2016 ITERA, PART ONE
What’s a team like ours doing in a race like this?
That was a near-constant thought for team Strong Machine throughout our experience in the ITERA Expedition Race, a five-day, non-stop team multisport race that took place Aug 16-23 in Ireland.
The race attracted some of the top teams from all over the world, including entries from Sweden, France, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and the defending champions, Godzone, from the U.K. Our friends Abby and Brent were also in the starting lineup with their team Rootstock Racing. They had played a major role in getting us here, first in convincing us it would be a race friendly to us novices, and then in patiently answering our interminable list of questions covering everything from pacing to gear to packing strategies.
Arriving at the race’s host hotel in Killarney, we took stock of our strengths and weaknesses. Our team, composed of Cliff and Kate White, Cliff’s (62-year-old) dad Starker and AR newbie Claire Poulin, had no experience in expedition races. In fact, none of them had raced longer than 30 hours. Moreover, we had never raced together as a team, though we all knew each other well and had raced in different combinations of three multiple times. In addition, in the stage-by-stage breakdown provided by the race organization a week prior to the start, we realized that several of the legs would be the longest distances we had ever covered in that discipline (a 75-kilometer paddle; a 200-kilometer bike ride).
In our advantage was our total naivete. We weren’t intimidated because the whole experience was so overwhelming to us that we couldn’t fathom what we had gotten ourselves into. Another advantage was that we had no expectations for our performance; our only hope - and it was just a hope - was to cross the finish line together. Also, we were all probably in some of the best shape our lives, having trained and raced through the spring and summer. Lastly, we all had experience in endurance events, from an A.T. thru-hike (Claire and Cliff) to marathons (3:07 PR for Starker) and ultras (Claire, 50 miles, and Cliff, 100 miles) and lots and lots of adventure races (Kate, Starker and Cliff have completed about 35 together over the past three years).
There were a million tasks to be completed in the months, weeks, and days before the race, many of them familiar to the team and many more new to us (such as trying to fit five days worth of gear into airline-approved luggage sizes and weights). But the real fun began at the start of the race, as we passed under the grass-green start banner and began our 7km loop around the streets of Westport.
The run went well, and we kept up about a 9-minute-per-mile pace. It was fun to weave around the bike paths of the small city, occasionally having traffic stopped for us by the friendly and sometimes snarky local police. Still, we were among the last few teams back into the Westport House, where a load of our gear was waiting to be hauled another kilometer or two down a slippery trail to the waterfront.
The rain was coming down lightly through the run, and it increased as we got our wetsuits on and latched down our drybags onto our two plastic sit-on-top kayaks, which looked more suitable for a 30-minute cruise around a Caribbean destination resort than 125 kilometers of open-water paddling. We were among the last five teams to get on the water, but started cruising at a handy 4 to 5 kilometers per hour in the protected cove out of Westport.
That lasted for a solid hour. Once we hit the end of the cove, we next had to navigate a narrow channel between the protective islands. With the tide coming in, we saw the teams in front of us struggle through a vortex of inrushing water, actually moving backwards for a time. We got out of our boats and pushed them along the shore, finding that the ocean water was warm and that we actually were moving faster this way than the team still stuck in the middle of the riptide.
Then we were in the open ocean, dealing with cresting 2-3 foot waves, a 30-mph headwind and an unfriendly coastline that looked too rocky to be counted on as a possible escape route. And the suck began. We paddled hard, but didn’t seem to be making any progress. In reality, we were probably moving 2-3 kph. Making things worse, Cliff and Claire’s boat was steadily taking water into the hull, getting lower in the water - and making our progress even slower.
Just past the beach marked as the sole emergency take-out, an Irish Coast Guard boat approached us and told us the kayak had been shortened to 25 kilometers, meaning we only had about 4-5 more to go. Cliff considered telling them about the leaky boat, but he didn’t want to cause them alarm, which might result in them pulling us from the race. He figured we could make it another 4-5 k. Feeling low, and a bit scared, the team was picked up by the sighting of two dolphins which surfaced no more than 5 feet in front of our boats. A beautiful and uplifting encounter with nature.
In the next hour, Cliff and Claire’s boat became more and more tippy. Every wave would throw off the balance of the boat and all the water in the hull would rush to one side. About two kilometers from the takeout, Cliff tried to calmly run Claire through what might happen if they capsized. Hold on to the paddle and the boat, he told her. Five minutes later, a wave threw their balance off and they were thrown into the water. We lost a couple of Camelbaks, our seat cushions and some snacks and water bottles that had been loose in the boat, but managed to reach the dry bags and throw them to Kate and Starker. Then Claire and Cliff got on opposite sides of the extremely tippy boat and slowly tried to get back on, eventually succeeding. Adrenaline surging, Cliff then tried to paddle after some of the lost gear, which was floating nearby. Immediately, the boat tipped over again.
