Team Ragged Glory – Adventure Racing, Multi Sport, Friends

The Dino Series Mission Adventure Race is among the longest running adventure races in the Midwest. Eric Henricks, Nancy Gawrys, and I (Doug Theis) participated in the Mission Lite four hour race on May 14, 2016 at Lieber State Recreation Area near Cloverdale. Here’s the story of our race.

Teams received maps at 6:30 AM. We copied the race checkpoints from master maps. Our points looked like this:

At 7:30 AM, we attended the race meeting. Brian Holzhauzen, Race Director, told us we would be completing the race in segments, and we would only receive race instructions one segment at a time. The race would be four hours long and start at 8:00 AM. We would collect as many points as we could, and return to the start line at or before the four hour mark. Every minute late would cost one point. Each segment would have to be completed, gathering as many points as possible before going on to the next segment. Our first segment would be a biking section, which turned out to be about 22 miles. Here’s the instructions for the bike segment:

The diagram on the bike segment race instructions showed more detail on the three points on the lower right corner of the larger map.

We started fast and got off on the wrong trail for a few minutes, but corrected the problem and started collecting points on our passport. Nancy slipped jumping a log and fell on her cracked ribs, but continued on. About 25 minutes in to the bike leg, my rear bike tire popped, and went immediately flat. We stopped and changed the tube, but found this:

Was this huge L-shaped gash going to put us out of the race? Eric said he’d fixed a similar problem before with a dollar bill. We settled on Nancy’s race bib, folded over four times, as my tire patch.

The patch worked! We rode the remaining 19 miles and completed the bike segment without any more tire problems.

Here’s our bike route:

When we returned to the transition area, Brian told us we were in first place! But a team was on our heels, and there was only 70 minutes left in the race. We received the next segment map, a paddling segment. Here are the instructions:

We didn’t think we had time to get both controls, but we headed down to the canoes to get what we could. We paddled to the further point as it looked easier to find on the map. We headed to the hilltop and found the control. But time was short when we got back to the boat. We paddled straight back to the dock and ran to the finish line, getting back with 8 minutes to spare.

Here’s our paddling route:

Eric’s MacGuyver trick with the race bib and his excellent navigation earned Team Tenacious Glory a first place overall and first place for three person coed division.

Here are the race results and final standings for all 34 teams.

Thanks to Dino Series for hosting the race and for keeping adventure racing alive in central Indiana!

Today’s race was a blast. Jay Newlin always puts on a good race. I raced as Team Ragged Glory 2, taking one of Doug’s brothers-in-law, Joe Madren, as on of my teammates, since I was a late entry. (Should have been in Pike’s Peak but my calf has not been good!) Doug raced as TRG 1 with his brother-in law-Jeff. We decided we would stay together the entire race.

The race start was at Flat12, a beer garden on Dorman and New York. We left the start at 8am on foot to spread out the field. After about 20 minutes of running around in circles looking for clues, we returned to the start to collect our bikes. We proceeded on bike to the Fireman’s museum, Harrison Home, Field house, Monument circle, (where we had to climb to the 59th step, a race decision error that cost us hardware), and then to the Natatoriun where we jumped off the 3rd platform. From there we proceeded to White River for a short canoe. We should have known that something was wrong at this point because we were ahead of Garrison’s Team (they went to the correct step) and in 2nd place overall behind Dark Side. The challenge on the canoe was a choice between eating a cricket and running a mile. We all ate the cricket. Yuck! We gathered our bikes again at this point and went on a tour of parks to Bahr Park and Rhodius Park where the challenge was an Angry B ird slingshot.

I should mention that Doug’s city navigation was near perfect! We then proceeded on bikes to the canal where one team member walked/swam in the canal while the other member walked the bikes. We had to switch teammates in the canal at least once. Once we all exited the canal. we rode to the City Market and into the catacombs for a punch. From there we went to the Slippery Noodle and then into Gen Con to find a Princess Leah who would sign our passport. Interesting! The zip line was next, near a bridge at Kentucky and I70. From there we went to Pogue’s Run and trekked our bikes through 2.25 miles of tunnel.

