Project Athena!!

September 30- October 4: Rim 2 Rim 2 Rim, Project Athena fundraising adventure.

I'm a little at a loss for words on this, but I felt it was necessary to post something. My loss of words may be because I'm not much of a mushy person... and any descriptions in English are just going to come off mushy.

This was an amazing group of people in an amazing setting, all for the purpose of helping others. All the planets aligned; it was the perfect storm.

See? Already I'm getting mushy. Think of any cheesy cliche, and I won't fight you on it. I seriously came back a different person.

The goal:
Cross the Grand Canyon on foot. Twice. From the South Rim to the North on Thursday, and a different route back on Friday. So I was thinking that this will be pretty easy; hiking is just walking, right? After two 10+ hour days with minimal stopping and a new series of blisters that Robyn dubbed "The Toe Hat", I realized that I was wrong.

The cause:
Project Athena, a non-profit that helps women "strive and survive" after medical tragedy/setback by fulfilling an athletic dream. For example, Kerrie Kerkman. She has a degenerative spinal condition, and has already had one spinal fusion- with the possibility of more on the horizon. Her dream was to to not only see the Great Wall in China, but to run the Great Wall marathon. In May 2009, accompanied by Melissa Cleary, she did just that. Project Athena provides funds and support for the "Athenaship Recipients" in these athletic endeavors.

The R2R2R recipient was Sandy Kilburg, aptly nicknamed "Sunshine". Always positive and active, you would never know that she is a breast cancer survivor.

Some of the people:
Melissa Cleary, San Diego firefighter, marathoner (dozens of 'em). Strong and kind, her Project Athena job description is "Angel of Hope". Seriously, it says so on her business card- and after hiking with her, I can't think of a better description. And again, don't think mushy: she's originally from Philly and tells it like it is. She carried packs and weight from damn near everyone.

Robyn Benincasa, San Diego firefighter, world class adventure racer. Strong, fun, and ridiculously modest, she is a founder of Project Athena (job description: "Minister of Dreams"). Anyone who follows adventure racing is aware of Robyn's rockstar status, but she is more down-to-earth than most amateur Cat. 3 road cyclists. Another woman who isn't afraid to tell it like it is, she knew my feet hurt before I did. She took weight and physically pushed, pulled, and dragged us to completion.

Masha Glanville, recently retired from the workforce and world class adventure racer. I didn't get a lot of time with Mosh, but I do know this: she suffers more gracefully than anyone I have ever known. She physically pulled (on a towline) other hikers for dozens of miles.

Florence Debout, French, tiny, and powerful, her Project Athena description is "Commissioner of Courage". Again, not a lot of time with Florence, but her presence is much larger than her compact frame. For example, Florence and Robyn completed RAW this year, and their two-person female team won their division and placed 3rd OVERALL. She is also not one to boast.

Jonea Mounsey, flight nurse, local, hiker extraordinaire, route finder. Another pusher/puller/dragger, Jonea is just an all around cool chick.

Josh Liberman, a professional photog there to document who quickly became one of us, and Jackie Windh, a journalist and photographer there to cover the event for Sleepmonsters, and who has always been one of us.

The "B" Team: abbreviated from "Bitchin'!", this was Wendy, a San Diego firefighter, Erica, the sweetest girl with a contagious laugh, and myself, the ex-crackhead posing as an athlete. We vowed on Day 2 that we would stay together and damnit, we did. Every. Last. Painful. Step. You learn a lot about yourself when you are stripped of all ego, walking in well after everyone else.

There were 22 of us, which would make for a really long blog. The moral is this: go to Project Athena and donate at least a tithe. Or ten bucks, whatever. Click here to do it under my page.

It is a cause worthy of all of your disposable income.

makin' progress

Dennis Grelk and I teamed up on August 29th to do the 12-hour Thunder Rolls AR. We're both in our first year or two of adventure racing, but we get into it like a couple of rabid beavers. Dennis is a great teammate for many reasons, not the least of which are his VW bus and his ability to tow my ass on a bike to the finish line at 26mph-- after 11 hours and 53 minutes of racing. (We finished, according to my watch, with 20 seconds to spare.)

Of note on this race:
1. Two-mile run epilogue, in which teams receive Map 1 of 6 and passport (for marking obtained CPs). Dennis had a pulled Achilles' tendon, so the run was less than fun for his angry foot. Luckily for us, Dennis and I are total geeks (again, great teammate) and had spent the evening before overlaying the existing maps to determine where CP 1 was on the missing map.
That way, we didn't have to stop and plot the UTM coordinates. We were off!