At this point, we were drifting dangerously close to the rocky shoreline. A quick self-rescue became paramount if we didn’t want to lose all our boats, gear and risk potential injury. Fortunately, we pulled it off, and with a supreme effort to stay afloat and upright (mainly involving very quick and hard paddling), we made it into the makeshift TA at the end of the peninsula.
Kate hustled a cold and in-shock Claire into the concrete building for some shelter and a clothing change while Cliff and Starker hauled the kayaks to the waiting trailer, struggling with the leaky one, which must have weight 100-150 lbs (we tried to drain it but didn’t want to waste too much time). We got cleaned up a bit then headed out for a 20K trek that went mainly along beaches, with a few roads in the mix as well.
We headed out right at sunset, sandwiched between about four other teams. We followed their headlights along the beach, and about halfway through the trek saw one set coming back our way. They had tried to cross a big stream, they said, and got in up to their waists before turning around. We grabbed the other teams following behind us, including a British team and the Japanese team Fujin Raijin, and gave them the news and we all headed inland together. The detour added about 5K to our trek, which eventually took us over a beautiful old stone footbridge over a raging river, and then into the next makeshift TA another 5K after that.
We hustled through the transition back into kayaks, donning our paddling gear and having to stuff everything back in dry bags. Boarding our kayaks on a little sandy rivulet of water, we didn’t budge. We dismounted and began hauling the boats through the shallow water. This went on for at least 20 minutes until we finally reached the outlet to the channel. The paddle was only 6K and went quickly once we found deep enough water, barring one attempt to cross through what looked to be the channel between two “islands” which actually turned out to be a beach. We passed by some salmon pens and oyster beds and hit the TA on the far side of the channel, realizing we had pulled ahead considerably from the four other teams we had been with at the previous TA.
As we got our boats on the trailer, we chatted with the volunteer, who knew Brent and Abby and had stayed with them in Philly the previous year. Casually, he mentioned something to us about the 5 a.m. cutoff for the next TA. WHAT? We went into a panic. None of us knew about it except for Kate, and she had assumed the cutoff had been eliminated due to all the changes in the stage. By the time we ran out of the TA, it was 3:20 a.m. We headed off at a fast hike, then a jog, and then we were at full-out 5K pace as the time ticked down. At one point, Cliff’s headlight battery died and as he tried to change it on the fly, he slipped into a pile of sheepshit. It got everywhere but he got the light switched and we all kept running, with the Japanese team following close behind.
We hit the paved road marking our imminent arrival to the TA at 4:40. A team we saw on the road told us it was just ahead. Then we saw arrows pointing into the woods. Cliff insisted we follow them even though Kate and Starker thought the TA was on the road. But Cliff saw tons of footprints and the team had been following the same arrows all the way from the previous TA. At this point, we only had time to choose one route. Cliff chose the wrong one. Getting all the way back down to the water, we acknowledged we had been wrong and walked back uphill, finding the TA at 5:05, with the Japanese team just outside. We asked them if they had made the cutoff, and they gave the thumbs-up. We walked into the TA, located in a geodesic dome with a crazy hollow echo, and found one volunteer, who told us we missed the cutoff and that we’d have to wait until we were given further instructions. Kate and Starker were bummed, Claire looked drained, but Cliff felt OK. We had given it our best effort, he told the team, and had nothing to be ashamed of.
After a few minutes of pouting, Kate started cooking up some food, Cliff took a shower to wash the sheepshit off himself and Starker followed, and eventually everyone but Cliff settled in for some sleep. At 7 a.m., while eating chili in the bathroom and thinking about sleeping, James Thurlow walked in and there was an awkward moment. Because really, who expects a race director to walk into a quiet bathroom in the middle of nowhere at 7 a.m.? Or for that matter, who expects someone to be sitting inside and eating chili out of a bag?
After that awkwardness got cleared up, James sat down with Cliff and the captains of the two other teams that had come in within the past hour. He told us if we got out of the TA by 8 a.m., we could keep going as a short course team, provided we did not rank above any teams that made it out of the TA before the cutoff. No problem, Cliff practically shouted. He got the team up and we were out by 7:50, somewhat refreshed and ready to hit the next 25K trek hard, having been challenged by James to make it in 7 hours or less so as not to fall behind the race again.
