up my pack & dropped off water bottles & rolled on up the hill. This is one of my favorite parts of the course; it's on the Colorado trail & the views are breathtaking. I still felt sooo relaxed & was just enjoying the day. Up Sugarloaf to Powerline, then down into the Fish Hatchery.

Again, Randy & Tammy were there. I dropped my pack, switched back to the handhelds, & cruised out feeling fine. About 4-5 miles of grueling pavement later, I came into Pipeline, where Tammy was waiting. She was also running the video & asked me how I felt, to which I replied, "SUPER COOL." Of course, later, watching the video, I saw my left ankle roll like a spaghetti noodle, but I never even flinched. I didn't feel it at all. Obviously, by this point, my ankles were just flopping around like dead fish, but heck, I didn't care. I was running Leadville, conserving energy, & having a BLAST!

Pipeline to Twin Lakes is yet another feast for the eyes. I again, ran this conservatively, my plan was to hit Winfield, and then actually "run" the rest of the race. As I came down the hill into Twin, there was a lot of confusion. There were tons of people standing around, but no clear direction on where to go. After asking several spectators, I was finally pointed in the right direction. I went into the check station; saw none of my crew, so I went out the other side. Up until now, someone from my crew was at the entrance of the checkpoints, so I assumed they would be here. When I didn't see them, I started looking for them...I NEEDED some of my things which they had. I ran down the boulevard, no crew. Down to the adjacent street, no crew. Soooo, I ran the 3/4 mile back into the aid station, filled my water pack, grabbed some gels & cookies & set out to climb Hope. After I crossed the adjacent street, Randy was there saying "just in time." Arrrgh. Really? “I just lost about 23 minutes looking for you guys, where were you?” “Here.” “Why?” “Why not?” “Okay, from now on, someone meet me at the timing mat, PLEASE!” “Okay.”
They popped me on the massage table, Randy & Libby beat the crap out of me, Tammy changed my shoes & socks, & they kicked me out of the station.

Well, up over Hope Pass we go. I still "felt good" but picked up a walking cane one the way as my right knee was on fire. Apparently my IT bands were not happy. I hobbled over Hope & down the back side, then up 3 miles of gravel into the half-way point, Winfield, 50 miles. Libby met me on the road with her kid gloves on. She radioed back to Tammy what to prepare, & the crew was in panic mode. I only had 10 minutes to enter & exit the aid station. I kept telling them to relax; I had plenty of time, as I really felt like they might forget something. I asked for my Garmin, which I had traded out earlier, & they gave it to me, but somehow, they had lost the charger in the car & didn't charge it, so I picked up a dead Garmin.

Out of Hope with 2 minutes to cut-off, 5:58. Let me say this, I don't like pacers. I like being alone. Maddie had asked if she could pace me & I said okay. Anyone else I would have rejected, but I thought since she was a teenaged girl, who may never get this chance again, to go over Hope, why not. I told her on the way out to stop treating my like Libby & Tammy had, that I was quite lucid, & didn't need a babysitter. I finally just had to ask her to start talking to me. I think they had her freaked out thinking I was "pretty disoriented." Still packing my stick, we hobbled on. At one point, for the first time in the race, I sat on a rock to take a break. I told Madison we would rest 3 minutes & then go on. I passed out, sitting on a rock with my face on my stick. Exactly 2 minutes, 55 seconds later, I woke up. On we went. Darkness hit us just at the summit. I told Maddie we would walk for 3 or 4 minutes to rest from the climb & then run. We did. We went into the hopeless aid station; I asked for soda, I needed caffeine badly. They had nothing but water so we quickly moved on. Still hobbling with my stick, having NO idea of the time, I really begin to push down the mountain as best I could. At one point, I left Madison & went on by myself. I knew I would be past the cut-off, but I didn't know by how much. As I passed people on the way down, people who had passed me on their way up the other side, I begged them to not give up. You can call pull me from the race when they cut my band or the race is over, but not until.

Well, on into Twin where Libby went out to pick up Maddy. Tammy met me at the river crossing, & took me on up to the timing mat, where my wrist band was cut & I was pulled from the race, still hobbling on my stick- 62 miles.

As I sat in a chair, Randy pulled my shoe off & I realized for the first time, my ankle was the size of a softball. Huge. Purple. Sprained. Bad. I suppose the IT band issues caused me to use the stick in my right hand, putting extra weight on my left ankle. I have since discovered a discrepancy in my leg length; my right appears to be about 1/4inch longer than the left. Wonder why I've been having ankle sprains????
Well, the second they cut my band, I looked at Tammy & said, "364 days till next year," and I meant it. I started this race, I WILL finish it.

A few quick points:
My hydration & nutrition were perfect; I lost about a pound over the entire race.
I should have ran a 'bit' faster at the start. My average heart rate was 124 for the first 25 miles.
The crew was helpful, but they need to be better informed of my race plan next time. Tammy knew what I wanted, but since the rest of them didn't get there until late the night before the race, they really didn't know what I wanted or expected of them.
Madison was awesome. I found out after I was cut, she is 12 years old. Wow. She has a running career ahead of her for sure.
I can't wait to get to the starting line next year!

Leadville 100

2010-08-21T06:53:00.001-07:00

As I write this our very own Ken Chappell is already underway in his quest for a Leadville 100 trail run finish. Good luck Ken on your journey.

HOT!!

2010-07-27T13:48:00.000-07:00

Ok, admittedly I think I speak on behalf of everyone ont the team EXCEPT for Ken perhaps when I say that our training has dropped off in frequency during this 139 degree summer.
I went to Breckenridge, Colorado for 4 days in mid July and it was absolutely fantastic there.
Ken is presently training hardcore for the Leadville 100 Trail Run in August. What a great base he will have for a long adventure race this fall....Hmmmm, Berryman 36 hour comes to mind. We shall see. Standby.

Post by Bryan Greaser

Ozark Greenways 8-14 hour Adv Race

2010-05-28T19:58:00.000-07:00

Alright alright, Greenways Part 3 for Cyclewerx. This was our third year doing OGAR, a race we really look forward to for alot of reasons. It has become a much tougher race than it traditionally was in it's earlier years. This year proved to be very tough. We all headed down to Gasconade Hills on Friday to camp, and the race begins Saturday morning although we don't know what time. We found out on Friday night that it began Saturday morning at 7 am. No real shock there, a standard time for a 8-14 hr race during late May.

On Friday evening we pretty much found out for sure that due to heavy recent spring rains, the Gasconade was swollen out of its banks and the race personnel determined that it was not safe to have us do the paddling portion of this race. Bummer, two years in a row that this has happened to this race. Mother Nature wins again. So we get the maps on Saturday morning at the 5:15 am map handout, and we learn that instead of doing the paddling leg down the Gasconade to get from CP 9 to CP 11, we now had to trek about 7 miles additional to make up for that segment. Anyway, getting ahead of myself here....

We take off at 7 am for the start of what was a 9 CP trekking leg/orienteering leg. We (ahemm, I) made our usual blunders and had a few snafu's in finding a few of the CP's. We came into CP 9 frustrated because we were near the front of the pack from CP1 to CP 5, but I screwed up on CP 6 and 7 and we lost time. We checked in with the volunteer, then began the trek back to the Race Start/HQ/Transition Area where our bikes were awaiting us.

The bike leg(s) of this race were surprisingly good. They were on some horse trails but were very "singletrack like." Once I heard that the river was swollen and the paddling was cancelled, I had assumed that the trails would be sloppy, muddy, rutted out and essentially unrideable. I had envisioned pushing bikes for 50 percent of the trail sections, but boy was I wrong. I would say it was more like 95 percent rideable, 5 percent pushing your bike. RIght on, I'll take that. We hit the CP's without incident, no nav problems and no bike mechanicals.

The bike/orienteering leg was pretty cool. It actually gave some good route choices. We also hit this section pretty much without incident and hit all CP's quite well with the exception of the fact that somehow I had nav'd us right past a pond where a CP was located. We did a full circle and came back and found it. Sigh.....

Now, the poo hit the fan when I, out of the blue, had some crazy dang allergic reaction to who knows what. Trouncing around in the forest on a hot, sweaty 88+ degree afternoon in poison ivy, oak, psumac, thorns, and everything else under the sun, well.....The toxins must have finally penetrated into my bloodstream and I puffed up. I was a little worried, my face was puffy, eyes were swollen, heart was a little racy, and my throat was a bit constricted, but we only had an hour on the bike (roads) back to the finish left. With only a few easy turns on roads, I threw the map at Marc and Ken and told them to figure out where to go from here back to the finish. I couldn't hardly see out of my swollen eyes to read the map. We took off on the bikes and came through the finish line not really having any idea what place we were in.

So, the results were in: We finished in 6th place out of 36 teams in 4 person co-ed, and 12th overall out of 79 teams which included 2 person teams as well as about a half dozen solo racers. The top teams really cooked the course, somewhere just over 6 hrs. Downhill Bikes blitzed into first place. Man those guys are awesome. Great athletes, great attitudes. I love getting our butts kicked by them!!!! Our race time was 9 hrs 35 minutes.

It was the first really hot day of the year, where temps approached 90 degrees, so there were alot of DNF's. The attrition rate for this race was higher than years past. We had our own issues, dehydration, allergies, etc. but overall, we laid down a solid race. It was a very good day to be an adventure racer. Marc, Ken and Jill all did great all day long. I was proud to have them as my teammates and I always have been. I was illin' from that allergy thing so badly that I didn' even get to back down to the campsite to hang out with my teamies after the race. Heck, I didn't even get a Fat Tire afterwards.
Post by Bryan Greaser

LBL 24 Hour

2010-05-04T07:37:00.001-07:00

Well there isn't a whole lot to say about the LBL 24 hr. We didn't finish the race. Ken had major knee issues during our second trekking leg (actually much earlier than that) so we pulled out. He was really beginning to hobble pretty badly.
The weather for the race was phenomenal though, and it was an overall great event once again. Ken was a warrior about it, not wanting to give up, but when you are doing the trekking legs of a race with a tree branch for a staff to assist your walking (I called him Gandolf)it is time to call it a day.

Next up for us is the Ozark Greenways Adventure Race near Richland, MO. Hopefully we'll all be healthy and put in a solid finish as we have the past couple of years.

Post by Bryan Greaser

LBL Challenge 24 hour coming up!!!!!!

2010-04-01T19:15:00.000-07:00

Well the weather has been crazy phenomenal, with sunny skies, dry singletrack trails, and 70 degree temps.....perfect for training, right? Well, not exactly. When we ran the Syllamo Arkansas "3 Days of Syllamo" event earlier in March (Ken did the 50k and the 50 Mile but the third day run was scrapped, Marc and I only did the
50k), Ken managed to get a blood clot in his lower leg from the 80+ miles of unforgiving pounding of the rocky trails around Syllamo. So Ken was, at least for a day, I think, questionable for the LBL 24 hr Challenge next week. His foot and lower leg looked kind of like a football minus the leather, and the seams, I guess.... I have always heard that canines have a high threshold of pain tolerance. I think Ken is part Poodle.
Here's the foot pic:

Making matters worse, I was doing some carpentry type work about two weeks ago and was in the baseball catcher's squat position, and I had been that way for a few hours working in a small space, and I turned while squatting and felt an "Uh-oh" pain in my right knee. It turned out to be more than an annoyance, and I thought it best to play it safe and keep off of it despite needing to continue training for the upcoming race(s), but I have stayed off of my feet to let it heal. I have been able to ride the mountain bike though at least so that's good. Oh well, what's a guy supposed to do? It is almost never the wrong decision to let something heal longer than probably necessary rather than risk re-injury by getting back on it too soon. I'll be well rested for LBL.