2. Rockin' bike section, in which I was towed for the first time. It was awesome! The only team that caught us was 3-person coed Team Bushwacker, and we all know that they are monsters, so I'm okay with it. Two water crossings by bike.

3. The Tyrolean traverse, during which certain female racers are accused of sounding like birthing water buffalo. Whatever, I think I sounded like a warrior princess. Did I mention that we had to traverse with our bikes?


4. The first orienteering course. We hit the traverse in second place. When we came out of this O-course, we were 16th. We spent 90 minutes on one CP, and still never found it. Yeah, neither of us are navigators. Not at all.

5. The damned paddle, in which all energy stores are completely sapped. The Mississippi is one powerful, angry bitch. A few days before the race, one river town had received 10" of rain in one storm. It took us 3+ hours to get two CPs, but damnit, we got them. God bless 180 Energy drinks and beans- supplied at the boat launch. Thunder Rolls volunteers are awesome.


6. The finish, in which racers are handed an ice cold beer (in a custom Thunder Rolls coozie). The rest of the race was a blur as I clung to Dennis' wheel.

the Muddy Buddy!! ...and a fuddy duddy

Did my first race as an Otter last Sunday-- the Muddy Buddy Chicago! Rod McLennan and I teamed up and gave that course the business as Fat Otter III.

This was my first Muddy Buddy, so I wasn't sure what to expect. It was what I would call a "civilian" race-- with 1700 teams of two and free Red Hook beer, the vibe was definitely pretty chill. The course was quick, creative and fun... and who doesn't love an excuse to crawl through the mud? Rod and I ended up 9th in our division... I'll take it, since there were 148 teams and I wasted some time waiting for a bike that was already in one of the transitions. (Note: make bike more identifiable next year.) Afterwards I stopped by the Zanfel tent and got to chat with Mr. Steve! Haven't seen him since the High Profile Adventure Camp last April.

We celebrated for a while, then I stopped by the bike corral to pick up my bike... to no avail. That's right: someone took my MTB. Are you kidding me? The year I get in to Chequamegon, and now I am without bike??

The race promotor/director was as helpful as could be expected, but the website had warned that the corral was not secure. I'm so used to bike and adventure races--where it's all athletes and no one would mess with your gear--that I disregarded this warning.

I had a three-hour drive home to totally lose my shit about it, and believe me, I did. But that didn't bring me any closer to having a bike again, so I decided instead on this:

I have chosen to believe that my bike ran off to live on a beautiful farm with an active family who cleans, maintains, and keeps bicycles inside. They have pristine singletrack out the back door and live on beautiful, rolling gravel roads. The Tassajara is in a much better place now. *sniff*

...and now I will somehow get a new bike.

(But just in case, keep your eyes peeled for a red & silver Gary Fisher Tassajara, nicknamed "The Ass Jar")

bonk hard chill

So, DG and I did a 12-hour adventure race on Feb. 7th. Called the Bonk Hard Chill, this race adds the extra challenge of cold weather on top of physical endurance. Good times!

I had done the Frozen Otter, so I felt I had my winter gear pretty dialed in. DG had just done the Arrowhead 135 (26 hours- third place!), so he for sure had his winter gear dialed in. We were set. Oh, except for the fact that the weather took a freak turn and it was 60 degF during the race!! So much for the cold weather home court advantage.

This was DG's first actual AR, and only my third or fourth, so we still had a few things to figure out. We got our maps Friday night and spent a few hours plotting UTMs and mapping our course. We decided I would navgate the first land O, and he would take the second one. We would both work on the canoe and bike routes.

We hit the first land nav section pretty dead on, but our pace was slower overall than most-- I wanted to make sure I wasn't getting us lost. When I'm more confident with my nav skills, then maybe we can run full boar through the woods... but not yet.

Of note was the second canoe section, where we had to strap our bikes in the canoes and paddle them a short distance across the lake. This is where we learned that a tailwind is actually the worst thing you can have in a canoe... a tailwind will blow you sideways. Since DG had never paddled a canoe before, I was in back. I should mention here that I am not known for my upper body strength. You could say that my language in this section was colorful. Definitely one of the more frustrating experiences of my life.

We got on our bikes (the right kind of pain) and did a couple CPs, then got to the church. At the church was a veritable army of volunteers (I believe the volunteer-to-racer ratio was 2:1). Along with brownies, juice, and turkey sandwiches, we received the second half of our map which we then had to plot and chart. Again, we took our time to be safe and double-checked our work.