At this point in the race we were leapfrogging between 2nd, 3rd and 4th place. This was a very tight race with no room for error. Now came the much needed relief of heading back to Flat12 for a drink of beer challenge! This is always my favorite challenge. The last segment of the race was a big bike loop from Spades Park to Brookside Park Church to Bethel Park (an Archery Challenge) to Lady of Grace to Garfield park (a build a dice challenge which was mentally challenging especially at this point in the race) to Hebrew Cemetary and then back to Flat12 and the finish. We were in 2nd place behind Garrison’s team leaving the last checkpoint. We decided to head up Shelby to the finish and got stopped by a cemetery procession and the Crit that was going on on Fountain Square. The two teams behind us made different route choices and passed us. We were also struggling with a nearly flat tire on Joe’s bike. Once we turned in our passport, I realized that I had failed to write down one clue on our passport, a rookie mistake that completely took us out of the running for hardware. All in all though, we raced very well, finishing in under 5 hours, a mere 12-15 minutes behind Garrison’s Rootstock Team. It was a beautiful day to be playing in the city.

Planet Adventure posted the results of the 2012 10 and 30 Hour races, and Team Ragged Glory placed first overall. We were the only team to hit every single checkpoint on the course before the deadline. I had a great time with Bob, Julie and Nancy. Thanks to Planet Adventure for the tough course.

Heather’s race report is hysterical!

http://heathersyapcrap.blogspot.com/2012/05/planet-adventure-challenge-30-hour-ar.html

Because too much adventure racing is never enough, I mapped out each leg of our ten hour race using Runkeeper:

Paddle

http://runkeeper.com/user/runrep/activity/85388984

Trek

http://runkeeper.com/user/runrep/activity/85749217

Mountain Bike

http://runkeeper.com/user/runrep/activity/85752718

Road Bike

http://runkeeper.com/user/runrep/activity/85753662

Tell City, Indiana. The place where a Northwest Airlines plane crashed in 1960. The place where, in 2007, the most brutal Planet Adventure 30 Hour Challenge took place. Reading the location of the 2012 Planet Adventure Race conjured up a cramp in my stomach. What were we getting ourselves in to? The answer: brambles, endless poison ivy, the remnants of a forest fire, and a rappel into a gravel pit, mountain biking, road riding, and huge amount of fun.

Julie Nor, Bob Mueller, Nancy Gawrys and I (Doug Theis) planned to race together. I like racing with four; it helps keep the team dynamic positive and it puts an extra set of eyes on the team. Julie and Nancy had not raced together, but the four of us had been racing with each other as Team Ragged Glory in different combinations since 2004. The 30-hour event and the 10-hour event were to be held on the same weekend for the 12th edition of this great Midwest adventure race. That meant one less race in our 2012 schedule. We decided to do the 10-hour course.

The weather forecast was all over the place and kept changing in the week leading up to the race. Race day we expected strong storms, a low of 54 and a high of 70. It would turn out to be a little different from what we had planned.

Saturday morning, we packed our bags at the hotel in Tell City and headed to the start line at Mano Point on the Ohio River in Derby, Indiana. At 8am, we received the maps and the race directions. The race would begin at 10 am play out as follows:
• Short paddle
• Huge trek/orienteering section with a rappel
• Mountain bike
• Another Trek
• Bike roads to the finish line

There was a hard cutoff of 8 pm, or ten hours of racing. Teams would lose one checkpoint for every minute they arrived after 8 pm.

At the pre-race meeting, after we were briefed on the race, Nancy announced to the group that it was Bob’s 52nd birthday. All the racers collectively sang Happy Birthday to Bob.

