Adventure Race Reports

The BAAR Brawl was an unofficial "training" event organized by Gordon Wright on Saturday, February 5th. The event started at 9:00am, and had more than enough CP's to keep people busy for many hours! I teamed up with Brandon Nugent (who goes by TrainDaBrain on this board), and here's my story about what happened...

I left Fairfield at 5:45am, and managed to find our meeting place in San Anselamo (the Safeway) at just after 7:00am. There I met Brandon, did some quick shopping for last-minute food supplies, and transferred my gear to his SUV so we could stash my pickup in Fairfax. We then drove to Fairfax, dropped off the truck, and found Gordon's street. It was time to prepare for the event! The residential street looked like a mobile transition area -- all in all there must have been around 15-20 cars there, with everyone getting all their gear together.



At around 8:30 we biked over to Gordon's house and picked up our UTM sheet, along with a supplemental map for later on. There were quite a few "racers" (this wasn't a race, of course) there, busily plotting points anywhere they could find a flat spot. It was quite a sight!



I wonder what the neighbors were thinking?!



Plotting the UTM's was lots of fun! I was a bit baffled at first, but then realized that the Northing's were the first number, followed by the Easting's. Brandon and I performed "independant voting navigation", much like the computers on the Space Shuttle: we each plotted our points, then checked to see if they were in the same spot -- if they were, we moved on to the next one, but if there was a discrepancy, we then stopped to figure out which one of us messed up! It worked great.

At around 9:00am, Gordon gave the pre-event announcements. Basically reminding us that this was not a race, and that it was purely an unofficial training event. Whatever we did, we were solely responsible for it on our own.

The event started at about exactly 9:15am, with a roughly 2 mile round-trip run up to a fence to count the number of fenceposts. At exactly 9:14:30am, Brandon and I realized that we were the only one still wearing our backpacks and quickly ditched them right before the event start. The crowd of runners taking off down Gordon's normally quiet street was pretty spectacular.

After the trail run, we returned to Gordon's front yard and transitioned to our bikes. We then took off for the Tamarancho mountain biking area.



Climbing up the singletrack into Tamarancho was pretty nice -- even if I did have to push my bike up most of the way! At one point, a rider behind me did an endo off the side of the trail into the bushes below. He was okay, but it certainly was a reminder of the hazards of singletrack riding! Once getting up onto the more-or-less level bit in Tamarancho, we then continued following fireroads southsoutheast. At a major junction, we had the choice of singletrack to the next CP, or fire roads. We chose fireroads, figuring we could move quicker on them than on the singletrack ... but neither one of us really noticed all the contour lines crossing our fireroad route!



Dang!! We had a wonderful 500' descent, followed by a painful 500' climb back up to where we should have been in the first place! Oh well. Once we reached the next CP (where we had to record the bearing from a metal stake to a signpost), we met some other riders coming back from the most-obvious-fastest-fire-road-route ... turns out there was a guy in the truck turning the eventeers around, telling them to take the Wagon Wheel singletrack instead. At first we were a bit suspicious (why would a ranger turn bikers away from a fireroad) but we decided to take their word for it and take the Wagon Wheel. I'm glad we did! The views were spectacular, as the rocky trail contoured around a steep slope.



After the beautiful singletrack, we had the LONG push up to the top of White Hill. It was a great day for pushing a bike up big hills ... sunny, cool temperatures, not much wind...





At the top of White Hill, we took another break before continuing west along the nice fireroads towards Kent Lake. Somewhere along the route we encountered another team with significant mechanical problems -- 4 chain breaks so far -- I wished I was carrying some chain pins to help them out, but I had none (mental note: carry chain pins!).



The roads were right on top of the ridge, and we had lots of really spectacular views! At one point, we had a choice of following the ridge -- up and then down -- or contouring along the north side of the ridge. We decided to take the more levellish road and follow the contour -- in retrospect, it was a great decision, since it not only saved some climbing, but it put us through a nice redwood forest!



After reaching the next CP (where the clue asked what the shape of the intersection was), we both stopped to eat something. It was then I realized that one of my two cans of nutrition drink had been punctured by a bungee, and had proceeded to drain protein goop into my running shoes! Oh well. At least I had half a can left. After the break, we then continued west towards the lake, choosing the southern fire road so as to maximize the scenery content of the trip.



At the dam, we stopped to plot another set of UTM's. Fortunately the wind didn't blow away any of our sheets! We had come about 20 miles in the course so far, and at that point (after plotting) we saw where exactly the kayaking leg was, and where the trekking legs were ... wow! This is going to be a LONG course!!!!



We then climbed up on top of Bolinas Ridge ... a wonderful 1000-foot climb! Arrghhh.... On the positive side, climbing up the ridge we talked a little with a nice two-woman team -- it's always great to chat with other participants during these events!



Having reached the top of the ridge (and the intersection with the Bolinas Ridge Trail), we met up with Randy Franklin who was coming up from the other direction ... we later learned that he had sprained his ankle early on in the event, so how he was biking with a sprained ankle I don't know! But he was in great spirits, and told us we'd really enjoy the ride down the ridge.



The ride down the ridge was really spectacular. Some mud, some ruts, but mostly an old cart-track with great views of the San Andreas fault to the left, and Tomales Bay (our kayaking destination!) off in the distance. At one point we even got to ride through a herd of cattle...



At that point, it was getting later on in the day, and we figured we needed to bike hard to be able to make it to the kayak TA in Inverness before they closed!



We continued down the ridge, then at the next CP (by a gate, the question was how many padlocks are on the gate) we got onto Sir Francis Drake highway and took the nice downhill ride to Olema. From Olema, we then headed northwest up to Inverness.



We charged into Inverness at around 4:15pm. A quick check with the really nice dude that ran the kayak rental place confirmed that there probably weren't going to be any other boats going out on the water after us! He said that the other teams were taking about 1.5 hours to do the four-mile round trip paddle to the next CP (on Heart's Desire Beach), and with only 1 hour of daylight remaining, and 2 hours before it was totally dark, we'd barely have enough time to do it ourselves. But, fortunately he let us on the water, so we transitioned to the kayak leg.

Unfortunately, there was about 50 yards of mud to cross before we could get the kayak into open water! Talk about a low tide! Brandon did an amazing job of hauling that thing out to the water, while I got our PFDs and stuff together. Unfortunately, on reaching the kayak I stowed my compass along with my pack in the back ...

We took off onto the water, with another team off in the distance ahead. I must say that the kayaking was SPECTACULAR! The water was relatively smooth, there were birds everywhere, and there were lots of seals! I had never kayaked near seals before, so this was a real treat for me. At one point a seal was right beside us rollign on it's back -- reminded me of my housecat at home! As we continued up, I noticed the Marconi Center on the northeast side of the bay ... and remembered how a few years earlier at a training meeting we had gone to a beach on the other side from the Marconi Center. Looking at the map, I could see the beach we wanted (Heart's Desire) was directly across from Marconi, and off in the distance I could recognize the beach that we had been on years ago. Navigation confirmed! We were almost there!



But... Upon getting close to the presumed Heart's Desire beach, the kayakers in front kept cruising right along past it ... leading to self-doubt #1. And the guy at the kayak shop had mentioned how we'd be able to see buildings and maybe a car or two from the water -- and all we saw were some signs ... leading to self-doubt #2. Finally, the crude bearing I was able to take on the water made me second-guess whether we were really directly across from Marconie ... and self doubt #3 made me want to continue on towards the NEXT cove to see if that was really the right beach!



Hmmm.... Things just weren't adding up. Marconi was getting further and further behind us. I asked Brandon what pace thought we were doing, and he thought 3 miles per hour ... looking at my watch, we had been paddling for almost an hour ... surely we should have passed 2 miles by now ... and then the kayakers in front of us turned around! We needed a break, so we pulled into a cove, emptied out the kayak of the water we had taken on with our vigorous paddling, and I was finally able to get my compass out and take an accurate bearing to Marconi. Uh-oh. We're just past DUCK COVE, which is over a MILE past Heart's Desire beach!

We then got back in the kayak, and paddled as fast as we could back. When we went by the beach with the CP that we missed on our outbound leg, we pulled in to grab the CP -- Brandon ran across the beach, over to the outhouses, and duly recorded the number of spigots outside the building. Back in the kayak, and we headed off. At this point it was around 6:15pm, almost completely dark. We finally pulled into the kayak rental place at 6:30pm in the blackness of night.

Our feet were FROZEN! To avoid the mud, we went in barefoot. It was strange how the 50-degree water felt warm on my feet in comparison to the 40-something air blowing by when on the kayak. As usual, I could barely stand when getting out of the boat, and I did my best to avoid stepping on the barnacles / oysters / razor blades that were lurking in the 1-2 foot deep mud on the trek back to the beach.

We spent around half an hour in the TA, mostly washing mud off and cleaning up.

Next up was the trekking leg! Woohoo! This was my first time doing nighttime trekking / navigation. And it was awesome being with Brandon while doing it! We trekked off along the road and then a fire road to the next CP. And it was dark! We turned off our headlamps briefly to see if we could continue in stealth mode, and couldn't see anything. At the CP, on top of a ridge, we had some great views of the nighttime stars (it's amazing how many stars you can see when there aren't any other lights around). We then met up with another team of 4 who had just come from the 'bushwhacking' CP13. They found the CP in the dark, but warned us against the "eyes" that were following them as they were off-trail. I don't know what species of eyeballs those were, but when Brandon and I got to the point on Mt. Vision Rd where we would have to descend down the gulley to find CP13, neither one of us was particularly enthusiastic about going into that place with potential predators (who could certainly see better in the dark than we could!).



So we decided to abandon getting CP13. The first CP in the race that we chose not to get. It was a hard decision, but I think at that point we were just feeling too uncomfortable about it ... for me, maybe it was a combination of that being my first nightime nav, and not wanting to push things too far.

On the way to CP14, we continued down Mt. Vision road, and the views were spectacular. It was pitch-black night, and there were stars everywhere. Way off in the distance (to the northwest) there were a very few lights on the horizon. And off to the southwest you could see the sweep of the beam from the Pt. Reyes lighthouse extending way out into the ocean. That's something I won't soon forget! I can only imagine how beautiful the place is in the daytime!

Half way down the hill, I stopped to check on some foot pain I was having. I figured it was a stone or a blister developing, so I better take care of it. When I took my socks off, I found five or so cuts on the soles of my feet, two of which were rather deep and packed with mud and sand. Ick! I got out some saline eye drops to try to clean the cuts out a little, and Brandon provided some neosporin. That and a little duct tape and I was ready to go again! Sort of... By that time, my energy levels had dropped substantially. It was around 10pm I think, and we had been out on the course for about 13 hours ... longer than I'd ever been on an AR course before. So we looked at the map for the rest of the trekking leg, and figured that we had covered around 1/5 of the distance of the whole leg. I was pretty sure that my feet wouldn't be able to handle that whole loop, and even if they did, my body wouldn't have been able to.

So at that point we made the somewhat difficult decision to head back to the kayak TA, pick up the bikes, then head back to the start/finish.