So the field is shaping up to be a dandy once again. Some top notch teams coming in. It won't take very many more teams to enter the race to match last year's racer participation total which I think was about 210.

Race should be able to be followed on Internet via Checkpoint Tracker somewhat "live" but that has been, on more than one occasion, a disappointment. Having helped put this race on in 2009, I saw how difficult it is to keep Checkpoint Tracker updated. It takes alot of time and alot of volunteers to make it work (and good internet connections in remote locations), and when emergencies and other duties come up like picking up teams in the middle of the night who are lost or injured, a race director quickly finds he can only do so much at once. Here's to hoping everyone can get updates at home.

It's gonna be good. Like really, really good.

Oh, and one final thing. Marc has some back issues so instead of waiting to see if he could get clearance to race, we made the decision to try to find a replacement, and lo and behold, who have we found to join us for this race but none other than Lullel Hickman himself from Downhill Bikes. Couldn't do any better than that. That's for bailing us out Lullel! Looking foward to racing with you, but we'll sure miss Marc.

Post by Bryan Greaser

Ultramax 8 Hour Adventure Race

2010-03-08T14:40:00.000-08:00

For starters, Ultramax did an overall tremendous job in designing, executing, and organizing this first-time race for them. We were super excited for starters because this kicks off the 2010 race season for us, but we weren't too sure what to expect from Ultramax since this was their first stab at putting one of these races on. I won't say that my expectations were necessarily low, but I figured they would have some "hiccups" along the way and there was only one which I will get to later...

Ok, since Ken Chappell couldn't race with us on this one we picked up Elizabeth Sparks who is an accomplished triathlete who lives here in Cape Girardeau. She is very strong, brings navigation skills to the table, and is tremendously easy to get along with in a team environment. Perfect racing partner, period.
The Friday night mandatory gear check and team meeting was late, and by the time we got our maps (killer, by the way), found out the 6 am start time (ouch, 24 degrees) and drove back to Jill's house in St. Chuck, we didn't even start plotting (21 CP's) until 10:30 and I got to bed at about 1 am after I stayed up a bit longer just to familiarize myself with the overall course map and flow. Wakeup time was agreed upon by all to be 3:30 am and that sucked but there would be time to sleep on Saturday night after the race.

Saturday morning we did a bike drop below a lake dam at 5 am, then drove to the parking area/Race HQ, tried to stay warm, hit the toilets, and lined up for the headlamp trekking start. We ran on a gravel trail and hit CP1 easily as daylight began to flirt with us, then the mass group began to thin out some but still quite a few pockets of racers in line. CP2 looked super easy on the map but I stupidly followed some groups that blew right past it and then made another turn away from it. This ended up causing us to 'wander' for a little bit and we finally went back and the pond was concealed by evergreen trees. Ok, not a good way to start off, costing us alot of time early. My fault.

Next we hit CP3 on a hilltop easily, then somehow I had us heading South towards CP4 when Elizabeth quickly noticed that we made a wrong turn at CP3 and that we should be heading W instead of S, so we quickly righted ourselves back to CP3, then easily went on to hit CP4. CP4 was at the bottom of a reentrant in one of the steepest hillsides I have seen on any adv race terrain. CP5 & CP6 were nailed, then we headed on up to the transition at the lake to hit the paddling leg.
The paddling leg was uneventful except for the awesome fiberglass canoes and the frozen coves. So many canoes going back into the coves were breaking up the one inch thick ice which was causing some slow going for teams but otherwise no big deal.
We finished the canoes, transitioned to foot and trekked to CP8 where we picked up bikes.

The bike leg hitting CP9 thru CP14 was mostly gravel roads, some doubletrack/horse trails, and quite a few creek crossings to get the ole feet wet, wet, wet. It was probably about 18 km and the CP's were easy. No problems here.
When we arrived at CP14 on bikes we dropped them and transitioned back to trek where we would be going out on about a 5 km orienteering course to find CP15 thru CP19 in any order (Rogaine style). CP15 was super easy following a powerline, CP16 also easy at the edge of a lake, CP17 was in a very pronounced reentrant feeding into another large reentrant, and from there we could see a hilltop that we shot up, then followed the flat terrain SE and around a reentrant, then a turn W to where the land had 4 distinct ridges overlooking a valley and Charette Creek below. The terrain was unmistakeable and I was confident since we were just ticking these CP's off so well. When we came upon the ridge where CP18 was plotted on the map, we went out onto the ridge and could not find it. Repeatedly looking at the map and comparing it to the terrain, I was sure it had to be there....Well it wasn't. Soon other teams started showing up and we compared plots, thinking maybe I mis-plotted. Nope. Had it right on. I then decide that maybe the race director plotted it over onto another ridge mistakenly so we went out onto another one and the same thing....Nowhere to be found. We had wasted alot of time by now. Forum Dental came along and told us that they had been to the TA and the volunteer told them that teams were finding CP18 so it had to exist. Hmmmm.

We went ahead and made our way towards CP19 and a four male team said that they found it but that it was indeed mis-plotted onto the wrong ridge. So we proceeded to go S and nailed CP19, then on our way back went over and sure enough, we found the mis-plotted CP18 on a paralell ridge but the ridges were very different from each other. The Race director realized the error and in a very professional way acknowledged it on the website. While all CP's were checked by GPS by the race management, I think they found out the hard way that the GPS method of checking CP's is not always accurate.

Next we hooked up our running tow system and made our way back to the CP14/20 Transition area and transitioned back to bike where we just had to go bike about 5k, hit CP21 and then on to the Finish Area where a "Challenge Course" would be waiting.

The Challenge course consisted of taking an empty sandbag, running to a lake about 3/4 mile away (guessing), filling it with a minimum of 30 lbs of sand, then each team member had to carry the sandbag back to the Race Finish to complete a small obstacel type course with their sandbag. The 'kicker' was that when you filled the sandbag, there was not a scale there, and if you returned to the Finish/Race HQ and the bag did not weigh 30 lbs, you and every team member had to go back to the beach to bring the weight up to 30 lbs. The mental side of that translates to "I'll be damned if I am going to take any chance of having to carry this thing all the way back here," so you end up wayyy overfilling it to make sure, sure, sure. When we took the bags back to the Finish area they all met the minimum weight.

We crossed the Finish at 8 hrs 31 minutes, good for 4th place in 4 person co-ed and 12th place overall. It was a nice event, great weather, and we all felt pretty strong. Innsbrook is a great setting for an adventure race. We plan on being back next year. I would be willing to bet that Ultramax learned a hard lesson about the misplaced CP and will go over and above double and triple checking them for accuracy in the future.

Post by Bryan Greaser

Race calendar 2010

2010-01-21T19:06:00.000-08:00

Well we are super, super excited in the early race season calendar. Despite a recent miserable period of cold, cold weather and dreary skies, we are all eagerly looking forward to some upcoming races. Here's what we are shooting for right now for sure in the first half of 2010:

March 6th, Ultramax 8 Hr Adventure race near Innsbrook, MO This is Ultramax's first crack at an adventure race, and they normally put on triathlons. Ken is unable to race this one with us so we have Elizabeth Sparks, an accomplished triathlete to say the least joining us for this one. Cannot wait.

March 13th: Myself, Ken and Marc will be traveling to Syllamo Arkansas for Three Days of Syllamo, a strictly trail running event on the hallowed trails of Syllamo. You can bite off as much or as little as you want for this 3 day event. The mileage of trail running equals 100 miles over the three days if you choose all 3 days.

April 10th weekend we have the Bonk Hard Racing 24 Hr LBL Challenge. This is one we absolutely positively cannot wait for. This will be myself, Marc, Ken and Jill.

Finally, in May we have the Ozark Greenways race once again near Richland Missouri. We have had good success at this race over the past few years and hope to continue that success or possibly even improve on it.

We'll be looking to supplement another race in the mix somewhere during June or July, then hopefully we can tackle the Berryman 36 hr in September.

Post by Bryan Greaser

Sand Spring Adventure Race

2009-11-24T06:54:00.000-08:00

The Sand Spring Resort Adventure race is a popular sprint race just outside of Lebanon , MO. Marc has run this race three years previous and claims this is one of his favorite races. I was unsure at first whether or not I wanted to do it since I have absolutely no sprinting ability! Plus, it was the same weekend as volleyball sectionals. Unfortunately for my volleyball girls at Zumwalt West, we lost in Districts. But on a positive note, I was able to run the race with Marc. The weekend actually turned out perfectly. Friday afternoon I left St. Louis to go to Richland/Lebanon to spend some time with my family for the Halloween weekend. I was able to not only run the race with Marc, but also able to participate in some Halloween festivities with my sister, my nieces and nephew, and my parents. What a great weekend! And to top it all off, Marc and I surprised ourselves a bit and did pretty well in the race.

Marc and I arrived to the race fairly early as usual. The morning was chilly, but bearable. We hung out by the fire until the race meeting started. During the meeting, I just happened to ask Marc is he had any bike tools with him. He said no, so last minute I decided to run back to my car to get some bike tools just in case of a flat. I rushed back to meet Marc, and a few short minutes later we loaded the buses so they could drop us off at the race start.
We started the race with a short sprint run for about 3 miles before jumping in a four person raft to begin our journey down the Niangua River. Since the rivers were above flood stage at dangerous levels, we were not allowed to go down the river in canoes. We happened to get into a raft with Amanda Glendenning (the wife of the person in charge of the race) and her partner. Amanda immediately instructed us on where to sit and how to keep count on our strokes. It was intense, but she led us exactly where we needed to go down the river. We actually went at a pretty good pace with the water moving so fast.

In the middle of the rafting section, we jumped out of our rafts, jumped in the water (about waist high, burrrrrrr……… It doesn’t get better than river water at the end of October) and began our hike up the mountain. It seriously felt like a mountain even though it was just a huge steep hill. In my opinion, this part of the race was pretty intense. I had to keep telling myself to keep my legs moving, pick one leg up, then the other. I am not sure how Marc felt during this part. There wasn’t much talking. But at one point, Marc did tell me to take a second and look at the view. It was an awesome view, not realizing how high we had hiked. Wish there would have been more time to relax and enjoy the fall scenery! Once we made it to the top, it was time to go down. Parts of this were a bit rough with the ground being muddy and slippery, but we managed to make it back down, back through the river (but this time chest high for me), and back in the rafts. Away we went for another couple miles or so with a different team.

