Carnage at the Creek (CAC) Race Report

Last Saturday, I participated in my first adventure (non) race, Carnage at the Creek, presented by Luke and Bob of Team Virtus.  After experiencing the party they hosted back in January at the Berryman Trail (ride report here), I knew that this was not to be missed.  I wasn't real sure what I was getting myself into, but from reading their reports from other races, it sounded like so long as I could read a map (check), ride a bike (check), run in the woods (hmm...), and work some sort of boat (depends), I'd be okay.  Check in was between 7:30 and 8:30, and since Google estimated the trip time from my house at 2 hours, I set the alarm for 5 AM Saturday morning.

With the checklist of items to bring being about 3 times as long as I usually take on a bike ride, I had double and triple checked most of it the night before so that I wouldn't be rushing around half asleep and groggy while I was trying to get out the door.  I wanted to be able to just throw my bike on the car and go.  This actually worked out pretty well for me, and even J waking up about 10 minutes after me didn't slow me down much.  I spent about 10 or 15 minutes trying to get him to go back to sleep in his crib, but every time I would try to leave his room, he'd start crying for me again, so I finally had to take him to my bed and let him snuggle with my wife.

I was still able to be on the road by 5:40, so I was happy about that, and on the way out of town, I made two quick stops.  The first one was my office so I could grab some Cool Mint Clif Bars out of my desk to eat during the race, then McDonald's for breakfast.  The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful, though I did have a bit of highway hypnosis and almost missed the Kingdom City exit off I-70.  Good thing I was in the right lane and was able to swerve over just in time.  For some reason, even though I totally saw the sign, something didn't register until it was almost too late.

A little before 8 I arrived at the camp site where registration was underway and began to change my clothes and get my stuff ready.  It was a little cool, so I kept going back and forth on what to start off wearing, and initially I had on jogging pants over regular workout shorts and arm warmers under my bike jersey.  After everyone showed up, we had our pre-race meeting, where we were informed that there would be an initial bike leg to spread everyone out, then we would begin our trekking leg.

About 10 after 9, we were off, and I started out towards the front of the pack.  We were supposed to take a short stretch of singletrack, then cross a highway and follow some PVC pipe through a cow pasture.  Unfortunately, that was all I heard, so I was following Todd from Hoosier Daddies through the field and a gate onto some more singletrack that was marked with pink tape.  After a creek crossing, we climbed a hill and crossed into another pasture where all of a sudden there was nothing.  This is when alarm bells started going off that we had made a wrong turn.  Todd turned around pretty fast, but I stayed out in the pasture with Derrick of Orange Lederhosen and Kelly of Off Road Fixation and the three of us rode around for probably 20 minutes before we decided to head back.  When we got back to the highway, we saw Bob who was running out and trying to flag everyone down, but since we were at the front of the pack, he had missed us.  He showed the three of us where to go, and we continued on.  At this point, I let the other two guys go ahead of me, but I made another navigational blunder and missed the trailhead to get back to the singletrack which cost me another 4 or 5 minutes. While I didn't catch Derrick and Kelly before the transition, I did manage to pass two other teams that had some mechanical issues with their bikes, so I was in 11th place when I got back to the campground.

Being my first race, I was slow during the transition, and lost a spot coming out of it.  I almost lost my map as well, but Bob saw it and flagged me down.  Whew!  That could've been bad.  Now was the time to use the trail we mistakenly took into the woods on the bike leg, so I headed back towards the meadow where I turned around earlier and started searching for the checkpoints.  The first one was pretty easy to get to.  Dave and Tim from Tardy Rooster were just coming out of the woods as I was going into them from the field, and they warned me not to slip off the cliff when I found it.  A five minute trek through the trees later, I found my first checkpoint.

The view from CP 1.

Somehow, while I was going across the field across the highway from the campground, I managed to lose my pen (mental note: either get a real backpack or a Camelback that has room for more than just your water supply), so I decided to take pictures of the CP's until I could get back to my car for a replacement.  Here was the first one.

A close up of the marker.

Looking at the map, it looked like it was going to be a pretty good hike to the other three points.  I opted to head for number 3 next via the open fields rather than trying to cut through the woods.  With the distances between these checkpoints, I was happy I had decided to bring my iPod with me.  The podcasts I had loaded on it definitely made the time pass more quickly. 

Cows in the pasture

The primary downfall of using the pasture was the presence of a herd of cattle that I had to come within a few yards of, along with all avoiding the minefield of droppings they had left throughout the field.  When I got close to a couple of them, they gave me a wary look and one mooed at me disapprovingly, but fortunately, none of them charged at me.

