This was our first three person race as the 50-Somethings. Vernon Winter our third member had competed in the Endorphin-Fix the weekend before. The E-fix is the hardest two-day race in the US. Our support team member was Ryan Castleberry. The race was 40+ miles with 17 checkpoints and three transitions. The weather was perfect. There were 31 teams.
The race started with a 2.5 mile run downhill to Yonah Lake at the end of Tallulah George. At the lake we transitioned to one-person hard shell kayaks. In our three separate kayaks we paddled the five uneventful miles down the lake enjoying the scenery with the rest of the teams. At the take-out there was a short run to the first mystery event which we completed in less than a minute. Then we were off on the second trail running/trekking section. It took a few extra minutes to find the first checkpoint which was hidden under a bridge over Panther Creek, which runs into Yonah Lake. A quarter mile later, we were attacked by a swarm of yellow jackets. (For those who do not know yellow jacket nests are in the ground and are impossible to detect until they start stinging. Unlike bees, yellow jackets can sting repeatedly and are very tenacious.) Cathy was yelling and swatting. Zach was trying to figure what was wrong with her at about the same time the yellow jackets started stinging him. They both ended up with many bites. Right after that we started a climb up a major hill and continued along other trails to the next transition point. By this time we were in the race over three hours.
At this transition we switched over to mountain bikes. We biked mostly on Forest Service roads and double-track trails with several stream crossings. There was a good mix of up and down hills but the uphill parts tended to be long. After several hours on the trails, we traveled on a hilly paved road for several miles to the nest transition point where we started the next leg of the race.
The third running/trekking section was much more challenging than the second with lots of uphill sections and one particularly brutal uphill that never seemed to end. It finally ended in a subdivision and we ran on paved roads for a mile, crossed a major highway, and continued several more miles on gravel road to the next transition point. Before picking up our bikes we had a mystery event that took us two tries before we got it right.
Like the third trekking leg, this second bike leg, that would take us to the finish, was much more difficult than the first. After riding on forest service roads for a couple of hours we enter the 6-mile Lady Slipper Trail which was the most difficult and dangerous part of the mountain biking. There were many eroded and rocky sections on the trail and lots of uphill. Finally, we hit a down hill which was the scariest part of the ride. By the time we reached the bottom Cathy's brakes were gone. At the bottom the trail ended and we had a mile and a half ride on paved road to the finish.
We finished in nine hours and six minutes, hit all the checkpoints and made no navigational errors, a successful race.
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