After the rafting, we arrived at our bikes. Our families were there at this point cheering us on. My parents even brought Cooper (my dog) down to the river. It was now time to complete a 2-lap bike course with an obstacle in the middle. We changed our wet muddy running shoes to our biking shoes and off we went. Near the end of the first lap, we were walking our bikes up a hill (yes, Bryan, we were walking) and I looked down to notice my front tire was completely flat! Uugggghh!!!! I was so upset, this was the second race in a row one of my tires has gone flat. Marc did an amazing job getting the tire off, tube switched, aired up, and back on in about 5 minutes! Thank goodness I took the extra minute before the race to get my bike tools!!! While Marc was changing the tube, about 3-4 teams passed us. It was so disappointing trying to play catch up the rest of the race. Five minutes in a sprint race is actually quite a bit of time lost. Marc even did an amazing job with the obstacle by splitting a piece of wood with one swing!
We finished the race in 2 hours, 37 minutes finishing 10th overall and 2nd in the co-ed division out of about 30 teams. After looking at the final results, 5 teams were within about 2-7 minutes of our finishing time. It’s disappointing about the flat tire, but I guess that’s going to happen from time to time. Let’s just hope it’s not my tire AGAIN next time!
Post by Jill Plassmeyer

Berryman 36 hr Adventure race

2009-09-30T07:26:00.000-07:00

Wow, where do I start? Chronologically I guess.
I arrived in Van Buren about 5:30 on Friday and met my teammates for the first time ever near Race HQ. I was never concerned about racing with people I don't know, and after meeting them, I was even less concerned. I knew everyone was cool, prepared and easy to get along with. We signed in and then took our bikes to the trailer for the race management to haul to an undisclosed location. We continued getting some gear together, then went over and ate at the pasta dinner, then off to the pre-race meeting to find out exactly what this thing was all about.
The pre-race meeting was at the Landing which is right beside the Current River and almost under the Hwy 60 bridge. Here's a shot of the pre-race meeting:

Very cool place. It was outside and weather cooperated. Jason began explaining things, and most importantly finally disclosed that the 36 hr race would start at 11 pm Friday night, just hours away. He then said that we would board buses beginning at 9:30 and the bus ride was an hour away. So it was getting to be 8 pm. How would we have time to drive back to Race HQ, pack our gear, and plot so many CP's before 9:30? Well, that question was answered when he then revealed that the entire course was pre-plotted and every CP was already on the maps! Wow, that was a first. It took the UTM plotting completely out of the mix, so there was no chance of anyone mis-plotting and searching in the wrong area for mis-plotted CP's. We also learned that we would have some disposable sacks to stash a food cache and anything else we might need later on in the race. These would be encountered much later in the race and provided the much needed opportunity to refuel.
So we stuff our packs to the gills, including our breakdown paddles, and we boarded what had to be one of the smelliest buses I have ever been on. We turned on the headlamps and looked over the course maps and highlighted our agreed upon route choices. This worked out very smoothly between me, Mike and Bill, and we discussed different routes from each CP to CP, pros and cons of each, and then by committee came up with our agreed upon route. They all turned out to be pretty much 'spot-on' for this initial nighttime 17 mile trek.
So we arrive at riverside and get dropped off, warned about wild horses on the trails, and off we went into the dark of night. It was really foggy at times too, expecially with the scattered hue from our headlamps.

We had no significant problems at all finding these CP's. There were several times we had to cross knee to thigh high deep creeks, but nothing any deeper than that. We had very minor problems finding two particular CP's. We wandered for a bit looking for CP 7, then we decided to go up to the peak (a known point) and shoot a bearing to the CP. We headed off in a southwesterly fashion and began dropping down the hillside and sure enough, we hit it. It was there that we encountered the Iowa Wolfpack and kept running into them for many, many hours to come. We also refilled our hydration packs several times with Mike's water purifier which did a bomber job. The creeks were clean and water tasted just fine. It was super nice to never have to worry about conserving water, we had so much clean water around us at all times.

Night trekking:

The good thing about the terrain is that there were almost always jeep trails running along the ridge tops which didn't show up on the map, but nonetheless were there. Sometime about 3-4 am we came to a clearing and we all marveled at the clear sky and the stars. While I don't by any means live in a metropolitan area, it is big enough to have city lights which inhibit such killer views of the dark night skies. It was truly phenomenal. I think it was also about that time that we discussed hallucinations and sleep deprivation, and somehow this resulted in us singing the song to the Muppet Show under a canopy of stars. But I digress......
We made our way towards CP8, crossed a creek and found the correct hollow and began following it, waiting for it to turn westerly, then began looking for the second reentrant on the left which should have CP8 ready to welcome us. We finally came to the second one, but the downfall was very thick, so the movement was very slow. Mike started scrambling up the reentrant in the lead and finally shouted out that he had found it. We were thinking that it shouldn't have been up the reentrant that far off of the creek, but we found it and continued climbing out of the hollow and back to ridgetops to head to CP9. As the sun began to come up, Karin's knee was really beginning to bother her greatly, especially from the brutal terrain. We did what we could, but ultimately, when we came to CP11 and prepared to transition to the canoe leg, she made the tough decision to pull out. I knew she was in pain, and selfishly I would have loved to see her continue onward with us, but when a knee begins hurting that badly, no good can come from pushing onward, especially with what still lied ahead of us. She could have done some serious damage to it had she continued. Due to having lost a teammate, we were now considered an "unranked" team so we were only racing for pride from here on. So we bid her farewell and we took off in canoes for the 25 mile canoe trip. Mike made like Rambo and said he would prefer to paddle a canoe solo rather than three of us in one canoe, and that was a solid decision. He managed his canoe very well down river. If Bill and I pulled ahead a little bit, I used the opportunity to get some 'shut-eye' and practically fell asleep in the canoe for a brief few minutes. Here's a shot of what the river treated us to all morning and early afternoon on Saturday:

Once we pulled into the riverside TA, we finally arrived at our first re-fueling station. We chugged Monster energy drinks, scooped our fingers into a jar of peanut butter, and pretty much ate and drank to fill the ole tank as much as we could, then threw some of the food into our packs and took off onto what would be another trekking section, this one about 12 miles. Once the three of us took off, a pretty chubby rain began to fall but it cleared out after about 15-20 minutes. We made a small navigational error here but we realized it fairly quickly and righted ourselves just fine and it was of no real consequence.
We hit CP13 & CP14 nearly perfectly, passing GoLite and DFW Hounds, then came to the infamous CP15. From CP14 we followed the reentrant down to a creek/hollow, and followed that creekbed into Sugarcamp Hollow which brought us to a crossing with the Ozark Trail, and then came to the base of the looming Barnett Mountain straight ahead of us. With no obvious trails up and around it, we just went UP, and kept going UP, through a large boulder strewn course. We started at 600 feet elevation, and ultimately the peak was nearly 1100 feet. It was a very strenous 500 feet of elevation gain. Towards the summit, the downfall was utterly insane. I don't know if this was due to higher winds up there, lightning strikes, or the recent devastating ice storms that the region sustained, but the peak of Barnett Mountain was awful. It was the only time all day that I saw a snake too, and I nearly stepped on it. And there were many false summits as well. Yes, I wouldn't believe it myself if I hadn't been there, but it seemed so many times it was about to plateau and peak out, but just kept going on and on. Finally the three of us came to the CP, took in a super awesome view from the top, shot a bearing and took off down a spur to where we would descend the mountain and intersect with the Ozark Trail. The descent was not any easier than the ascent with navigating through the downfall and bushwacking. And to top it all off, the gnats that were swarming us at the top of Barnett Mountain were awful too. They tapered off as we came down the side of the mountain though.
Finally we came to the bottom and intersected with the Ozark Trail. From here at least we were on a trail finally and no more bushwacking, and we were to follow this to CP16 & CP17/TA where the bikes were waiting.
This hike on the Ozark Trail was a big relief but took longer than we had expected. There were several little shut-ins type areas with small waterfalls, etc. We agreed that Rocky Falls (our destination) would have to be pretty impressive to be better than these spots. It was...

We finally came to Rocky Falls probably about 6:45pm or so. It was still daylight. The CP was in a spot that you really had to scramble up alot of rocks to get up to it but the falls were spectacular. Once we punched the CP we followed the creek and came to CP 17 and the bike transition area where we would get additional maps with the bike course. Here's a shot from the TA with the race volunteer laying out our new maps while we pondered life....

When we hiked into the TA we could see that there were many, many bikes still there, which is always a comforting sign to know that there were still alot of teams behind you.

Many teams were transitioning in progress also. We began fueling again as this was a second food cache that we had with our bikes. Prior to coming into this TA we were all having foot issues with wet feet non-stop, and unfortunately Mike was suffering from some severe chafing in his nether regions from just trekking 30 brutal miles in cycling shorts with a chamois. That does have a tendency to rub you the wrong way if you get my drift. Despite applying generous amounts of Bodyglide on several occasions, he was in major pain. He tried to sit on his bike seat to test the waters, but the pain was too much. We were staring at a 65+ mile biking leg ahead of us all through the night, and he made the decision to pull out. I didn't doubt for a second his pain and discomfort, as I had just raced along side iwth him for nearly 24 hrs, and it was clear to me that he was a warrior and a very strong racer, never complaining about fatigue or soreness, etc. I knew that he still had energy and strength in his legs, but if you can't sit on a bikeseat, all the strength and energy in the world can't compensate for that. Bill and I changed into dry socks which felt soooo good as our feet were killing us with wet socks. When I took off my shoes I was prepared to see something out of horror movie, they felt that bad. I thought the soles had split open on me. There were deep fissures and swelling but nothing beyond that. We dried them and rubbed them back to life.
So Bill and I put on our bike gear, I looked over the new maps and highlighted our routes, and we took off into the dark of night with lights burning. We hit CP18 pretty easily, and then we were off to CP19. This was the very first time all day long that somehow, someway we could not get the right road to connect us from 18 to 19. We tried several different jeep trails/fire roads, but none of them were the right ones. We would ride one for a mile or so and it would be a screamin' downhill, only to come to a deadend and have to spin back up and climb back out of there. I knew we couldn't keep doing this or our legs would be zapped.
A straw that broke the camel's back was when I went through a large puddle in the road that turned out to be deeper than I thought, and the mud stopped me in my tracks. I had to put my foot down and the water went up to my ankle. So much for the dry socks and shoes now. I was back to having feet issues again.
After never finding exactly which trail connected to CP19, I suggested to Bill that if we continued to wander, and even eventually came to CP19, we had so much left to do, and if we pulled the plug later on we would be that much further from that last TA where there were volunteers and potential to get a car ride back to Race HQ. Since we were only about 8 miles from that last TA where we took off on the bikes, we made the call to turn back and return to CP17 and hope to get a ride back to my van. It also made a difference, at least mentally, that we had dropped two teammates at this point, and I believe that we would have been more likely to push onward had we still had a full team. Nonetheless, Bill and I pulled the plug after having raced about 24 hrs. I have no regrets. Even though we were an incomplete team at that point, we made it much further than alot of other teams who had pulled into CP17 and decided not to go out on the bike leg at all. They all got DNF's but will still rank ahead of us since they never dropped a teammate, even though Bill and I in reality went farther and longer than many of them did. But that's the way the game is played, and rules are rules.
Parting thoughts: This was a remarkable race and I had a great, great time racing with Karin, Mike and Bill. Ultimately the dropout and DNF rate was extremely high, evidencing the brutality of the course. In fact, all three Colorado teams that came in for this race didn't finish either! That should say something! Morale was high throughout the race generally (with a few lows but nothing that spoiled the race by any means). Morale certainly hit a low point on Barnett Mountain. I suspect that teams who summited that at night were demoralized beyond comprehension. That would not have been pleasant.
I never had a single cramp, never bonked, and overall felt very strong throughout. My legs felt super strong when I mounted our bikes Saturday night. My feet hurt alot from the long treks but that was the extent of any pain that I had. I really feel like I have had some good races this fall that are preparing me for some good racing next year. And I am very fortunate to have had the Mid-Rivers gang invite me along to race with them since my normal beloved Cyclewerx comrades could not do it with me due to schedules.
What a great weekend, man, just great. All told we trekked 30 miles, paddled 25, and Bill and I covered 20 miles on the mountain bikes. And I came home to a beautiful loving wife and beautiful loving little daughters, and I was once again reminded that I am the luckiest guy in the world......

