She ran with the pace balloon until around mile 15 or so, where she said she felt pretty good but was worried a bit about her stomach. By mile 19 she had left the 3:10 balloon, she must have been feeling good, because she was a full minute ahead of it! She absolutely flew through the rest of the course. She ran 7:02′s from mile 19 to 23, which is all slightly uphill. Then she latched onto a woman runner that was making steady 6:50′s until she blasted past her and many other runners, closing down with a 6:13 last mile!

Her garmin data is really something else. What an incredible effort. And only her second marathon!

I wanted to get a good warm-up in because I knew it would be continuous, hard sprinting. What I didn’t know is that lots of guys line up early in order to get the hole shot. I showed up at the start line about 5-7 before the gun and there were already 50 guys in the box. Not knowing what to expect (I had only raced one other cx race, last year) I choose not to fight my way up. I passed maybe 15 guys on the first lap but I was blowing up doing it, sprinting around guys on the outsides of turns that could be negotiated by barely pedaling if on the inside line. After the third lap I figured I had passed about 25 guys, 15 on the first lap and maybe 5 the next two laps.

Then I heard the bell, and since it’s a short race and I didn’t want to regret not trying. I passed another 3-4 guys during my 190BPM efforts to the finish. When I got to the finish line I hear a much louder and more mature church bell, and one of the guys I hard worked so hard to pass flew by me at race speed. Uh oh, I’m in for another 9 minutes of pain! We were still racing. Some fan had a cowbell and was ringing it to cheer, it was not the real bell lap until now! My legs were really hurting and I couldn’t keep up the pace, I hard to slow down.

Fortunately after about two minutes of struggling my legs came back underneath me to some extent. I felt strong, but had certainly lost an edge, there was no fire left, just good pedaling power. I had no idea where I sat but I knew the leader were way ahead of me.

I rode an average pace the rest of the lap, and Kelly kept yelling that a group was forming behind me. I didn’t care. I was doing what I could. If they had enough to pass me, my lungs were seared, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Coming into the last straight away I was able to muster up a decent enough effort to hold them off, barely. One of the guys passed me right after the line. I finished in 21st of 58. Not a great result considering I was racing CAT 4, the slowest of the 3 categories in the day’s race. But it was all I had, and that was good enough for me. Such a tough challenge.

I’ll be back for more, probably next weekend.

I’m pretty sure it was 80 degrees at 5PM and 87 degrees at 8PM yesterday. That was a not awesome way to welcome a night of racing. Fortunately the race started at sundown with an awesome swim across the St. Croix river on the way to CP2 which was on the southern tip of an island.

Our team consisted of the usual studs Andrei 3000 and Crusher, but this the first time I successfully roped my HS friend Scott into racing with us. We met in 7th grade because we have similar last names and therefore had lockers next to each other. We raced MTN. bikes in college. He has not worked out since we lived together in Salt Lake City as ski bums in 2002-2003. The island was thick and nasty. Although we were merely fast hiking, we were losing fluids really fast trekking through thick Razor grass, buckthorn, and wildflowers with our PFD’s zipped tightly beneath our race packs as we picked up four trekking CP’s before we headed out on the bikes. The humidity was high and the cold front that would bring rain later in the night had not moved in.

We came out of the first trek in the lead, with Blind Squirrels, Orion, Beautiful People, Rick and Pete, and WEDALI within a few minutes behind us in that very approximate order.

We were out on the bikes in the lead with Blind Squirrels but that only lasted a very short while. I had Kelly on tow but within a few minutes she was off tow and Scott was on for the rest of the bike section. Don’t get me wrong, he did great and raced is behind off, but since I knew Kelly would be really strong on the last trek, we were 100% focused on saving as much energy in Scott’s legs as we could to ensure he’d be able to finish the race the way we wanted to.

The bike section was fun. 31 miles of mostly paved, a little gravel, and a little doubletrack in the area south of William O’Brian and north of Stillwater. This is an area I know quite well because I love the Square lake triathlon that takes place right there. I’ve done both the Olympic and the half Iron-man triathlon there. Also, Kelly recently won the Stillwater triathlon on the same roads just a few months ago! It was fun to recognize where we were from time to time on course.