We planned, marked maps, dropped bikes and readied ourselves for the race. Nancy would carry the passport, Bob would navigate, and I would manage the race directions. Nancy and I would be in one canoe, and Bob and Julie would be in the other. It seemed warm, but we all packed plenty of clothing, expecting strong storms and a wet race.

The gun sounded at 10:06 am. The temperature was 61 degrees. We grabbed our canoes, and put them in the Ohio River. We paddled on the Ohio for 200 meters, long enough to get to Little Oil Creek and paddle upstream. Race Director Mike Garrison eliminated paddling checkpoint CP1 from the race, so we skipped the originally planned portage, picked up a punch at CP2, and paddled to the take out at TA1. This first leg took us a little less than two hours.

Looking at the map, the first trekking section didn’t look too challenging; seven controls in a hilly wooded area about 2 miles wide by 3 miles long. We had to swim back across the Little Oil Creek about half a mile into the trek, wearing our PFDs . The temperature was 73 degrees, much warmer than we expected. The sun was shining and there was no sign of rain.

But as soon as we crossed the creek, the brambles got thicker. We crossed a large area where there had been a forest fire, climbing over burned fallen timber, slowing us down even further. But the control placements were cool. CP4 was down under an overhang in a deep reentrant, only visible from Nancy’s point of view as we passed it. CP6 was hanging from a tree accessible only by climbing a 20 foot boulder. We were all bleeding from the brambles that seemed to be everywhere. Poison ivy looked like carpet. We found the fourth of seven controls in the trek section and headed to the rappel at CP9 on the edge of an old gravel pit.

Skirting the north edge of the gravel pit was rough going. We shared the trail with Brian Schaffer’s 30 hour team JAMBS and arrived at the ropes together. We were the first 10 hour team to the rappel! Great news, but there was plenty of race left. Going down the ropes was fun, but the snake grass, the heat and the crazy hills at the bottom of the excavation started to take their toll on my body. The temperature had risen to 80, and the air was still and humid. I was heating up fast and the climb out of the gravel pit took most of what I had. Nancy, Bob and Julie all gave me a little helpful advice and kept me going as we headed towards the final control in the trekking section.

All along the course we had seen fellow 10 hour team Dude Where’s My Car. As we approached the final trekking point CP10, we approached from the high ground, and Dude approached from the low ground, converging at the same reentrant. Neither team could find the control. The area was overgrown and there were multiple small parallel reentrants that al looked the same. Bob and I decided to reset from the trail and take one more run at it before skipping it and heading to the bike transition at TA2. When we got back to the area, Dude had done the same thing, resetting from the low ground. We were again in the same area. Julie decided to check one more reentrant and found the control. We punched CP10 and headed to the bike transition. The temperature was holding steady at 80.

We got back to the bikes, refilled our water containers, ate a little and changed out of the long pants that had heated us up but protected us from the poison ivy. The next section was a mountain bike leg that was being cut short to just two controls, CP 12 and CP 16, roughly six miles total. The race directors also were cutting the second trekking section because the first trek was so difficult it had taken more time than estimated. Also, the cutoff rule was changed so that teams arriving late would only lose a maximum of two checkpoints. So a team that wanted to complete the course would have that option, albeit in the dark.

So all we had to do was finish six miles of mountain biking and about 12 miles of road riding, picking up a total of four more controls along the way to the finish line. We left everything that wasn’t mandatory at TA2, and headed out to the Mogan Ridge Bike Trails. The trails were a combination of single track, fire roads, gravel roads and horse trails. We had plenty of downhill and big rocks to negotiate. We kept moving and saw Team Wales as we picked up CP16. One of my great joys is seeing our friends racing with us side-by-side on the course. Wales’ Dana Fielding and Dave Tanner are old friends; they were the only team on the course with a higher average age than Team Ragged Glory. We old racers stick together. As we finished the mountain bike trails, we picked up our gear at TA2/TA3, and rode out for the final bike leg. We spoke to Aaron and Chase of Dude; they had failed to find either mountain bike checkpoint. If we could pick up the final two controls and finish the race, we had a good chance of finishing first!