We got into the kayak TA in Inverness sometime in the night ... not sure when, but I'm guessing it was around 11pm. There were still a number of bikes there, and the super-friendly kayak shop owner was lots of fun to talk to while we were transitioning onto the bikes. He also had a suggestion -- take the "Cross-Marin Trail" when we were on our return from Olema to Fairfax. He said the trail was an old railroad bed, was away from the highway, and would be great for nighttime biking!

We got on the bikes (OUCH! My butt hurt something fierce at this point! Not to mention shoulders, feet, muscles, etc) and pedalled back towards "home". The nighttime biking was much better than I imagined ... I was a bit worried about being on highways at night, with cars flying by, but there were practically no cars out at that time of night. We pedalled up the big hill out of Olema, then down the other side of Bolinas ridge, and with a minor backtrack we found the underpass for the Cross-Marin Trail. The trail itself was beautiful, paved most of the way, right next to a creek that we could hear. After about 7 miles of trail, we came back onto Sir Frances Drake highway, right at the same point we had passed through on our way out of Kent Lake. We then followed SFD highway back to Fairfax, and pulled into Gordon's driveway at around 12:45am. I don't think I'd ever been happier to see a garage! The garage door was open, there were water bottles (swag, I hope, since I stole one of them) lined up in a circle on the floor, and a clipboard to write notes on. I tried to write a few notes, but fatigue and cold hands kept me from writing more than a chicken-scratch!

So that's about it. I had a blast doing the event with Brandon, and the course was spectacular. In addition, I'd pushed myself about 50% further than I ever have before, and a managed to avoid any serious injuries. A great day.



Some quick course stats:

Percent of course completed: 50% ??
Total Distance: 65.2 miles
Distance Breakdown: MTB 51.1, Kayak 7.5, Run 2.0, Trek 4.6
Overal Elevation Gain: 7,658 feet
Time on course: 15+ hours

Elevation profile:


And finally my heart rate profile through the race clearly shows how I started off strong, but got slower and slower throughout the event:



Overall, the BAAR Brawl was a real fun experience for me! I met lots of new people, had a great time with Brandon, pushed myself past the limits that I thought I had, and learned LOTS of new things!

Thanks, Gordon. You did an excellent job.

-Dave

Dave, Great Report and cool pictures. here's mine. I have our track and all the CP's plotted on a 6 MB digital map at this link:

http://www.teamengine.org/html/2005fx/brawl-course.jpg

We put this team together in December and we have been training for the Brawl pretty consistantly. When the date finally came, we felt ready and confident.

I got up saturday morning at 5 am, double checked everything and loaded up my car to go pick up Matt down the hill. He was ready to go as usual, waiting for me to arrive. He got a new bike for the race, he said he had spent $800 on stuff for this race! Unfortunately his bike did not fit on the rack so we had to tie it on, but it worked. Then we were on our way up to the Marina to pick up Brian. Like me, he had a cold and seemed tired. But sometimes doing moderate exercise helps with your cold.

We arrived at the race site about 8:00 AM. Maps and course instructions were to be given out at 8:30 with a start at 9. We got our maps and UTM coordinates and I realized the one thing I forgot to bring was a UTM ruler. A ruler was quickly made out of a scrap piece of paper, that actually worked quite well. We had two sets of maps and already the teamwork was coming into play. Brian and I plotted maps independently while Matt read the UTM coordinates. It was very fast, we would plot and double check a point every 45 seconds or so. Brian was very fast at plotting as well. Matt was good at reading the coordinates!

We were excited when we saw that the race would cover a good amount of what we had done in our training event. We were also happy to see we would be kayaking out of Blue Water Kayaks as we had expected.

There were about 50-60 people that came out for this training event. This is as large as some of the real races are in the southeast. It was very exciting seeing so many teams come out. Gordon collected waivers and such from everyone and gave us passes to Camp Tamarancho. Gordon's neighbors came out to see what was going on, there were 60 people wearing all assortments of Lycra in the street. Gordon let the neighbors kid fire the starting gun and we were off.

Matt immediately noticed that the pace of the top teams was not that faster than ours on the first run. We stayed about middle of the pack during the run and got back to the bike TA. We had a 4 minute TA and then we were off on a 30 mile bike ride with many ups and downs!

With two navigators, we took a little more time to make decisions but usually the decision was correct. So when we came out to the main road, we correctly decided to turn left. Some teams made an error here and had trouble finding the road into Camp Tamarancho. We saw teams ahead of us and we found the singletrack trailhead and CP 3 quite easiely. We cruised up the trail, I crashed once going around a switchback and Brian crashed once as well. At the top we decided to take a fire road route to CP 4 instead of up and down singletrack.

After gaining Blue Ridge we spent about 15 minutes on navigation even though we saw people heading up white hill. I think part of it was that we didn't want to go up the 60 degree incline. We did. It was a calf burner. It was definately the steepest hill I've ever pushed my bike up. I don't believe people ride down that. Reaching the top another team caught up with us that went on the trail which countors around.

A series of ups and downs on pretty technical jeep road brought us to CP 5 near Pine Mountain Road. There was a team that just arrived before us, deciding which way to go. They (incorrectly) choose south on Pine Mountain Road. This made our team take a few more minutes to determine the correct direction. This allowed another team to catch up to us, who I believe went in the direction we were going. It was interesting that while we took a long time to make navigation decisions, we would somehow get infront of teams because the same teams would pass us multiple times. I'd rather go slow in the right direction than fast in the wrong one.

Going towards Kent Lake the trail was very rutted adn had some death defyting downhill sections ending in deep ditches. After Brian went over his handlebars once, we decided we'd put him in front so Matt and I would know if he crashed. Once we did this, he went down the next hill and had one of the most spectacular mountain biking crashes I have seen. He went in a ditch and Matt and I were sure he broke something. He was okay though, so we were releaved. He did wack his head twice so there is a good reason for helmets. I don't think his helmet was cracked though.

Matt and I would recklessly careen down these trails, usually making very slight use of brakes. Brakes will throw you off the bike too sometimes. We'd pick a line and bomb it. It was great fun and at some times scary when you would almost loose control.

The ride down to Kent Lake was great, gradual doubletrack that was really fast. We cruised up to Kent Lake to get the CP, then continued on up to Bolinas Ridge. The trail to Bolinas Ridge was STEEP. We didn't think anyone could ride it. It is probably rideable, if that was the only thing you were doing that day. We pushed our bikes almost the whole 2 miles. After we gained Bolinas Ridge we knew it would be easy to get to the kayaking TA.

Because we'd been on trails the whole day we made the decision to cut down to Bolinas-Fairfax Road, and ride the road to the CP even though it would add about 3 miles. We were on Bolinas Ridge trail last weekend and it was absolutely nasty. We didn't want to experience that again. We felt like it was a good decision and while it may not gain us any time, it wouldn't loose us any and would definately be less strenous.

We kept a decent pace on the bike, especially considering Matt and Brian havn't trained to ride such large distances. We were averaging about 13 mph on the roads. When we got to the kayak TA there were perhaps 25 bikes or so. It looked like we were middle of the pack.

By the time we left the Kayak TA to go on the water it was 3:20 pm. We had to pull the boats out through mud at low tide. Brian was really not happy with this. I thought that was something they definaetly had to put in the race! Since Brian and I were not even wearing our own clothes, who cares!

We had to paddle sit on tops. Since I'm the strongest paddler on the team I got to go solo. We paddled the big plastic barges through now strong winds and against flood tide to get to the CP almost 3 miles away. Brian and I were wearing wetsuits and paddling jackets and we were definately not hot. Matt was wearing just nylon pants and he was cold. He got out to get the CP on the beach and he was running through the sand.

We got back in the boats and Brian was in full out Bonk Mode. I wasn't in the boat with him and didn't really get what was going on. Him being in Bonk mode allowed me to paddle as fast as them with me giving 100% effort. I guess I'm pretty strong in paddling because in Louisiana, races are at least 50% paddling by time. Its routine to have 30 miles or more of flatwater paddling in a race.

Once back on shore, we had to get ready for Brian's strongest part of the race. So I wasn't worried about him that much. We ate, changed, and got ready in about 20 minutes. Started on the hike and Matt said it was his favorite part, because it was like a break. The navigation decision was either to go through a neighborhood with winding streets, or go up the trail we biked down in our training. We choose the latter, deeming that the extra 10 minutes or so it would take would be lost trying to navigate if we went the other way. It was a good decision and we arrived to CP 12 in no time.

CP 13 was perhaps the highlight of the race. We arrived at our landmark we were going to use to shoot a bearing and find the lake at after 7 PM. That means it is dark! We took a long time at the landmark doublechecking things, especially the 15 degree declination which I was not used to. Matt arrived at the same bearing as I did, so we set off towards the lake with me in the lead.

We calculated it was about 0.5 miles to the lake and 400 feet of descent. We generally kept the bearing, following game trails through some of the brush and bushwacking the rest. We heard frogs and saw Linda's team as they were heading out. We got to the lake and it was pretty swampy. After finding the CP we turned around and I told everyone I was tired of leading because it was taxing. Matt said that I should lead cause I lead us here and he didn't know where to go. So, I continued leading.

About halfway up, Matt stopped me and questioned what I was doing. I kept explaining to him that I was correct, but he kept questioning it and did not agree. He was wanting to go 90 degrees from the bearing I had, which would have gotten us to the road but we'd have to cover much more distance. Eventually he agreed with me. His argument was that we came down on the opposite side of a tree line he thought he saw in the distance. This was after he told me to always trust my compass, and he was going against what the compass said. I only looked back once, and that wasn't enough to accurately use terrain features to navigate - I was totally relying on the compass. Eventually he agreed that my bearing would get us back and I lead for about 10 more minutes.

I told Matt I had enough of breaking trail, since I was the one who was doing it for the past hour and it was mentally taxing. Matt said he would take the lead, and he did. Within a few minutes he said he now realized that it was indeed mentally taxing. He pressed on though, with Brian behind him and me in the rear. Then he abruptly stopped.

Not ten feet from us there was a large wildcat perched just watching us. We shown our lights into its eyes and it looked us up and down, ready for some tasty human flesh. Matt took control of the situation and asked for Brian's whistle. We carfully walked away from the wildcat hoping it wouldn't chase after us. We probably looked pretty intimidating and agreed to stay close together. We looked back until we were back at the road, and as far as we could tell it wasn't stalking us. This totally freaked Brian out, and I'd have to admit me as well. Needless to say we were looking back for Eyes every few minutes.

We ran down the road back to Sir Frances Drake en route to the next CP. While walking down another road to a private ranch, a lady stopped and asked us if we were okay or needed directions. We said no, we are okay. We then realized that this was the lady who owned the ranch, who we were supposed to avoid! So now she is obviously home and will obviously see us going through the ranch. Matt and I started conguring a story to tell her - because we had to deny the race at all costs.

We also found Linda's team coming back from the ranch. They said there was definately no legal way through. Matt and I tried to convince them that was the way to go, but they weren't coming with us. When we got to the property and found the fence we were supposed cross it was pretty obvious. There was a van parked just beyond the fence with this lady Jane in it. So we didn't go through the fence. Rather we found the lady who apparently owns the ranch and Matt told our story.

