Adventure Race

On June 5, I (Kevin) and my buddy Keith took part in the Gold Rush Adventure Race near Chinese Camp, CA.  A friend of ours from church convinced us to sign up for the race after he had participated in the race last year.  This is not your average start-to-finish race.  The three parts to this race each proved to be a challenge.

After arriving at the start at 6:30, we hung out till the start of the race at 8:00.  We took two other friends who served as our crew.  These guys played a huge part in getting us through the race.  The best advice they gave was not to bring any beer on the mountain bike portion of the race.  They got our bikes ready for us, unloaded our kayaks, and provided us with our own personal two-man cheering section.

The first leg of the race was a 6 mile orienteering run.  For those of you who don't know what orienteering is, it is simply finding markers or signs using only a compass and a map.  The race organizers released the marker locations 15 minutes before the race began so Keith and I had time to plot our course.  Any marker which wasn't found would add a time penalty to the team so we were careful in making sure we plotted our course carefully.  The run went pretty well for us.  We managed to keep up with this team of hard core racers for exactly 5 minutes.  They were insanely fast and good.  We couldn't find one marker (I swear it wasn't even there!) so we were given a time penalty.  Overall we were happy with our run.

The second leg was the biking section.  This 18 mile trek wasn't as bad as we thought it was going to be except for the ten mile section where we took a wrong turn.  Ouch.  Luckily we were in the same situation as probably twelve other teams so we didn't lose any time to them.  The final mile and a half was probably the fastest I have ever gone on my mountain bike.  Keith's speedometer on his bike topped us off at 33 miles per hour.  Nice little end to the saddle sore inducing bike ride.

Final section: 6 mile kayak.  Because the river was dangerously high, the race director moved the kayak portion to Don Pedro Reservoir.  We had two locations to find.  We hadn't trained for the kayak portion so this proved to be a challenge.  We found the two markers and then booked it to the finish line.  We crossed the finish line in 7 hours and 7 minutes.  We were hoping to be under seven hours but seeing as we were still alive at the end of the race, we'll take it.

Coming up to the finish line.  Phew...it's over.

Posing for our adoring fans after the race.

The racers and crew.  (Keith was obviously in need of serious hydration after the race.  I was already well hydrated when this picture was taken.)