Endurance Sports Breakout 24AR

Endurance Sports Breakout 24AR

Location: near Muskegon, Michigan

May 24-25, 2008.

As preparation for Untamed New England, which I’m doing with fellow Running Free team member Marcus Olson, a couple of friends and I headed to the far side of Michigan this past weekend to take part in the 2nd annual Endurance Sports Breakout 24 adventure race.  The appeal of this race, aside from the $105 pp entry fee for a 24 hour race, was the choice that racers were given.  The race was split into three stages, each of which comprised multiple disciplines.  Racers could do each of the three stages in any order, and CPs could also be obtained in any order within each stage.  There were no minimum number of CPs that had to be found, allowing each and every racer to not only finish ranked, but also decide how long they wanted to race for.  Racers returned to the race HQ at the end of each stage, where they could go back to their cabins to transition (or nap!) before continuing on.

The Osippwe section of the race (named for the scout camp where the race HQ was located) involved trekking and river paddling.  The “JJ” section involved both biking and trekking and the Muskegon section involved biking, trekking, and a paddle on Lake Muskegon.  This last section had a dark zone from 8-11pm in which racers could not be on the lake due the dangers of other boats.  As racers gathered for the start at 1:00 pm on Saturday, it was really interesting to see which stage teams decided to start with. Our team was one of only 3 to start with the Osippwe section.  We found all but one of the CPs that we intended to get and returned back to race HQ at around 8:00 pm.  After a half hour transition, we set out for “JJ,” realizing that we’d probably be out there for most of the night.

“JJ” proved more difficult than originally expected.  Many of the controls on the map were pre-plotted, but the tradeoff for this was not being told what land feature they were on.  Many of the CPs were listed as simply “on the map.”  The first few biking CPs en route to the trek / orienteering section were fairly easy to locate, but the night orienteering was another story… Many of the CPs were located only a few hundred metres from the bike drop, but without knowing what feature to look for, and large circles on the map indicating where to look, this section ended with a bit of frustration for our team.  After finding only a small percentage of those we looked for, we got back on our bikes to head into a maze of sandy 4X4 trails, many of which turned out to be dead ends!  After many, many hours, we found the CPs we wanted to and began to head back to HQ, just as the sun was rising. One of the more exciting parts of the night was when an errant dog ran out from a farm and chased us for approximately 5 miles of roads, causing more than one crash along the way. After trying unsuccessfully to get him to ‘go home’, we were lucky to find an all night convenience store when a kind man agreed to call animal control.

We got back to HQ at about 6:30 am, after 10 hours on our bikes.  The Muskegon section started with another 22km of biking just to get to the first CP.  We looked at the logistics of how much time was left and realized we weren’t going to get much of this section done.  It was a long weekend for the Americans, but we were heading back Sunday night, so we realized we’d be better off packing up and sleeping before heading home.  After hearing horror stories of big waves on the water and endless frustrating river searches, we felt better about our decision! Our goal for this race was mainly to get out for a good long training session, and we were happy with the 17.5 hours we spent in the Michigan wilderness.  As always, the most fun part of the race was swapping stories with other racers about those *(&^*% CPs that could not be found!

Having this longer race under my belt makes me feel much more prepared going into battle for 60 hours at Untamed New England in a couple of weeks.  I’m sure that Marcus and I will both bring home some great tales from that one!