We were out hiking for the day, and planned to do a loop hike but we were caught out late due to navigation difficulties. We were on our way back to the hostel and the map we had showed the easiest way was through the ranch. She seemed to buy the story, and told us that yes, the hostel was about an hour walk through the gate. She said to tell Jane in the camper that we had permission to go through. Then Jane came out and told the owner that there were probably 20 people that came through as part of a race. We were asked if we were in the race, and Matt said no he didn't know about any race. We weren't pimped out in Lycra and we looked like normal hikers, plus we were a good bit younger than everyone else so I think our story was believed. We were allowed through.

In the ranch, there were a number of roads that weren't on the map. When in doubt, check the compass. As well, we were a very good navigation team. Since I'm blind and can't read maps constantly in the dark, Brian and Matt ahd the maps. I was keeping pace, and estimating time, and looking for landmarks at set time intervals, and watching the compass. Brian and Matt were looking at the map. We got on this trail that started going in the wrong direction, we could see the ranch house. Matt noticed this and questioned us after about 3 minutes. We all verified that yes, we should not be gaining elevation and yes we are going in the wrong direction. We came back to the gate and found the faint road to Muddy Hollow along a fence line. We later found another team took the trail we almost took in error, all the way to the coast! This was our only navigational error in the race, and it cost us only about 5 mintues, which I wouldn't even call an error.

After hiking about 20 more minutes we saw a lone headlamp ahead. Whoever it was waited for us and he was lost looking at his map trying to figure out where he was. We found out his name was Hugh and he expected to be out for 12 hours and now it was almost midnight! We told him where we were on the map and he stayed with us through the hike. We decided to take the trail up to Drakes View Road, then down and hike along Frances Drake. The hike up was pretty, with a sweeping view of... darkness. But the starts were out and definately pretty. We played the catagory game for a little while and that slowed us down but provided entertainment. We used Classic Literature for C and things that cause you Distress for D. Some of those were quite specific to this particular race!

We got back to the kayak TA at 2 am to discover we were one of the last 3 teams in. Another team came in shortly after us. They were all going back to Fairfax. I was feeling good and could go on. One of my goals was to get Matt to want to bail, and he did at the TA. So I'd accomplished my goal. The rest was laniappe.

But the real issue was, this was not a race. We were completely independent, and whatever we decided to do we had to get ourselves out of. We were already looking at a 20+ mile bike ride back to Fairfax, which I calculated would take at least 3 hours... possibly 4 if we had to take breaks. If this was a real race, we could go balls to the wall for 24 hours confident that if we didn't finish, someone would be looking for us. Not so in this training event. I had to consider the condition of the team and our ability to "self rescue". Therefore, the decision was made to ride back skip the remaining CP's and ride back to Fairfax.

Two teams left just ahead of us, but I knew we were going to be slower than them. We got on the bikes and I was wearing all my clothes. I thought I'd warm up and start taking off clothes, but I didn't. Brian and Matt were wearing much less than me, I asked if they were cold. We didn't need any hypothermia. Brian was cold so we stopped and he put on a jacket. We continued on and arrived in Olema where the sherrif slowly drove by questioning our sanity.

Going up Bolinas Ridge I took off my jacket, but quickly put it back on for the rest of the ride. I was wearing wool socks and waterproof socks and my feet were freezing. The fog was frosting over on my bike computer. Matt and Brian were out of energy and going unberably slow. I generally bring just enough clothes that I will stay warm by generating warmth from exercise. We were going slow and I wasn't generating the required warmth. So sometimes I would take off for a few minutes so I could warm up, then let Matt and Brian catch up.

Both guys were absolute Zombies. Brian was totally incoherent. All he could think was "pedal pedal pedal pedal pedal". Matt was out of energy and misurable. None of us could eat anything without wanting to puke. But we still did. Matt almost puked but said come on, this doesn't taste bad, and didn't puke. We continued on until the last 0.2 miles where Brian couldn't ride any more. He started walking. We finally go to the top hill and had a fun downhill hitting the car at 5:15 am. There were two cars left, so either they were still on the course (on the longer biking section), or they were crashed at Gordon's house.

We put everything up and I drove home. Matt was quickly sleeping. Brian was trying to have conversation but he was completely incoherent and incomprehensible. I dropped the two off as the sun was coming up. Got home, ate some soup, and went to sleep until noon. Suprisingly, I had trouble going to sleep because it as daytime.

My overall analysis of the teams performance is very good. The only thing that was holding us back was food, which would be rectified in a real race by the fact that you would have TA support; and physical ability on the road biking portions. Matt and Brian almost doubled their longest adventure racing experience. We all were eating every 30 minutes, everyone had high energy through most of the race, we made only one navigation error costing us only 5 minutes, we were at least twice as quick in the TA's, and alot of things went right for us. The things we did well include:

Task delegation. Certain people were responsible for certain things throughout the whole race including:

Matt was in charge of the passport and writing in the clues

Brian was in charge of telling everyone to Eat and Drink every 30 minutes

Task delegation for TA's, Matt was in charge of the Kayak TA, Ross of the Bike TA, and Brian of the Hike TA.

Task delegation of Navigation:

2 people were watching the maps at all times

Each map watcher questioned the other map watcher, even if they agreed, at each point where a decision had to be made

Someone was in charge of keeping pace, time, and direction to the next landmark

Having the Eat-and-Drink Nazi was invaluable. We started this at the beginning of the race. I was never hungry or thirty during the race. We all had high energy throughout the 20 hours because we were disiplined about eating. I ate 7,300 calories during the 20 hours; on track to almost finish the 10,500 I brought in 24.

Here are some quick stats:

The course we did, with only that 5 minute navigation error, was 20 hours long, 77 miles, with vertical elevation gain of 11,795 ft. Our approximate split times were:


Start 09:13 am
Gained Bolinas Ridge at about 1-2 pm
Kayak TA at 3:00, 20 minutes in TA
Back at 4:45, 20 minutes in TA
Hike started at 5:05
Started bushwack to #13 about 7 PM
Hit ranch between 9-10 pm
Met up with Hugh about 10-11 pm
About 2/3 way up Drakes view trail around midnight
On Frances Drake at 1 am
Back at TA at 2 am, 30 minute TA
Finish at 5:20 am

The data from my bike computer said we rode 50.35 miles, with a total time of 13 hours, 34 minutes of riding time, max speed 34.9 mph and average speed 8.3 mph.

Okay.. doing the whole course would have been impossible. The final bike leg as plotted was 48 miles and 13,375 ft elevation gain from the TA back to Fairfax. Subtract the 20 miles we did to get back and yeah, it means it would have been only 28 more miles for us to finish the course. But it would have been hike-a-bike most of the way. We'd have finished sometime tonight. The entire course was 100 miles and about 22,000 ft of elevation gain.

BAAR Brawl Race Report
By Gordon Wright


February 5th, 2005 was the second running of the BAAR Brawl, put on by the Bay Area Adventure Racers. The event is designed to shake off the winter rust, expose folks to the beautiful terrain of Marin County and share the resulting misery with new friends.

It also serves as a stark reminder of how valuable real race directors are. Yes, the Brawl has no permits, schwag, results, prizes or entry fee. In return for the (lack of) investment, you are also foregoing what you can expect in a real race, like support, an easy path around private landowners and realistic course lengths. Your local race directors do a very hard job, and yet they make it look easy, so while everyone enjoys the odd training exercise, be sure to support your local RDs.

Anyway, the course began at my home in Fairfax, California and covered a great deal of western Marin. Too much of Western Marin, actually, which accounts for the fact that as best as I can tell, only one team finished the whole course.

At 9:15 a.m. my son Will let loose the athletes; as near as I can figure, 52 adventurers headed out to do a one-checkpoint, two-mile warmup and then hopped on our bikes for a challenging 29 mile ride.

This first bike leg was heavy on the singletrack, and everyone was outfitted with a legal pass that entitled them to travel on the Tamarancho trails. This is technical stuff, though my team got through it pretty well. Rich Brazeau, a Raid Gauloises veteran and Explore California series race director, amused us all with a rolling tumble into a creekbed. Kevin Walker is my best friend from high school and a 2:48 marathoner who was doing his first real AR. Austin Murphy, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, is my regular teammate, though we hadn’t “raced” together for nearly 18 months, and it seems that he must have been using an EPO/testosterone in the interim, because he was frighteningly strong through the entire course.

Kevin struggled a bit with the singletrack, and later told me that he was trying to figure out how to drop out after the first leg. The dude completely recovered though, and pulled us for many hours much later in the race.

After the singletrack, we all got to climb the vertiginous face of White’s Hill, where I was tempted to brag that I had once cleaned the thing while riding with Ned Overend and Austin. Since I was hypoxic and pushing my bike, though, I thought it prudent to keep my mouth shut.

It was about this time that my bike decided to betray me. On the decent from White’s Hill, my NiteRider jiggled loose of its strap, hit the ground and - moored as it was to the lens on the handlebars by a bouncy cord - sprung up to poise like a hummingbird in front of my face for a Wiley Coyote moment before falling into my front wheel.

Given what could have happened at 32 miles per hour, I was lucky (if astonished) to get out of that with only a blown front tire valve, which my teammates quickly fixed for me while I shuffled my repair kit. Moments later, my rear brake started to feel funny, and a quick check confirmed I had snapped a brake cable. Looked like I was going to do another 19 hours with only one brake.

After descending White’s Hill, we got to check out two of my favorite ridges of all time: San Geronimo Ridge and Bolinas Ridge. Unfortunately, that also meant climbing up San Geronimo Ridge, following that all the way down to Shafter Bridge, then climbing 1000 feet up Shafter fire road to Bolinas Ridge. It was worth it though; the views were spectacular and the descent from Bolinas Ridge to Olema is one of the best I know, even if you have to do it with one brake and veer around a bunch of curious cows.

We hit Olema and started pacelining on the five-mile road to Inverness, where Blue Water Kayaks held the TA. One mile into the road ride, I bonked like a rookie, and our paceline went from a consistent 17.5 mph to … about 12.5 mph whenever I tried to pull. I don’t know why I even tried - we went much faster when I just sat in Rich’s or Austin’s slipstream.

A bit of food was a great recovery, and we were pleased to find that there were only a few bikes in the corral when we got there. Team Subaru, Team Silly Rabbits and super solo Phil Lovalenti were already out on the kayak course, as was Team Shooting Star Adventure just ahead. We had a great paddle to the CP at Heart’s Desire beach, where my wife and kids were waiting. It was great to see them, but a bit hard to leave. I felt like just asking for a ride back at that point, but my teammates were raring to go.

It should be noted that I didn’t have to run to the bathroom to get the CP - we knew all of them already. This was a sweet advantage, as we didn’t have to do much navigating the entire course. I estimate that even if a team had flawless nav (and many did), we STILL had a 4-5 minute advantage per CP.

The kayak was awesome, as we went with an ebb tide on the way out and had a stiff breeze at our backs for the return. Tons of harbor seals and even a glimpse of a puffin. Total time in the boats: 1:15.

We were done with our transition and ready to leave by about 3 p.m. for a gorgeous trekking leg. I had paid in bloody rash for setting this segment, so I was glad to see that the teams had as much fun doing it as I did in creating it.

Well - we all had fun except for Team Engine’s wildcat confrontation. That’s no fun.

