2013 THUNDER ROLLS AR
We had heard Thunder Rolls, in Mt. Carroll, IL, was a “big” race. Meaning teams from around the region and the country travelled to do it. That proved true - Gearjunkie/WEDALI, Bushwhacker, Alpine Shop, Rev3, Lupine and BDAR all showed up to race the 24-hour. We arrived a few hours before the Friday evening race briefing to what was most definitely the most “real” feeling scene we had encountered yet in the AR world - team-branded campers and RVs, serious multi-thousand dollar bikes heaped everywhere, and very serious and fit people walking around the YMCA campground. We got settled into our cabin, which we learned we would be sharing with two other teams, then got some of our gear staged before heading to dinner and the briefing.
Following a pasta dinner, we got our first exposure to one of Gerry Voelliger's race briefings. The man is truly one-of-a-kind. With no need for a microphone - the man's voice could carry through an artillery bombardment - Gerry launches into a two-hour, step-by-step overview of the course. By the end, it's clear his passion for adventure racing is as clear as his voice, though his race directions are a little more convoluted, at least for us beginners, as he occasionally mixes up instructions for the 12-hour and 24-hour race. Finally, at 10 p.m., we got out of the cafeteria and headed out to do more last-minute preparation. We rigged a tow for my bike and were one of the last teams to hit the bike drop at the bank of a river 10 minutes away. There, friendly volunteers (Dawn and Matt Moore, hosts of the Plot Pedal Paddle race), warned us about the cruelty of Gerry’s bike sections. In retrospect, we should have heeded this advice more carefully. We got back to camp to watch the 24-hour race start at midnight, then headed back to our cabin to fall asleep for a few hours, amidst a cacophony of snoring in our fully loaded bunkhouse.
Our alarms were set for 5 a.m., but that wasn’t what woke us. Rather, alarms of other teams started at 4:30, and eventually, by 4:40, we gave in and slowly got up and ready. Race morning is always filled with stress and too many activities to fit into too short of a time, but we made it to the start line with about 10 minutes to spare. Gerry played the national anthem and then set us off on our way. The first six CPs were down in the river behind the camp. We waded across a cold, small river, and wound our way up an embankment to where we thought the first CP was, but to Cliff’s horror, as he neared the top, he saw nothing. Starker suggested moving a bit farther down the bluff, and he spotted the flag, to the team’s collective relief. Always nice to get the first flag. We descended the bluff and made our way through a field of stinging nettles, then decided to change paths and cross through the knee-deep river and up another embankment to CP2. CP3 was at the top of a cliff, and we knew it was the rappel. A few teams had gotten there before us, so we had plenty of time to get our harnesses on and prepare ourselves for the 100-foot descent. Starker went first, then Kate, and last Cliff, taking turns splashing into the river below and belaying for the teammate who came next. Working our way up the river, we made it to CP4, which was at the top of a 50-foot embankment, which had a nice view of the river now that it was finally light out. We moved on to the next point, which was an all-punch deep in a cave. Finding the cave with little difficulty further down the river, we dumped our packs on one side of the water, then had to swim for the other side. Getting there, we waited at the mouth of the cave for our turn, a good 15-20 minutes. When we finally had space to move forward, we squeezed through some tight spaces and found the flag at the back of a long, narrow passageway, taking turns punching our wristbands. Out of the cave, we retrieved our packs and headed further downriver. Cliff studied the map and saw what he thought might be a shortcut up and embankment and into a reentrant, hitting CP5 spot on. Then it was 45 minutes of coasteering down the river as day broke full force. We were passed by three or four teams as we took our time to make sure our footing was safe. At last we reached the end of the coasteer, hit a paved road and began running to warm up and make up for lost time.
The run was about two miles, and at its end was a bridge and the canoe put-in. With two teams we had just passed right behind us, we hustled to get our canoe in the water, then pushed off without checking the maps to see which way we should be going. After 10-15 minutes of self-congratulatory paddling, Cliff made the heart-dropping realization that the team was headed upstream instead of down, and that the stream was narrowing instead of widening. Humbled, we turned around and headed back to the put-in, hoping that the TA volunteers weren’t waiting to see what our faces looked like as we went by. We pushed forward, trying to use our embarrassment as motivation to paddle harder, and actually passed a couple of teams on the water.