CP 3 was in a creek valley that descended off of one edge of the pasture, so I went into the woods to cool off in the shade, thinking that I would just follow the creek bottom until I saw it.  However, the more I looked at the map, the more I thought it was on the edge of the hill rather than along the creek, so I routed a path along the middle of the hill, hoping I'd be able to see it.  After walking a fair amount past where I thought it should be without seeing it, I decided to go back down the the creek.  When I got to the bottom, I saw a spot that looked scenic enough to be a spot for a CP, but there was no CP around.  At this point, I started to think that maybe I'd misread the map and I was in the wrong creek valley.  Since I only had a little over an hour to get back to the campground for the bike leg, I was ready to give up with only finding the one CP.  Just then I saw Derrick again and asked him about CP 3.  He said it was indeed along the creek, but it was further upstream and I had already passed it.  I headed back up to where he said it was and sure enough, there it was.  Team Wahoo was also in the area searching for that CP, and they followed me down towards it.  Thankfully, they had a pen for me to use, so I didn't have to try to get another picture of the marker on this CP.

Waterfall near CP 3.

 Team Wahoo had started by searching for CP's 2 & 4, so they still had to go back and get the first one.  They invited me to tag along with them over to get it, but they were going to just try to head towards it in a straight line through the woods and the valleys.  I thought I'd be able to make better time in the pasture where the elevation changes were minimal, so I declined the invite and headed back to the campground to start the second bike leg.  By now, it was dangerously close to 1:00, and there was a 1:40 cutoff for the hiking leg.  Looking at the map, it looked like it was about 2 miles back to the campground, so I knew it was doable, but I didn't have a lot of room for error.  I turned on one last podcast and started back.  The trip back was uneventful, and I made it into the transition area at 1:33.  Whew!  I was disappointed that I had not gotten all of the CP's, but I was hopeful that maybe other people had missed some too.

Back in the transition area, I asked Bob if I was in last place.  To my surprise, he said it was in the middle of the pack (7th to be exact), even after I admitted to not getting all of the CPs.  Once the bikes came into view, I was surprised at the number of them still at the campground.  The cutoff was only 7 minutes away, but there had to have been about a dozen bikes there.  I made a slightly faster transition this time, and didn't loose any ground in the standings during the transition. 

The first part of the bike leg was a welcome relief.  My feet were getting really tired, and it was good to be on the pedals.  Also, this area had some pretty decent singletrack.  There were a few hike-a-bike areas, but most of it was nice and flowy.  CP 4.5 (a late addition) was on the backside of an abandoned building, and after that point, there was a decent to a pretty wide creek crossing. 

This creek wasn't real deep, but boy was it wide.  As you can see from the pictures, there were a lot of rocks right at the surface, so I tried to cross hopping from rock to rock, hoping not to soak my feet.  I got about 90% across, but then there just weren't any good stones, so my last 2 or 3 steps soaked my feet.  Oh well.  I hoped my socks had enough wicking material to dry out sooner rather than later.  At this point, I also wouldn't have been surprised if there were more creek crossings to come. 

Immediately on the other side of the creek, I had a choice to make.  I could follow the trail to CP 5, or I could take a gravel road.  Looking at the elevation profiles of the two options, I immediately opted for the road.  There was one big hill to climb, but given the hills I deal with around my house on a daily basis, it wasn't bad.  It was gravel though, and at one point, I spun out and had to walk the bike the last couple hundred feet to the top.  Once I hopped back on, I had about a mile to ride before I arrived at CP 5. 

After CP 5, the gravelly goodness ended and it was back to singletrack.  On the map, the path to CP 6 didn't look too bad, it just appeared to be a long steady descent along a creek valley before climbing a hill at the very end to the CP.  Once I got rolling though, it was a different story.  This area had been beaten to shreds by horse owners than had ridden the trails when they were too wet.  I don't know how many times I was on and off the bike through here, trying to get around post holes and generally nasty areas.  At this point, I realized how spoiled I am living here in St. Louis where we have the members of GORC taking care of our trails.  I don't know how many times I came to a section of trail and thought, "GORC would never build a trail like this!"  There were just a lot of soft spots that either needed to be rerouted or armored with rock in this area.  Unfortunately, if the horse riders outnumber the bikers in this part of the state, it'll be difficult to get the manpower to fix it. 

