I was poking through old picture files the other day and came across this picture. It's me around 2007, and at the time I was about 4 hours into a 24 hour race that I was doing as a solo team. It was in Eastern Tennessee in the middle of a typical hot and humid Tennessee summer, and I was doing the race not to actually "race" it. I was doing it for navigation practice.
Here's what I wrote in a race report at the time about the events leading up to this picture:
Started the day worried more than anything else about how I'd hold up in the high heat and humidity, and knowing that a June race was "pushing the envelope" for me in that regard. But I wanted to play in the woods, and I wanted to play alone, so I was really looking forward to this race.
Morning of the race plotted the CP's fine, and one of my support crew suggested that I blow off CP1 that was in the opposite direction from the rest of the action, and just immediately head north towards CP2 and onwards. I agreed with that suggestion and started the race with CP2 on my mind.
Race "gun" went off and I took off running down the road with a bunch of other folks. They turned left and headed across the bridge towards the dam, and I blindly headed left as well. Climbed up the pipeline trail, some of them stopped to read their map and that's when I realized that they were headed for 1 and I was headed for 2. Rule #1 - DON'T blindly follow people.
Climbed back down the pipeline trail, headed back across the bridge, and continued on down the road looking for (what looked to me) like a draw that led to the trail. Couldn't find it. I'm running up and down the highway unsuccessfully looking for the entrance (and NOBODY else is around at that point - and it's only 8:20am - so I'm not feeling overly confident even early in the race). I keep looking at the map, looking at the terrain, looking at the location of the dam and the curves in the road, trying to get it straight in my head and it's not working.
The flattest entry point I could find was a creek and I look down the creek and could see a small trail. Is that it? Run up and down the highway a bit more and finally decide that's got to be it 'cause I don't see anything else - and I head in. Keep checking the compass and I'm at least heading in the right direction. Finally the trail ends and I look across the creek and there's a trail across the creek. Cross over, follow the trail for a while (checking compass and still heading in the right direction), and the trail ends again. Look across the creek, and the trail picks up again across the creek. Do the same thing again, until THAT trail fizzles, look across the creek - and no trail. Nothing. Nothing anywhere but thorn and prickly-filled bushwacking nastiness from this point on.
Compass says I'm still heading in the right direction, but this is wrong and I know it's wrong - but I haven't quite figured out where to go from there and how to make it right, so I keep checking the compass, keep moving forward, and start getting badly scratched and scraped all over my arms, shoulders, neck and legs, from all the thorns and deep undergrowth.
Did this for a while and decided to move higher up and try to get out of the thorns and thistles, but by this point they're just everywhere. By the time I'd been doing this for probably 30 minutes I started to feel really claustrophobic - the sun was "up there" (up the hill), I was in the middle of a skin tearing nightmare, I was definitely NOT gonna find the trail off this creek bed and I still hadn't figured out how to get myself out of this mess that I was in the middle of, so early in the race. So I started heading up - and the dirt under my feet kept giving way and I kept sliding back down. I finally slid down uncontrollably about 10 feet and came to rest (with a thud) against a big tree stump and thought "that's it - stop moving - stop what you're doing Karin, and figure this out".
I didn't do anything but drink water and calm down for about 5 minutes, and then finally looked at the map. And then of course, everything began to make some sense - I saw the creek, I saw the trail, I saw the incline I was heading up. I wasn't exactly sure how far I had traveled along the creek, but I realized that I needed to change my N/NE heading and start heading S/SE if I was seriously going to try to hit this trail that was eluding me. Took a bearing and "up" was south(ish). That was good enough for me - I headed up (still working through some really nasty bushwacking the whole time). Got to the top of the hill, headed southeast, started to head down the other side of the hilltop, looked down, and there was the trail. The beautiful, calm, thorn-free trail.
**********************
Within a couple of minutes of finding that elusive trail I looked up and saw the official race photographer pointing his camera at me. He snapped this picture at a moment when I had scratches all over me from bush wacking, and when I was incredibly relieved to realize that I was now on the right track for sure and (since the race photog was in front of me) I was likely very close to Checkpoint 2.