The stream was strewn with downed trees, and we used good teamwork to make quick work of them, as Starker would call out directions, and when collisions were unavoidable, choosing the best attack point before jumping out of the boat onto whatever flotsam was blocking our way, then pulling the front of the boat up and over the blockage as Kate and then Cliff followed. The paddle was 2.5 hours long, then we took a quick lunch break at the TA before jumping on our bikes. We were surprised to see Elkbones here, as they were supposed to be leading the race.
We jumped on our bikes and headed to Palisades State Park for an orienteering section. When all of a sudden, the wheels came off our race. Dismounting from our bikes at an area strewn with bikes from other racers, Cliff led the team into a reentrant, certain they would see a flag on the way. It didn’t happen. They checked the reentrant twice more, up and down. Then gave up on that point and headed for another, directly down a “road” clearly marked on the map. Looking for a paved, two-lane road, the team walked right past a trail with other teams on it, through a cornfield, through a brushfield, and popped out on the original road, about half a mile from the place we had left our bikes. Eating humble pie, we walked up the road back to start and tried to get a handle on where we actually were on the map. Kate took over, firmly establishing we were in an area Cliff didn't think we could possibly be. However, we still somehow took the wrong way, ending up at the end of the wrong field and searching for a flag in a reentrant about a quarter-mile away from where we were supposed to be.
After about two hours of futility, we finally started figuring it out In the next 20 minutes, we found three CPs in those fields, then two more after remounting our bikes and riding a short distance. At this point, we were waaay in last place. No other bikes could be seen. Fortunately, we did start seeing teams in the next area we parked our bikes, out on a knob with views of the Mississippi. Unfortunately, it turned out they were mostly in the 24-hour race. Undaunted, we made good time finding the five points strewn in a 20-minute radius (each) up and down the knob.
We biked down a crazy hill to the last TA, where watermelon awaited us on what was turning out to be a scorching hot day. We ate some, then talked with one of the volunteers at the TA. At this point we had three hours left before the 6 p.m. cutoff. From the looks of the map, we had about a 14-mile ride back to camp and the finish line. There were three checkpoints up in the hills above the TA, and Cliff asked the volunteer how much time he thought we had to clear it. “Well,” he said patronizingly, “how fast do you typically ride?” Cliff answered, “About 10-12 miles an hour on these types of roads.” The volunteer said, “Well than an hour should be sufficient, no?” Unaware that the ride ahead would actually take the team almost three hours to complete, we headed up into the hills, using pace counting and compass work to find two points (at one point crossing through what Starker swore was a marijuana field), then reluctantly left the third as we stuck to our plan of allowing what we thought would be a safe, two-hour buffer.
Back on the bikes, we rode north from the park for a few miles, then hit a sandy, grinding uphill. That uphill went on for what seemed like forever. Walking our bikes, the team averaged about two miles an hour for at least 30 minutes. Finally arriving at the top, we thought it would be smooth sailing to camp. We were wrong. The sand and the hills continued incessantly as the minutes ticked by and the deadline drew closer. At 5:20 p.m., it looked like we still had about 10 miles to go. We were pushing hard, all of us light-headed and near bonking, when on a fast, swervy dowhill, Cliff braked and Kate rammed into the back of his bike, which had a PVC pipe as a tow mounted to it. She went down hard, sliding on her side and leaving a trench in the glass-like gravel road. Then there was crying. Starker and Cliff exchanged a look. This could be the end of adventure racing for us, the look seemed to say. Cliff approached Kate. A long hug and some good crying ensued. Then the decision was made that there would be no way to make the cutoff, and that everybody needed a good snack and drink session. After about 10 minutes, amazingly, Kate got back on her bike and the team moved once again. At 6 p.m., the cutoff, the team was still about 6 miles away from camp. As we made our last turn into camp, with the day fading quickly into dusk, we were passed by an elite 24-hour team. We rolled into camp to see the finish line blocked by Gerry posing for photos with that team. We were exhausted and incensed, robbed of our opportunity to cross a finish line we had been fantasizing about for 12 hours. Cliff had had enough. He rode into the banner to the left of Gerry, trying to duck under it. He didn’t quite make it and the banner disattached from its moorings as Cliff took a tumble and Gerry yelled his disapproval. Slightly humbled but also slightly pleased, Cliff rejoined the team, waited for its own turn to take a photo with Gerry, and then went inside to eat and drink themselves back to sanity. At the finish, a very upset looking Andrei Karpoff of WEDALI sitting on a bench and staring into the distance. Apparently he had made some pretty bad nav mistakes. Alpine Shop had it worse though, after they finished first but were found not to have completed an all-punch. They were docked four hours and one CP, and went from first to fifth, handing Bushwhacker the win. Sadly, due to our late finish, we were not ranked, though our CP total would have put us in the top third of teams in the race. But this was an important lesson for us to learn. Always make the cutoff, even if you finish embarrasingly early. Better to have some points than none. It was also a seminal moment for the team and its ability to overcome hardship and “endeavor to perservere.”