We left Blue Water in Inverness and caught Shooting Star at the top of Mt. Vision ridge; prudently, they stuck with us to find CP 13, a tiny lake well off any trail (and no, the answer is not “Mitten,” it is “Circle,” there is a perfectly round, teeny mini-lake at the edge of the tiny lake). After following a southwesterly ridge all the way down to near the off-limits private ranch, Shooting Star veered away to contour north and east of it while we strolled onto the property to say howdy to the owner, Ann. She’s a great woman, and we were dismayed to learn that, despite explicit instructions to avoid the ranch, the lead teams managed to stumble right onto the property. A very tough-minded ranch resident sent them packing, and they had to contour all the way around west of the ranch, where they extended their misery by jamming ALL the way down to Drake’s Head to snag the championship option.

This allowed Shooting Star and our team to find ourselves tied for first place (albeit without hitting the Drake’s Head option) once we were back on Muddy Hollow in Pt. Reyes National Seashore land. To our amazement, however, hot on our heels were the Rabbits, Subaru and Phil, who had done the entire loop at what looked to be about a 7:30 minute/mile run. They came back east on White Gate trail and quickly pulled away from us on Muddy Hollow even though I kept trying to ask Roy Malone questions to slow them down.

After the Muddy Hollow CP, the last on the trekking leg, we ascended Drake’s View trail, a good route choice as we attained the ridge just as darkness was setting in. We ran down the road, hit Sir Francis Drake Blvd, turned north and ran all the way to Inverness, dodging the grumpy locals who largely drove in a manner designed to make us dive into the weeds.

We had a great time during the legs so far - especially the trek, where we talked, laughed and stumbled around gawking at the views. I have to say, my teammates are the funniest, fittest group of dudes you could ask for.

And our training event got even got better, before it got much, much worse.

We hit the town of Inverness with a pretty universal bonk going on. We needed food, and sure enough there was a cozy café still open. And who was there when we walked in? The lead teams, enjoying some pizza. Shooting Star had just run past; they didn’t stop, just cruised on to the TA. We, however, sat down with the leaders, ordered some quiche, coffee and clam chowder and enjoyed the convivial vibe.

Subaru and Silly Rabbits (with Phil) polished off their pizza and told us they were headed back - on the road - to my house and they were done for the night, even though they all looked like they could go another several days at the same torrid pace.

We weren’t sure what to do with that information - and we also didn’t know that Shooting Star was also packing it in and heading back on the road. We were now in the hunt to “win” this non-competition, through no merit of our own. We definitely wanted to keep going, just to prove it could be done, but we were all nervous about the last bike leg, which I optimistically thought we could do in six hours.

This was an abysmal joke. The ride home lasted ten hours. It featured 45 miles of riding and at least 5 miles of pushing. I can’t even begin to theorize how much vertical we did, although we got a final altimeter log of nearly 14,000 feet for the entire race.

The route really would have been nice to see, had it been light and had we not been delirious. After leaving the café and gearing up, we headed on the bikes back up to the top of Mt. Vision, did some really cool ridge-line singletrack, a bomber descent, a grind through the wilds of Firtop Mountain in Pt. Reyes, another bomber descent to Olema and then a killing, surreal ascent of Bolinas Ridge using Randall trail.

Austin, Kevin and I have all ridden up Randall before, many times, and had never failed to clean it. But in our altered states, it was sick; we must have pushed 50 percent of it. And I started to literally feel sick - to my stomach. Once we got up it, it was nearly 4 a.m., I was dry-heaving and we still needed to traverse half of Bolinas Ridge to get to the paved Ridgecrest Blvd.

This was terrible. Austin stopped to put fresh batteries in his headlamp, and I took the opportunity to lose consciousness. My teammates, kindly, laid down to make a puppy pile around me and we caught about five minutes of sleep before we all started shivering.

Upon FINALLY reaching Ridgecrest, we needed to pull another ascent, from 1500 feet to 2100 ft, the highpoint on the course. Hey, at least it was paved and the night views were cool.

We missed the Laurel Dell turn off (yes, the event director got lost), had to backtrack, and when we bottomed out at the Dell, I had to command another short nap. This only lasted a couple of minutes, though, as it was getting really freakin’ cold. So we did our last climb out of Laurel Dell, paused to congratulate each other, and roared all the way home.

Pulled into the driveway at 6:15 a.m. 21 hours on the nose. We all just looked at each other and asked, “How did we do that?”

It turns out we were the only team to finish the full course, largely because I was racing with some tough mothers. Hats off to Subaru, Silly Rabbits and Phil, who were clearly the fastest out there, and to Shooting Star, who were very fast and very fun to “race” against.

Ross was right on in his race report: I think it was 96 or 97 miles, though I don’t think we did 22,000 vertical feet gained (maybe gained and lost a total of 22k?). But Ross probably does have good topo software. Which I do not. Which may explain the ongoing curse of the BAAR Brawl finishing percentage.

If it happens next year, we’re going to make it easier. I know I said that last year, but I’m serious this time….

Special thanks to Blue Water Kayaks in Inverness - please use them and take the time to thank them for their hospitality when you do. Also thanks to the Royers, who brought a large complement of water bottles from Cyclepath in Hayward. Many thanks to Ralph and Kevin for helping set the sick bike legs. Yet more thanks to Dave Palmer of adventure-race-reports, who has the makings of a real race director. The special Jack Youngblood award goes to Brian Schmitz and his Dirty Avocadoes team, who suffered FIVE broken chains, one broken spoke, one broken derailleur and one broken collarbone (see photo) and did it all with a smile.

And a big thanks to all who lined up, you are all studs: Karen Lynaugh, Ken White, Cynthia Royer, Kevin Walker, Jen Stillwell, Beth Fordyce, Will Gillmore, Brian Schmitz, Karl Royer, Roy Malone, Dan Barger, Jon de St. Paer, Jennifer Kleff, Carl Lee, Oliver Pohl, David Palmer, Ross Capdeville, Peter Johnston, John Wiess (Bliss?), Austin Murphy, Anthony Cotton, Hugh Magen, Kellen Glinder, Greg Barber, Jason Quinn, Tenacious MD, Linda McLean, Michael Liftik, Ryan Madison, Eric Krantz, Jacqueline Wollman (superb handwriting, Jacqueline), Matt Fitting, John O’Donnell (back for another year), Don Daniel, Michael Brill, Jill Vialet, Adam Kaye, Jesse Olive, Gavin Keith, Mark Irwin, Diana Monsahe, Mark Richardson, Grant Sisler, Rick Baraff, BJ Hamel, Brandon Nugent, Brian Cox, Randy Franklin and Shelly Potts.

(A couple of others entered forgot to write their names or wrote them so illegibly that I can’t figure anything out, eg: I M (maybe B) lehce. Also, if I misspelled your name, your handwriting sucks).

Take care, and have fun out there.


Brian Schmitz's Collarbone, Post-Brawl

Hats off to Gordon for once again risking the health of his marriage, the safety of his children, the emnity of his neighbors, the sanity of Marin land managers, and the wrath of the the lady who LIVES IN A TRAILER DOWN BY THE PADDOCK (sorry, couldn't resist the SNL reference).

All apologies and sympathies to Gordon's teammates, clearly saddled with a man possesed by a grim determination to finish...this......thing. No way anyone else was going to climb all those freakin' hills and pass through a campsite at 2 AM--at least without prize money at stake. Your reward? You get to call yourselves "Team BAAR," should your families ever let you race again. Wear it proudly--you earned it the hard way.

Props to Dave for posting photos and elevation and GPS tracks; to Ross for pointing out the giardia potential on Bo Ridge (did you bleach or boil your water bottles after the race?); to Brian for sharing his scary x-ray; and to the Blue Water Kayak folks for watching our bikes all night while blasting the Dead.

Seriously, Gordon, another fantastic, brutal, fun, laid back, and just-the right-amount-of-wacky event. Thanks.

Ken White

So this weekend I participated in an event called the BAAR Brawl. Now, let me be very clear, this was not a race (that would be illegal and permits would be reguired) but rather an event where a course was set out by an awesome individual (nameless to protect) who spent the time scouting a course and then had a group of adventure racers go out and find the points. As most of you know, navigation and I do not get along. Well, this was race #3 where I was trying to "navigate" and it did not go well.
I managed to rope Jon De. St Paer into racing w/ me for this event. Jon has never gone longer then 5 hours, so I figured a 12-24 hour training event where he could bail out at any time would be perfect. He had heard all the stories about my navigation, but since we were going to be in Marin, how badly could I mess up? The morning of the race I show up and I think Jon is nervous. I have managed to forget food (kind of important for a 12 hour race) my altimeter (hard to find out where you are for sure if you don't have the altitiude) and a UTM marker (hard to know where you are supposed to go if you put the points in the wrong place). My bad... Probably why I never won any awards for most organized. As I'm trying to figure out where we are supposed to go a guy comes up to me and asks if he can join us for our race. He forgot to get any maps at all, so I figure hey, that sounds like something I would do, he must be a good guy! W/ very little discussion, Tony is going to join us. Not only that, he has an altimeter so that will help. To top of all my mistakes, we show up a bit late, so when the Event Organizer says "GO!" I'm still trying to figure out where the heck we are supposed to be going. Not a good way to begin.
The event starts w/ a quick run up to the top of a small hill to find out "How many posts at top of singletrack". That is how all the clues were given so that there was nothing out on the course that would make people think there was a race in progress. All of the Checkpoints were posts, signs, how many locks on the gate, etc. It was really an awesome idea and event. We finish the run and have to stop by the car. See, w/ the late start, I was still wearing my sweatshirt, andrunning clothes, but the next section was a long bike and I had to change and pack my bag. Oops. So, after a quck change, we hop on the bikes and we are off. We head from Fairfax off to Tamarancho for some of the only LEGAL single-track in Marin. Great place to ride.
Up to the top of Tamarancho and then up and around Pine Mountain. Absolutely beautiful day, no clouds I'm out on my bike in a great area. Side note: This is why adv. racing is so much fun. Outside, beautiful day, great views, w/ friends, exploring a place that you would probably never go normally. Back to the story: Only problem so far is that Jon is fast, really fast. So while he bikes along talking to people, I'm swearing under my breath as I try to keep up and try not to die. The guy might not be human, there is some debate. He's flying up the hills, down the hills all over the place. I try to remind him that the event is going to be 12+ hours and he might want to take it easy. Nope, never happens. I assumed at some point he would get tired, but no. Awesome to race w/ just a bit more painful. In the meantime Tony is sticking right w/ us as we travel all over Ping Mountain heading towards Peter's Dam near Kent Lake. The navigation so far is going well and no problems, but as we all know, that's not going to last long.
After CP 7 we head onto Sir Francis Drake and towards Olema. We get there and then contiune on Highway 1 heading towards Point Reyes Station (I stop and buy food) and towards where I think the CP is supposed to be. This is where I made my one little mistake. See in my hurry to plot all of the points, I happened to plot this one on the wrong side of Tomales Bay. Yup, I managed to plot the coordiante in the wrong place. (The worst part of all of this is that it could lend some credibilty to the fact that the coordinate that was plotted in the wrong place for the App. Extreme, could belong to me). So, as we are biking along the east side of Tomales bay, the kayak store that we are trying to get to is on the west side. That's not good.
Eventually we bike past the point where I think the kayak shop should be and we decide to look at the map... Hmm... Doesn't seem to make a ton of sense so then we look at the coordinates for where we are supposed to be going and it all clicks. Now, this should have all made sense before. This was the only CP on the east side of the Bay and everything else was on the west. That should have set off a few warning bells, but nothing going off in my head (yeah, I know what you are all saying). Now that the mistake has been made, we've got to ride all the way back around Tomales Bay. I take out he map and look and think hey, it looks like we can cross here on the Tomales Bay Trail. Mistake #2... The good news is that I think we were the first people to ever bike Tomales Bay Trail. The bad news is that while it looks promising, you can't cross Tomales Bay anywhere until you ride all the way back aound through Pt. Reyes and back. At this point I'm a little bit worried about Tony. Here's this guy who I don't know, who has now been following some idiot all around. Unfortunately for him, he followed me to the wrong side of the bay and then on a "short-cut" that did not quite pan out. Jon in the meantime is cracking up. He thinks it's the greatest thing ever that after hearing all of my navigation stories, he now actually gets to see how badly I can mess up in person. I ask Jon if he thinks Tony has any violent tendencies and then I ask Tony if he ever gets violent. After Tony says no, I explain to him that there is in fact no brige to cross and we have to bike all they way back and around. Tony then picks up my bike and throws it in the Bay. Just kidding, but I would not have blamed him.
So we finally get to they Kayak shop (probably an extra 15+ miles of biking and about 1+ hours) and hop into the boats. Since the tide is really low we have to walk out in shin high mud that is covering barnacles. Why people pay good money to put this stuff on their faces is beyond me. I know a place you can go for free and get all the mud you want. The kayak turn out to be awesome. There are all sorts of seals and birds all around us following us as we paddle along (by the way, if you make seal noises, they don't reply, I checked). We get to our beach (find out how many fountains are outside the bathroom) and paddle back. The paddle took us a little under an hour and a half. Now we are on our feet and heading out.
We start to jog and turn around and Tony has stopped. When he started to run he managed to pull the tube out of his Camelback and now all of his gatorade is leaking out of the bottom of his pack. That's not good. He fixes that, refills the water and we are off again. The problem w/ plotting a CP in the wrong place is that instead of trekking around in the light, it is getting dark. We nail the frist trekking CP and then there is a bushwack section. I have a hard enough time navigating on a paved road when it is light out, but we decide to try it anyway. After about 20 minutes of cutting our legs to pieces (and getting poison oak), we decide not to keep trying. Since the odds of me navigating us to the right place are lower then the chances of a complete miss, we hike back up the hill to the road and move on. It's training, not a race, so it doesn't really matter. We finish all of the trekking section around 11:30 and decide that enough is enough we're going to bike back to the start.
Jon and I have been talking about In and Out Burger for nearly 2 hours at this point and we realize we are not going to get back before it closes. We're sad, but come up w/ a back-up plan. Dennys. We finish the bike get in the cars and head to Dennys. That's a whole different story time, but there are weird people in a Denny's at 2am.

