Applied Vitals

My first adventure race was a success. I had a blast, learned a lot and finished!

Distance: 75.12 miles
Time: 11hrs 02min
Location: Francis Marion National Forest – 50 minutes north of Charleston, SC

Thank you Jason for going out of your way to help me before and during the race.  And thanks again to those that shared expert adventure racing advice to help get me prepped. I followed some of the advice and, very unwisely, challenged some of the other insight.  To my defense, caught up in the excitement of my first race, I didn’t realize I was ignoring the advice until it was too late.

What worked:

Adventure Racing Diet and Hydration Plan

I think my diet and hydration plan was the most effective part of my race strategy. I followed the advice in this article on pre-race diet for endurance running, which lays out a carb-loading method to get your muscle glycogen stores topped off.

I then tweaked this advice on race day nutrition for triathletes according to the recommendations of the always helpful crew at TriSports. I stayed well hydrated by taking a good 2-4 oz. pull of water from my Camlebak hydration pack every 10-15 minutes and mixing in sips of a high calorie energy boosting concoction of Hammer Nutrition‘s Sustained Energy–with a 7:1 carb to protein ratio–mixed with their electrolyte drink Heed. The folks at TriSports recommended against using Hammer’s Perpetuem formula only because it tends to foam up when jostled around, resulting in excess air in your stomach.

Every hour or so I took in Hammer Gel. All this and I also ate a peanut butter and banana sandwich, two bananas, a Hammer energy bar and a couple candy bars over the course of the day.

Adventure Racing Gear

My combination of gear seemed to work pretty well for me. In advance of the race, I spent quite a few training sessions wearing my gear just to get used to it. In the process I learned what was going to hang and swing and what was inclined to rub.

In the race, I wore an elastic triathlon belt around my waist. Designed to hold Hammer Gels for easy access, it was more useful when stretched over my map case to stop it from bouncing around.

BodyGlide on the undercarriage was simply a great move. While I don’t normally chafe, had I not used it, the mud, water and friction would have done some serious damage on this 12 hour adventure race. I’m inclined to start using it during training session now to avoid even minor irritations.

What didn’t work:

Ad lib navigation ate up about an hour and half of my time. In a navigation-centric event, it’s just foolish to think you can wonder off into the woods in a general direction to find an intentionally hidden checkpoint.

My overall pre-race gear preparation were pretty poor. I left several major details to the night before that I never had time to accomplish. Things like swapping the pedals on the bike that I borrowed so I wouldn’t have to wear shoes a size too large. Like not having my pack race-ready before I went to bed. I showed up at 5am to get the coordinates and realized that my map was left sitting on the kitchen table.

Map folding seemed to be a challenge this first time around.  I passed up two checkpoints  simply because the markers were folded out of view when I was covering nearby territory.  Perhaps this isn’t as much of a folding error as it is just committing to memory or obsessing over where I am in overall field of play.  In the future, I’ll take the time to unfold the map fully and get a visual of where all the checkpoints are.

Results of First Adventure Race

I finished 5th out of 10 teams entered in the solo category. But more significant, I really really enjoyed the race and can’t wait to challenge myself at the 24 hour Atomic Adventure Race in May.

From what I learned during the Palmetto Swamp Fox Adventure Race, I feel like I know what I need to do with my physical conditioning and overall adventure training to improve my performance.