At any rate, a little more than halfway down the trail to CP 6, I came up on Steven of Lonesome Drifters, who was starting to think he was lost (apparently, he and Kelly were riding together when Kelly took another path because he wasn't sure if he was on the right path), but I was pretty sure we were still where we were supposed to be.  After riding for a half mile or so, we came to another creek crossing and saw Bob sitting on a rock making sure the riders followed the right path.  At that point, we just had to climb up on the bluff to get to CP 6.

The view from CP 6.  At this point, my memory card was full, so that's it for the pictures.

While we were resting, Kelly rode up behind us, and then the three of us headed of to CP 7, another mile or so down the trail.  Just minutes after we left CP 6, Todd from Hoosier Daddies came at us from the opposite direction, convinced we were going the wrong way.  After we explained that we had just come from CP 6, he turned around and we rode to a junction in the trail.  Todd was certain that he'd been straight at the junction, and we needed to turn right, so we made a fateful right turn, than sent us into a giant loop that got all of us turned around with no clue where we were.  Finally, after about 20 or 30 minutes (most likely even longer - I wouldn't be surprised if it knocked us off course for close to an hour), we arrived back at the same spot where we made that turn, and went the other way.  My instinct when we were first there said we probably should've gone straight, and looking back I should've been more assertive (lesson of the day - don't trust anyone navigating).  By this point, I was the slow one of the group and they had all gone ahead of me, but when I arrived at CP 7, Steven and Kelly were still there, along with a young couple that was hoping to get some quiet time together.  It was a pretty spot to hang out, but I don't think they expected to have several adventure (non)racers coming through all afternoon.  I got a quick drink of water, and left with them on our way to the other late addition, CP 7.5.  Fortunately, there was only a little bit of singletrack left, then we had about 5 or 6 miles of gravel roads to the winery that was the checkpoint. 

Right after we got off the singletrack, Kelly got a flat, but he said he had everything, so Steve & I pushed ahead.  At this point the terrain was pretty rolling, so my strategy was just to coast on the downhills, then gear down and spin on the climbs as much as I could.  It must've worked pretty well, because it wasn't after two or three of these hills I looked back and didn't see him at all.  Maybe I'm a better climber than I realize after all.  It must be all of the hills around my house that I dread on every local ride.  Finally I reached the winery where Emma from Orange Lederhosen was watching the checkpoint.  I asked if it was time to put my bike on her car rack, but she said nope, there was another mile or two to Little Dixie Lake Conservation Area where we would be rowing for the final leg.  I hopped back on my bike and headed over there.  When I arrived, Luke said they were out of rowboats, so I grabbed a drink and waited until someone came back with a boat.

Finally, a couple that was out fishing came back in and I hopped in the boat and was pushed off.  It's been a while since I've done any kind of paddling or rowing, so I was zigzagging a lot at first training myself on the proper way to turn the boat.  There were three checkpoints on the lake, two on the opposite shore and one on the near shore.  I headed to the opposite shore first.  As I arrived at the first checkpoint, Steve, who had been given a kayak, caught up with me and then left me in the dust on the way to the second one.  When I then saw Team Wahoo coming behind him, I knew I needed to kick myself into gear a bit.  Fortunately, by now I'd gotten my rowing technique down as well.  While they passed me between the second and third checkpoint, I managed to almost stay with them on the way back to the base to where they only beat me to the shore by a few minutes.  Since my clock was stopped for 15-20 minutes while I was waiting for the canoe, I was able to hold on to a 6th place overall finish.  Given that my stated goal was not to finish last, I was extremely happy with where I placed overall.

While I waited for the last two teams to come in, I refueled my body with some delicious baked potatoes provided by Luke & Bob and Super Kate's famous chocolate chip cookies.  To quench my thirst, there were jello shots and a cooler full of blue moon.  We hung out at the lake until the sun went down, then Bob led an awards ceremony where I was awarded the Strength and Honor Achievement Trophy (a very nice bike light) due to my completing the rowing leg solo.  While Todd and Steve went solo in kayaks, I was the only one who attempted the rowboat solo, which really impressed the judges.  I have to admit though, that seemed like the easiest part of the race to me.  After killing my legs for over 8 hours hiking and biking (I could barely walk after I got off my bike), chilling out in the rowboat rowing to those checkpoints for an hour and a half was a cakewalk.  Granted I looked like a fish out of water at the beginning, but once I figured out the motions, it wasn't horrible out there. 

It was an awesome (non) race, and I intend to be back next year.