Grant

Thanks to Gordon for suggesting the BAAR Brawl.
Although intended to be a training session for a 24 hour race, which I have never done, I never had any intention of finishing the event, but I thought if I went for 12-15 hours at a moderate pace, and got some experience, then it would be a successful event for me. I have participated in two of the 6-11 hour format races (Red Tail ~9 hours, Ocean Blue ~7 hrs) and a couple of sprints. I thought that this would be a good opportunity to push myself a little further, get some night navigation experience, and night biking experience.

The short version is: Crazy. Awesome, Overwhelming, Challenging, Great learning experience, “Don’t run around the woods in the dark by yourself”. Let’s do it again. I am a little itchy.

----Read on for the longer version, if you wish------------------

Since I couldn’t convince any of my friends that this would be fun for them also, I decided not to do the “find a teammate” thing among people I didn’t know because I really wanted to practice the navigation and I wanted to be able to bail at my discretion without affecting a potential teammate’s goal. This may not have been the best decision, but it would not have been my only bad one.

I spent Friday night learning how to plot UTM coordinates (love the internet) and trying to mount my friend Mark’s borrowed light onto my bike (thanks Mark for the loaner). Nothing like waiting until the night before...

Sat morning I arrive in Fairfax ready to go. I plot the first set of coordinates and was quite nervous; I wanted to check with someone else to make sure it was right. But then I noticed that it was right next to the dot I made the night before of where Gordon’s house was. Well at least I know where the start is. I plotted 20 of the 26 coordinates and stopped because it was time to start.

We started with a 2 mile run and everyone was going at a chill pace which allowed me to say hello to some of my friends who I hardly noticed while my nose was to the map during the plotting session. I was among the lead groups out after transitioning to the bikes but lost them when I decided to stow some stuff in my car.
Easy ride to Tamarancho, great singletrack ride up, and then we left Tamarancho and started heading west. I was moving at a moderate pace among some incredible scenery. At some point I met up with some great guys (Grant, Tony and Jon) and we kept passing each other and eventually rode a bit together from about White Hill past Kent Lake/Peters Dam to Bolinas Ridge. I noticed that a zipper had opened on my backpack but it looked like I only lost some Hammer Gel (not exactly). I also had a bottle of Gatorade bounce off of the bike. I chill out (~noon) to have some food and they take off. After eating, I look forward to finishing the mtn bike ride into Olema and buy a drink, but the liquor store/deli is closed.
After just finishing about 24 miles on trails, I know have about a 5 mile road ride to the kayak. I find another store in Inverness open and replace the Gatorade, which took only about 30 seconds to drink. There I met some road bikers who asked if I was doing the BAAR event and when I show them the map they are aghast at the amount of terrain it covers. The dude is happy to have gone for the road ride with his friends instead.

A few minutes later it is 2:30 pm, I am pulling my kayak across about ~50’ of shin deep mud (which is covering some nasty sharp stuff). I kayak for ~4mi on the bay with tons of birds and seals. Great nature scene. As I am close to finishing, I see Grant and crew just starting the kayak. They had made a fateful error after leaving me by going to a mis-plotted spot on the wrong side of Tomales Bay. When I am finished, my leg muscles are pretty darn stiff so I have trouble walking across the mud. My hand has also cramped so it takes me about a minute to let go of the darn paddle.

At 4:30pm, I leave my bike at the kayak place along with half of my possessions so that I could run a little lighter. I decided that I didn’t need my gators (???). I decided I didn’t need food for more than ~4 hours, and I needed my glasses to read the fine details on the map. Can’t find the glasses. Oh , they must have fallen out of the backpack. These are the expensive ones I just bought in December. $%^&**^$#$^%&.

Anyway, I hit the first trekking CP with ease but it didn’t look “exactly” like the map and I wanted to be 100% confident as the next CP was off trail. I didn’t want to head into the woods without knowing exactly where I was starting. I waste some time backtracking, checking the plotting just to make sure. Fine; everything was good. I have had no significant nav errors yet, but life was going to change. I head into the woods looking for the lake that is the next CP, and I scramble through low lying thorn bushes. Every few feet the thorn bushes got taller and were intermixed with poison oak bushes. (uh, why didn’t I bring my gators?) I am now tripping, rolling, falling and getting caught in the poison oak and thorn bushes (which are taller than me now). I was not making good progress, my legs were bleeding and the sun was setting. I decided I should get out of the woods and re-think this approach.
When I get back to the road, I started thinking that it was getting dark and I should evaluate what my plan should be. An angel pops up on one shoulder, in the image of my mother, saying “go home, you’ve done enough, it isn’t safe to be out here in the dark”. The devil, in the form of co-worker Russell, appears over the other shoulder saying “Dude, this is fun; you came out here to do this in the dark, keep going”. A little thought, and I decide to skip CP 13 and continue on without a second thorn bush encounter.

Easy jog the long way to CP14, hop some fences, and I was moving along a dirt path connecting to the trail system in Pt Reyes, north of Limantour. The trail disappears from under me. I go back & find it, head out again and it disappears. I decide that I must follow the compass, but my big nav error here was not clocking my travel. I somehow totally overshoot my intended mark (trail intersection) and end up at another one, which I thought was the intended one. At this point, every trail intersection had signs that did not make perfect sense because I kept thinking I was somewhere else on the map. That and I was looking for Muddy Hollow Road but occasionally followed signs for Muddy Hollow Trail, which apparently, are not the same. Several times I chose trails that seemed to disappear on me, or went the wrong way, so I re-traced my steps. It is also hard to read fine features on a 1:48,000 scale map using the magnifying lens on the baseplate compass because one does not have their glasses.
At one point I adjusted my headlamp and the battery compartment opened and I heard the sound of metal bouncing, in the dark. There I was, lost, alone, now an hour past the 8:00 “stop and go home” time, not on a trail and in the dark. And yes, this was supposed to be fun. Of course at this point, the stars were out and it was incredible. I had this lame red laser thing which provided almost no light but enough for me to get the batteries into the headlight but I saw no small metal part that had pinged on the ground. With tremendous relief, the headlight turned on.
I went back to the last intersection that I knew of and decided to see if it made perfect sense for any intersection on the map. It did – but what am I doing over here? I then retraced my steps – how did I get there? That’s what I did? Huh! I now knew my way but realized I had a long way out, on more trails.

I started making my way and was doing great but then I saw some headlights coming and decided it would be better to join another group as my nighttime navigation skills were pretty disappointing so far. I joined up with Matt, Brian and Ross who had the navigation thing going well, but I think Matt was bonking a little bit. We walked together for about 2 hours on trails (up to and about an hour on Sir Francis Drake road. I would have preferred to move faster but I was very thankful for the company and the nav assistance.

I arrived back at the Kayak/bikes at 1:45 am. I had spent about 9 hrs in the woods for what I thought would be 4 hours. I ate lots of food and drank a lot of water. Another team of two (John and ?) rolled into the TA (after the 6 of us there were no remaining bikes), and they announced their intention to head back to Fairfax. I decided to ride with them, starting to feel like the safety in numbers thing was a good idea. (Should have listened to BJ’s pre-event advice). We rode for over 2 hours (19 miles) on Sir Francis Drake back to the start arriving at 4:15 am. Thankfully I rode with those guys because my bike light decided that it wasn’t properly charged and started going into the blinking Beacon mode with half an hour left. I went to Gordon’s garage to see if we should check in, and there of course was no one there, and nothing really looked like a check-in station. However, there in the center of the garage were my glasses in their case!!! Much thanks to the person who found and returned them.

Summary: I put on about 50 miles on the bike, ~4 miles kayaking. Hiking was 20+ miles, but wandering around it is hard to use the map to estimate how much more. 19 hours of exercise. I have hundreds of cuts across my legs, cuts on the bottom of my feet, a limp from a sore calf, and poison oak blemishes almost everywhere. I met a lot of cool people, learned a lot about proper (night) navigation, and many lessons on what I will need if I participate in a real 24 hour race.

Thanks to everyone who traveled with me and made my life a little safer.


