Team Ragged Glory – Adventure Racing, Multi Sport, Friends

Because of the sacrifice and support of many people, Team Ragged Glory officially finished Planet Adventure 2002 in about 25 hours. We thank the Lord for His grace, our loved ones for their help and sacrifices of time, Bob for excellent crew support, and Greg and all the volunteers that transformed PA02 from a concept to reality.

Greg Arnold, Race Director, held the pre-race meeting on Friday evening. At the meeting we learned that the second half of the race would not be revealed until we got to Checkpoint 11. We headed back to our lodging (thanks Gail), and prepared maps and gear for the next morning.

Saturday morning was cloudy and cool with a forecast of heavy rain late in the day. The race began atYellowwood Lake in Yellowwood State Forest near Nashville, Indiana. At 6am, the Star Spangled Banner played and the starting horn sounded. The first discipline was a five mile trail run around the lake with a 30 foot stream crossing in two foot deep water.

After the trail run, we picked up some paddles, ran another mile down to the boat docks, and rowboated about two miles around two buoys on the lake.

After heading back to the start line , now TA1, we got on the bikes for a 32 mile hilly ride north through Needmore and Trevlac. We then headed back south down Baughman Hill (40 mph down hill, woohoo! ) and east of Yellowwood Lake all the way to the TA2 at Crooked Creek boat ramp on Lake Monroe. Checkpoints along the bike trail were staffed by many of our friends who volunteered; it was great to see them.

The canoe leg was an 18 mile out-and-back to a boat ramp north and west of Crooked Creek. The first of the two checkpoints was easily visible from the water but was difficult for many to find because the water level was high and the shoreline was different from the map. The Lord blessed us with a beautiful afternoon with some sun and very calm water for Lake Monroe in April. We completed the canoe leg in about 5 hours 20 minutes.

Back on the bikes after TA3, we headed two miles northwest to Crooked Creek Lake and CP11, the location where the rest of the race was to be revealed. We found out then what we had ahead of us:
-a four mile land navigation section with two controls to find
-another 17 miles on the bikes
-about 17 miles on foot for the final 12-control land navigation section.

As daylight ran out, we miracously found the second of the two controls on the Crooked Creek Lake land navigation. We headed down a steep ravine back to the bikes for a 17 mile loop to Prange Pond then back to Yellowwood Lake.

We walked our bikes on most of the uphills. I ran out of gas about midway and we stopped and rested for a few minutes. We made it to Prange Pond and headed over to Yellowwood Road for a nice gradual downhill back to the lake.

Upon arriving at TA4 at about midnight , we were told that in order to be an official finisher, we needed to find two of the twelve controls. The team decided to grab 90 minutes of sleep, so we could finish with clear heads. During our sleep it finally began to rain steady and hard.

After the sleep, refueling and tentative excitement about meeting our goal of finishing, we headed out under Steve’s guidance to finish the last leg of the race. In four hours we attempted four controls and found three. We crossed the finish line about 7am Sunday, 25 hours after we started.

At every TA, Bob waited on us hand and foot and had all our gear at our fingertips. Without him, we couldn’t have done it.

We are thankful to God for his grace in letting us finish. Even though we placed 19 of 22 in the coed division, we would’ve been happy with last place. It felt great to reach our goal of finishing.