Adventure Duluth 2006

I’ve gotten a chance to be a part of Adventure Duluth for three years in a row now. The first year, I did the swim leg as part of a 6-person team; last year I did the swim and the rollerblade as part of a 3-person team with 2 co-workers; Gregg Pattison (who wants everyone to know how envious he is because he didn’t get to race this year) and Todd Ekstrom; and this year I completed every leg of the race with my boyfriend, Tom Alcivar. In the previous years, I considered Adventure Duluth to be a race. This year, it was truly an adventure.

Given normal weather conditions, the race consists of 1-mile swim in Lake Superior, 9-mi kayak in the bay, 18-mi mtn bike through Spirit Mountain, 12-mi inline skate down the Munger Trail, 4-mi whitewater canoe on the St Louis river, 10-mi trail run through jay cooke state park. Race day weather made for a contingency plan on the swim and kayak legs, and cold, wet conditions for the rest of the race.

Tom and I signed up as a two person team. The rules are that we each do every leg of the race together. We must go through each transition together, and finish together. Here’s how it went:

1-mile swim
The winds were 40+ mph at 7am. Rain was falling, and the waves along the beach were 5-7 feet. Due to safety concerns, they shortened the swim to ¼ mile swim in the breakers along the shore, and a ¼ mile beach run to make a ½ mile round trip first leg. The good news was that the water was a steamy 64 degrees (much better than 2 years ago when I was swimming in 52 degree water…) which actually made it somewhat enjoyable for a strong swimmer to navigate ripcurrent and waves by diving under the breakwater every 3rd stroke. Even though Tom and I are strong swimmers, we had to conserve our energy, and as a result ended up finishing the swim in the middle of the pack (21st out of 40 teams – teams could be 6-person, 3-person, 2-person, or solo.)
I tried body surfing my way back to shore after the swim and ended up going a bit off course. I likened my attempt at being cool to that snowboarder chick who took the jump at the end of her race in the Olympics, fell, and lost the gold…

9-mile kayak
The swim ended, the transition timers recorded every team’s time, and then contingency plan #2 started. Every team started the kayak together and we were escorted for 3 miles of the course through 3-foot chop and 1,000-foot laker traffic before being started again with 6 miles of the course left to go. Tom and I were very cold when we were waiting for the race to re-start. We had to wait for everyone to get to the remote starting point which took 45 minutes to an hour. I warmed myself the only way I knew how; by relieving myself in the kayak… Poor Tom; there was no divider in our tandem kayak. He was furiously bilging out the mysterious liquid that kept appearing on the floor of the yak. Once we re-started the race, we warmed up quickly, and learned how to surf the waves. We witnessed a few swamped yaks, and the kind hearted nature of other racers who quickly came to the rescue of the ones who had tipped. We finished 14th in the kayak leg, due to Tom’s steering skills and the benefit of 2 paddlers (most people were in single kayaks).

18-mile mtn bike
We’re now 2 ½ hours into the race. We got to the transition pretty well soaked. After getting hydration packs changed out, eating some solid food, and getting the rest of our gear on, we hopped on the bike for some easy gravel riding. We entered a short portion of xc ski trail that was so bumpy, I thought all the parts on my bike were going to shake loose. I liked it though; grass covered every obstacle, and since my mind is the limiting factor on the bike, I just bombed the hills not knowing what was underneath the grass and let the bike do the work over the rocks. We then started the ascent up to Spirit Mountain. Tom, who has excellent climbing skills, had to hold back and wait for me. I was breathing pretty hard and was nervous that I wouldn’t have enough energy left for the last 3 legs of the race. We eventually flattened out after what had seemed like forever, but missed a turn for some single track and went about 3 minutes out of our way before we ran into other people who missed the same turn and were on their way back to find it. We hopped on with them and walked/biked through the messy, muddy single track. Then we made our way to the steep, rocky, mud/clay, wet descent. My brakes were nearly gone, so I was going faster than I was comfortable with, but I think it helped me rather than hurt me. We finished 31st out of 40 teams in just under 2 hours. We’re strong enough endurance riders, which makes me wonder if other racers missed turns and skipped part of the course, which would have been very easy to do (OR, maybe they just had their eyes open and didn’t miss any turn offs…)

12-mile inline
In any case, we were at the bike to blade transition 4.5 hours into the race, looking very wet and muddy. The transition went smoothly, and we were on our way with refreshed nutrition and water. The trail was wet and full of leaves, but not treacherous for an experienced skater. Now, would one be considered experienced if they bought their first pair of skates in July and had never been on any skates before then? That was Tom’s situation. Despite the lack of experience, he persevered and ended the inline leg with cramps in his quads, trying to maintain a stable position on the skates. We finished 35th in the inline portion, and were now just under 6 hours into the race (BTW, my longest race prior to this one lasted 5 hours and 50 minutes – a half ironman triathlon.)