The rest of the race was fun, adventurous and eventful (but in a good way). For the next 20 hours I navigated, mountain biked, road bike, lake kayaked and river kayaked. By the end of the race I had gotten 24 hours of navigation practice in, during both day and night travel. And that was the point. Coming in second in the solo division was just a bonus.
Here's what I wrote in a race report at the time about the events leading up to this picture:
Started the day worried more than anything else about how I'd hold up in the high heat and humidity, and knowing that a June race was "pushing the envelope" for me in that regard. But I wanted to play in the woods, and I wanted to play alone, so I was really looking forward to this race.
Morning of the race plotted the CP's fine, and one of my support crew suggested that I blow off CP1 that was in the opposite direction from the rest of the action, and just immediately head north towards CP2 and onwards. I agreed with that suggestion and started the race with CP2 on my mind.
Race "gun" went off and I took off running down the road with a bunch of other folks. They turned left and headed across the bridge towards the dam, and I blindly headed left as well. Climbed up the pipeline trail, some of them stopped to read their map and that's when I realized that they were headed for 1 and I was headed for 2. Rule #1 - DON'T blindly follow people.
Climbed back down the pipeline trail, headed back across the bridge, and continued on down the road looking for (what looked to me) like a draw that led to the trail. Couldn't find it. I'm running up and down the highway unsuccessfully looking for the entrance (and NOBODY else is around at that point - and it's only 8:20am - so I'm not feeling overly confident even early in the race). I keep looking at the map, looking at the terrain, looking at the location of the dam and the curves in the road, trying to get it straight in my head and it's not working.
The flattest entry point I could find was a creek and I look down the creek and could see a small trail. Is that it? Run up and down the highway a bit more and finally decide that's got to be it 'cause I don't see anything else - and I head in. Keep checking the compass and I'm at least heading in the right direction. Finally the trail ends and I look across the creek and there's a trail across the creek. Cross over, follow the trail for a while (checking compass and still heading in the right direction), and the trail ends again. Look across the creek, and the trail picks up again across the creek. Do the same thing again, until THAT trail fizzles, look across the creek - and no trail. Nothing. Nothing anywhere but thorn and prickly-filled bushwacking nastiness from this point on.
Compass says I'm still heading in the right direction, but this is wrong and I know it's wrong - but I haven't quite figured out where to go from there and how to make it right, so I keep checking the compass, keep moving forward, and start getting badly scratched and scraped all over my arms, shoulders, neck and legs, from all the thorns and deep undergrowth.
Did this for a while and decided to move higher up and try to get out of the thorns and thistles, but by this point they're just everywhere. By the time I'd been doing this for probably 30 minutes I started to feel really claustrophobic - the sun was "up there" (up the hill), I was in the middle of a skin tearing nightmare, I was definitely NOT gonna find the trail off this creek bed and I still hadn't figured out how to get myself out of this mess that I was in the middle of, so early in the race. So I started heading up - and the dirt under my feet kept giving way and I kept sliding back down. I finally slid down uncontrollably about 10 feet and came to rest (with a thud) against a big tree stump and thought "that's it - stop moving - stop what you're doing Karin, and figure this out".
I didn't do anything but drink water and calm down for about 5 minutes, and then finally looked at the map. And then of course, everything began to make some sense - I saw the creek, I saw the trail, I saw the incline I was heading up. I wasn't exactly sure how far I had traveled along the creek, but I realized that I needed to change my N/NE heading and start heading S/SE if I was seriously going to try to hit this trail that was eluding me. Took a bearing and "up" was south(ish). That was good enough for me - I headed up (still working through some really nasty bushwacking the whole time). Got to the top of the hill, headed southeast, started to head down the other side of the hilltop, looked down, and there was the trail. The beautiful, calm, thorn-free trail.
**********************
Within a couple of minutes of finding that elusive trail I looked up and saw the official race photographer pointing his camera at me. He snapped this picture at a moment when I had scratches all over me from bush wacking, and when I was incredibly relieved to realize that I was now on the right track for sure and (since the race photog was in front of me) I was likely very close to Checkpoint 2.
The rest of the race was fun, adventurous and eventful (but in a good way). For the next 20 hours I navigated, mountain biked, road bike, lake kayaked and river kayaked. By the end of the race I had gotten 24 hours of navigation practice in, during both day and night travel. And that was the point. Coming in second in the solo division was just a bonus.