2007 Cradle of LIberty Race Report, Part 1

So here we are before the race we just competed in, the 24 hour Cradle of Liberty in the Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania.

Big happy family.

We had spent the better part of the past few months getting ready for this event, and it finally happened last weekend. Here is a quick summary of how things went...next time I'll bring a micro cassette recorder or the new hotness with me so that I can actually have a record of some of what goes down on race day. Apologies all around to anyone who might have wanted to see this earlier, but for some reason this post was slower in developing than the others.

Registration started at 1100, so we got there at about 1030. We got some nice parking spots in the shade and began pulling our stuff out of the vehicles. We signed in, got our emergency radio, maps, etc and then had our gear check. It was pretty apparent that we had worried way more about the packing list then the race staff did. In any case, our stuff was checked off, we sat down with the maps and got a rough idea of how we were going to progress on the course, loaded our bikes onto a truck for transit to the first transition point, and then got on a bus to take us to the starting location.

The race started at Jim Thorpe, PA. If you haven't been there, Jim Thorpe is a pretty cool little town with a railroad, river side views, an opera house, little stores and cafes, and a bike shop within spitting distance of where we started.

So far, so good...which is pretty much the way you want things to go before the race starts.

We unloaded the bus, got paddles and PFDs, and then posed for the obligatory pre-race picture. (A couple of these are posted to the Picassa album linked on the right sidebar).

With all that out of the way, the race started with a cattle-like stampede. There was one raft per team lined up on the beach about 300 yards from where we started. At the sound of the gun everyone started running for the beach, grabbed a raft and carried it to the water. Our plan was to take a very mello pace to the rafts and grab whatever was left when we got there so that we wouldn't do something stupid like sprain an ankle or trip and face-plant because we were in a hurry to get to the boats. So we took a nice leisurely pace to the beach, being passed on all sides by racers who evidently thought they were trying out for a place on the olympic sprinters-who-wear-white-water-rafting-gear team, and there at the bottom of the trail leading to the sand is a raft. It is the closest raft to the trail, and the closest raft to the water, and yet all the other racers were avoiding this particular raft as if it were infested with ebola, creating a scene strangely reminiscent of Moses parting the Red Sea. So we grabbed the raft, took advantage of the short walk to the water and were the fifth team in the river.

That's pretty much the best part of the race for us...I'd say it was all down hill from there, but, well, it wasn't.

The map above shows the portion of the Lehigh River that we paddled, starting at Jim Thorpe and ending in Weissport, about 8 miles south. The water level was pretty low since this was not a white water release weekend, but the good side of that is that there weren't many other folks on the river. We got stuck on rocks, and played bumper boats with other teams, and generally fell behind the majority of the competitors, most of whom seemed to be taking this VERY SERIOUSLY and I think maybe didn't like the idea that someone out here was actually having fun. By fun, of course, I mean getting hung up on rocks, jumping in and out of the boat to push ourselves off of these nearly invisible obstacles, and generally splashing around like someone who shouldn't be racing, but should instead have a very concerned TV personality holding a telethon for them.

We got to the end of the paddling section in about 22nd place out of 24 teams. Not exactly something to write home about (and yet here I am blogging...oh, the irony...). At this point we picked up our bikes, ate some food and got on the trail heading back north. We did well at the transition, leaving 5 or 6 teams who had paddled faster than us behind as they futzed around with their gear and generally wasted time. We picked up an old rail trail heading north along the river for a couple of miles and made good time, again passing a team or two as they tried to figure out how to get up the river bank to the road that would allow them to cross to the east side of the river.

At this point the cue sheet said that we should proceed north along the river on the canal trail...it also said that the canal trail would end and we would need to break brush with our bikes. This is NOT something that is fun to do, and since the map showed the canal trail ending pretty quickly, it appeared that his bike whacking would proceed for upwards of 4 miles. This was why we thought there might be a better way to go about this.

WARNING: Thinking about things like this during an adventure race can be extremely hazardous. It can also make you waste loads of valuable time and look stupid. Consider yourself warned. DO NOT TRY THIS DURING YOUR OWN RACES!

We had decided to try something different and take a road that looked like it would save us significant time by getting us much closer to the next river crossing with less effort. This involved avoiding the nice, wide, flat canal trail that ran along the river in favor of riding up a road that was apparently the inspiration for several early roller coasters in a futile attempt to get closer to the next checkpoint. Our well-laid plans were foiled for two primary reasons. 1. The roads were, shall we say, less than optimally marked by signs and 2. All the property bordering the river was privately owned and thus illegal to use to access the water.

By the time we figured all this out we had lost at least an hour of time and had ridden several extra miles on hilly terrain. NOT a good thing this early into a long race. In any case we eventually decided to cut our losses and backtracked to the canal trail. We then made our way north along the river on the way to the second checkpoint where we had to cross the Lehigh river on foot while carrying our bikes.

Here we ran into Bill Gibbons, the race director who had almost-but-not-quite given up hope of ever seeing us outside of a situation where he had to identify the bodies. Bill was kind enough to tell us that it's generally BAD to question the route the race director provides. Given his perspective on this particular issue I have to say that any other opinion would have been highly irregular, but this time around he was absolutely right.

Suitably chastened I watched from the western bank of the river as the rest of the team crossed the water behind me. Note to self: Next time doing a race involving water crossings, mandatory individual equipment for Carol includes a snorkel. Other than the almost drowning part, everything went well as we pulled ourselves across the river.

We took a quick break in the same parking lot where the race had started, got something to eat, mounted our lights on our bikes since the sun was getting low and headed off through Jim Thorpe, aiming pretty much straight up the biggest hill in the area.

Now, I already mentioned that Jim Thorpe is a nice little town, but that is tough to appreciate as you ride a bike up a road (coincidentally named race street) that is so steep at some points you are pretty sure its about to do a loop-the-loop like a slot car set. Fortunately this portion of the hill was steep, but short and quickly leveled out into a much more ridable grade that took us generally uphill for a couple of miles to the next checkpoint. This point was at the top(sort of) of a long ridge line that generally ran east-west. The staffer manning this point told us that there was one more team behind us, and he had received no word about where they were on the course.

Since the sun was going down at this point we turned on our lights and proceeded into the darkness buoyed in spirit by the news that at least one other team was having problems too. At this point we adopted our motto for the rest of the race: We suck less.

The next portion of the race was a long, rocky ride along a trail that more or less followed the spine of the ridge in a southwesterly direction for several miles. I blew a tube on my rear tire less than 100 meters into the trail, but after we got that repaired the rest of the ride down this trail was slow and bumpy, but relatively uneventful. The ridgeline trail dumped out onto a road and a quick right turn headed us to the next checkpoint.

This checkpoint was manned by the folks from ARFE who were one of the race sponsors. They were pulled up on the side of the road, operating out of their SUV, and giving out candy in exchange for trash turned in by racers. I suppose someone could have just grabbed some candy and tried to run, but they wouldn't have gotten far. The ARFE crew, clearly preparing for this eventuality, have brought with them a gigantic great dane who was big enough that he was either the result of genetic experimentation or a throw back to the mesozoic era. So, under the watchful eye of Digby, the biggest dog in the world, we took our candy and got ready to set out on a section of trail described in the pre-race brief as a "wicked steep descent with lots of loose rocks."

It was then that the magic happened...

[cue deep movie-guy voice]
TUNE IN FOR PART 2 TO FIND OUT WHAT THE MAGIC WAS, AND HOW OUR HEROES SURVIVED...

[ dramatic pause ]

THE CRADLE OF DOOM..ahem...LIBERTY