The final twelve miles of the race was relatively flat with a couple of big climbs. The temperature had dropped 9 degrees in first part of the ride. The wind seemed against us. Bob towed me, then Nancy, helping both of us to recover as we picked up the final two bike controls and headed back to Mano Point and the finish line. In the final few miles, we passed Dude and another team. We finished with 45 minutes to spare, the only team to gather all the controls on the course.

Here are some comments about the race from the team.

Bob: The swim was great; at first it felt bad and then it was refreshing. I’m glad we went after CP 10 again and ended up getting it. All in all, it was an awesome birthday!

Julie: I loved the CP6 on the boulder and Nancy’s climbing skills to go and get it. Bob’s navigating skills were once again impeccable. Love the fellowship of the trail with TRG and also the teams we bump into.

Nancy: I always love the water, and in this race the creek swim was cool. I loved the fact that we reset on CP10 and found it.

As for me, I’m proud to have teammates who are friends. They helped me when I was weak. We race well together because we are friends. We win because of great navigators like Bob Mueller.

The biggest thanks go to Planet Adventure and the race directors, John Farless, Mike Garrison, and John McInnes, and all the volunteers. Even though the volunteer pool was small, the group pulled off a great race.

All photographs by Gail Henricks. Gail’s full gallery of the race can be found here.

John McInnes and John Farless, course designers of the 2011 Planet Adventure 30 Hour Challenge, stayed true to the original format by staging a single 100+ mile race course for all participating teams. The race’s published start time was “sometime after 9 pm” on Friday night, June 17. The race would continue for 30 consecutive hours into Sunday morning. Disciplines included mountain biking, trekking, paddling canoes and some ropes.

Team Ragged Glory decided early in the year to participate in the event. Our planned team was a threesome including Bob Mueller, Nancy Gawrys, and me. We signed up an invited fellow TRG member Julie Nor to race with us as a foursome. Julie joined up in March. Then Bob Mueller bowed out in April after being diagnosed with a hernia. His surgery was scheduled for the morning of the race. We asked fellow TRG member Eric Henricks if he would take Bob’s place as the navigator, and he agreed. Then, during the week preceding the race, Nancy bowed out with an aggravated IT band and collateral quad problems. She had to make a difficult call, but it was the right one. Rather than look for a fourth team member, the remaining team members decided to race as a threesome: Eric Henricks, Julie Nor, and me.

Past experience told us that a 30 hour course would be somewhere between 90 and 120 miles long. We knew that John McInnes, chief course designer, was a veteran adventure racer and has done many long, unsupported races. We therefore assumed that we would be carrying most everything we needed and that we would probably have little or no access to additional food, water and gear along the way.

This race means a lot to me. My second adventure race ever was the original Planet Adventure 30 Hour Challenge (PA30) back in 2001. TRG has raced in all but one PA30, and we volunteered at the one we missed. We love PA30 because it has always been as a racer’s race. A racer’s race is an event where the cost of entry makes sense, where the course and the event are designed to be fun and challenging for the racers, where an average team has a chance to finish.

On Friday evening, we arrived at Paoli Peaks around 5pm and unpacked.

We received directions and maps at 7:30 pm Friday night and found out that we would begin at midnight. The course was long and heavy on paddling. We read the race directions and plotted the coordinates. The course and our route choices would have us doing these disciplines and distances in this order:

• Paddle about 2 miles
• Trek on foot in the woods roughly 16 miles, hitting 8 checkpoints
• Paddle about 10 miles to Transition Area 1 (TA1)
• Mountain bike around 13 miles
• Rappel down a 150 foot cliff
• Mountain bike another 35 miles, hitting 3 more checkpoints to TA2
• Paddle 4 miles
• Trek on foot another 5 miles, hitting 5 checkpoints
• Paddle 2 more miles to TA3
• Mountain bike18 miles, hitting 3 more checkpoints
• Cross the finish line

We were allowed to tape our bike shoes and helmet to our bikes for transport. We also were allowed to pack a single box of additional gear, food, water and clothing. The race directors would take the bikes to TA1 and the gear to the TA2. We estimated we needed to carry enough food, water and clothing to last us 14 hours until we made it to our gear box at TA2.