Post by Bryan Greaser

Berryman 36 Hour Adventure Race

2009-09-24T07:41:00.001-07:00

Since our Cyclewerx team cannot do the Berryman Adventure due to several schedule conflicts, I have managed to team up with Mid-Rivers Adventures to compete in the 36 hour race on September 26-27. I really didn't want to miss it this year. While I don't know the people that I am racing with, it is sure to be an adventure on so many levels.
There are some great teams coming in for this race, including an awesome team, WEDALI, from Minnesota, Golite from Colorado, Alpine Shop, Bushwacker, and a team from Texas. There are 12 teams in the 4 person co-ed division and many more in other divisions competing in the 36 hour race.
My goal is to finish this race. Post race report to follow sometime next week!
Post by Bryan Greaser

Berryman Offroad 6 Hour Duathlon

2009-08-25T08:55:00.000-07:00

The weather for this Bonk Hard race could not have been any nicer. Well, I can't lie, I was a little hot a few times. Maybe next year the highs can only be about 72 instead of 80. Ok, KIDDING. August in Missouri and the high was only around 82 with low humidity. It was great.
It was nice being casual about getting ready in the morning for the 9 am start. Marc and I agreed that it sure beats these 4:30 am wake ups, and 5:30 pre-race meetings that we always have in adventure races, not to mention the last minute scramble to make sure we have all of our mandatory gear, maps, cluesheets, passports, etc. We got up early, cooked some breakfast, tooled around, and got ready to line up for the race. You can choose which leg you do first, bike or run. Marc and I both chose to do the bike leg first. It seemed more people chose to do the running loop first.
We lined up, and I made sure to be out front and found the 'hole-shot' into the woods right off of the bat. I wanted to get up front on this bike leg and stay there. Immediately onto the trail I was reminded of the extreme technical nature of this trail. Roots and LOTS of rocks. Big ones, small ones, sharp ones, loose gravel, you name it. I was intending to set down a hard pace on this bike leg. It consisted of 8 miles of singletrack on the Berryman trail, then it hit a connecting fire road up to a gravel road which we rode back to the Start/Finish. All told the bike loops were about 12.2 miles or so. One screaming downhill on the gravel had me clocking myself on my cyclocomputer at 35 mph! Yikes.
I stayed out front for this bike leg and came into the transition area, my computer showing me having completed a 1:12 minute lap. I think official race time might have been 1:14 though. It was time to transition to the run.
I transitioned and took off onto the run, knowing it would not be my strength for the day. I just came off of a 50k trail run two weeks ago, and being undertrained already for the run, coupled with fatigue from the 50k still (yes, I know, sad isn't it?) I wasn't counting on setting any records for the run. I took it at a moderate pace. The run had alot of doubletrack climbing towards the end, like some seriously long hills.
There was a cut-off time where you had to come back in to Race HQ under the 5 hour mark or you would not be allowed to go back out for another lap. I came in under it and transitioned again to go out for the final lap. I was told by Jason and Laura that two of the guys ahead of me pretty much just went out for their final laps also, one on the bike and one on the run. I had some work to do if I wanted a top 5 finish. I didn't see Marc at that time but I later found out that he had come in after 2 laps just over the cut-off so he was held back from doing a 3rd lap. He completed 2 laps in 5 hrs 19 minutes. Nice job Marc!
I went back out for lap 3 knowing I had to catch one of the guys on the bike. I finally caught him about 5 minutes from the end, so I hit the transition area, laced up my shoes, and took off knowing I had a fight going on with me and this guy. I was concerned because earlier on one of the laps this same guy went blazing by me on the running loop, so I figured he was a stronger runner than I. I also had the motivation of knowing that the other guy ahead of me was out on the bike and only minutes ahead of me.
So here I go, leaving Race HQ knowing I was in no worse than 4th but needing to fight to stay there, and possibly shooting for 3rd place. When I did this final run I swear I looked over my shoulder 50 times, thinking he would be fast approaching. It got to be a bit dangerous as it isn't too wise to turn around and take your eyes off of a rocky trail, but I couldn't help it.
I came to the long doubletrack climbing section and slowed it down some, still looking back, still seeing nobody. I ate a final AccelGel packet for the final push, pulled my hydration hose up and sucked for some water but it was EMPTY! No big deal rally since I was close to the finish, but I had a mouth full of gel that was thick and no water to wash it back. Anyway,I wondered what had happened to the guy giving chase? I was only a few minutes ahead of him when we left Race HQ, and I really thought he would catch me early. Well I kept pushing along, finally hitting the gravel road which takes you back to Race HQ/Finish. This meant about .6 miles left. I knew when I looked back then that if I didn't see him coming, I could hold my lead over him for that short remaining distance. As I was running this final portion, a guy came by on the bike (the end of each loop shared some of the gravel road) and I didn't know for sure since many different divisions were racing, but I had a feeling that it was the other guy who was minutes ahead of me.
When I came into the finish, I was told I secured 4th place in the 6 hour solo division, with a race time of 7 hrs 5 minutes, and sure enough, the bike that had just gone by was 3rd place, beating me by about 2 minutes. It turned out that the guy who was running that final lap that I kept looking over my should for finished 15 minutes back.
It was a fun time, pushing your body hard always is, and with great company and great weather, what more could you ask for? I had a great time talking and camping with my ace Marc Fisher, Jeff and Carrie Sona, Jason and Laura Elsenraat, Todd Holtman, Dathan Atchison, Jim and Wendy Davis, etc etc. I love this sport and all of the people who go along with it. The course was super fun, although I have to admit that by the 3rd lap I was really beginning to hate the rocks and found myself longing for some hardpacked singletrack like my hometown Klaus Park trail, or the Canal Loop trail at Kentucky Lake. The Berryman has a way of beating you up on a hardtail, but that's what makes it soooo fun. Like I have said before, to do these types of races, you have to like to suffer..... 37 miles on the mountaibn bike, half marathon trail run, and like minded people=A good day to be alive.
Post by Bryan Greaser

The 'Stank' not so stanky....

2009-08-13T12:06:00.001-07:00

Well the Stanky Creek 50k trail run is over, and as I write this my legs are back in normal shape again. For a couple of days there my legs were sore enough for someone to have mistaken me for Frankenstein as I walked, but I am feelin' oh sooo good once again.
It was a hot day but the trails that this course covered were almost completely shaded from the sun, so that helped. But countering that was that there is no breeze blowing through this wooded area on a trail run, and the humidity was pretty much typical Memphis humidity in August. There were about 75 runners for the race, some doing 50k, some doing 40 miles, and some doing 50 miles. One thing that I noticed was that everyone was fit, fit, fit. Aid stations were spaced out nicely. I was drinking and eating like a maniac despite my stomach not really wanting anything. My fingers were really swollen from retaining sodium and fluids, as well as my feet, so I got some weird blisters and hot spots on my feet from that. And the roots on the trail cause you to trip now and again, especially later in the race when you start to get the heavy feet and heavy legs.
I felt pretty strong on the first 17 miles, but after that my lack of any real serious training and preparation for this race began to sneak in a little. My mind kicked it into overdrive and took over for the weakening legs, and I ultimately finished at 6 hrs, 22 minutes. Not by any means a blazing fast trail run, but it was my first ultra, and I truly just set out to hopefully finish the race. It ended up being 14th out of 38 total racers in the 50k race.
Ultra running is a very different creature from mountain bike racing and adventure racing. There was something very simple and primal about just running out into the woods with some food and hydration. When doing an Adventure race, it is nerve wracking to make sure you have all of the necessary gear, maps, etc etc. And the navigation throughout the adventure race is stressful yet fun. Doing an ultra trail run, it was you and the trail, and that's about it. When the run started, in my mind I said, "Well, here's to 6 hrs of getting to know yourself even better." That pretty much sums it up. I
It was a great event, and I am really glad that I did it. I cannot wait to step it up a notch and take it to the next level, whatever that might be. But I do know that I loves trail running.... Always have, always will. And that's all I have to say about that.

by Bryan Greaser

Sunflower State Games

2009-07-27T06:25:00.000-07:00

On Friday, June 25th I picked up Lullel Hickman in Bolivar, MO and we headed to Perry State Park in Lawrence, KS. Before that time I had never officially introduced myself to him but had seen him many times at other events. I was thrilled to finally meet him and even more thrilled to get to race with him.

We pitched a tent when we got there at around 10:30. We did not waste much time getting some rest. Overall we both agreed that we had gotten more and better rest than we thought we would.

Saturday morning we were up at 6:00 and we began to take care of prerace stuff. We knew that this was a sprint race but we both had taken enough stuff to race a normal 8 to 12 hour race. My philosophy is if I do not pack it I cannot use it.

At 7:30 the pre-race meeting got underway with Jason Elsenraat of Bonk Hard racing directing the rodeo. He was in a chipper mood once again and was having way too much fun throwing out Salomon water bottles.

We got our map and clue sheet and began to strategize. This race had a specific bike section, a specific run section, and a specific canoe section. Jason allowed the racers to choose the leg that they wanted to do in any order. Each time you finished a leg you came back to HQ to receive a punch on your passport. We chose to bike first.

Before we took off we looked at the bike section as it had three checkpoints(CP's). The first was at the entrance to the singletrack trails and the other two were in the midst of a complicated trail system. I was very concerned about finding them but I kept that to myself.

Lullel and I had about a mile to the entrance of the singletrack and we then began our quest to find the two CP's amongst the puzzle of trails. My concerns were greatly brought to life as we struggled a little to find CP #6. The concerns were full blown as we struggled greatly with #7. We were falling behind at a rapid pace. Our biking was very fast but our locating of the CP's was very slow. We found them both and finally escaped the maze.

We then chose to trek. Lullel's gift is running. He towed me with a bungee. It was awesome. We knocked out the trek pretty quickly. We were slowed a little as I fought off some cramps. This was the first time that I had ever been towed running and we would not have gone even close to as fast as we did if it weren't for Lullel towing me. It was a great experience.

We then bolted for the canoes. When we were done they had told us that we were the fastest canoe time recorded for the race. We bushwhacked a hundred yards to the finish and was through. We ended up 22 minutes behind first place and we are thoroughly convinced that we lost all of that on the bike section.

Results completely aside, I was thrilled to spend some awesome time with Lullel. I truly looked forward to spending the time with him way more than the racing. My expectations were fulfilled.

This post is from Marc(as if you could not tell by the above picture).

What's that Stank??? It's Stanky Creek!

2009-07-21T19:50:00.001-07:00

www.swampstomper.com

Yep, you read it right,the Stank is a comin'. Marc, Ken and I are switching gears a bit and doing a trail run only instead of an adventure race. It's on August 8th in Memphis, TN so you can bet your can it's gonna be hot and humid. Those two crazies are doing the 50 mile trail run, which was what we had planned for all of us to do together, but my running has really been lacking in quantity so I decided to just register for the 50k instead. The cool thing is that this race allows you to switch during the race, so if somehow I am still feeling good at 50k I could continue onward, but I am not betting on that. Making things worse, I tried to break my collarbone last weekend in a bike crash.....50k will be a serious effort for me as it is.
Berryman duathlon is slated for August 22nd. I am planning on doing that also, just haven't decided what I am doing there yet. Then there's the Berryman Adventure of course in late September.... Hmmmmm, hoping we can somehow make that happen too.

Post by Bryan Greaser

New jerseys

2009-07-10T16:24:00.001-07:00

Ozark Greenways Adventure Race

2009-05-19T06:35:00.000-07:00

May 16, 2009. OGAR comes up again on the schedule. This was our first race together as a team in 2008 and we did well and had a great time, so we were very much looking forward to this one again. Marc, Ken, Jill and I were racing this year. We had all planned ahead on making a weekend out of it, camping at the Gasconade Hills campground/resort with our families along. That aspect of the whole weekend really made it a memorable weekend in and of itself and completely aside from the actual race.