That was a near-constant thought for team Strong Machine throughout our experience in the ITERA Expedition Race, a five-day, non-stop team multisport race that took place Aug 16-23 in Ireland.
The race attracted some of the top teams from all over the world, including entries from Sweden, France, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and the defending champions, Godzone, from the U.K. Our friends Abby and Brent were also in the starting lineup with their team Rootstock Racing. They had played a major role in getting us here, first in convincing us it would be a race friendly to us novices, and then in patiently answering our interminable list of questions covering everything from pacing to gear to packing strategies.
Arriving at the race’s host hotel in Killarney, we took stock of our strengths and weaknesses. Our team, composed of Cliff and Kate White, Cliff’s (62-year-old) dad Starker and AR newbie Claire Poulin, had no experience in expedition races. In fact, none of them had raced longer than 30 hours. Moreover, we had never raced together as a team, though we all knew each other well and had raced in different combinations of three multiple times. In addition, in the stage-by-stage breakdown provided by the race organization a week prior to the start, we realized that several of the legs would be the longest distances we had ever covered in that discipline (a 75-kilometer paddle; a 200-kilometer bike ride).
In our advantage was our total naivete. We weren’t intimidated because the whole experience was so overwhelming to us that we couldn’t fathom what we had gotten ourselves into. Another advantage was that we had no expectations for our performance; our only hope - and it was just a hope - was to cross the finish line together. Also, we were all probably in some of the best shape our lives, having trained and raced through the spring and summer. Lastly, we all had experience in endurance events, from an A.T. thru-hike (Claire and Cliff) to marathons (3:07 PR for Starker) and ultras (Claire, 50 miles, and Cliff, 100 miles) and lots and lots of adventure races (Kate, Starker and Cliff have completed about 35 together over the past three years).
There were a million tasks to be completed in the months, weeks, and days before the race, many of them familiar to the team and many more new to us (such as trying to fit five days worth of gear into airline-approved luggage sizes and weights). But the real fun began at the start of the race, as we passed under the grass-green start banner and began our 7km loop around the streets of Westport.
The run went well, and we kept up about a 9-minute-per-mile pace. It was fun to weave around the bike paths of the small city, occasionally having traffic stopped for us by the friendly and sometimes snarky local police. Still, we were among the last few teams back into the Westport House, where a load of our gear was waiting to be hauled another kilometer or two down a slippery trail to the waterfront.
The rain was coming down lightly through the run, and it increased as we got our wetsuits on and latched down our drybags onto our two plastic sit-on-top kayaks, which looked more suitable for a 30-minute cruise around a Caribbean destination resort than 125 kilometers of open-water paddling. We were among the last five teams to get on the water, but started cruising at a handy 4 to 5 kilometers per hour in the protected cove out of Westport.
That lasted for a solid hour. Once we hit the end of the cove, we next had to navigate a narrow channel between the protective islands. With the tide coming in, we saw the teams in front of us struggle through a vortex of inrushing water, actually moving backwards for a time. We got out of our boats and pushed them along the shore, finding that the ocean water was warm and that we actually were moving faster this way than the team still stuck in the middle of the riptide.
Then we were in the open ocean, dealing with cresting 2-3 foot waves, a 30-mph headwind and an unfriendly coastline that looked too rocky to be counted on as a possible escape route. And the suck began. We paddled hard, but didn’t seem to be making any progress. In reality, we were probably moving 2-3 kph. Making things worse, Cliff and Claire’s boat was steadily taking water into the hull, getting lower in the water - and making our progress even slower.
Just past the beach marked as the sole emergency take-out, an Irish Coast Guard boat approached us and told us the kayak had been shortened to 25 kilometers, meaning we only had about 4-5 more to go. Cliff considered telling them about the leaky boat, but he didn’t want to cause them alarm, which might result in them pulling us from the race. He figured we could make it another 4-5 k. Feeling low, and a bit scared, the team was picked up by the sighting of two dolphins which surfaced no more than 5 feet in front of our boats. A beautiful and uplifting encounter with nature.
In the next hour, Cliff and Claire’s boat became more and more tippy. Every wave would throw off the balance of the boat and all the water in the hull would rush to one side. About two kilometers from the takeout, Cliff tried to calmly run Claire through what might happen if they capsized. Hold on to the paddle and the boat, he told her. Five minutes later, a wave threw their balance off and they were thrown into the water. We lost a couple of Camelbaks, our seat cushions and some snacks and water bottles that had been loose in the boat, but managed to reach the dry bags and throw them to Kate and Starker. Then Claire and Cliff got on opposite sides of the extremely tippy boat and slowly tried to get back on, eventually succeeding. Adrenaline surging, Cliff then tried to paddle after some of the lost gear, which was floating nearby. Immediately, the boat tipped over again.