The start line was a 45 minute bus ride away from Paoli Peaks at a boat ramp on Patoka Lake. All paddling sections would be on this huge reservoir. We readied our gear and got on the buses at 11pm for the ride to the canoe put-in.

Once we arrived at the start line, we were told that there would be a short swim in PFDs (life vests) to get us started (and wet). The gun sounded, the racers swam, and we jumped into the canoes to paddle two miles to the first trekking/orienteering section. Julie kept an eye on the map while Eric and I paddled. Eric later said that Julie’s help was hugely important; it helped us make sure we that didn’t commit any early navigational errors in the dark on the water.

For the first trekking section, the checkpoints we had to visit were on a huge plot of land separated by a wide creek. We decided to split the section into two loops connected by a short paddle. We had a little trouble with the first control, so we decided to catch it on the way back. Eric immediately dialed in and we found all eight checkpoints like clockwork. At about 3 am the lightning and rain rolled in and it stormed continuously for about four hours. Our route covered eighteen miles, enough distance that we hiked into the dawn. The storms delayed the first light of day, but when it finally came, it brought new life to each of us.

After finishing the first trekking section, we got back in the canoes for the longest paddling leg of the race, a ten mile circuitous route to the Little Patoka Boat Ramp. The storms had subsided and the wind was light as we enjoyed the beautiful scenery along the way. About half way through the paddle, Julie asked me if my knife was handy. I gave it to her, and she proceeded to cut off her underwear! We had all been soaking wet for hours and she had decided that her underwear was chafing her enough that she was going to get rid of it without stopping the boat! Julie accomplished this amazing trick and we continued on, with the wind picking up near the end of our paddle. At the end of this long boat ride was TA1.

Seeing the race directors, our teammate Nancy Gawrys volunteering, and Gail Henricks taking pictures at TA1 was a welcome sight. We changed into dry clothes, ate some food out of our packs, and spent about twenty minutes preparing for the long mountain biking section that was ahead of us. This bike leg would prove to be the most difficult section of our race.

We stopped just after we left the boat ramp to buy a gallon of water at a convenience store. Eric’s bike developed a flat on the rear tire shortly thereafter, and we stopped again to repair it.

About 13 miles into the 48 mile bike loop, we arrived at the ropes section. The rappel was down a spectacular 150 foot concave face called Hemlock Cliffs near Mifflin, Indiana. The view on the way down was amazing, with the wall many feet away from the rope after the initial descent. The climb back up was perilous in bike shoes. But we made it, got back on the bikes, and headed out for the remaining 35 miles.

The bike route was almost all paved and gravel roads. We stopped by the English Reservoir to investigate a shortcut, but opted to ride around rather than bike-whack through some pretty thick brush that we later learned was private property. Julie fell one on elbow, then fell on the other. We had been racing almost 18 hours and we were all running out of gas. The team decided to rest for a while in the yard of an empty home near CP5. We catnapped for about 20 minutes and resumed our ride.

The bike went on forever. The hills were unending. We rode through the town of English and decided to rest again. Julie and I went to the convenience store and picked up some water, Fritos, Cheetos and a Coke. We headed back to Eric, who was resting, and we all feasted on the junk food. A few minutes and a few hundred calories later, we set out revived for TA2.

Arriving at TA2 was a huge milestone. The TA2 location was at the same boat ramp as TA1, but now we had access to our food, water and gear. Even though each of us privately considered quitting during the bike leg, we confirmed with each other that we were in the race to finish it. We ate Arby’s Roast Beef and Taco Bell Bean Burritos that tasted like steak and lobster. We spent a luxurious 42 minutes offloading climbing gear, fixing our feet, changing our clothes, eating, and repacking for the final three sections.