Following a pasta dinner, we got our first exposure to one of Gerry Voelliger's race briefings. The man is truly one-of-a-kind. With no need for a microphone - the man's voice could carry through an artillery bombardment - Gerry launches into a two-hour, step-by-step overview of the course. By the end, it's clear his passion for adventure racing is as clear as his voice, though his race directions are a little more convoluted, at least for us beginners, as he occasionally mixes up instructions for the 12-hour and 24-hour race. Finally, at 10 p.m., we got out of the cafeteria and headed out to do more last-minute preparation. We rigged a tow for my bike and were one of the last teams to hit the bike drop at the bank of a river 10 minutes away. There, friendly volunteers (Dawn and Matt Moore, hosts of the Plot Pedal Paddle race), warned us about the cruelty of Gerry’s bike sections. In retrospect, we should have heeded this advice more carefully. We got back to camp to watch the 24-hour race start at midnight, then headed back to our cabin to fall asleep for a few hours, amidst a cacophony of snoring in our fully loaded bunkhouse.
Our alarms were set for 5 a.m., but that wasn’t what woke us. Rather, alarms of other teams started at 4:30, and eventually, by 4:40, we gave in and slowly got up and ready. Race morning is always filled with stress and too many activities to fit into too short of a time, but we made it to the start line with about 10 minutes to spare. Gerry played the national anthem and then set us off on our way. The first six CPs were down in the river behind the camp. We waded across a cold, small river, and wound our way up an embankment to where we thought the first CP was, but to Cliff’s horror, as he neared the top, he saw nothing. Starker suggested moving a bit farther down the bluff, and he spotted the flag, to the team’s collective relief. Always nice to get the first flag. We descended the bluff and made our way through a field of stinging nettles, then decided to change paths and cross through the knee-deep river and up another embankment to CP2. CP3 was at the top of a cliff, and we knew it was the rappel. A few teams had gotten there before us, so we had plenty of time to get our harnesses on and prepare ourselves for the 100-foot descent. Starker went first, then Kate, and last Cliff, taking turns splashing into the river below and belaying for the teammate who came next. Working our way up the river, we made it to CP4, which was at the top of a 50-foot embankment, which had a nice view of the river now that it was finally light out. We moved on to the next point, which was an all-punch deep in a cave. Finding the cave with little difficulty further down the river, we dumped our packs on one side of the water, then had to swim for the other side. Getting there, we waited at the mouth of the cave for our turn, a good 15-20 minutes. When we finally had space to move forward, we squeezed through some tight spaces and found the flag at the back of a long, narrow passageway, taking turns punching our wristbands. Out of the cave, we retrieved our packs and headed further downriver. Cliff studied the map and saw what he thought might be a shortcut up and embankment and into a reentrant, hitting CP5 spot on. Then it was 45 minutes of coasteering down the river as day broke full force. We were passed by three or four teams as we took our time to make sure our footing was safe. At last we reached the end of the coasteer, hit a paved road and began running to warm up and make up for lost time.
The run was about two miles, and at its end was a bridge and the canoe put-in. With two teams we had just passed right behind us, we hustled to get our canoe in the water, then pushed off without checking the maps to see which way we should be going. After 10-15 minutes of self-congratulatory paddling, Cliff made the heart-dropping realization that the team was headed upstream instead of down, and that the stream was narrowing instead of widening. Humbled, we turned around and headed back to the put-in, hoping that the TA volunteers weren’t waiting to see what our faces looked like as we went by. We pushed forward, trying to use our embarrassment as motivation to paddle harder, and actually passed a couple of teams on the water.
The stream was strewn with downed trees, and we used good teamwork to make quick work of them, as Starker would call out directions, and when collisions were unavoidable, choosing the best attack point before jumping out of the boat onto whatever flotsam was blocking our way, then pulling the front of the boat up and over the blockage as Kate and then Cliff followed. The paddle was 2.5 hours long, then we took a quick lunch break at the TA before jumping on our bikes. We were surprised to see Elkbones here, as they were supposed to be leading the race.
