Odyssey Endorphin FIX

Name of Race: Odyssey Endorphin Fix
Website: http://www.oarevents.com/event.asp?id=92&catID=1
Date of Race: April 20-22, 2007
Location of Race:  Canaan Valley, West Virginia, USA
Type of Event: Adventure Racing
Distance/Length of Event: 2 Days

Tina and Harper went down to Canaan Valley, West Virginia for Odyssey’s Endorphin Fix for a 2-day adventure race to start off the 2007 season. Initially we were supposed to go down with 2 other racers from the Ottawa region, including a regular teammate of ours James Galipeau and his friend, and experienced adventure racer, John Ranson. The 4 of us were pretty excited to race together and expectations would be high. However, I (Harper) sustained a pretty severe ITB injury about 2-months ago and we all decided it would be best to split the teams (in other words, J&J FAST – H&T SLOW). Tina ended up having some inflammation in her ITB about 3 weeks prior to the race so any pressure to run for us 2 was now minimal. We agreed we would just walk any trekking/running sections and try and make up ground on the bike and paddle and treat this more like a hard training session.

After gear check Friday afternoon, we recieved the maps and plotted our course. The course was filled with mountains and we would be constantly changing elevation. On the plus side, the weather was finally co-operating (for the first time this spring) with temperatures in the 20’s. The race director warned of cold nighttimes and snow in the higher regions, but overall everyone should love the course. We were hoping to catch some shut-eye before the 10pm start but unfortunately the check-in and plotting took us until 8:00pm and we still had to pack for the race. Unlike most races of this length which are usually supported with our supplies and food in our gear bins at TA’s, this race was entirely unsupported (other than a drop-off for neoprene wetsuits) – in other words, we had to carry all of our food and gear with us for the entirety of the 42-hour race. I think our packs were almost 30lbs with water thrown in as well!

The race started with a quick run up and down a hill to spread out the teams. Tina and I said we wouldn’t run, but couldn’t start the race in last place so we ran it… we were already breaking our “no-run” rule! After the quick run it was onto the bikes for an approximate 40K bike ride, mostly on gravel and paved roads through the hills around Canaan Valley.

We biked into the bike->trek TA somewhere mid-pack, around 20th. From here we were supposed to follow the Little Allegheny trail up and through the mountains. I was too busy eating to remember that we needed to be on a trail, and after 10 minutes on a road I knew something wasn’t right (even though there was about 4 teams ahead of us all going down this road). Tina and I checked the instructions and realized we were supposed to follow some flagging tape to the trail almost immediately after the TA. We decided to backtrack instead of bushwhacking up the mountain to get on the trail. We were disappointed we made this careless mistake – I had meant to write this on the map, but forgot, and it had cost us about 20 minutes.

The trek across went pretty well and we chatted with other teams. Usually we’d be running or at least shuffling most of these parts, but since we were walking it gave us the ability to carry on a conversation with other interesting teams from around the US. After about 7 hours we made it out of the Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area and onto our bikes for a quick hour ride (downhill) to the ropes section. I think we maintained our position somewhere around 20th.

The ropes section had a really interesting feature called the Via Ferrata, which was essentially climbing and scrambling the side of a rock with the help of cable wires and metal ladders bolted into the rock. You just clipped in via your harness and some caribineers and off you went… At the end of the Via Ferrata was a 300 foot rappel down a sheer cliff. Unfortunately we arrived about 5 minutes after 2 other teams so we were bottlenecked here for about an hour (with no time credit). I hid under a lone tree on the side of the cliff before the rappel and tried to catch some quick zzz’s before the rappel (but did not). After we finished the rappel, we walked on to the kayaking section, about 20 minutes away.

Even though by now (around noon Saturday) it was about 17C out, we decided to put on our neoprene wetsuits. The area was still snow-covered in regions and the water was frigid. Once aboard the inflatable kayaks, we realized we’d made the right choice – it was cold! The river (the Potomac) was a lot of fun, with CII and CIII rapids never more than 5 minutes away from one another. Although we never dumped, we came close a lot. The paddling took about 3 hours, and was great to be off our feet, if only for a short while. From the end of the paddle we made our way, on bike, to the first big orienteering trek.

After several hours of grueling uphill climbs we finally made it to the first orienteering section right before dusk. We contemplated taking a short nap (we’d now been up about 36 hours) but Tina wanted to keep moving to avoid getting cold. I was okay with that, I was a little sleepy, but nothing too bad.