Leaving TA3 as the sun set, we evaluated the maps of final trekking section, which held five checkpoints surrounding a large inlet. Doing the whole section on foot would involve miles of backtracking. We decided to drop our packs on the near side of the inlet, paddle and park the boat on the far side, and swim with PFDs back across the inlet to our packs. This strategy would let us walk a line back to the boat picking up controls along the way. This would minimize our effort and time on foot. The plan worked perfectly, and Eric’s navigation was incredible, in spite of our fatigue. We got a little help from another team on the last control. We then found our way to the canoe and paddled to TA3, which was located at another boat ramp just a few miles away.

Arriving at TA3 we found that we were in sixth place. We learned of a surprise optional six checkpoint swim navigation section that surrounded the boat ramp’s inlet. We also learned that the final three off-road bike checkpoints were optional as well. We could choose to skip up to nine checkpoints, ride our bikes straight to the finish line and be official finishers. We talked as a team and decided to skip all nine optional checkpoint controls and head for the finish line.

We had heard that the ride to the finish line was about 12 miles, but it tuned out to be 18. The ride was very hilly, and as the early hours of the morning passed, we ground out mile after mile to the last hill before Paoli Peaks and the finish line. We hiked our bikes up the steep hill, then rode together to the finish, elated to completed the course and be official finishers.

Words cannot express how critical Eric’s navigation was to the success of our race. His innate ability to watch the land forms and feel the distance allowed us to travel straight down the center of the course. It is so easy to want to quit when you’re lost; Eric never gave us that option.

Julie’s positive attitude, her life experiences, stories, and her amazing transparency makes her a perfect teammate. Her ability to bounce back in the midst of adversity is second to none. The team dynamic couldn’t have been better.

And even though we’d rather have her racing with us, seeing our teammate Nancy at transitions gave us energy and moral support. Gail Henricks’ amazing photography skills and encouragement made this amazing race even better.

Crossing the finish line of this race was big for me. I hadn’t finished a PA30 race since 2003. Three DNFs in past years weighed heavy on my mind in the days leading up to the race. I thank my team for working together and making our goal a reality.

Congratulations to the top three finishers: Alpine Shop, Bushwacker and Climb4SMA. Great racing on a tough course. Thanks to Planet Adventure organization including Matt Jourdan and James Nichols, and to all the volunteers. It was one of the great races of my career.

Eric put together a MapMyRun of our course here.

Here are all the pictures of Team Ragged Glory from the race. 2011 Planet Adventure 30 Hour Challenge – TRG photos

Planet Adventure did a fantastic job on the 12th installment of this classic Midwest adventure race. The course was heavy on paddling and hilly as it could be in Indiana. We started at 12:00 am on Saturday morning and raced until 5:00 am Sunday. Words cannot describe the great teamwork, the fun, the difficulty and the elation of completing the course and hitting the finish line.

Gail Henricks took some amazing pictures of the Planet Adventure 30 Hour Challenge.

Planet Adventure also took pictures. You can find them here.

Here is the Team Ragged Glory gallery, a combination of TRG team photos from Gail Henricks and Planet Adventure:

It’s people that make races awesome. The Planet Adventure Race organization, directors like John McInnes and John Farless, and volunteers like Frank Baukert and Nancy Gawrys made Planet Adventure 30 Hour Challenge a racer’s event and kept it true to the eleven year tradition that Greg Arnold began.

Just got a text from Steve Kincade, one of Team Ragged Glory’s original members! Steve finished 50 miles at Dances with Dirt in Gnaw Bone yesterday in fourteen hours! Amazing! More details soon.

Nancy Gawrys and I (Doug Theis) ran the 500 Festival Mini Marathon today. We had a chance to use a couple of race bibs from folks who decided not to race. I was a 24 year old girl from Westfield named Stefani. Nancy was a 40 year old female named Ellen. Hope we made the two ladies proud!