4-mile canoe
I was not looking forward to the canoe portion at all. The inline was somewhat of a recovery leg for me since I have much more experience on skates than Tom. Due to that, my body got cold on the skate, and I was not excited about being in whitewater. We paddled our wide, heavy, plastic barge of a canoe upstream to the portage head. We had established that Tom would carry the canoe through the ¼ mile portage. I didn’t realize how badly his legs were hurting from the skate, but the portage was the straw that cashed his legs out. I asked if I could help carry the load, but the terrain was difficult to navigate with 2 people under the canoe. Still cold, still fresh, I hop in front for the whitewater portion, and the exhausted Tom hops in back. The flow is very low and we get hung up on some rocks. We back up, get spun around and end up going down the rapids backwards. Tom is trying to figure out his steering while at the same time trying to shout backward-paddling orders to me. In all of the commotion, the canoe flips, I get stuck underneath and dragged across the rocky river bottom and have a nasty collision between my back and a rock. Thank goodness we had helmets on. Tom managed to grab both canoe paddles when we tipped and we floated to shore where we could right the canoe and hop back in for the second white water portion. This one was much better; textbook, in fact, and maybe even a little fun. We had some renewed energy for the paddle back, and had some interesting interactions with other paddlers. On two separate occasions, other racers asked if we were married. One went so far as to tell me that she got married as a result of this race 2 years ago. WEIRD. Anyway, the canoe took us a LONG hour and 20 minutes; 39th out of 40 teams.

10-mile trail run
We were cold and shaking pretty violently during the transition from the canoe to the run. I was a little nervous for my health, but I knew that once I got out running, I would warm up quickly. I ate half a sandwich and we were on our way. Again, my legs were still pretty fresh since I got to recover on the skate. Tom on the other hand had already worked over his legs and was feeling pretty sluggish. I led the way through the first 4-5 miles of rocky, rooty, slippery, technical terrain. It was great. We had amazing scenery, and we couldn’t think about the pain because we had to concentrate so hard on not breaking an ankle. The next few miles were a bit boring and grassy which allowed the fatigue to settle in. Then to add insult to injury, the next 2 miles were uphill after uphill. Every corner we turned there was another hill. We swore we were at about 11,000 feet at the summit. We hit Scenic Hwy 23 with 2 miles to go and just steadily motored into the finish; happy and exhausted.

We finished 34th overall, with an official time of 9 hours, 23 minutes. Before this summer, we had never kayaked before, Tom had never inline skated, I had never canoed in whitewater, and we had very little experience mtn biking. My parents asked me if, now that we had “gotten it out of our system” we would ever consider doing it again. I said, “Heck yes; next year!” It was a great experience, and I don’t even regret the bad weather. How many times do you get to swim/race in 6-foot waves? How often do you swamp a canoe, and end up feeling warmer than before you tipped because of all the adrenaline running through you? How often do you get to do six sports in one day?!

Recovery
I downed 2 cups of the best chicken noodle soup I had ever tasted and was able to stomach half a beer before heading to my family’s home on a small lake just outside of Duluth. We recovered in the hot tub with beer in one hand, chips in the other, the jets massaging our sore muscles. My roommate and friends were there to share in the experience and I was quite content. The next day (which was beautiful in contrast to Saturday’s weather,) we spent much of the day cleaning up our equipment and preparing for the drive back to town.

Surprise
Before we left, Tom took me down to the lake where he asked me to marry him. I had absolutely no clue he was planning to ask. Those canoeists were prophetic! Anyway, I guess he figured that if we could work together during a grueling 9 hour race, we could build a life together. I, of course, said yes, and have been on cloud 9 ever since. Now, as long as the wedding doesn’t interfere with training for next year, we should be set. And so the next adventure begins…