Friday night: We checked-in and went back to camp to get things together and cook some food. We had heard that a fairly nasty storm was moving through, so we were all trying to put things away at camp and prepare for it. Right before dark, the sky became really black to the west and that is when the winds began to pick up and then the rain came. The rain began around 9:30 or so and we all took shelter and tried to go to sleep. I think it rained all night long, and probably didn't quit until maybe 3 am. We got up for the pre-race 5 am meeting where we were given our maps for the first time and cluesheets. We went back to the campsite and continued to get things together. Another mandatory team meeting was at 6 am where we were given a few more bits of information, one of the most important things being that the race format had changed due to weather conditions. The paddling leg, which would have been canoeing on the Gasconade River, was scrapped and taken out due to swift water from all of the recent rains. So this meant we were only running, trekking, biking and orienteering. It is nice in an adventure race to transition to a paddling leg to rest the legs and use the arms for a while, but we would not have that luxury this time. This was beyond everyone's control and they made the right decision.

The race started out from the campground on bikes. 55 teams lined up for the start. We were moving along nicely, probably sitting in the front 10 of the pack, and unfortunately we had a flat rear tire. We all stopped to change it and I used the opportunity to take off my lightweight rain jacket and stow it away. As always, a ton of teams began passing us by. It rips apart part of my soul when that happens. I cannot stand it when teams you were ahead of start passing you by when you have a flat or mechanical. But these things happen, plain and simple, through no fault of anyone's. So there is only one thing you can do. We knew we had to hammer again so when we got rollin' we took off hard and slowly began checking off alot of the teams that passed us. We eventually arrived at a transition area and bike drop. We transitioned pretty well and took off on trails for a run. Boy were they a mess from the rain. Literally there were spots on the trail where water was flowing like a creek. Not just standing pools and puddles of water, FLOWING water. We started passing more teams on this trail run. When we arrived back at a manned CP we were told we were sitting in about 10th place and we were heading our on a Rogaine style Orienteering course to find 9 CP's.

We took off and found the first 6 of them very well, but I had some difficulty finding 2 of the last 3. There were some parts of this trek that took us through some serious bushwacking, our lower legs being sliced and diced by briars, etc. Right now as I type my shins look as if I got into a fight with 100 cats. We also ran into some of the worst 'itch-weed,' probably Stinging Nettle, that I have ever encountered. Once you ran through it the sting and burn hit you immediately like a Mack truck. Mine went away after about 20 minutes though. Once we checked back in after the 3+ hr O course trek we had another run back to our bikes. When we arrived back at bikes we were still sitting in about 10th place so we were hoping to possibly catch a team or two who might be bonking on the final 7 mile bike leg back to the Finish.

On the final bike leg we were moving along nicely and wouldn't you know that with less than 3 miles to go to the Finish we suffered another flat tire. We changed it pretty quickly though, so it was not of any real consequence. We got passed by a couple of teams while changing it but I know at least one of them had dropped a teammate and were racing "unranked" so it didn't matter.

We pulled into the Finish at 7 hr 33 minutes, good for a 9th place finish out of 55 teams. We were happy with that. We all had a great time racing this race again. We all agreed that there is still room for improvement and places where we can shave more time, but most importantly, we had a very good race. Physically we were all feeling good at the finish and nobody bonked or cramped. Good signs indeed.

Here is a link to our results: http://www.greenwayrace.org/races/ogar-2009/teams/cyclewerx/

Race report by Bryan Greaser

Frisco 50

2009-04-21T09:30:00.000-07:00

Marc, Darren & Ken all went to Willard for the Frisco 50 last weekend, although Darren strictly went to steal T-shirts.
The weather could not have been more perfect; we had mild temperatures in the upper 50s & low 60s most of the day with cloud cover the entire time, which kept temperatures bearable for a long run.
Our families dropped us at Willard school for the start, then met us, albeit a bit late, at the finish in Bolivar. My race was perhaps one of the best races of my life. I turned in a 4:46 time for 31.+ miles; not too bad for my first 50K that actually went the entire distance. Marc also reports that his race was equally stellar, & he finished with a huge smile as all of his children & one stray ran him across the line.
I had to go to work upon returning to town, so we left very quickly after the race was over. I barely can remember anything about working at the store the night after the race, so I must have been pretty taxed.
Lessons learned from this one: I am adopting the Boy Scout motto of “be prepared.” No where can this be more useful than in long distance racing. Several aid stations only offered water, but fortunately I had some nutrition in my pack. I have also developed blisters & other foot oddities of late. My new best friend, the book “Fix Your Feet” helped me to prepare for that. I had all the supplies I needed to keep my feet happy during the trek.
Highlights for me were a nice pre-race meal the evening before with the Fishers, good pre-race coffee, perfect weather, & family & friends to celebrate with afterwards.

Next up, 100K or 50M, whichever comes first.

This and that....

2009-04-13T11:36:00.000-07:00

Some general notes on the early season....

On May 16, 2009 the Ozark Greenways Adventure Race is set and we once again will be entering this race. It will be myself, Marc, Ken and Jill. Last year we entered and raced under the team name, "Epic Adventures," and had a great race (See our 2008 blog posts.) We are hopeful for another great race this year.

Marc and Ken have been trail running alot, and I am wanting to do a few of those races as well. I have had a goal now for a couple of years to run a 50 mile trail ultra but it just hasn't happened for me yet. I am looking at doing the Bonk Hard Berryman duathlon again this year though in August or September. I did it last year with my friend Matt Ochs and I ended up running 27 miles on the Berryman trail, but with one hour breaks in between laps while Matt mountain biked the bike course. Marc and Ken are running the Frisco 50k on April 18th.

On June 6 I am planning on going down to Arkansas for an Ozark Extreme Adv Racing race at Village Creek State Park. I'll do the Advanced Course.

Our team still hasn't done the Berryman Adventure yet. I am really hoping to do it this year. I hope our team can do it, but if not I will look at alternatives like finding a replacement for whomever cannot race it or finding a team to join that might need another male racer.

Jill and I recently ordered some new take apart kayak paddles.
We decided to give these economical paddles a try, as none of us are in a hurry to go out and buy an Epic Wing paddle for $400. We are crossing our fingers on these paddles. I often find myself using the "You get what you pay for" phrase, but hopefully these will turn out to be solid paddles for the price. The weight looks good and the breakdown length of 25 inches looks about as small as I found. I will post an update when they arrive. If they turn out to be good this is a great find for adv racers on a budget! They are the Advanced Elements Packlight Four piece take apart paddles, and we found them for $59.

Post by Bryan Greaser

LBL Challenge

2009-04-07T07:24:00.000-07:00

Where to begin? Hmmmm, I guess where it all truly began. Probably about a year ago I was talking to Jason Elsenraat, owner of Bonk Hard Racing, and mentioned to him that he should seriously consider putting on a race at the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area at Kentucky Lake in western Kentucky. I live about 2 hours away, but Jason lives in the Kansas City area which is more like 7 hours away. So he did some research on the area and decided he wanted to give it a go. He asked if I would be willing to help design the course and put it on since I live closer and am familiar with the area, and the rest is history. A race was born. This picture is Gary and I (me in red) going over the maps, UTM's and cluesheets one final time on Thursday night at the lodge.

Many months went into the planning and preparation of this race. We initially intended to put the race on in September or October of 2009, but circumstances changed and April 4, 2009 was the date we came up with that worked for the US Forest Service and ourselves. While things were progressing along, the worst ice storm in history slammed the LBL area, causing complete and utter destruction right through where our race was going to be. The KY governor called it the worst natural disaster in modern history. Widespread power outages, power lines snapped in half, and trees, trees, trees snapped and down everywhere imaginable. HUGE trees, even the healthy ones, weren't spared. We had a conference call with the LBL US Forest service trails manager Bill Ryan who is a real class of a guy, and one of his co-workers Kyle Varel, another class of a guy. They described the condition of the area but remained committed to making this event continue nonetheless. They had crews cutting trees across roads and trail non-stop. The local bike shop owner Steve Wilson from Wood N Wave sports in Grand Rivers was a HUGE part of this as well, rallying crews to clear the very well known Canal Loop trail on the North end of LBL. Steve also helped us out in other ways as well and we really appreciated his help. Another jewel of a guy. And I also had some major help from two of my friend in Cape a few weekends before the race. Keith Hente and Tom Farden both dedicated an entire Sunday to help me with some back breaking work on clearing a certain key road that was decimated with trees, just to make it somewhat passable for bikes. Huge thanks to those two guys too.

Registration was looking great. For a first year race, we anticipated maybe 150 racers, and considering the news of the ice storm slamming the area, we were anxiously awaiting to see if people were scared off from coming. To our delight, we ended up having over 210 racers for this race. Because of the condition of the trails and side roads and jeep trails, I had to spend many, many man hours working on clearing downed trees and branches from roads we intended to use for our route. I spent many weekends doing hard back breaking labor to make this race work. Unfortunately this took away from my time on concentrating on different parts of the race that I needed to do. This is when Jason and I decided to ask Gary Thompson from Osage Beach, MO to come on board. Gary is an orienteer and an avid outdoorsman, having done many O-meets, Rogaines, and even some adventure races in the past. In fact, after the LBL Challenge he was driving straight to Atlanta to begin his hike of the Appalachian Trail. So we now had three heads working on this event and things were progressing well.

Race week: I headed over to LBL on Wednesday, April 1 to begin setting up the course. Every CP was flagged previously with pink colored surveying tape and the location and description plotted onto our master map. Gary had arrived a day earlier and began placing the actual CP white and orange bags/flags. He and I continued to place the flags on Thursday and Friday before the race. We stayed at the Ken Bar Lodge in Gilbertsville where the owners treated us like family. Very interesting place they have there.

The pre-race meeting was Friday evening. Racer check-in began at 3 pm and you could feel the excitement in the air. And the race shirts that Jason ordered from the North Face were simply awesome, and I mean super groovy awesome. WAYYYYY better than just an average ole race t-shirt that we all have too many of already. These were tech shirts, not cotton.

We had some seriously good teams coming in for this race from all over the country. And I mean SERIOUSLY good. It was very cool to have met those teams and racers individually. Adventure racers are such cool people. The one thing I always tell people about adventure racing is that you have to like to suffer, plain and simple. Crazy isn't it? Anyway, the racers got their maps and cluesheets and after the meeting they began plotting their UTM coordinates and plotting their routes and gameplan. Jason, Gary and I had more last minute work to do. No rest for the weary. div>
I went back to Race HQ on Friday night with 4 of my good friends from Cape who came over to volunteer for this race and help me out. I think they got more than they bargained for. We ended up being short on volunteers so we 'recycled' these guys all day long over the course and worked them like dogs. So here is a seriously, from the heart SHOUT OUT to Pat McMenamin, Ben Gray, Chris Heeb and Matt Ochs for coming over and helping me. Steak dinners are in order for these guys to say the least. I hope they at least had some fun. When we arrived back at Race HQ on Friday night we set up the HQ tent and took care of some other business, and then eventually we went to sleep right there in the parking area for a couple of hours before the sound of a 6000 watt generator was fired up at 5:30 am on Saturday morning. What an alarm clock that was for my boys! It was SHOWTIME. The weather was absolutely perfect. Sunny and a high of 70 degrees.

Once the race began, things calmed down and the race begins to play itself out. All of the planning and coordinating just kind of comes to a stop and things progress out. Jason, Gary and I were driving all over the course just checking things out from different locations and transition areas where we had volunteers stationed. Occasionally you get the call from a couple of racers that had bike problems or whatever so I ended up picking up a few and driving them back to Race HQ where they called it a day. These things happen. The 12 hour racers were finished and off of the course by 8 pm Saturday evening. This is when the REAL fun began for the 24 hour racers.