Stupidly, I only had 3 hours of sleep and a couple of meals before my buddy Jon T picked me up to participate in a sailboat race. Another beautiful day, though.


***
Hugh "Posion Oak Itch" Magen

Gordon Wright passed along this exchange with Gavin Keith:

Gavin wrote:Gordon-

We want to thank you for organizing this event. You, and the others that contributed to the race, were very cool. Anyway, I wanted to briefly share our experience.

I think we have the honor of finishing DFL – dead f**king last. We rolled into your neighborhood 21 hours and 55 minutes after the start. At 7:05am, we were the only cars left on the street. We were all wondering how everyone did, because we never saw anyone after the kayak leg.

My bike odometer showed approximately 75 miles of riding and our altimeter measured 12940 of climbing. We did vary a little bit - We bagged 18 & 17(after 15) as part of our trek(without bikes). We weren’t sure if you said we had to take them in order, oh well.

Miscellaneous comments:

- We were slow in transitions. After reviewing the CP’s at the start, we realized we had to carry everything for the entire race – We had to re-pack for a non transition area route. A rookie mistake.

- We gleefully took the single tracks through Tamarancho. Only after we rolled to the bottom of some great curvy track, did we realize we had to climb out and over White Hill – ouch.

- We’re the team that rolled out of CP 5 on Pine Mountain Loop in the wrong direction. It was only short time(20 minutes) until we realized the mistake, but enough time to rattle my navigating confidence.

- We had one good injury sustained in a bike crash, but we were able to patch it up and push ahead (see notes below…)

- Getting to CP13 was awesome. We scampered down the hill on animal paths and successfully found the hidden lake to the side of the main lake. We were very proud of ourselves. That was until we left for CP14 and knowingly charged down into the scrub oak. Yes, you warned us of the difficulty. Yes, you were correct that it only gets worse the deeper you get into ravines. Only after the stinging nettles reacted with the deep gashes sustained from the brush, bramble and poison oak, did we come to our senses. We lost over an hour getting back to a ridge line. Unfortunately, it led right through the off limits ranch property. We went stealth, and except for the stampeding cattle and barking dogs, I think we went un-noticed.

- This was the first time we navigated at night. It was so interesting. One particular experience occurred on our way to CP15. We came to a gate where we thought there should be a path of to the left, but couldn't find it. We were on a ridge and it was pretty cold and windy and we spent a good half hour trying to find the right direction. We headed up one way and it just didn't make sense. Eventually we headed back to the gate and found the trail -- had it been in the daytime, it wouldn't have taken any time at all but the darkness really changed everything.

- We saw so many animals – The sea lions and birds during the kayak, herds of deer moving like birds thru bear valley, skunks, raccoons, owls – not to mention the hundreds of pairs of eyes that reflected back to us during the night riding…more than a few looked like predators…

- We all agreed we should have brought better clothing. On the return trip up Randall trail, along Bolinas ridge and up/down back to Fairfax(around 4am) – we cycled between intense over heating to freezing our a**es off – I think it kept us awake.

Anyway,

Three of us have already started massive doses of prednisone to counter the already developing severe cases of poison oak. And, our fourth teammate, spent two hours in urgent care last night getting antibiotics for the staph infection developing in the road rash and arm gash she sustained after a nasty bike spill coming down from the spill way. (I was rather proud of my field first aid treatment, but the attending physician wasn’t very happy that she waited over 30 hours while we completed the race and took a nap…)

We’re very proud that we finished. It was pretty slow and we made a lot of mistakes, but the memories will be lasting. Don’t change a thing. We look forward to next year’s event.

Thanks again
Gavin Keith, Jill Vialet, Jesse Olive, and Adam Kaye

Gordon wrote:Un. Freaking. Believable. You guys are absolutely amazing. You've just snared the Hard Team Award. Unbelievable tenacity and toughness...Jill - are you mental? How is everyone feeling?

Just so you know, the easy route from 13 to 14 was to head SSE for about 150 yards through short chapparell, then when you were at a huge dead eucalyptus tree you can catch an abandoned ranch road that is totally runnable and heads due south to the edge of the ranch property (where you could then countour SE and then back SW to get 14 and avoid the ranch).

So, but tell me: did you hit every checkpoint? After climbing (or pushing, as we did) Randall, did you head SE on Bolinas Ridge and go through Laurel Dell and everything? Tell me what y'all did, because if you give me all the right answers, you're officially runners-up in the Brawl.

Actually, now that I think of it, you guys snagged second anyway, regardless of your route, because other than my team, you hit the greatest number of checkpoints. Congrats!

Uh, not that its a race or anything.

Glad to hear your spirits are high, and sorry about the poison oak. Oh, and can I post this to Dave at ARR?

Gavin wrote:Gordon-

We hit every checkpoint except CP 26 – Laurel Dell. After climbing Randall and following Bolinas Ridge to Bolinas Fairfax Road, we decided to head home. So, we really didn’t complete the course either. Again, it was a totally awesome experience. Are you going to post the answers so we can compare our results?

You’re welcome to post our message…
Thanks for everything.
Gavin

Wow, reading these stories is incredible. I suppose that I can add a couple notes to Dave's and mine adventure. Basically the scariest thing that happened to me was nearly colliding with a skunk. More on that later.

Saturday morning was the first time Dave and I had met each other, but upon meeting him, and having a couple face-to-face conversations, confirmed my belief that he was, and is, a really good guy. Later on in the day when he picked up a branch to knock me off my bike and kill me, I questioned my decision. No. Just kidding. I'd race with him any day.

Like Dave said, the early portions of the day went well. We used the seat-post racks to carry our food, and they worked great. When I saw that Dave had nearly the identical set-up as mine, I knew we would get along.

We only plotted the first 6 UTM points when we started. Later, I realized, it was probably a good idea that we didn't have knowledge of the extent of the course in our minds. Psychologically, I'm not sure I could have handled that. When we made it to the next section of plotted points, it started to dawn on us that a crazy man was in control of the course, and we had only just begun.

We were the last ones to make it to the kayaking section, like Dave said. Fortunately I grabbed the boat and used it as a crutch support to take weight off of my barefeet so I could walk out there and drag it while Dave got the lifejackets and paddling gear. Only one cut on my foot.

Moving on from the paddle was rough, our legs were frozen and we needed to get moving. But our clothes were also soaked. Kudos to you people that can take all that stuff in stride. I have a new appreciation for what the human body is capable of doing. Someday I'll get there. Anyway, we started out toward CP 12.

We found the dirt road from the main highway toward CP 12. And as indicated from Gordon's notes, this was a quiet zone. I of course forgot this. And blabbed and babbled about who knows what to Dave's patient ear. Lights on, everything. Only upon reaching CP 12 did I realize that we made it unscathed in spite of myself.

CP 13 was where both Dave's and mine spidey senses were turned on to full alert status. Sure it was dark, no clear trail defined, and we had been warned about the difficulty in finding the CP. But when we reached the point where we were about to step into the brush. We stopped. Now, up until reading other people's posts, I thought we were just being chicken, but now that I know people saw a mountain lion, I don't feel so bad. We bagged 13 and decided to go for 14. Niether Dave or myself are big guys. Dave's taller, but armed only with a pair of whistles, two headlamps, and a couple pocket knives, we figured it would be better if we had just one more person with us. Onto CP 14

To the solo competitors who did this: you have ice running thru your veins, get it checked out.

Well we didn't make it to 14. We proceeded down the road toward the main highway, and Dave thought he had a couple rocks in his shoes. When he took his shoes off to expose the bloody socks, we both figured his feet could use some attention. He had gashes in both feet, and was walking on these things with ZERO complaint. He flushed out the cuts, and applied some neosporin and some duct tape. And then we took a look at what the rest of the nite had in store for us.

Yikes. Compiling the problems of Dave's feet, the rest of the course that we had to complete, and our progressively slowing pace, it was clear that at some point both he and I would be "going down". Turns out, that happened just before we made it back to the cars.

We make it back to the bikes and have a midnite conversation with the boat guy. At some point the whole nite started taking on a "Harold and Kumar" feel. We swapped a couple stories and found out that the teams preceding us had changed the man's world view of what islander kayaks are capable of. Then he added, "oh you guys went fast too." That guy was cool.

The skunk. How hard is it for an animal to just sit still? As I was riding in front, getting mesmerized by my shadow from Dave's MAJORLY bright light system that puts mine to shame, I saw the little referee plodding along, ready to call some 'pass interference'. It was jamming by the way. I move to the left, it moves to the left. I can't move right, it's halfway in front and to the right of my front tire. I freak out.

"SKUNK!!" I yell to Dave who I hear laughing behind me.

"SKUNK!" I yell, as it comes closer to my front wheel. More laughter.

Finally, I remember that I have brakes, but by this time, I'm in the middle of the road. Now whose about to be road kill?

After nearly missing the skunk, I start to uncontrollably yawn. For the next 15 miles.

Dave puts on what appears to be a furious pace, and I'm wondering what he's been eating, because none of the food I have is doing me any good at this point. I'm tired and ready for warm air vents, soft car seats, and sleep.

So that's the end of my story. After I dropped Dave off to his car, and mistakenly started to follow him toward Fairfield, I got situated and made it back to Campbell.

Looking forward to more stories, and races. Great job on the course Gordon, it's given me a lot to think about and prepare for the next "BAAR Brawl!!!" (said in monster-truck-rally announcer voice).


-Brandon Nugent
http://www.nerdsonice.org/

BAAR Brawl 2

A Dirty Avocados Race Report.
By; Mark Richardson

Prelude: What’s a Dirty Avocado? The day after my 41st birthday in December I met up with Brian Schmitz and a couple others for a ride in Henry Coe Park. Here I was introduced.to Will Gilmore. We chatted about the upcoming AR season and Brian told me he was putting together a Yahoo Group of racer adventure. The group is made up of people he’s raced and or trained with who he’d like to race with again. The group started as Team TBD but became Dirty Avocados.

Race Day Arrives

For the brawl we were made up of Brain Schmitz, Will Gilmore, Jesse Bolton, Jeff Patrick, Mark Irwin, and Mark Richardson…that’s right, a six person team. The thought was that with two navigators, Will Gilmore and myself, we might possible split up into two groups after the paddle section which we figured would be in the daylight hours. We arrived and parked down the hill from Gordon’s place.

Will and Jeff plot CPs.

We dallied around a little too long and ended up rushing to plot all the CP’s before the start. We got the pre-event “non-event, we’re not really here, and this isn’t a race but….”, speech. A few minutes of prep and we were ready to start.

The Race Begins:

The first leg is a quick two mile out and back run. We started at a fairly tame pace out to the hill which was dang steep. The turn-around was where the trail met a fire road and we had to know how many posts there were. We were around the top five or so back to Gordon’s (CP2/TA1) where we transitioned to the first mountain bike leg. We rode west on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and tuned north towards Tamarancho. CP3 was at the start of the trail and we had to record “the third word from the bottom of the private property sign.” We passed some people and were passed by some people. We arrived and wondered if Gordon meant the third from end of the last line, or the third above the last word in the last line. We spent a bit too long stopped here and when we started rolling again we were passed by Subaru, who’d apparently returned to their vehicle for a forgotten item. The trail was some fairly steep but rideable single track trail that switched back and forth up the hill. We reached a trail intersection where most teams went left and followed the winding single track. We opted to go right, catch a road, and speed around toward where we needed to go. The plan worked great and we moved much more quickly than if we’d stayed on the single track trails. We reached Canyon Trail and headed west.

