BRMAR 2008

This year for our 9th Blue Ridge we again teamed up with Mark Bell, our teammate for the last two years. Mark’s wife Lorie and his brother-in-law Gerry again volunteered to be our Support Crew. Mark’s son Andrew was also there to help with support. We received our map and other instructions the night before at check-in. The race had a new twist this year. Teams could separate and send just one or two members to a checkpoint, so we had to plot a strategy that would best use our time and allow us to stay competitive. The format went against traditional adventure racing structure, but we were willing to give it a go.


There was heavy rain in the forecast; fortunately, it was gone by race start at 8am on Saturday. The race started with one team member, Mark, running to CP1 at the top of a mountain while the other two, Cathy and Zach, portaged the canoe to the river and prepared it for launch. The run was supposed to spread teams out, but it didn’t work out that way. There was a logjam of teams and a 15 minute wait for putting canoes into the river causing some impatient behavior by our team captain, “we can fit between those two canoes” Zach.

The river had a lot more exposed rocks than we were expecting. We had planned to never take the canoe in white water again (so much for plans). Cathy was not happy to be in white water since our experience two years ago on this same river, but she was a good sport and paddled hard. We did well until the end of the paddle where we were faced with the biggest rapid of the day. We were on the right side of the river and needed to be on the left. We paddled hard but were not positioned to run it properly. We got stuck on a rock and the canoe tipped and took on some water. At the same time the three of us ended up in the water and Cathy lost her paddle in the confusion. Fortunately, Zach was able to keep the canoe upright and got everyone back in. Then we carefully paddled the fifty meters to shore. Everything was wet since we didn’t anticipate taking on water; since it was secure, it wasn’t on the river bottom or floating downstream. We got the canoe out of the river, attached our portage wheels and portaged down a road for about a mile to CP2 or Grand Central Station as it became known.

This is where things started getting interesting. The three of us ran a mile and a half to CP3 where our bikes and Support Crew were located. We had a minor obstacle before getting there. We weren’t allowed to run across the bridge. We had to wade through the river and climb up and down the cargo net before scrambling out the muddy bank of the river.

We put on dry clothes and took off on our bikes. A half mile from the CP we split up. Zach went on a 3.5 mile run over a mountain to punch five checkpoints along the way while Cathy and Mark walked the bikes back to CP2. While Zach was running Cathy and Mark were waiting and waiting, so they felt. Their waiting was not in vain; someone found Cathy’s paddle near the bridge and she was able to retrieve it. The run and five checkpoints took Zach about an hour and on his arrival at CP2 it was a quick change to bike gear for him.

We decided to leave Cathy at CP2 to portage the boat to CP13 while Zach and Mark went after CPs 8 through 11. It was a muddy uphill ride all the way to CP8 and then more muddy uphill riding to CP9. When we finally reached CP9, we decided to skip CPs10 and 11 because we didn’t want to miss the cut off time. The ride back to CP2 was mostly downhill and amazingly fast considering how long it took us to ride up. Two hours later we returned to CP2 and had to make a quick ride to CP12 and back. The alternative there was to paddle to CP12 from CP13. Cathy had already taken her bike back to CP3 and met us on the road. She went to CP13 where she had already portaged the canoe to wait for us. Zach and Mark rode back to CP3, dropped our bikes then ran back to CP2 on the way to CP13. Kind of confusing? Yes. All the other teams went through CP2 as many times as we did, hence the name Grand Central Station.

We decided to paddle that last long leg of the race. Another option would have been to paddle our bikes across the river, leave our canoe on the other side and ride to Blue Ridge Marina. Whenever we have the option to ride our bikes or do something else; we always choose to do something else. The paddle took about two hours and three checkpoints. We had to fight a pretty good head wind but we were able to pass six other teams along the way.

The paddle ended at Blue Ridge Marina. From there it was a 3.5 mile run to the finish. We were gaining on the team in front of us when Cathy had to make a pit stop. Mark and Zach started walking and watching the team in front widen the gap between us. Cathy returned shortly and within a half mile we ran down and passed the other team. Then there was one last hill to run up and at the top it was a run down hill to the finish.

At Blue Ridge, it’s never a run across the finish. The race always includes some challenge before allowing teams to cross the finish line. This year it was sawing logs.

Zach and Mark did their best as lumberjacks, sawing fast since we wanted to finish in less than nine hours. As you can see we did, crossing the finish line in 8 hours 59 minutes and 17 seconds.

We came in 41st out of 84 teams. Not as good as last year but about the same finish if we had actually punched CPs 10 and 11 and been on the course another hour and a half, so it was a good decision on our part to skip the two checkpoints.