About halfway through the bike section we had gotten passed by 4 teams in total and we had settled into a pace we could sustain, hoping to perhaps pass some teams on the last trekking section. Scott fought hard on his old steel hardtail and we finished the bike section with a clean run with the exception of one attempt I made at a short cut that did not turn out and cost us about 10 minutes.

We arrived at the last trekking section in about 6th place overall, but not far at all behind any team, 14 minutes back from the lead. Beautiful People we learned was dropping out there due to a combination of really bad bee stings on the first trek (sorry Ellen!) kids at home and the impending storm. So that meant that we were two minutes behind Orion and 14 minutes behind WEDALI in third place in our division. There were two two person teams ahead of us as well.

We had a nice fast TA and passed Orion in the TA! Andrei was on the map and we were knocking out the trek at a good clip. Kelly had Scott on tow and they were really moving!

By the halfway point the rain was sheeting down as hard as I’ve seen it. The drops were both large and heavy as well as misty and windy, like at the bottom of a waterfall. This effect may have been from the water blowing out of the leaves in the trees, not sure, but it was cooling and refreshing. I felt like a kid playing out in the rain.

Then, lights up ahead. Andrei noticed them first at the bottom of a large reentrant, far up ahead. We picked up the pace slightly. Then they were gone. Five minutes later, we saw them again. Andrei decided to bushwack a section. These lights up ahead (which appeared to be two teams, both with two people) veered off to the south. Andrei confidently stayed the course. He knew we had passed them.

I didn’t know what place we were in as we ran quickly the remaining few miles back. When we arrived at the finish I was shocked to find out we were the 2nd team overall to cross the line. We passed 4 teams on the last TA trek, so that was a great end to a hot and stormy night. WEDALI had some hiccups along the way, and still came across the line 14 minutes ahead of us.

Andrei rocked the navigation on both trekking sections, Kelly was amazing towing Scott on the entire last trek, and Scott pulled an athletic achievement normally reserved for those who workout 24SEVEN, or at least with regularity, out of nowhere based on nothing but guts. Success!

The race started with a great little O-section around Loon Lake which Andrei and Kelly flew through while Brandon and I tried our best to keep up. My heart rate hit 178 on the way home, so we must have been moving quickly. We came in a few seconds behind Orion and a few seconds ahead of Wedali, but we left the TA a seconds after Wedali. We had a slow TA but I’m not too sure why.

The next bike section was the beginning of the end for us. Kelly fell very hard after catching her bike tire in a mud hardened rut on the north side of loon lake. I felt terribly for her as she struggled through the rest of the bike on the way to the paddle. Andrei and I had a very miscommunications on the way to the paddle, but overall we did well and I don’t think we lost much time to any team. We didn’t gain any either.

The paddle on Big Sandy Lake and a nearby area was fun through the tall thick grasses! They appeared to be impassable but after giving it a shot it turned out that they hardly slowed the boat down at all! Very fun. The mistake we made here was not putting the dipper in the faster boat. Brandon and Andrei were at least 10% slower than Kelly’s boat, she was crushing the paddle. So instead of having her go punch quickly while the big strong men caught up, we had to wait for them. Bad strategy by me. I just assumed that our boat would be equal to or slower than Brandon and Andrei’s boat. After asking them about it, they could not figure it out either. So it goes.

We came out of the water 15 minutes after Wedali and 3 minutes behind TMMAR. The next bike section was tough, lots of bumps harsh terrain, and horse flies to punish you if you stop for even a second. I was navigating. I did well until I got to a four way intersection north of CP 12. When I got there I took a right at the four way, as showed on the map. However, the right I took was ACTUALLY the “straight ahead” shown on the map! It turned out to be a costly mistake and I did not catch in time. Andrei briefly second guessed me but after I checked my watch to see I was headed south, I was sure I did not “go straight”. But I was wrong. So wrong. Kelly was hurting and I was taking us east, the wrong way. When we finally realized it, Kelly was falling over in pain. We got her hooked up with the EMT’s and Andrei and Brandon and I headed to get 13, 14, and 15 on our own. I felt so badly for Kelly, who has never not finished a race she has started with only one exception, the day she ruptured her hamstring her sophomore year on college. She was devastated. I tried to assure her that being safe and dropping out was what we all wanted her to do, but it was hard.