Team Heads West, Karma Heads South

On the Canyon Trail things began to go awry. Will suddenly stopped, his chain had broken. Mark Irwin had team’s bike repair kit and did a chain repair but it took a couple tries to make it work and we waited about 15 minutes on the side of the fire road. We were confident that we’d made the right navigation choices but were now wasting our advantage sitting along the trail. Finally we were up and rolling and at the next steep hill where we make a left turn onto the Blue Ridge Trail….pop, Will’s chain had snapped again. Another frustrating 15 minutes and the realization that we had no chain lube with us. Mark Irwin and I warned Will to try not to use his small chain ring as the problem appeared to be chain suck on the small ring.
Many of the hills we were traveling had short sections that were too steep to ride. We came to an intersection where we stayed left. To our right we saw two teams heading up White Hill, one walking bikes up the ridge on the fire road as we intended to do, and another dragging their bikes up an impossibly steep grassy slope…what was up with that? We traveled south east to CP4. We followed Blue Ridge Trail until about 1/10 of a mile from CP4. Here the trails on the map and the trails on the mountain were not the same. We ended up walking our bikes down a steep single track and landed right on the CP. We saw another team that was leaving the CP and one arrived while we were there. We’d all approached from different directions. We had to take a bearing, then we were off and making good progress.

Shedding the long sleeves on White Hill.

We headed west and walked our bikes up the steep fire road over White Hill. We flew down the hill and a couple of us had small, inconsequential crashes. We hit some steep section on the way to San Geronimo Ridge Road but were still moving fairly fast when once more Will’s chain snapped. We’d come to a short, steep, rocky section along the ridge trail and into the small chain ring he’d shifted…old habits die hard! Our kit was now out of extra links and pins. Mark Irwin did another repair in about 10 minutes but we aren’t able to really get underway because Will’s drive train was making a lot of noise. Investigation revealed that the last chain suck had pulled the front deraileur out of alignment. Mark Irwin again made the repairs and we took off. We seemed to be passed by a team or two every time the chain broke, I was wondering if there could be any more behind us as we’d spent about 45 minutes dead stopped…we had to be in last place by now. (A dependable source told Will after the race that, based on our route choices, we were probably near the lead when the first chain broke, oh well.)
We reached CP five and wrote down the shape of the intersection. From the CP I easily identified Green Hill. Will and I decided to take Hunt Camp road around the north side of the peak and avoid the elevation gain of the ridge road over the hill. I watched the passing terrain knowing we’d turn before heading up the hill. As we approached the hill we were following Will and passed and intersection that I thought was Hunt Camp. We began to suddenly gain significant elevation… this was wrong. I yelled ahead that we’d missed the turn. We turned around and got back on our intended course having only lost a couple minutes. I rode with Brian back to San Geronimo Ridge/Bay Area Ridge Trail, this had definitely been faster than the ridge trail. We stopped and waited….and waited…and waited. Finally someone yells something completely unintelligible. We yell “what?” and get an even less intelligible response. Brian rides back, and a couple minutes later I follow. It turns out that Jeff had broken a spoke. Mark Irwin jumped back into his mechanic role and got us rolling when….it can’t be…yet another broken chain, four in one race! This time it was Jeff’s chain that snapped! The repair was made while yet a couple more teams pass us. We made it back to the intersection as a team and rode along for awhile. After maybe a mile Jeff’s chain breaks again. Same story and two more teams pass…where are these teams coming from?

At this point we have spent probably an hour and a half stopped for repairs. This was a total nightmare, but it was about to get worse. As we got rolling, Brian picked up a full water bottle that was in the trail. He asked if any of us had dropped it. Answer; “no”, but a two woman team and another team were just ahead. We ride over a small knoll and ask the people there if it’s their bottle…no, it isn’t. There’s a steep little pitch on the back of the knoll. Brian is holding the mystery water bottle in his right hand and thinking about tossing it to the side of the trail. He’s picking up speed and goes to brake gently with his left hand. The front brake starts to slow the bike and throws Brian’s weigh off-center. The handle bars snapped to the right and Brian’s left shoulder slammed into the trail, snapping his collarbone.

Brian at the crash scene, arm inside fleece.

Time to Throw in the Towel.

I was ahead of Brian when the accident happened. When Will and I rode back up to Brian someone from another team and my teammate Jesse were already treating him I’ve been a firefighter and EMT for fourteen years so I am ready to jump right in and help, but as it turns out Jesse and the person from the other team are physicians. They unloaded his pack and set it up as a harness to keep his shoulders back. I pulled a triangular bandage out of my medical kit and set up a sling to support his arm. I give Brian my fleece and we put his tights back onto him. A hiker we’d passed a couple of times came along and asked if he could help. Well, Brian’s going to need a ride. He’s happy to help. We walked down to the Lagunitas Creek Trail head, coming within only a mile and a half of CP6. The hiker’s name was Chris. He took Brian, Mark Irwin, and Will back to our cars while Jeff, Jesse, and I waited in the parking lot and discussed terrorism and foreign policy. The gang came back with Mark Irwin’s minivan and Brian’s Pick-up. We got all our gear back to our cars down the street from Gordon’s. We left a not on Gordon’s door and went our separate ways. It was tempting to try and find a couple of us willing to go on and finish what we could. However, we were now waaaay behind, undoubtedly in last place, and unlikely to be able to make the kayak leg before dark. We also would have had to figure out how to split the cars because of all the carpooling. Our mood was still good but our enthusiasm for racing was low. It was easier to save the maps and attempt to try this course again on our own another day.

Jesse, Chris (hiker walking Brian’s bike), Brian, Mark R, Mark I, and Jeff on the walk of shame.

Parting Thoughts.

1. Having six people instead of four increases the odds of someone having a problem by 50%.
2. Having 2 navigators is great!
3. Poor chain maintenance is an issue with the Dirty Avocados.
4. Every single person on this six person team stayed upbeat to the end despite all the adversity, amazing!
5. The Dirty Avocados will be a force at Big Blue and Explore CA races this season.

We got there at about 8:15 – as planned – but were, nonetheless, one of the last teams to arrive. While taking the bikes off the car I recognized some Silly Rabbits parked nearby – they were joking about having over-packed. Looking at their packs, ours really seemed excessively heavy. As we tried to figure out where our excess was, Rich came by with an Explore California postcard – we’re looking forward to that series.

Racers were already at work plotting their checkpoints as we turned the bend onto Gordon’s street – and what a lot of racers there were – so many that it had taken on the feel of a real race. Paper was exchanged, maps marked and folded, and then a young, helmeted adventure racer of the future, with scooter in hand, sent us on our way …

… a nice easy pace … uncertain about running between the horse corrals … but follow-the leader was too tempting. Gordon was seen cutting across the switchbacks as we climbed the steep hill – we all followed suit. Over a fence at the top, first CP done and back down the hill. The horses in the corral were alarmed so we obeyed the voices from the stables that instructed us to go around the corral.

The first bikes were leaving as we got back to the start-line. We paused to take care of some necessities … heading towards the single track, the Subaru pair appeared coming towards us, going back towards the start. “That’s not good!”, said Peter. It didn’t take them long to catch us again though – we let them pass and they soon disappeared. A little later, still heading up the single track, another rider chastised me for cutting across a switchback, “… it’s bad for the trail!” … oops! apologies! point noted!… I remind myself that we’re training and not racing.

As the bike leg progressed, we repeatedly met the same few teams at various checkpoints and intersections. At one point, the Gavin-Jill-Jesse&Adam team from Oakland appeared ahead of us at the Hunt’s camp intersection. How did they do that!? I’m almost certain that they’d gone south from CP5 … while we’d gone North … what’s your “little secret” !? use of teleport is not permitted!! I’m sure that they pulled off some crazy feat to do it ‘coz the next time we saw them they were considering taking a shortcut across the spillway at Peter’s Dam … yup – they’re crazy:P .

I think that even the cattle were bouncing and dizzy as they watched us rattling by on the bone-jarring downhill along Bolinas ridge from CP7. That descent was welcome after the tough CP7 climb, but the jolting had us feeling like mush by the time we got to CP8. Was that a team heading up Bolinas Ridge as we were heading down? – a guy and a girl – they had a map, backpacks and helmets – perhaps they took a long detour out of CP6 to avoid the steep climb.

Smooth road to the paddle put-in … what bliss …

The toughest part of the paddle was getting the kayak to and from the water. The nicest part was washing the mud off afterwards.

We decided to eat on our feet as we started the trek and met another team as we headed up the main road towards the post with the reflector in the concrete drain. One of the girls was from Tahoe … convinced by her friends to try out the BRAWL. We all talked with quiet voices as we trekked along the private road. The views were nice. The reflector counted, they headed down into the dense bushes towards CP13. We paused to look at the map before deciding to take the same route – bushwhack down to the ponds and then follow the contours around to the checkpoint at the small lake. Of course, we were absentmindedly forgetting about the pre-race hint … “take the easy way” ...

“Is that Poison Oak?”, I asked as I picked myself up after a slip-and-fall in the undergrowth.
“Looks like it!”, Peter reassured me. The plants were waist high in places.
(I hate tell the rest of you that neither of us have had any reaction yet ... touch wood! ... we took Gordon's advice on the long sleeves!)

The other team, off to our left, warned us not to follow them, “This is definitely not the way down!” We worked our way around a pool and struggled through some more vegetation to get to the edge of the first pond. Trying to work our way along the contour, we were fighting a losing battle with the undergrowth, so after a short discussion we decided to head back to the road along an animal trail that we’d seen by the pond’s edge. We didn’t see the other team again, but wonder how they got on …

It was only after finding the easy route to CP13 that we remembered the pre-race hint… “take the easy way” ... hmmm ... After retracing our steps from CP13 back to Mt. Vision Road we met some other racers arriving to head down to the lake. That was Ross, Matt and Brian from Team Engine. Darkness had fallen as we started our shuffle down the road towards the nails that hold up the chain in the gate. We saw chains and gates and nails and a barking dog and a camper van, but, thankfully, no-one from the ranch …

Then we got LOST … Well, we knew where we were, but it was a long time before we realized what we had done. We were having a good old natter about all sorts stuff, and pushing along at a fair click, but neglected to pay enough attention to the compass or the time, and took a farm road that was not marked on our map. We did suspect our direction of travel at one stage, and then suspected the time taken to get to a certain gate. We should have been more trusting of our own judgement, and more willing to question the map. Our dilemma realized, we could make out certain landmarks in the dark and judging our position on the map, figured that we may be able to cut across a marsh to the Estero trail. We took what faintly resembled a trail, through brush heavy with brambles and down a steep slope. After seeing some skid marks in the mud I commented to Peter that someone else had been down that way – but we may have been just following our own footsteps – we were all over the place trying to get through that brush. As expected, we made it to the edge of a marsh which we tried and cross over but it was impassable, and nearly swallowed us whole! The only option was to backtrack to Muddy Hollow trail – exactly 2 hours lost … dang … that was a bit disappointing, but we were still feeling good.
(A comment earlier in the day about “not getting lost so far” must have been the jinx … )

The headlights of racers on the hill ahead could be seen as we trekked along Drake’s View. We were able to jog again as we hit the downhill pavement. On the way into Blue Water we tried to guess how many bikes there’d be left. I guessed 10 and Peter guessed 5. He won : there were 6, and they were all accounted for too - Ross, Matt, Brian, Hugh, Peter and I.