The 24 hour racers were paddling two person canoes from Demumbers Bay all the way around to Cravens Bay, which was about a 14 mile paddle. Unfortunately, as the day progressed, the lake conditions worsened. Winds picked up, waves whipped up, and temps dropped slightly. It made for a really, really challenging paddling leg for some of the later teams. Some even described it as actually moving backwards when the momentarily stopped paddling. Once they became wet, the winds just caused them to be very cold. A CP location at Eddyville Ferry Lake Acces (CP14) had my good buddy volunteers mentioned above with a nice fire going lakeside. Some racers came up to the fire to get warm for a moment and I think they appreciated that. We also had many teams finishing up the paddling leg in the dark of night. Truly tough conditions.

In the evening hours, after 6 pm, I went down to Hematite Lake to set up a very key transition area. The 24 hour racers would be coming into this TA on bikes, drop them and head out into the woods for a 12 mile trek finding 13 CP's in the dark. We gave the racers sacks the night before to do a food and water drop at this area so when they came in they could refuel, etc. The first team(s) to come through were WEDALI and Eastern Mountain Sports. At this point in the race, I had sheets printed out and provided to me from Jason who had internet access. This race was a Checkpoint Tracker series race, which means that friends and family could follow their daddies, husbands, wives, etc. nearly live. I say nearly live because Jason has to actually get updates from the volunteers on the course about what place the teams are in, then he has to run back to the lodge where he could access the internet and actually sit down and input the information, all while trying to do a ton of other race director duties as well. But we did the best we could. Anyway, these people at home could also post "Shout Outs" to their racers and we would then print them out and I would literally "Shout Out" to the teams while they were transitioning at Hematite Lake what their friends and families posted on the internet. It appeared to be a real hit with the racers. There is nothing like hearing "Go daddy, I love you and I hope you aren't tired" coming from your 5 year old daughter while you are out in the woods in the dark 16 hours into a grueling race. It seemed to be a morale booster for most of them, and every time I read these to the teams they all gave a very genuine "thank you." My favorite Shout Outs were from Carrie Sona who races for Alpine Shop. She races with her husband Jeff on that team. She had circumstances come up days before the race that didn't allow her to race with the team. You could tell that it was killing her, just killing her, not to be there. But she should be aware that Jeff, Dave and Doug were getting her Shout Outs down at Hematite TA, probably where they needed them the most. After WEDALI and EMS finished the Hematite Rogaine style 13 CP trek, Carrie posted, "Please come out of the woods next." I believe Alpine Shop did just that!

This Hematite Lake transition area ended up being my favorite spot in the entire race. It was nearly the furthest place south that the racers would go during this race, and it was truly a really full-on effort for some of them to have even gotten down there. Once many of them arrived there, they didn't have plans on going out on this very tough night trek to get many of the CP's, so some of the teams just sat down by our campfire, ate, took in fluids, and shared stories and just chummed around the fire. It had a "we're all in this together" atmosphere down there at Hematite Lake. Many teams sat with maps and plotted a route back to race HQ (20+ miles away on the bike) which didn't allow them to get any remaining CP's, but instead allowed them a manageable way to get back to race HQ nonetheless on their own power and without calling for a ride and pulling out. So many of these teams down there were obviously not "in it to win it" at this point in the race, but showed so much heart that I just really, really enjoyed sitting there talking to them. Many of the teams were fighting major adversity. Team Just for Kids comes to mind. These guys had one teammate who suffered four flat tires relatively early in the race. It was the ole thorn in the tire that kept popping the tube. That is sure to be something they will look for in the future. They also had a teammate who was having major problems with his seat, and they ended up using duct tape to help fix that problem. Wow. And these same guys busted a chain too. But they never even contemplated quitting. They had real heart, let me tell ya. I really grew to like those guys. And they were raising money for a good cause too. This Hematite transition area put many of these teams into a "survival mode" so to speak. There is an old joke in adventure racing about not stopping to get warm by the fire. Once you do this, you get sucked in and something grabs ahold of you and it is very, very hard to get away. It is just too easy to stay there. Well, many teams fell for it. They put wet socks near the fire, warmed their shoes, etc. Some spent a couple of hours by the fire. One guy slept by a tree for probably two hours! But they knew that the leaders were many, many hours ahead and that a win was not in sight, so they took the time to get refreshed and this allowed most of them to eventually bike their way back up north to the finish before noon on Sunday.

Having been on the racing/participating side of adventure races, this was my first time being on the other end of it. After the race is over, racers pack up and leave, but our work was just getting started. Taking down race HQ tents, cleaning up trash, and most importantly, going out onto the course to retrieve all of those CP's over the entire 95 mile course. Fortunately, many were pretty easy to get to by car and a short hike, but not all of them. We worked all Sunday afternoon and Monday until mid to late afternoon getting everything picked up. And although the weather for the race was great, the weather for the course takedown was awful. Windy, cold rain was switching back and forth from rain to sleet. But we got it all done nonetheless.

Some general parting thoughts: As a race designer, it is the goal to strike a balance between making a race course that is both enjoyable and manageable for both experienced teams and less experienced teams, while at the same time making a real challenge for all racers. If you make it too easy, less experienced teams will probably like it more, but the real top dogs who traveled from so far away may not feel that it challenged them enough. We attempted to strike the balance, but many variables come into play that are very difficult to plan for. One such variable was the wind on the lake later in the evening on Saturday. My impression is that it was less of an issue for the 12 hour racers who were on the lake on Saturday morning, and the winds picked up significantly into the evening when our 24 hour racers were out there. Also, the ice storm caused the trekking sections in the woods to have slower travel due to the large downed trees and limbs. Finally, we were limited in our route choices somewhat due to certain roads being open and others being closed from trees being across them. Due to that, the final biking leg was probably longer than I would have liked, but it was really the shortest route we could design while making due with the roads that were open and usable. While we projected the top finishing time to be about 18 hours, it was 19 hour hours and some change, which wasn't far off of the mark.
I learned alot from this race that should prove to be invaluable to me as a racer. And I learned alot more about adventure racers than I knew before. While racing, you are going through alot yourself, but when working on the course during the race and observing, you learn more about racers in a different perspective. I have come to respect adventure racers even more than I used to and I never thought that was even possible.

Ok, ok, I might be waxing poetic here, but I am not done yet... All of these racers, both 12 and 24 hour course participants, they have heart and soul, and determination beyond comprehension. Some are in it to win it while others are there to have fun. I can only hope that despite a very tough course, everyone came away having had a great time, learning alot about themselves and their teammates and friends, and learning that adventure races are not meant to be easy, and just like life itself, an adventure race throws things at you that you might not expect, might not want, and might feel like you cannot continue on any longer. There are trials, and tribulations, but more trials than tribulations, but at the end of the day, just finishing the race, or even knowing that you gave it your best shot, that is what matters the most. When one reaches down deep and puts their mind into it, and when the legs say "I can't go any more" but the mind and heart says "GO," you put one foot in front of the other, rely on your teammates to help, and make it to that finish line knowing you took the challenge head on, and came away a winner regardless of the time or number of checkpoints that were punched.

This was an unforgettable experience for me of which I am so grateful that Jason asked me to help him out with this event. I hope he feels the same way.

There were five teams who finished with all CP's punched. That was a monumental effort for those five, and of course, you can't forget WEDALI, being the first team to finish by about 45 minutes, only to later discover they had missed CP 24. That was a real shame as they raced an incredible race. But things like that happen in adventure races.

The race course ended with a 20 mile bike leg, a little less than half of which was singletrack. I know some of the teams liked it, but others said it was less enjoyable, and more like a ride on the 'pain-train.' But the teams can't say that they weren't warned ahead of time. Our race description told the racers that they would be on very few roads, and instead on alot of singletrack trails.

Finally, a big thanks to Jason and Gary, two really great guys who were great to work with. A big thanks to Bill and Kyle with the USFS, Steve Wilson with Wood n Wave, and all volunteers who made this possible, especially my good buddies Pat, Ben, Chris, Matt, Tom and Keith. And finally, and most importantly, a HUGE thank you and lots of love for the patience and sacrifices that my family endured through all of my time away while working, designing and planning this race. I have such great friends and family, and at the end of the day, there really isn't anything more important than that. As my profile states, I continue to be "the luckiest guy in the world."
Post by Bryan Greaser

3 Days of Syllamo- 50k

2009-03-19T06:22:00.000-07:00

Ken and I travelled down Hwy. 5 South to run the 3 days of Syllamo 50k trail race. It was a tough drive down there with both of us struggling to stay awake at times. We arrived about thirty minutes before the start. We sat in the truck for the last few minutes before the start with the engine running and the heater cranked. I have learned to almost hate the morning of a race because of the anticipation of just wanting to get out there and go.

At last we were off. The race headquarters was where the first aid station was at the Sylamore 25k that I had done three weeks earlier. I do not have the patience to tell about all of the details of the run. Two people, among many, that we became acquainted with were Lindy from Republic, MO and Robert from Georgia. I believe that he said Augusta. Allen Honeycutt lives in Berryville, AR and we talked for a small stretch. That is one of the neatest things about these races. No one is so ultra competitive that they cannot talk. You can tell that they are just happy to be out there experiencing the trails and the people.

The run ended up being twenty-five miles. The experience was awesome. I do not know what next year holds but I would like to run all three days next year. The three days consists of a 50k, 50-miler, and a 20k.

The legs were tired on the drive home and we had to make a couple of stops to stretch and revive a little. I definitely know what they mean by a runner's high after completing these races. I hope to do a 50-miler soon.

My next race will be the Frisco Highline 50k on April 18th. Overall, I feel like leg strength is my biggest training thing right now. I just need to get more miles in on running.

This post is by Marc.

The Sylamore Trail 25k

2009-03-02T11:40:00.000-08:00

I had been viewing this race for some time on the internet and I decided about 3 weeks before the scheduled date to sign up for it. I wanted to do the 50k but I did not have the guts to get that done. Looking back, I could have done it, but I am glad that I did not.

I headed out on Friday afternoon, and after about a three hour drive I ended up in Allison, AR. I got my sweatshirt for entering and proceeded to find a campground for the night. I was going to sleep in my truck and then later decided to get a campsite and pitch a tent. I built a fire in a fire ring with old scrap lumber from the addition to the office at the Sylamore Creek Campground. I sat around the fire for a couple of hours reading and eating peanuts and drinking Gatorade.

I turned in about nine o'clock and slept well until about one. I was a little cold. I dozed until three and nature called. I was in and out until 4:19 and I decided to get on up because my alarm was set at 4:30. I was cold as I laid on the ground in my sleeping bag. I expected the weather to turn colder that morning according to the news. As cold as I was laying on the ground I really figured that I was in for a cold race. As it turned out I figured out that the ground was cold, but the air was not nearly as cold. I could not even see my breath as I came out of the tent.

I proceeded to drive to the Angler's resort where the race started. We were supposed to check in at 6:00 a.m. I was there at 5:00. I love being early. I had my choice of parking spots. I knew it would get crowded and boy did it.

The 50k started at 7:00 and the 25k started at 7:15. We were off. We encountered the creek crossing at just over a mile. This was not wading. This was crossing the Sylamore Creek which was up to my titties. There was no rope and it was slippery. One miscue and you were swimming. One lady was swimming in front of me. It really would not have been that big a deal had I fallen because I was pretty deep already.

Anyway, out of the water and on with the run. It was beautiful. It completely blows away anything that I have ever ran before as far as beauty. There was over 6,000 feet of ascent and descent. There was one aid station for the 25k'ers at about six miles. I stopped long enough to get a peanut butter and syrup sandwich square and a quarter of a banana. We then proceeded up a million stairs. This began the major climbing portion of the race.