We finished the bike-O section quickly, passing teams who had made the correct turn at the 4-way as we progressed. That felt good to be peddling fast again. It felt like I was racing for the first time since before the paddle.

We came into the O-section in different moods. I was upset for Kelly but otherwise energized by the faster pace we were carrying. Andrei was pretty beat up and complaining of a headache and Brandon was somewhere in between, doing very well for only his second race ever.

I asked Andrei how much water he had on the day and he said his bladder and his water bottle, so I figured about 90 ounces, probably not enough for the 6 hours we had done in the heat, but not grossly inadequate. I figured he was probably good to go. Then he checked his bladder and saw that the bladder hose was routed such that he could not get any water out. So I think he probably had only had 40 or 50 ounces. Then I knew was likely severely dehydrated. I think he even gave Kelly the last half of his bottle! He is a tough guy, so when asked if he could go do the O-section with us, and he said that he’d rather stay in the shade and drink, I knew to listen.

I was totally ok with that, as we were already rolling as an “unranked” team. Brandon and I went and did the O-section. Again, really fun but very difficult terrain. Thick, uneven, and tons of bugs. I made one good sized parallel error but otherwise it went perfectly. The water crossings and control locations were fun, and I was happy to give it a good effort and do some more navigation.

Overall it was a very mixed day of highs and lows. Although we had a lot of lows this weekend (including a blown head gasket on Andrei’s beautiful Honda civic!) it was a pretty fun weekend.

Also, the camping was really good. Awesome weather, great fire, not too many bugs (do they spray the camping area?) and pretty lake-side setting.

Hats off to Jerritt and Molly and Ian and the MNOC crew for another great AR event.

The Planet Adventure was a very well run race with great attention to detail and a well thought out and fair course. The team was very surprised that more teams from the area were not there as this was on par with the Berryman and other Bonk Hard races, generally the gold standard in the midwest. Kudos to the PA crew, we’ll be back if we can be.

24SEVEN participated in the Minnesota Wild Adventure Series 6-hour Summer Sprint race near Hastings, MN. The weather was more spring than summer-like, with temperatures in the 60s and a cool, gray, intermittent drizzle falling throughout the event. But despite the weather conditions, the venue was fantastic. HQ was located at a neat park area in Schaar’s Bluff, and the course made it’s way through the Spring Lake Park Reserve. The entire area is actually a part of the Mississippi River National Park. A park ranger was on hand before and after the race to educate everyone about the park system and its features (including 30 active bald eagle nests).

There was a good field of competitors, including powerhouse Wedali, and contenders The Beautiful People, Blind Squirrels, Lil Sumpthin Sumpthin, and other regular AR scene squads. The 24SEVEN line-up for the day included team members: Tom, Andrei, Kelly, and Tom’s cycling friend, Brandon Manske.

Following a brief pre-race meeting, all racers were ordered to line up and dump out the contents of their packs. The first twist of the day was a quick unpack, repack just as maps were being handed out. The race was on!

24SEVEN took off to the north with Andrei navigating the first, trekking portion of the race. The rules mandated that teams get five mandatory checkpoints (CPs) in sequential order. In addition, there were three optional CPs, which could be obtained at any time, in any order during the race. 24SEVEN had decided before the start to go after all checkpoints.
After a little bobble, heading to CP 2 before CP 1, Andrei began laying down a wicked pace from point to point. Kelly was punching, and Tom and Brandon were right on their heels. The trek portion was only about five miles so there was no letting off the gas pedal. After realizing 24SEVEN was leading the pack following a quick punch at CP 3, the entire team implicitly agreed red-lining was the strategy of the day. On the trails we were putting down sub-eight minute miles, with packs on.