We hit the final land nav with only enough time for one CP before we had to strap our bikes back in the canoe... and we wanted to give ourselves enough time for that nightmare.

...but the canoe back was something completely different. We were headed into the sunset, and the air was calm. We sat back and enjoyed our final paddle in. It was just a few miles by bike to the finish line from the shore.

Results: DG's first race, my first time not getting short-coursed, cool views of an uncharacteristicly unpopulated Lake of the Ozarks, dead last in our division

Frozen Otter

January 17th was the Frozen Otter Ultra-Trek. For me, a long hike. I attempted the half: 32 miles. I completed half of the half: 16 miles. Single-digit temps, and it snowed the whole goddamn time. It was a trudgefest of a good proportion. One of the more difficult things I've done to date.


I trekked with the guys from team POLeR, Chad Hannon and John "Code" Morris. Chad made a video.


I think this will be excellent training for the Bataan Death March.

don't be confused, i'm not a navigator

The weekend of Jul 19-20 was the CAARA 2-Day Potluck, a free event designed to help beginners get into the sport of AR. The first day was an optional activity, either a MTB bike, a bike and hike, or a paddle. That evening, there were clinics on paddling, gear, and a storytime about Primal Quest. The final day was a practice race.

I did this event last year and felt that it rocked, so I decided to see if Stephanie wanted to go, too. She was down and we were off.

We got out to the park, which was a small city park in a small city (Spring Valley). There was, however, a pool. We checked in, set up our tents, and headed out for the MTB ride.

Day 1- Ride @ Mattheissen SP

The 'MTB ride' turned out to be a road ride to Mattheissen State Park, where there is some singletrack. The roads to Mattheissen (past Starved Rock) have some hills that would be challenging on a well-equipped road bike, so my heavy GF Tassajara (the AssJar) with knobbies was not necessarily the best tool for this task. I assume Mattheissen's singletrack is pretty sweet in the right conditions, but it had been raining and the trails were greeezy. If I've learned anything from Rage, it's not to shred trails by riding them in the wrong conditions. ("Somebody broke their back building that shit! Don't fuck it up!") We got about fifteen minutes in and decided to turn around. Stopping every ten feet wasn't really that fun anyway.

Now, heading in we were sure to stay on the "main trail", not taking any branches until we got our bearings. Turning around ended up being more challenging, as there were about a thousand feeder trails that we failed to notice. We had no idea which trails we had come off of. Forty-five minutes later we ran into the Hernanns, who had just started in. They told us to stay right and we did and eventually got back out to the sweet, sweet pavement. We had to stop and scrape pounds of mud off our bikes to simply make them operational again.

We ran into a few other folks and the Hernanns, and we all headed back towards Spring Valley- via the ice cream shop in Utica. Adventure racing is tasty!

Day 1 (evening)- Clinics

Not much to say, other than there was a lot of info involved here. A LOT. I won a pair of socks during the ARFE "Racing Green" clinic because I knew that you should pee on a rock in the woods. Gerry Voelliger gave the gear talk and I think may have given some hints for Thunder Rolls. Of course, I have been very wrong about hints before...

The night nav clinic had to be called off because a wicked storm ripped through. Again, super psyched about my Boy Scout-style Eureka pup tent! Handled it like a champ. Forgot a tarp so I had to cut up some garbage bags which worked just fine. I slept without problem during the violent thunderstorm- I was just happy to be dry and lying on the ground.

Day 2- Practice AR

I am fucking psyched about how this thing went. Stephanie and I went into this knowing that neither of us are navigators and we would have to be careful. The pre-race meeting was fast and furious, with me franticly taking notes. There has to be a better way to do that.

The race started with one teammate (Stephanie) running to the other side of a baseball diamond and grabbing one of many papers stuck in the fence. It was a word find, and there were different requirements. We grabbed a "find ten", which turned out to be one of the worst. We were third to last when we finally started out.

CPs 1, 2, 3

We jogged to the first checkpoint (CP) and found it pretty quickly on the top of a hill. We then ran down to CP2 on the river bed, where there was a descending rope (no harnesses required) to a sideways scaling (along the clay riverbed) into a woody area along the river. This may or may not be where I got poison ivy. We were already gaining on some teams. CP 3 was across a shallow section of river. This is where we saw Team Child's Voice, which was reassuring because Milan is a really awesome navigator. We high-fived and wished them luck. We jogged past them on the way to CP4.