The O-section featured 7 CP’s within about a 70km2 area of Mount Porte Crayon, the highest point in West Virginia.  It contained a small network of trails and plenty of contours. Even though we were still ranked about mid-pack I knew that we could make a big move in the rankings if we could push on through the night and nail all the CP’s clean. My theory was confirmed by the volunteers for when we got to the TA, they informed us most teams were pretty tired and most were opting to only get 2 (to stay in the “adventure” category) and move on. The more CP’s you got in here, the higher you would finish, so long as you made the 4pm Sunday cut-off (as the other Canadians J&J found out, which I noted near the end). I couldn’t understand why more people weren’t “going for it”… but as it turned out, they probably made the right choice…

We started the leg with attacking a fairly simple CP about 4K from the TA, in a creek, near an old road off the main TA road. Our plan was to obtain all the CP’s in a counter-clockwise order. While crossing a river on the way to our first CP we met up with a disdained soloist. He told us after he got the CP we were about to get, he tried bushwhacking up the creek to get to the plateau where most of the other CP’s were (it sounded like he had the same plan as I) – however after 5 hours and barely making any progress he decided to come back down and forget the CP’s. I told him that was my plan and he urged me to reconsider. We thanked him and wished him good luck and proceeded to the CP, keeping his advice on our minds. We got the CP and heeded his warning and instead tried taking a trail up to the plateau. After about 40-minutes the trail disappeared and I decided we’d use a river to our east as a handrail up. At first the bushwhacking wasn’t too bad but as we gained elevation, our progress slowed to a crawl due to snow, the pitch of the mountain, but most of all this tree called “rhododendron”… I’ve never encountered anything this tough to bushwhack through before. I kept figuring it would eventually go away as we ascended and that maybe it was specific to this part of the area. Occasionally we’d move laterally around 100-200 meters but it was everywhere. After 2 hours and maybe 0.5K progressed Tina, who was having an extremely miserable time in this stuff, suggested we go back down. I replied “not a chance”. I knew we had to get to the top to get the CP’s and this WAS the race. I knew very few teams would get more than 2 CP’s, and even if we could just get one up on the plateau, we could finish top 5. So we pressed on… Another 2 hours and Tina suggested again we go back. “Not a chance”. I kept thinking we would get through it and once we did, we’d be fine, grab all the CP’s and laugh about the crappy bushwhack. However, my altimeter was also telling me how slow we were going and we still weren’t half-way up the mountain from where we started this bushwhack from hell… I started to reconsider – what if the plateau was this bad – what if this whole area is filled with this rhododendron? 2 hours later I made the call “let’s go back down”. I was upset we had to bail on it, but I just knew we wouldn’t make the plateau at this rate until morning and then still had to get the CP’s. I also knew Tina was at her wits end for this bushwhack and was not having a good time at all (neither was I, or anyone else I knew who went in this stuff). So we made the call to go back down. The descent took just as long and I think overall we wasted about 8 hours just going up 1km and back. Ughhhh…

On the way back to the TA we picked up another CP not far from the main road, that was on another gravel road and went in with our head held low. Upon our return we learned all but 4 teams only got more than 2 CP’s – and that many teams were still out there. It was nice to know we weren’t the only ones having problems in there, but also disheartening knowing that getting one additional CP would likely vault us 10-15 places. Little did we know our friends John and James were still out there after 14 hours or so by now…

By now it’s Sunday morning and we hopped back on our bikes making our way to the last trekking leg which featured a hike on trails through a park and an O-section. It was pretty easy and although I was feeling a little light-headed from the heat (25C) and no sleep, I was able to navigate our way to 3 of 4 optional CP’s before finally making our way back to the chalet (with 1 minute to spare!) before the 4pm cut-off. When we arrived, we figured our friends John and James were probably half-way to Ottawa by now since they were no where to be seen. We grabbed some food and decided we’d drive back that night, after a couple hours sleep. As we were about to leave John and James came in and told us their horror story about the first O-section and the dreaded bushwhack. Like us, they were committed to getting all the CP’s (however, unlike us, they did not give up). They entered the section in 2nd place too but largely due to the nature of the vegetation found it slow going and at one point were lost for a bit. After about 20 hours they emerged from the O-section but could not make it back to the chalet before 4pm so were DNF’ed. After sharing horror stories (and laughing them off) with John and James, Tina and I grabbed a couple hours sleep in her car before driving back to Ontario.

Overall we ended up 11th place in around 38 teams, which wasn’t too bad given that we didn’t push too hard for the race and maintained discipline to not run due to our injuries. We really enjoyed the race, the scenery was great, and the paddle was a blast. Hopefully next year we can do it as a foursome and hammer the entire race! In any case, great training for our big race, Raid the North Extreme in June!