Team Ragged Glory – Adventure Racing, Multi Sport, Friends

Team Ragged Glory experienced an incredibly fun, fast, and tough challenge in the first Indianapolis Wild Onion Urban Adventure Race on June 7 and 8, 2002. We thank God for safety throughout the race and for the reasons to keep moving. We thank our loved ones for their sacrifices that allow us to race. We thank Lantech and Prescient for their generous sponsorship.

We congratulate all of our friends: Wild Indy Go, Planet Adventure, Shackleton Endurance (awesome showing!), Dingo, True North, Gillesfitness.com, El Camino (The Way), Sense of Wonder, Galyan’s/Salomon Adventure, Sleepless in Indy and Are We There Yet. Adventure Racing teaches us lessons as individuals, as teams and as a community.

Our newest team member, Jessica Shafer, assisted Bob Mueller in an excellent job of being our mothers and taking care of us in transition.

Thanks to Will, John, John and Joe for a well-organized, long, difficult course that tested us both physically and mentally throughout the race. And thanks for the post race party.

Now here’s the race recap:

Maps and the course book were handed out at Onion Central (Pan Am Plaza) 1 pm on Friday, June 7. We headed to the parking garage below to beat the heat, set up our table and do our maps. In two hours we had completed a crew set and a race set of maps and had our routes planned. Everyone pitched in to help with the maps, food, gear and clothing prep. The race meeting commenced at 4pm and the gun sounded at 6:30. Here’s how our race progressed:

Run – The initial run was about a mile to the Bank One Building.

Bank One Stair Climb – we entered the building, climbed 51 floors, and then descended on a second staircase. Sleepless in Indy and Gillesfitness.com were right with us the whole time and we had some good laughs. It was a sweaty, stinky loud mess. It was great.

Run – After exiting the Bank One building on the Circle, we walked/ran about 7 miles to Broad Ripple near the Indianapolis Art Center. Thanks to the fire fighters on Massachusetts Street and to the Broad Ripple folks for cheering us on. Teresa, Jimmy and Emily Theis cheered us on as we ran up the Monon Trail. And thanks to the guy on College who offered us part of his “bottle o’ red.”

Paddle – In addition to mandatory gear, we had each been carrying our life jackets since the race start. Leslie also carried the canoe sling seat. We picked up our paddles (race officials had transported them to the canoe put-in) and climbed in the canoe for a 12 mile leg on the White River from Broad Ripple to IUPUI downtown. Twilight faded during our first miles in the boat, but the ambient city light made for a beautiful trip on the river. There was one portage over the 16th Street spillway, and we were able to pass some teams there. Steve accidentally whacked Leslie with his paddle three or four times; the result of a long paddle in a short canoe. We pulled the canoe out south of the IUPUI track downtown, left our paddles and life jackets, and headed to Transition Area 1.

Transition Area 1 – Teresa, Jimmy and Emily Theis and Scott Thompson cheered us on as we headed up the hill to switch to the scooter leg. Having friends and family at the race was one of the best parts. We changed some clothes and ate, then got our clue sheets and headed out on the scooters.

Scooter – The scooter leg was a 20 mile landmark tour of downtown and the near north side. We visited the NCAA Hall of Champions, the USS Indianapolis Memorial, The Armory at 30th Street, Major Taylor Velodrome, Hinkle Fieldhouse at Butler University, and the Vogue nightclub in Broad Ripple. We then headed back downtown to the American Legion Mall, then to Conseco Fieldhouse. Our friend Michael Sapper was at midcourt; it was good to see him. He tolds us we had to shoot free throws until we made one as a team. Steve finally hit after about 10 team tries, then we headed over to Victory Field, the baseball park. We then headed back to the canoes for the final canoe leg. Local knowledge helped us;our scooter time was just over two hours.

Paddle – The second canoe leg was about 12 miles with two portages over two spillways. Our friend Jim Dill was a volunteer at the second portage; it was nice to see him. We paddled fairly well and were able to complete the leg in a little over two hours.

Portage – The canoe take-out was at Southwestway Park. It was a small, muddy bank about two feet above the water line. The volunteers helped us out of the boat and we were able to get off the bank fairly quickly. The portage was a half mile over the top of Mann Hill (whew!) and about five teams passed us during the portage. We finally got to the parking lot and dropped the canoe off. It was a glorious. We headed to the truck to see Bob and Jessica and prepare for the bike leg.

Transition Area 2 – The sun was finally up and we were all hungry and cold. We managed to eat, drink, change to bike and orienteering clothes and load up for the first road bike leg. We knew that the coming section would be the longest section without support, so we packed extra food. We were able to complete a fast transition and headed out on the bikes.

Bike – Riding from Southwestway Park to Eagle Creek Park via the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, we traded from dozing to hallucinating in the early morning hours. We stopped for some hot coffee to wake up. We took about and hour and a half to make the 18 mile leg.

Orienteering – Eagle Creek West was the site of the orienteering leg. Nineteen controls over about seven miles took us four hours to complete. Although we did not run, we were accurate and steady. The Stinging Nettle plants made us scratch like animals. Back on the bikes, we went to Eagle Creek East for the Bike Orienteer leg.

Bike Orienteer – We found the seven orienteering controls on the grass and dirt trails in Eagle Creek. Next was the trip to Town Run Bike Trail for the off road section.

Bike – Each of us was at some stage of bonking when we agreed to stop at Arby’s and get some real food. We spent a little too much time, but we got our energy back and completed the 15 mile ride to Town Run Park for the off road bike trails.

Off Road Bike – With concentration flagging, we headed into the 8 mile off road bike loop. Each of us had ridden the trails many times before, and though we were slow, we came out pretty much injury free to head into what was to become our final transition.
Transition Area 3 After feeding and changing into skates, Bob and Jess drove us to the beginning of the skate section at 96th Street and the Monon Trail. It seemed strange to be moving at 40 mph after operating under our own power for 20 hours.

Skate – Bob and Jess dropped us off and we skated from 96th to 38th Street on the Monon. Those Kincades and those Theises along with other friends cheered us on at the Canal in Broad Ripple. We were running up against cutoff times, but we agreed to continue moving until we hit a cutoff.

Triad – This leg had Steve on the bike with two tow lines, me on the scooter and Leslie on skates. We rode from the Fairgrounds to the hill at Crown Hill cemetery in about an hour. It was 5pm and the cutoff for hitting the Speedway, still an hour away, was upon us. We exited the race and chalked it up to not being fast enough at the end.

We knew the race would be fast. Our goal was to finish the course. Although we did not reach that goal, we ran our best race ever. Our victories:

-Our transitions were fastest ever, thanks mostly to Bob and Jess
-Our Orienteering leg was very accurate
-We minimized mistakes in course planning and execution
-We set a new team record in number of hours of nonstop racing -22.5

What a race! – Doug