Team Ragged Glory – Adventure Racing, Multi Sport, Friends

Nancy Gawrys, Bob Mueller, Julie Nor and I (Doug Theis) are registered for the 10 hour Planet Adventure race in Tell City Indiana on April 28. We look forward to seeing our racing friends again soon! We’re training every Saturday and Sunday at 7:30 am out at Fort Harrison in Indy. Times may vary, so call me if you’re thinking of joining us.

Come join Team Ragged Glory help the Hoosier Mountain Biking Association January 14, 8:30 am, at the Lawrence Creek Trailhead in Fort Harrison State Park.

If you haven’t been on the Fort Harrison bike trails, you’re in for a huge treat. Mike Hufhand, trail boss, has coordinated the construction some of the best trails in Central Indiana.

We’re running from the same trailhead at 7:30, if you’re looking for a little exercise before the exercise.

See you Saturday!

Nancy Gawrys, Bob Mueller and I (Doug Theis) are running the Dino Series Tecumseh Trail Marathon on December 3. Saturday with trained with friends Phil and Kim McNealy and Eric Henricks, running both 10 mile loops at Morgan Monroe State Forest. The weather was nearly perfect. If you’re considering doing the Tecumseh, it’s sold out. Sorry for the bad news. Many of our adventure racing friends are running, including Paula Pearson, Rachel Moir, and Mike Garrison.

Looking forward to running in the woods with my friends.

My favorite diversion is adventure racing. A group of friends and I have been doing adventure races since 2001 as Team Ragged Glory. This year we did four races and finished well in each :

Planet Adventure Urban Sprint – 1st overall
Planet Adventure 30 Hour Challenge – 6th overall
Planet Adventure Urban Sprint Race – 2nd all male division
Indianapolis Adventure Race – 3rd overall

Our success this year was due to a combination of factors: experience, navigation skills and good team dynamics. It’s the people that are the key ingredient to the fun we have every year. I raced with some incredible teammates in 2011:

Eric Henricks – Exceptional navigator, calm thinker, great all-around athlete. Eric knows how to lead.
Dave Tanner – Endurance legend, incredible swimmer, cyclist and navigator. Dave is kind, gentle, and relaxed during every race.
Nancy Gawrys – Energetic, positive, focused, competitive and fun. Nancy is probably the best athlete on the team, and the easily the most fun.

More of the blog post from Doug Theis at DougTheis.com

by Doug Theis
September 25, 2011

Team Ragged Glory loves the Indy Adventure Race. We’ve raced it every year since 2001. We’ve seen it go from a grass roots two-course event created and run by Greg Arnold to an charity fundraiser with a single course run by Michael Sapper and Indy Rootstock.

This year, TRG was made up of Nancy Gawrys, Bob Mueller, and me. Bob had planned to do four races this year, but an unexpected hernia surgery cut him back to just this one.

An adventure race consists of many teams navigating through a course that is unknown until shortly before the race. Most races include mountain biking, paddling, and navigating on foot. Teams must travel together as a unit visiting each checkpoint along the way. The teams use race-provided course description and maps to understand the course, plan routes and navigate. The passport is the most critical document. The passport is a waterproof small sheet of paper with grid of squares, one for each checkpoint. Each team carries a passport and uses a unique paper punch at each checkpoint to punch the passport and prove that they completed the course.

We received the course description, three maps and our passport at 7:15 am.

We also received a sealed envelope with instructions not to open before the race began.

Our team is good at navigation, paddling and fast transitions. We looked over the course description. A few details of the course were on our mind:

• We would not return to the start/finish line until the end of the race, so we needed to carry everything we needed.
• The first section would split teams up briefly, which is unusual in an adventure race. We would send one teammate (Bob) to an unknown point with a phone. A sealed envelope with a map remained with us. When the starting gun sounded, we would open the envelope, call Bob and direct him to three points on the map from the envelope, so he could punch the passport at each control before returning to us. We would need to be fast if we wanted to get out in front of the pack.
• The next navigation section on foot was the longest on-foot section of the race. Doing well in this section would be critical to finishing well overall.
• The paddle section at Geist was longer than usual, somewhere around five miles.
• The stop at Sunnyside Elementary would likely be using the ropes course there.
• We would ride the new mountain bike trails at Fort Harrison near the end of the race.

We marked our maps with the routes we would take between points.

Nancy wrote the clues from the course description on the passport and we were done with our navigation planning.

Each racer on Team Ragged Glory has a different role. Nancy would carry the passport and punch each checkpoint or write down the answers. Bob would carry the maps and navigate. I would carry the race directions to double-check clues and keep an eye on the overall course.