The last portion of the trek led the team on a bush-whack through a pretty gnarly reentrant that ended up being private property (confusingly, as the maps were ambiguous and mis/unmarked) causing them to lose a little speed and pop out of the bush at the paddle transition just behind Wedali, who also lost time trying to decipher the private property debacle.

After a decent transition, Tom and Kelly hopped in one boat and Andrei and Brandon in the other. There appeared to be a lot of weeds and logs near the surface of the water, it was a rather shallow river. Kelly was thankful for that because after taking a couple peeks over her shoulder to eye the competition, she noticed Tom seemed to be sinking dangerously lower and lower. Despite briefly checking the drain valves in the boats before pushing off, their boat was definitely taking on water. Brandon and Andrei’s boat was just ahead and they were hopping out as they had hit a sandbar. Even further up, 24SEVEN noticed leaders Wedali out of their boats and crawling/swimming/dragging themselves over a mess of trees and other debris in the water in an attempt to get to shore. 24SEVEN sort of followed suit, getting out of their boats and swimming/dragging their way through the debris. Tom and Brandon agreed the floating garbage was likely the same place that the Star Wars garbage/water pit scene was filmed as they feared the appearance of the giant one eyed BoaConstrictor monster. IT never came up for a bite, and they continued to look for a bench on a point as their next CP, and felt fairly confident they hadn’t traveled far enough yet.

Not long after their decision to paddle on, Kelly eyed a CP flag. They were on the right path! The team hit the point in first place, hopped out of the boats, and hit the trail to the boat clean/bike drop transition area.
There was a mandatory 10-minute period for boat cleaning, but teams could earn up to a 4 minute bonus by tossing some Norwegian golf balls onto a target. Tom earned a self-proclaimed limp-wristed one-minute advantage, as Brandon and Kelly cleaned boats, and Andrei previewed the next section on the maps.

Nine minutes later, the boats were cleaned, bike gear was on, and 24SEVEN was off. Unfortunately, Kelly, the least experienced on the bike, had a case of numb and wet hands from the paddle and accidentally dropped the tow rope which immediately (and dangerously) wrapped itself around Tom’s rear cassette. Fortunately, he was able to react with a quickness and lock up his rear wheel and skid out to avoid a tightly wound tow-rope catastrophe. The entire team was stopped in its tracks and forced to help disassemble his rear wheel, unwind the rope, and reassemble. Wedali sped by at this point reclaiming the lead after their bobble on the river.

Tom and Brandon were producing watts on the bike like Chernobyl. Kelly and Andrei, known for their quick trekking, were doing everything they could to not tug too hard on tow. The majority of the bike route was on paved roads, with short gravel sections (hard-packed gravel), allowing the pace to be lightning fast. Even on hills, bucking a headwind, and towing teammates, Brandon and Tom were pushing the sound barrier.

The CPs were coming fast and furiously on the bike. After a dog-leg stretch in and out of a residential park area, 24SEVEN spied Wedali not more than a few minutes ahead. Both teams were inspired by the competition and knew there was no time to relax.

Five miles of trekking, 5 miles of paddling, and about 20 miles of biking ended at Schaar’s Bluff, with 24SEVEN claiming second place. Wedali took the top spot on the day finishing the course in approximately three and a half hours, and 24SEVEN about seven minutes back.

We were happy with the result, and more importantly, we all agreed to do it again soon.

WEDALI is not only one of the fastest teams in the world, recently finishing 5th at Primal Quest, they are even better people, setting the highest example in sportsmanship in the business. Tom is honored to receive the invite to race with WEDALI at an event as competitive as this one.

There were some kinks and hiccups along the way but no more than could be expected from the new group. As a whole we were a strong group athletically, pushing the pace in all three disciplines.

We crossed the line in second place overall, just seven minutes behind the favorites, WEDALI.