We jumped on our bikes and headed to Palisades State Park for an orienteering section. When all of a sudden, the wheels came off our race. Dismounting from our bikes at an area strewn with bikes from other racers, Cliff led the team into a reentrant, certain they would see a flag on the way. It didn’t happen. They checked the reentrant twice more, up and down. Then gave up on that point and headed for another, directly down a “road” clearly marked on the map. Looking for a paved, two-lane road, the team walked right past a trail with other teams on it, through a cornfield, through a brushfield, and popped out on the original road, about half a mile from the place we had left our bikes. Eating humble pie, we walked up the road back to start and tried to get a handle on where we actually were on the map. Kate took over, firmly establishing we were in an area Cliff didn't think we could possibly be. However, we still somehow took the wrong way, ending up at the end of the wrong field and searching for a flag in a reentrant about a quarter-mile away from where we were supposed to be.
After about two hours of futility, we finally started figuring it out In the next 20 minutes, we found three CPs in those fields, then two more after remounting our bikes and riding a short distance. At this point, we were waaay in last place. No other bikes could be seen. Fortunately, we did start seeing teams in the next area we parked our bikes, out on a knob with views of the Mississippi. Unfortunately, it turned out they were mostly in the 24-hour race. Undaunted, we made good time finding the five points strewn in a 20-minute radius (each) up and down the knob.
We biked down a crazy hill to the last TA, where watermelon awaited us on what was turning out to be a scorching hot day. We ate some, then talked with one of the volunteers at the TA. At this point we had three hours left before the 6 p.m. cutoff. From the looks of the map, we had about a 14-mile ride back to camp and the finish line. There were three checkpoints up in the hills above the TA, and Cliff asked the volunteer how much time he thought we had to clear it. “Well,” he said patronizingly, “how fast do you typically ride?” Cliff answered, “About 10-12 miles an hour on these types of roads.” The volunteer said, “Well than an hour should be sufficient, no?” Unaware that the ride ahead would actually take the team almost three hours to complete, we headed up into the hills, using pace counting and compass work to find two points (at one point crossing through what Starker swore was a marijuana field), then reluctantly left the third as we stuck to our plan of allowing what we thought would be a safe, two-hour buffer.
Back on the bikes, we rode north from the park for a few miles, then hit a sandy, grinding uphill. That uphill went on for what seemed like forever. Walking our bikes, the team averaged about two miles an hour for at least 30 minutes. Finally arriving at the top, we thought it would be smooth sailing to camp. We were wrong. The sand and the hills continued incessantly as the minutes ticked by and the deadline drew closer. At 5:20 p.m., it looked like we still had about 10 miles to go. We were pushing hard, all of us light-headed and near bonking, when on a fast, swervy dowhill, Cliff braked and Kate rammed into the back of his bike, which had a PVC pipe as a tow mounted to it. She went down hard, sliding on her side and leaving a trench in the glass-like gravel road. Then there was crying. Starker and Cliff exchanged a look. This could be the end of adventure racing for us, the look seemed to say. Cliff approached Kate. A long hug and some good crying ensued. Then the decision was made that there would be no way to make the cutoff, and that everybody needed a good snack and drink session. After about 10 minutes, amazingly, Kate got back on her bike and the team moved once again. At 6 p.m., the cutoff, the team was still about 6 miles away from camp. As we made our last turn into camp, with the day fading quickly into dusk, we were passed by an elite 24-hour team. We rolled into camp to see the finish line blocked by Gerry posing for photos with that team. We were exhausted and incensed, robbed of our opportunity to cross a finish line we had been fantasizing about for 12 hours. Cliff had had enough. He rode into the banner to the left of Gerry, trying to duck under it. He didn’t quite make it and the banner disattached from its moorings as Cliff took a tumble and Gerry yelled his disapproval. Slightly humbled but also slightly pleased, Cliff rejoined the team, waited for its own turn to take a photo with Gerry, and then went inside to eat and drink themselves back to sanity. At the finish, a very upset looking Andrei Karpoff of WEDALI sitting on a bench and staring into the distance. Apparently he had made some pretty bad nav mistakes. Alpine Shop had it worse though, after they finished first but were found not to have completed an all-punch. They were docked four hours and one CP, and went from first to fifth, handing Bushwhacker the win. Sadly, due to our late finish, we were not ranked, though our CP total would have put us in the top third of teams in the race. But this was an important lesson for us to learn. Always make the cutoff, even if you finish embarrasingly early. Better to have some points than none. It was also a seminal moment for the team and its ability to overcome hardship and “endeavor to perservere.”
