BRMAR 2004

This year’s BRMAR V (yes, we have been adventure racing for 5 years) was going to be a new course but we still anticipated about an 8 hour completion time. We wanted to finish ASAP and return home since we were leaving for 10 days in Arizona and Nevada early the next morning. Racing with us was Greg, our teammate from Raging Russell. At the pre-race meeting the night before the race, we were officially recognized as the oldest team of the more than 80 team in the race, 159 years.

 The first change to the race was that the course wouldn’t be announced until the start of the race. The announced combined mileage for the kayaking, mountain biking, and trail running was the usual 30-35 mountainous miles and there were three special events and a river crossing. New this year to the race was navigation. Race day weather was perfect.

The race started as always at the Shackelford Bridge, this time with a twist. We had to solve a riddle to find our maps. Once we found the maps behind a wall we had to plot the coordinates which took about 20 minutes. The first leg was running about eight miles with the checkpoints mostly along the Benton MacKaye Trail. We had no problem finding the checkpoints and in about two hours arrived at the river to begin the paddling leg in the dreaded “funyak”. We don’t know why they are called “funyaks” because it is never fun paddling them down the cold Toccoa River with three people in a boat meant for two.

The paddling section always has a mid-course checkpoint where we have to climb the12-foot wall. Before attacking the wall we had to retrieve our team number that was suspended about 12 feet in the air on the other side of the river. Although the river was only two feet deep at the crossing, the current was extremely powerful making the crossing over and back very difficult. Once we returned to the other side we zipped over the wall in less than 30 seconds, our fastest tine ever.

Then it was back in the boats and on to the Aska Rapids. We had no problems with the rapids and managed to stay in the boat throughout the entire section unlike many teams that went swimming. At the end of the paddle we had to carry the “funyak” about a half mile and then had a two mile run to Turkey Farm where we transitioned to our bikes.

The biking leg was longer this year and new for the course. The very mountainous 20-mike bike included a combination of single track, forest service road and paved roads. There were six checkpoints we had to find along the way. Finding the checkpoints was the easy part; the hard part was all of the long and difficult climbs. We made pretty good time and arrived at the last transition well before the cutoff. There was one special event, then a 3-mile run to the finish line. At the finish line was the spectator favorite “slippery mountain” where we received a 5-minute penalty when Zach’s hand hit the side on the slide down.

Our official finish time was 8 hours and 14 minutes and we came in 30th out of 83 teams! We were also the 2nd master’s team to cross the finish line. It was our best finish ever in this race.