At this point, we were drifting dangerously close to the rocky shoreline. A quick self-rescue became paramount if we didn’t want to lose all our boats, gear and risk potential injury. Fortunately, we pulled it off, and with a supreme effort to stay afloat and upright (mainly involving very quick and hard paddling), we made it into the makeshift TA at the end of the peninsula.
Kate hustled a cold and in-shock Claire into the concrete building for some shelter and a clothing change while Cliff and Starker hauled the kayaks to the waiting trailer, struggling with the leaky one, which must have weight 100-150 lbs (we tried to drain it but didn’t want to waste too much time). We got cleaned up a bit then headed out for a 20K trek that went mainly along beaches, with a few roads in the mix as well.
We headed out right at sunset, sandwiched between about four other teams. We followed their headlights along the beach, and about halfway through the trek saw one set coming back our way. They had tried to cross a big stream, they said, and got in up to their waists before turning around. We grabbed the other teams following behind us, including a British team and the Japanese team Fujin Raijin, and gave them the news and we all headed inland together. The detour added about 5K to our trek, which eventually took us over a beautiful old stone footbridge over a raging river, and then into the next makeshift TA another 5K after that.
We hustled through the transition back into kayaks, donning our paddling gear and having to stuff everything back in dry bags. Boarding our kayaks on a little sandy rivulet of water, we didn’t budge. We dismounted and began hauling the boats through the shallow water. This went on for at least 20 minutes until we finally reached the outlet to the channel. The paddle was only 6K and went quickly once we found deep enough water, barring one attempt to cross through what looked to be the channel between two “islands” which actually turned out to be a beach. We passed by some salmon pens and oyster beds and hit the TA on the far side of the channel, realizing we had pulled ahead considerably from the four other teams we had been with at the previous TA.
As we got our boats on the trailer, we chatted with the volunteer, who knew Brent and Abby and had stayed with them in Philly the previous year. Casually, he mentioned something to us about the 5 a.m. cutoff for the next TA. WHAT? We went into a panic. None of us knew about it except for Kate, and she had assumed the cutoff had been eliminated due to all the changes in the stage. By the time we ran out of the TA, it was 3:20 a.m. We headed off at a fast hike, then a jog, and then we were at full-out 5K pace as the time ticked down. At one point, Cliff’s headlight battery died and as he tried to change it on the fly, he slipped into a pile of sheepshit. It got everywhere but he got the light switched and we all kept running, with the Japanese team following close behind.
We hit the paved road marking our imminent arrival to the TA at 4:40. A team we saw on the road told us it was just ahead. Then we saw arrows pointing into the woods. Cliff insisted we follow them even though Kate and Starker thought the TA was on the road. But Cliff saw tons of footprints and the team had been following the same arrows all the way from the previous TA. At this point, we only had time to choose one route. Cliff chose the wrong one. Getting all the way back down to the water, we acknowledged we had been wrong and walked back uphill, finding the TA at 5:05, with the Japanese team just outside. We asked them if they had made the cutoff, and they gave the thumbs-up. We walked into the TA, located in a geodesic dome with a crazy hollow echo, and found one volunteer, who told us we missed the cutoff and that we’d have to wait until we were given further instructions. Kate and Starker were bummed, Claire looked drained, but Cliff felt OK. We had given it our best effort, he told the team, and had nothing to be ashamed of.
After a few minutes of pouting, Kate started cooking up some food, Cliff took a shower to wash the sheepshit off himself and Starker followed, and eventually everyone but Cliff settled in for some sleep. At 7 a.m., while eating chili in the bathroom and thinking about sleeping, James Thurlow walked in and there was an awkward moment. Because really, who expects a race director to walk into a quiet bathroom in the middle of nowhere at 7 a.m.? Or for that matter, who expects someone to be sitting inside and eating chili out of a bag?
After that awkwardness got cleared up, James sat down with Cliff and the captains of the two other teams that had come in within the past hour. He told us if we got out of the TA by 8 a.m., we could keep going as a short course team, provided we did not rank above any teams that made it out of the TA before the cutoff. No problem, Cliff practically shouted. He got the team up and we were out by 7:50, somewhat refreshed and ready to hit the next 25K trek hard, having been challenged by James to make it in 7 hours or less so as not to fall behind the race again.
CONTINUED...