After climbing forever, I distanced myself from two girls that I had been trailing for some time on the downhill. I made it to the halfway point and punched my bib number and began the journey back. I met a guy named Ryan and he trailed me the rest of the way. He ran when I ran and walked the hills when I walked the hills.

We came back to the same aid station and I refueled with the same food as before and I filled my Camelbak with Gatorade and was off again. Ryan and I talked a little here and there. I heard the girls talking behind me and it inspired me to run harder. They caught me at the creek crossing. This crossing was very cold. The adrenaline was not surging like the first time and my legs ached. The girls passed me in the creek and they began running as soon as they exited the water. I was not able to start the running engines immediately. It took me a hundred yards or so before I could begin to jog again.

I walked up a steep, short climb and then began to run the rest of the way in. I crossed the finish and asked if I was the first 50k'er. It got a chuckle from the race director's wife. I was chilly very quickly after stopping. I drove back to the campground and took a wonderfully hot shower and began my drive back home.

It was a wonderful trip. I plan on doing it again next year. I encourage anyone to. I am now preparing for what I was glad that I did not do on this one.........the 50k at the 3 days of Syllamo. This will be ran on March 13th on a lot of the same trails as this one. I am very excited about this next challenge.

This post is by Marc.

The Bonk Hard Chill

2009-02-12T06:46:00.000-08:00

As Shakespeare once said, "What’s in a name?" Well in this case, not much. This is a February race every year for Bonk Hard and is always appropriately named, but at the pre-race meeting Friday night, Jason started off the meeting by grabbing the microphone and saying, "Welcome to the Bonk Hard ‘Heat-Wave.’ Yep, that sums it up. Somehow the temps have been in the low teens and 20s for most of this winter it seems, but on race weekend, the lows were only 45ish and the highs were in the 60s. As always, Bonk Hard had some killer prize give-aways at the Friday night pre-race meeting, including free entries into a Bonk Hard Race, AR backpacks by Columbia, Salomon XT Wings trail shoes, a Kuat bike rack for cars, and many more. The free Grand Slam breakfast at Denny’s was killer too, but we all left town before we could use it. Wonder if we could sell them on eBay?

We stayed up late Friday night plotting CP’s 1-26, and getting last minute mandatory gear stuffed into our packs. As usual, we didn’t sleep very soundly in anticipation of a long raceday ahead. I was especially anxious to see how my new GoLite racing pack was going to perform for this race. I really like my Salomon pack, but it is about an 18 litre volume, and this new GoLite pack is a 25 litre pack which I thought would be better since some of the mandatory gear in a winter race tends to be bulky and heavy. Well it turned out to be the schnizzle-fo-dizzle, plus a few more schnizzles and another mo-fo-dizzle. It was super roomy like the Adams Mark Honeymoon Suite, and all of my gear fit nicely in there with room to spare. I think I am becoming a backpack junkie. Most of my friends call me the headlamp junkie. Ok, I have a couple, or nine....

On race morning, we had to first stop at Camp Rising Sun to stage our bikes, and then we drove our cars to the actual Race HQ at Camp Clover Point.
At 6:25 am, the National Anthem played, and we started off on a trekking leg at 6:30 am with headlamps. We hit all of the CP’s without any problems, and then went on to the bike drop area and rode our bikes a very short distance down to the lake where we dropped them lakeside in a staging area and transitioned to the paddling leg.

The paddling wasn’t too bad. Admittedly, the lake water was really, really cold, and the coves had a ton of ice in them, with very large pieces floating about too. It was a bit disconcerting to run your canoe into those floating ice chunks with thoughts of capsizing into the frigid waters. But it wasn’t that bad, and we never came close to capsizing. The biggest thing about the paddling leg was the paddles. The race website stated that you can bring your own paddles. Well... we didn’t. When we saw so many other racers with double bladed kayak paddles, we knew we were in trouble on the paddling leg. Teams can put down some serious time on opponents if they are jamming with two people who both have kayak paddles rather than a standard single blade canoe paddle. Add new break apart kayak paddles to the gear wish list.
Once we finished most of the lake paddling, we canoed back to the beach where we dropped our bikes off earlier, but this time we had to load them into our canoes and strap them in and take off for another mile or so of lake paddling. That was stressful. I just bought a new carbon framed mountain bike, and thoughts of that bike on the bottom of the lake were.... well, there was a ‘pucker’ factor of 10+ during that paddling leg if you get my drift. Two bikes strapped into the canoe also adds some problems to the stability of the canoe, but honestly, it turned out to not be a big deal.
So we paddle to the next CP where we took out the canoes and transitioned to the mountain bike. As always, it feels good to use different parts of your body just about the time when your muscles are getting tired from doing something else. Arms and back were tired, but now it was time to mash on the bike and crank those leg muscles.

The biking leg was mostly on gravel roads, so that was good as we knew the trails around the area were very muddy. We hate riding on muddy trails for a lot of reasons, but not the least of which is that it just isn’t good trail stewardship at all. Alot of racers on trails can cause some serious damage, but thankfully we were mostly off of them except for trekking on them at times. So eventually we biked our way down to a church (CP23 I think) where we went inside and received an additional 16 or so CP’s that we had to sit down and plot. We also took some time to re-fuel as the church volunteers had tons of juices, fruits, turkey sandwiches, etc waiting for us. Wow, these volunteers never cease to amaze me for the hours they dedicate to races like this for our benefit. I was plotting our new points as Ken and Marc took turns reading out the UTM coordinates to me, and between the CP plots I would scarf down a bite of turkey sandwich that was handed to me. They had bananas to eat too, but our team was really hoping that they had plantains....Oh well, that’s another story.

After plotting the new CP’s we took off to hit a few more CP’s on the bike, and then we came to CP26 where we dropped the bikes again and transitioned back to trekking where we were essentially doing an orienteering course. Often an orienteering course isn’t all that large, but this one seemed to cover miles, and the terrain was pretty darn steep and muddy at times. We had an awful time finding one of the CP’s and we became discouraged for a short while, but we got our wits about us, regrouped and somehow we intersected with a jeep trail that actually showed up on the map! It was then that I knew where we were again! We then backtracked a bit to hit the CP and all was right with the world again. We had reference points again to shoot bearings to the remaining CP’s. We all agreed that this was tough terrain to bushwack through. It was steep, muddy on the hillsides, rocky at times, and lots of deadfall. We weren’t traveling on trails, I’ll put it that way.

While still hitting the CP’s on this trekking leg, we came to what I refer to as a crucial point in the race. We hit the CP that was on an old abandoned boat dock. We had about three more CP’s to hit before we were to go back to the bike drop area and retrieve the bikes. It was beginning to get dark. I asked Jill what time it was and it was getting to be about 4:00. We had only an hour or so of daylight left. We had to decide if we were going to push on and try to find the remaining CP’s, or whether we would just start making our way back to the bikes and then on to the finish and skip the last few CP’s. Ken did a great job of rallying the troops, and we agreed that we had headlamps, let’s use ‘em. We hit the last few CP’s very accurately during the waning hours of daylight. Unbeknownst to us at that time, this would become our demise for our final ranking. Then we made our way back to the bikes. It was about 6:15ish, and yes, very dark.

We transitioned back to the bikes and rode about 3 miles maybe where we then had to get back across the lake where the finish area was. Since it was dark and getting cold, the race directors decided to hold up our team and a few others so that we could paddle across the lake as a large group for safety reasons. They also provided a small watercraft that followed us as well for safety. We once again strapped our bikes into the canoes, turned on our headlamps and blinking red lights on the bikes and off we went into the icy waters one last time in the dark. It reminded me of the scene in the movie "Titanic," minus all of the floating bodies in the water, of course. The water was very calm. Fortunately this paddling leg was only about a mile. We took out at the beach and jumped onto our bikes for the final few miles or so of biking to the finish.
We made it to the finish at about 7:30. Technically the race cut-off time was 7 pm, but we were told on the course that we would still be allowed to finish since they were holding us up as a group at that final lake paddle.

Once race results were posted, to our surprise we had a very disappointing finish. It turns out that the volunteers supposedly informed us at a bike drop to trek transition area that we were to be back at the bike drop no later than 5 pm or suffer a CP penalty for every minute past 5 pm for the CP’s in that orienteering section of the woods. For whatever reason, we didn’t hear that or it wasn’t told to us, and so we made it back to that area well past 5 pm and unbeknownst to us, we suffered severe penalties, getting credit for only 31 CP’s when in reality we hit all 42. Oh well, life is full of disappointments. We still had a lot of fun and learned a lot about racing, ourselves and each other.
Race Summary by Bryan Greaser
Next up: Ozark Greenways Adventure Race

Castlewood "8 Hour" Adventure Race

2008-12-12T06:26:00.000-08:00

Sat morning, December 6th, 4 am. Wake up time for the Bonk Hard Castlewood 8 hr Adventure Race. Ken, Jill, Marc and I all stayed together the night before the race, packed our packs together, and plotted the checkpoints that we had already received. When I took a peek outside at 4 am, I saw a very light dusting of snow covering the lawns, streets, and houses. Oh boy. I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t say that thoughts of, "What in the H*%^ am I doing this race for?" didn’t pop into my head...... And stayed there for a while.
We headed to Castlewood at 5 am, and passports and additional maps were given out at 5:30 am. We staged our bikes near the Race HQ pavilion and were informed that we were all going to be bused to a remote unknown location. The buses arrived at 6 am and proceeded to take us on a drive out I-44. It seemed like the bus ride was 40 minutes long. I was halfway expecting to see a highway sign reading, " Rolla, 20 miles."Fortunately, we exited in Eureka, took some backroads and arrived at the race start area about 6:40. While many racers from STL may have had an idea where we were, our team had no clue where this bus trip just took us. We stood for the national anthem, and then Marc lined up to run out to two designated volunteers and brought back our clue sheets and UTM coordinates for additional plotting. Ken plotted the CP’s onto the map and off we went on a short trek to the first leg of the race, a paddling leg at 7 am with freezing temperatures.

This paddling leg ended up being about 8-10 miles I believe. There was an orienteering course mixed in there too. We did it without any major problems.
Once we pulled over to the takeout, we had a mandatory gear check, and then transitioned to trek, hitting CP’s 6 through 13. We were doing well until we moved from CP 7 to CP 8. We had major problems finding CP 8, which turned out to be right inside a tunnel going under the RR tracks in a remote area of Castlewood State Park. I won’t go into all of the details of the "CP 8 fiasco," but it cost us time, A LOT of time. Once we finally found CP 8, we easily and quickly hit CP’s 9 through 13. But we were morally defused at that point. It was a defining and testing moment for our team to say the least. Frustrations were setting in, having teams that you were way ahead of begin passing you, etc. Every adventure racing team has dealt with moments like this, and it really tests the team factor to see what every individual is made up of, as well as testing the collective team unit itself. We responded by sucking it up and trekking faster and harder. We noticed some teams beginning to walk and were ‘hitting the wall,’ but we pressed on pretty hard and we all felt pretty strong still.
We arrived back at Race HQ, transitioned to the mountain bike and hit CP’s 14 through 29 pretty much without any problems. We then went out on a final trek to find as many CP’s as we could before the 5 pm race cut-off as there was substantial time penalties for being out past 5 pm. We took off and found seven CP’s, one of which was on a beautiful bluff overlooking the Meremac River at sunset, and it was awe inspiring. We made it back to the Finish line with a little time to spare.
Once it was all said and done, we finished 10th place in 4 person co-ed out of 21 teams. We were disappointed in not having a more respectable showing, feeling capable of finishing in the top 5 if we had raced to our capability, but we raced for 10 hard hours and learned a lot about ourselves and the team. Another race under our belt is always a good thing.
By Bryan Greaser
Next up: Bonk Hard Chill, February 2009

Sand Spring River Race 2008

2008-10-31T03:58:00.000-07:00

Ken and I got the pleasure of racing together in the third annual, two person AR sprint at Sand Springs Resort on the Niangua River just outside of Lebanon, MO.