We packed our gear, Bob went with the group to the unknown starting point, and we waited for the starting gun.

The gun sounded, Nancy and I called Bob. The race directors had taken them to the middle parking lot north of the sledding hill at Fort Harrison. We described to him where the points were and he ran to each point and punched the passport.

We were able to direct Bob fairly quickly, and he made it back to us in just a few minutes. Bob gave the passport to Nancy and we headed out on the bikes.

We rode for about five minutes to the first on foot navigation section in the Northwest corner of Fort Harrison. We got to the checkpoint and received the map with the points we needed to get:

Bob picked up the map and we took a clockwise route through the points. We had a couple of misfires on the course, but found all the points quickly. We put this new map in a map case about half way through the loop after it started to disintegrate in Bob’s hands. We grabbed the last few controls, traveling with another team, Shrimp Cocktail, and returned to our bikes to head towards the paddling section.

A twenty minute ride took us to Fall Creek Trail at Geist Reservoir, just west of the dam. The aerial map showed a checkpoint in the woods across Fall Creek. We ran this section, punched at CP-8, and headed out of the south end of the woods section to 79th St. There were two good route choices from that point to the canoe put-in, one via Courageous Drive and the other via 79th St to Sunnyside Rd to Fox Rd. Nancy was familiar with Courageous Drive because it’s in the Geist Half Marathon. She suggested we take the 79th St route, and we ran to CP-9, the canoe put-in.

This year the race provided aluminum canoes with only two seats. The race directors were kind enough to transport all teams’ paddles, lifejackets and team optional third canoe seats to the beginning of the canoe section, so we grabbed our gear and headed for the boats.

After a short special test of team coloring (with crayons, we climbed in canoes and headed out. The paddling section was long, but we were able to see the teams ahead of us. We figured out that we were in fourth place, with Rootstock/Bushwacker in the lead, Kiss My CompASS in second, and Tenacious just ahead of us. We put some distance between ourselves, Dino and Flatlanders on the paddle and held our position with the teams ahead of us. The take out and portage were uneventful, and we climbed back on the bikes for the final big bike leg.

We rode north around Geist Reservoir, punching or recording answers at the checkpoints along the way. After rounding the east side of the reservoir, we headed to a Lutheran Church property near Sunnyside Dr. for a short navigation section. We received another aerial map, took off and punched each of the controls before leaving on the bikes for the ropes course.

The short ride to Sunnyside Elementary put us right on the heels of Team Tenacious. We hit the ropes course and climbed into harnesses for the four-segment zip line course. There was no waiting as we went one at a time through each segment. After finishing, we climbed on the bikes for the final road riding section back to Fort Harrison and the new mountain bike trails.

We entered the mountain bike trails knowing that Tenacious was just a few minutes ahead. The trails form a 3.5 mile loop, and we were told that we would find two punches along the way. We rode steady and I fell behind a little. We punched at one control, then Bob and Nancy caught up with Tenacious, and as soon as I caught up with the group, Tenacious let us by. With less than two miles left in the race and were now in third. Nancy punched the second checkpoint on the bike trail and we headed to the final checkpoint.

The final checkpoint was marked as a special test on the south side of Delaware Lake near the start/finish line. We rode to the south side and realized that the test had been moved to the north side. Thankfully, Tenacious didn’t catch up to us by the time we hit the challenge. Each of the three team members had to paddle a paddleboard out to a log in the middle of the lake and return. One paddle board, three teammates, one at a time. Tenacious showed up as Nancy finished the first leg. I went next, then Bob, and we maintained our lead. We finished, climbed on the bikes and rode the final few hundred yards to the finish, placing third overall and second in the coed division. Congrats to Rootstock/Bushwhacker and Kiss My CompASS for a great race.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this event a great one. A special thanks to those of you who help every year. It’s always a good race, and the course this year was great. And Kudos to Michael and Debbie Sapper, Ryan Burke, Greg Grossart, Dave Kauffman and all the individuals who worked to make this race happen in 2011!

Here are photos of Team Ragged Glory from Dave Kauffman and from Gail Henricks.

Team Ragged Glory really appreciates the photographers. Looking at the photos is a great way to relive the race. Thanks for spending the time to capture the race forever.

Once again, thanks to all the folks who made the race happen. The Indianapolis Adventure Race is one of our favorites.

We’ll post more photos as they come available.

Team Ragged Glory placed second in the all male division of the Planet Adventure Urban Sprint in Indy on August 13. Team Ragged Glory also placed second in the coed division of the Indianapolis Adventure Race on September 10! More to come soon. Thanks to the race directors and all the volunteers!

8:30 am south parking lot outside of the park. See you there.

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.