Adventure Race
Today I was part of an underground adventure race! It was a grueling 17 mile hike and bike around Lake Perris (and in it at times). The following link is from the Gmaps Pedometer: [Link to race route]The race started in the early morning and mass confusion instantly set in as a result of a thick layer of fog that made it all but impossible to read the provided topographic map. A majority of the teams headed due North which, it turns out, was incorrect. My team was traveling West on a nice trail, but after some distance we decided that we must have made a wrong turn (herd mentality) and backtracked to the North fork of the trail. After hiking North for a bit, we turned West in hopes of finding the road that our first checkpoint of 25 was supposed to be adjacent to. Once we finally located the first checkpoint it was smooth sailing through the next 17 or so checkpoints, until the final checkpoint of the hiking segment. This final checkpoint was nearly impossible to find in the fog since there was no defined trail, just a clue to look for a “GIGANTIC” boulder. Well, since the fog prevented us from seeing more than 100′ ahead of us it took a long time to find this checkpoint. Once that was over with, we headed down the hill to the parking lot and hopped on our mountain bikes for the second leg of the race. Nothing really exciting happened until we reached the top of a long grade and got to aim straight downhill following a nice single track (a narrow trail that winds down the hill allowing for some very high speeds, sharp turns and the occasional jump). Shortly after this we passed a set of checkpoints that would have been under water a few months ago, but the lake has been drained down almost 40 feet due to concerns over the dam’s ability to withstand a high seismic load. The final checkpoint of the entire race was a short climb up the side of “Big Rock” and a fun rappel down the face. Thanks to my recent trip to Joshua Tree National Park I was able to do this without too much fear!
Unfortunately we did not finish the race, which would have required a 5 mile ride across Lake Perris’ dam. One of my teammates had developed some pain in his knee and I was cramping up. In my defense, I haven’t ridden a mountain bike in over 6 months and this was extremely strenuous. Had we completed the race I believe we would have been in 3rd place out of about 7 teams. There were other teams that finished before us, but they had failed to find all of the checkpoints in the fog, so their times would not have counted.