The morning was cold. It was not cool, or brisk, it was cold. We were prepared with plenty of clothing for the pre-race preparations. Ken was even prepared for a total eclipse of the sun as he still wore his headlamp in broad daylight (he had just forgotten to take it off). We pulled in and began to sing “Stayin Alive” by the Bee Gees. We had discussed the lyrics earlier in the week and both admitted that we could not understand the lyrics but we liked the title so it has stuck temporarily as our theme song. This was especially true on this day as Ken had heard this song on the radio earlier in the morning. Come to think of it, what kind of radio station still plays that song Ken?

We traveled by bus to the beginning run (sprint) of 2.2 miles. We ran the first mile in 6:34 and the second mile in 7:04 and was very glad to see the run ending and the canoe starting. We neither one could have kept up that pace much longer. I took the front and Ken took the back of the canoe and off we went.

Further down the river I bailed out and headed to land to do the mystery event. It consisted of a zip line across the Niangua River. It was a blast! Thanks for letting me do that Ken. The next one is yours. When I got done zipping, the instructions were not very clear on what was next as far as me getting back into the boat. I asked the volunteer if I just needed to jump in or what. She said yes and so I did. Ken was right there with the canoe and I dove into the canoe and we were off………………..that was short lived. The officials then decided to inform us that I had to get out of the boat, back into the river, and run a few feet past a fallen log before I could get back into the boat. Soooo, out of the boat I went, down the bank and then back into the boat. Now we were legal and off again.

A little further down the river we beached the canoe and were off for a two mile technical run. By the way, did I mention that it was technical? Up the hills was a hike. Down the hills it was sometimes a free fall. We slid down parts of it. It was some amazing scenery overlooking the river. You really did need all of your concentration on parts as a fall from the heights was definitely possible. The highlight of this run for me was when we missed part of the trail and it took us a bit to relocate it. Once we did, we had surrendered a couple of spots to other teams. We got in a traffic jam because of this. We began a downhill run and the teams in front of us were very cautious about the downhill. I was thinking of our need to get past them and about that time I heard a voice behind me say, “Gotta go.” Next thing that I see is Ken bounding down the hill, passing the teams effortlessly, and making his own trail. I knew that was my cue to get on it also so down the hill I went making my own trail down the other side of the pack. That move alone made up major ground for us.

It was then back to the canoes for a short trip back to the transition area (TA). We were out of the river and off to our bikes. At this point I got to see Pam and the kids and my mom for a brief moment. It is always so good to see your family at these events and having them cheer you on.

The bike portion was seven miles. It was very technical and rocky and lots of major hills. We passed one or two teams on the bike. We then stashed our bikes and ran across the finish line together. The family was there and Dad had since joined them. I was so excited to see him there.

We had a blast. We finished 2nd in the men’s division and 6th overall out of about 40 teams.

The race was, once again, very well organized. Thanks to the volunteers and the Glendenning family for all of their hard work to put on this race.

Thanks for the pictures Pam, Dad, and Jenny.

Race summary by Marc

2008-10-15T11:40:00.000-07:00

Burnin' at the Bluff 12 Hour Mountain Bike Challenge

2008-10-13T11:34:00.000-07:00

This wasn't necessarily our adventure racing team that competed in this race, but I decided to include it on this blog anyway. The Burnin' at the Bluff 12 hour race has become a premier race put on by Mesa Cycles out of STL on a very technical, rocky, rooty and loose gravel short steep climbs around a 13 mile loop of Council Bluffs Lake south of Potosi, MO.

Cyclewerx sent four teams to this race, and I was racing with 15 year old up and coming phenom Garrett Smith and Scott Taylor in the 'Fast' division under the team name "B.A.M.F."

We had an incredibly consistent day of racing. We pretty much went out and raced a perfect race. It started at 9 am, and by 9:45 pm we each had completed 3 laps of nearly equal times for each lap. Not a single flat tire all day. Must have all been choosing good lines.

This was good enough for a 2nd place finish in the Fast division out of 10 teams. It was a nice finish to an excellent race that just gets better and better every year. A great race to finish off the mountain bike season and carry some momentum into the offseason and next year. I still have the Bonk Hard Racing Castlewood 8 Hour Adventure Race on December 6 with my AR team and we are sending myself, Marc, Jill and Ken, so I can't get complacent. There is still much prep to do.

By Bryan Greaser

Up next: Castlewood 8 Hour Adventure Race December 6, 2008

The Monster in Quincy IL from Jill Plassmeyer

2008-09-24T06:42:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, September 20th, The team chose to do the Long Course of the Monster Adventure Race in Quincy, IL, which consisted of about 45-50 total miles of biking, running/trekking, orienteering, kayaking, an obstacle course, and worst of all, a 40 lb sandbag carry for 2 miles!
The team sent Jill Plassmeyer, Marc Fisher and Ken Chappell to this race. Bryan had a wedding to attend that weekend (hey Bryan, where's your priorities???) ha
For some reason, all three of us seemed to be more nervous for this race than some of the others. I think I had to use the restroom at least 4 times before the start of the race. Due to the last stop to the restroom, I forgot to put my Camelbak back on. I realized this just before the horn sounded. After letting out a classic, "Ohhhh F*$@" like Ralphie from a Christmas Story, and as I frantically sprinted to get it, my team ended up about 30 seconds behind the rest of the teams. Nice one Jill. Not exactly the best way to lobby for MVP of a race.
This race, like all races, was another adventure for sure. We spent much of the day on our bikes, riding through sand (or attempting to ride), torturous hills on the road, and mud, mud, and more mud. Did I mention mud? The 2 mile creek run was also interesting. With the extra rain they had received, the creek felt like quicksand much of the time. Marc did the kayaking portion of the race and had a blast! He couldn't stop talking about how much fun it was.
We also owe a big round of applause to Ken for learning to do the orienteering in a little over a week. He even checked out a book and a video from the Lebanon Public Library He guided us through the woods as if he had been orienteering for years. This was key as the more people knowing how to orienteer and navigate, the better. Woo-hoo, nothing like hands on learning in combat situations.
Near the end of the race was the dreaded sandbag carry. All three of us agreed that that was the worst part of the race. I know my back was sore for three days after the race.
Overall, we had a great day. The weather was almost perfect (about 5-10 degrees cooler and it would have been perfect). We ended up finishing 4th in our division (3 person co-ed long course) and 10th overall with a time of 8 hours 22 minutes. We were disappointed that only the top three teams qualified for nationals, but at least our goals are in sight. The organization from the race staff and volunteers was "spot on" and one of the best I have participated in. I would strongly recommend this race, as I know we will probably continue to do this race in the future.
Race summary by Jill Plassmeyer

What's behind the name?

2008-09-22T13:14:00.000-07:00

Cyclewerx is a bicycle shop here in Cape Girardeau, MO.

They have an excellent cycling team as well and all of the best cycling equipment you could want. John Dodd is the owner and a good friend of mine. He is an excellent local ambassador for cycling, and we're proud to sport the Cyclewerx name and jerseys.

Greenways pic

2008-09-22T12:38:00.000-07:00

That is what you like to see out of your female racer....in the lead showing those boys how to run! Go Jill !

Good Samaritan Boys Ranch Adventure Race

2008-09-22T12:10:00.000-07:00

Darren Helton was unable to race this one with us, so we picked up Ken Chappell who has experience with adventure racing already. Ken is a friend of Marc's that joined us at the last minute. He worked out great. Looking forward to racing alot more with Ken.
This was an 8-10 hour race near Walnut Grove, MO. We sent Jill Plassmeyer, Marc Fisher, Bryan Greaser and Ken Chappell on this race.
It was a semi-cold and rainy morning and it rained for probably at least half to 3/4 of this race. One of the highlights (or low-lights) of the race was when we were on the Frico Highline Trail. There was a bridge that crossed the river, but the map and race instructions stated, "Bridge out. Swim river or use canoe to cross river if provided." Hmmmm. I looked at that again, and again, and again. The bridge wasn't 'out,' but I assumed that it meant that we couldn't use it. Even though there were no race officials there, I thought maybe they were hiding in the woods or something and keeping track of which teams crossed the bridge illegally. Well there we go, down to the water's edge and into the river, despite a perfectly functional bridge that crossed right over the river. After some river crossing hoopla, fighting the current and hidden deep spots, we came out across the other side having to climb up a muddy slope. This whole deal cost us probably 15 minutes extra. At the finish, we asked other teams about that spot, and they didn't know what we were talking about. When they came to that same point they just ran right across that bridge. Come to find out, the bridge was actually 'out' and non-functional last year at the race and they didn't change the race instructions. Dohhhh.
There was an obstacle course that was pretty cool, and we learned that Marc might have better balance than Shawn Johnson and Nastia Luikin. We finished in first in our division, and 2nd overall behind the very strong all male team of Downhill Bikes of Branson, MO. They are strong racers and overall very good guys too, so there was no shame in losing to them. Nice race guys.
Our time was 8 hours and 13 minutes. We made some errors which we looked back on and laugh at, but every race is good experience and you always learn something, especially when our team is in it's infancy. Getting races under our belt is key and we are determined to continue to get better and better. We're already learning everyone's strengths and weaknesses, so we all know where we need to improve to make the entire unit a well oiled machine. My mountain biking background is helping me alot, but I need more miles on my feet.
Next up: Quincy, IL Monster Adventure Race, September 20th.

Ozark Greenways Adventure Race

2008-09-22T12:00:00.000-07:00

Well on May 31, 2008 it all came together. I have been racing fora couple of years now but have not been able to establish a consistent and permanent team to race with. Things changed on May 31, 2008.
The Ozark Greenways Adventure race near Richland, MO was a 8-14 hour race which is one of the most heavily participated races around, drawing 78 teams of 4 racers per team. In past years it was even as high as 90+ teams. Through mutual contacts, myself, Marc Fisher, Darren Helton and Jill Plassmeyer joined to race together for the first time ever. We had all raced in various races in the past but never all four of us together.
The race was a spectacular event for us in our initial race together. We had high expectations and we lived up to them despite some serious adversity. About the midpoint of this race, we jammed it up Cyclewerx style and got our groove on in the Orienteering course. We went into the woods in 10th place and came storming out in 4th place after completing the course. Next, we transitioned to the technical bike section, and that is where the poo hit the fan. With about 3 miles left in the technical mountain bike section, Jill's bike pedal broke off of the crank. We spent a couple of minutes trying to fix it, but when it was hopeless, Darren made the call to take Jill's bike and they swapped. What a bummer. We were smokin along, looking at a top 5 finish in our first ever race together, and now this. I was envisioning getting passed at that point by 20 teams. Well I'll tell you what, we only got passed by 4 teams. We hooked up a retractable dog leash that I threw into my pack at the last minute, carabinered that bad boy up to 'one pedal Darren' on his bars, and off we went like a blue streak. I sucked down an Enervit and felt like Lee Majors, pulling Darren for 8 miles while Marc pushed on his back when he could. Every little bit helped. We actually passed one team during that final leg. We ended up finishing 7th place out of the 78 teams, and we knew at that moment we had something special. A team was born. I love the team aspect of this sport. So many dynamics come into play that these races truly are an adventure.