CPs 4, 5
CP 4 was actually in the Illinois river attached to a kayak paddled by Neil Johnson (the Tax Guy- Team Critical Path). I did the swim portion and the water was refreshing. CP 5 was back to the start/finish to pick up our bikes. We were keeping a steady pace and transitioned quickly.

CPs 6, 7, 8, 9

The ride to CP 6 was fast and fun, with one wicked hike-a-bike gravel hill. It started on paved roads, but at the bottom of a fast, curvy road it transitioned to gravel pretty quick. I remembered this from last year and warned Stephanie. As we were pushing our bikes up the wicked hill, Chad came by in a truck and said he had to check on someone who wrecked and probably had a separated shoulder. We wished them luck and health and kept pushing on. We had passed another team or two in the bike transition, and thought we were maybe in third place.

CP 6 was the bike drop. Code and Yi Shun were manning the point. When we handed off our bikes I didn't see the other bikes, so I asked Yi Shun, "Where are you putting the bikes?"

Yi Shun: "We don't know yet."
Me: "Are we the first ones here?"
Yi Shun: "Yep."

Stephanie and I looked at each other and headed off. No way! We decided to take the fire roads into CPs 7 (at shed and shelter) and CP 8 (bottom of ravine). I think a lot of teams tried to take the gravel road around the outside (which is what I was proposing) and it proved to be harder. We found these CPs pretty easily. At one point coming out of the ravine, we heard the second place team and tried to hide by laying flat against the side of the ravine. This also might be where I got poison ivy. CP 9 was back to pick up our bikes. Code told us later that we had about a 45-minute lead at this point.

CPs 10, 11

CP 10 was right at the bottom of said wicked hike-a-bike hill, across some tracks. We found it and were on the gravel towards CP11. CP11 was on an old rail trail, right at the intersection with a highway. We slightly overshot the old tracks and turned back to catch it. Later we found out that some teams overshot on purpose in order to ride the roads in lieu of the grassy offroad route that we chose. However, we came out of the woods right on the highway, at the bottom of the trail up to CP11 and got it.

CP12- final CP, also known as the Trail of Tears

We knew we had probably lost a little ground overshooting the trail on CP11 (and stopping to pee- this also may be where I got poison ivy- so much for finding a rock), so we rode fast and furious along the old rail trail. Here I would like to pass along some of the things Chad said in the pre-race meeting: "Do not cross the creek on foot. There is no reason to cross the creek on foot." "Stay to the right." "Look for the spray painted arrow. Follow the spray painted arrow." "You will cross three railroad tressles."

We stayed right, but knew something was up when the trail went into the creek ("Do not cross the creek on foot. There is no reason to cross the creek on foot.") We turned back and checked some of the other possible routes, thinking that maybe the rights we had been taking might not have actually been trail. We headed up a steep incline to a corn field, which (out of respect for the farmer) we spent twenty minutes hike-a-biking around, only to find a sheer dropoff dead end. We headed back and ran into a group of teams also perplexed, including Child's Voice. Instead of staying and brainstorming with a known skilled navigator, we freaked and rode away from them- a total rookie mistake.

If we had stayed on pace, we would have finished this race in around two hours, forty-five minutes.

We got so severely lost on CP12, we finished in just under six hours. Luckily we had 100oz bladders of water and thousands of calories in bars and gels.

We did everything we weren't supposed to do, including crossing the creek on foot. We were six minutes (literally- "Let's give this 10 minutes and then head back") from quitting, when we heard voices coming out of the creek bed: "This is the worst fucking weekend! First my kayak flies off the truck, now you got us lost!"

Stephanie and I look at each other. Other racers!

We found them, and it was Dawn and Matt. They were in the creek (drivetrains submerged) trying to find the elusive tressles, too. We spoke to them and they had seen the spray paint but hadn't taken it ("Stay to the right"). We teamed up with them and they showed us the arrow- which turned out to be the only left on the trail. Stephanie and I had forgotten all about the spray paint.

Nonchalantly, I asked Dawn if they had enough to eat & drink, considering that we were over five hours in.

Dawn: "We had an apple."
Me: "How many apples did you have?"
Dawn: "We split one."

At this point, Stephanie and I both started pulling out gels and bars to give them, forcing them to get some calories.

As we headed out, we all stayed together. We laughed and pointed out that we were all so far behind that they would probably be sending search and rescue soon. A few times Dawn and Matt told us we could go on ahead, but that seemed ridiculous. The only reason we found CP12 was because they showed us the trail. We became a team of four as we headed back into town for the finish.

We finished third to last.