We’d already decided that we’d bike straight back to Fairfax. We were more than happy when Hugh asked if he could join us. Team Engine was still contemplating as we left for home. Leaving Inverness I saw Hugh swerve to avoid a skunk …”SKUNK!!” … I was sure that Peter was going to get sprayed, but he managed to avoid it too.

The cycle home was straightforward with a nice whizzing downhill to the finish. Not many cars left. In Gordon’s garage we looked at the signoff sheet, added a note and read some of the others. I was surprised to see that Dan Barger was one of the Subaru pair – hadn’t recognized him, despite meeting him twice on the bike! – he looks different with a helmet and Lycra on!

09:15 : START
09:25 : CP1
09:33 : CP2/TA1
09:53 : CP3
10:29 : CP4
11:30 : CP5
12:20 : CP6
13:18 : CP7
13:57 : CP8
14:35 : CP9/TA2
15:25 : CP10
16:15 : CP11/TA3
17:07 : CP12
18:14 : CP13
20:10 : CP14
(We skipped the Championship Option … )
23:16 : CP15 ( … but it still took us 3 hours to get to the next CP !! )
01:55 : CP16/TA4
(Skipped CP17 to CP26)
04:35 : CP27/FINISH

A quick "Howya!" to some of the teams that we met repeatedly on the course :
- Hugh from San Francisco
- Gavin, Jesse, Jill and Adam from Oakland
- Team of 2 – guy from San Jose and guy from San Ramon - who we met frequently on the bikes.
- Ross, Matt and Brian (Team Engine) from San Francisco.
- Team of 3 – with the rookie from Tahoe – hope that you got out of the CP13 ravine OK!

Hope that you all recover nicely!

GORDON,
Thank-you for arranging this again. Kudos on a nice course, and kudos on proving that it was not impossible! If it were a real race we would have prevailed ... Regards to whoever else helped, to your wife and kids and to all the people we disturbed in your neighbourhood!!

John O'D.

Who are we?

Well, I’m John O’Donnell.
I raced the BRAWL with Peter Johnston.
The third core member of our team is Jean Naughton (didn’t do the BRAWL)

Our team is called Team Gaelforce and we did our first race in 2001. We’re all Irish and we first got to know each other while working and studying in Japan. Other people have joined us from time-to-time for races, but this still remains the core of the team. We didn’t race last year because of other commitments, but this year we’re trying to get back into it – the ultimate aim is to compete in some expedition length races.

Oh … must mention our most excellent crew, my brother Eoghan – who may even race with us this year.

Jean and I live in Belmont.
Peter lives in San Mateo.
Eoghan is in LA.

- My strongest discipline is paddling. I’ve done all sorts of paddling, but now mostly play Kayak Polo (a.k.a. Canoe Polo) and have represented the US at the last 2 World Championships. Try this sport out if you ever get a chance.
- Jean’s strength is in mountain biking – she’s good on her feet too, and very tenacious. Also plays Kayak Polo.
- Peter is a marathon runner – no stranger to endurance events. Have tried to convince him to play Kayak Polo ... but ...
- Eoghan is an avid mountain biker and generally a super-fit gear-head.


JEAN, JOHN, PETER, EOGHAN

Three months and seventeen days ago, the BAAR Brawl II, a training race event in Marin County outside of San Francisco ended for all teams except one that vowed to finish no matter how long it took...

On Sunday, May 22, 2005 adventure racing team Dirty Avocados completed the BAAR Brawl II three months seventeen days after the original start of the event. This is a simple story of team dedicated to finishing together no matter how long the wait for one team mate to recover from a race ending emergency room visit.

Roughly three hours into the February race, team member Brian Schmitz suffered a cleanly broken clavicle and had to walk off the course with teammates to the emergency room. After exiting the ER and still in pain, Schmitz confirmed to another team mate that DA would return to the course to do it over again, “we cannot let this injury stop us from finishing the course, we must have our revenge!”

The “do-over” in the case of an adventure race is quite appropriate as long as the course remains somewhat a mystery to navigators. In the case of the Brawl II, the race received many more reports than usual for any event (See Adventure Race Reports at www.zdap.com). However, two of the navigators refused to read any of the race reports and even acknowledge their existence. Those teammates who did read the reports issued warnings to the navigators, which of course went unheeded. Therefore, the Dirty Avocados team (here after referred to as “DA”) was able to enjoy a course full of adventure and Poison Oak, lots of Poison Oak.

Author’s Note: Given the fact that enough race reports have been written about this race I am going to summarize the events on the course your enjoyment of their pain and their glory. Dirty Avocados team member Mark Richardson has written a very detailed report that will be available shortly giving the play by play.

“Take Two” of the race began ten minutes before the February start had at 8:50AM. Team DA avoided the zigzagging switchbacks and ran up the hill the same way they ran up it in February, straight up to CP1 and straight down to CP2 putting them near the front of the pack before.

From CP 3 to 4, DA had cut across the Boy Scout camp just like they had done in February, but according to a troop leader ranger who stopped DA that course was no option on this day in May (They really didn’t know). They knew that one road was marked on the Tom Harrison Pine Mountain Map as, “no access”, but they did not know that the rode they were stopped on was also, “no access.”

They then biked out to and up Serpentine Trail, but with the added distance forced on them by Scoutmaster Stalin. Upon reaching the base of White Hill, they hammered their way up the Hill struggling to remain on their bikes. Will Gilmore then took a fall. “No…not another broken collar bone!” one teammate yelled. Instead, he banged his funny bone. (Little known medical fact #134: funny bones recover about 100,000 times faster than clavicles).

Somewhere between CP 5 and CP 6, on San Geronimo Ridge remained the slope that snapped Brian’s collarbone and ended DA’s first attempt at BB2. Upon reaching that site, the team slowed for a moment of silence.

At this point in back in BB2, DA had also experienced 5 broken chains and one broken spoke. These mechanical issues cost us some time, but did not damage our spirits given the skills of former bike mechanic Mark Irwin and our clever navigators. Will “yank my chain” Gilmore this time had no major bike breakdowns. But this time Adam Doti did. His front disc brake broke before they started. Though, Doti toughed it out like every good racer and rode with just his rear brake, thus, earning the nickname “Uni” for the race. Luckily for him the nickname has not stuck.

Dirty Avocado’s ride up to Bolinas Ridge from CP6 was the same of a hill that everyone else rode/walked. DA arrived at CP8 covered in their first coat of mud, which by the way is an excellent choice for sunscreens.

At the kayak transition, DA was welcomed by the excited and happy faces
of the Blue Waters Kayak staff (yeah, right!). At first, they didn’t understand why they wanted to brave the typical afternoon Tamalas Bay conditions that would keep most rational people in their beds and under their covers. DA Chief Negotiators Mark Irwin and Will Gilmore told them they had just ridden from Fairfax…on trails. After they bowed at their feat with glory, they suited the team up and sent them on our way.

Observing the race’s 10,000 yard travel rule, Mark Irwin and Mark Richardson bagged the kayak CP and they all gladly returned to the transition.

Back on their feet, DA made it to the lake CP and then their navigators made the same choice as many had done back in February. Proving that they had not read the race reports, DA’s navigators led the group west off the lake and into Poison Oak (“PO”) and Stinging Nettle hell.

Slowly, DA went down into a leafy salad of Poison Oak and thorny vines. Upon exiting, they each admired how the sunset shined brilliantly off the PO oil on their gear and the oozing blood from their thrashed limbs. The team had not race together before and therefore a few biases added to the decision making and the motivation to continue in the thick brush:

1. Sunk Cost Bias (“we have gone this far why not a little more”)
2. The Supermarket Club Bias (“look at how much we saved!”)
3. I see the end of the tunnel Bias (a.k.a. “We’re there, dude!”)

However, at least one navigator would do that again any day (and most of the team would go again in a competitive situation).

The sunset and the moon rise were enjoyed running south on a small peninsula out to Champion Point, (the optional extra credit 3 mile run). They would be the only team to take this point plus go the entire course, but that is with more than 3 months of extra preparation.

DA then executed a sneak operation to bag the CP at the farm/cult compound from the south. To lessen the chance of getting shot, mauled by guard dogs, or caught and brain washed they sent in only 3 members.

Brian Schmitz, Jen Stilwell and Will Gilmore were the conscripts choose and had little choice, but to approach the compound on a road with a full moon to their backs. They needed to find out how many nails were used in the gate or something like that. Standing at a post, Gilmore could see a lady reading in a van parked near the gate. Knowing that the pages of her book would hinder her night vision he casually walked over to the gate and began counting nails. No sooner than he had run his fingers over the gate did a tiny dog perk up and started barking and frothing. Then a larger dog joined the fun. That was their cue…to get the hell out of there! In this confused evacuation half the team went one way and half the other leading to a search and rescue operation done without the use of any lights.

Skipping ahead (not literally) stress was relieved as the team later notes that they enjoyed drinking from a stream of cool soft water on Drakes View Trail.

Several teammates slept on the walk-jog on Sir Francis Drake Drive to the transition. They had a very long transition there before heading back out for the second bike leg.

Much of the team would have to leave at Five Brooks (CP23 of 29) due to work and family commitments, but felt quite accomplished and ready for the up coming season of 24 hour races.

After that the remaining Dirty Avocados headed down the Olema Valley and rode up the steepest climb of the race, Randall Trail and then up the rolling Bolinas Ridge Trail line. At the intersection of the Bolinas Fairfax Road and West Ridge DA became witness to a hit-and-run. Aid was offered by DA, but the victims turned them down and headed off in revenge. So, off DA went into the blaring sun on top of West Ridge.

At the last check point, Laurel Dell half of the remaining DA team was having a hard time staying in the game, but gathered water at the steam and rode to the finish without a single complaint. At the finish line all were revived new again and felt a great feeling of pride having had their revenge on this course from hell.

However, after just a mile of driving home Will Gilmore stopped the car and handed the keys to Jen Stilwell who drove to the Mill Valley In and Out Burger. To this day they are both still there sleeping, in a food coma.

Mark Irwin and Mark Richardson made a good decision after some discussion to stop less than fifteen minutes from Irwin’s house in Pleasanton for a quick nap (most accidents happen within a mile of your home according to “experts”).

Adam Doti, said, “I got pulled over in Nicasio. Nicasio!!! of all places at 3:45 AM, in the middle of nowhere, on a small, winding road, out of nowhere.” Adam was pulled over by Marin Sheriff for swerving and speeding. Even with these 2 strikes, he was let off with only a warning and not even a double take on what he was doing out at 3:45 am on a Sunday morning covered in mud, with a headlamp and map clipped to his chest.

Adam Armijo stayed awake talking on the phone to his girlfriend all the way home. How cute.

Elated on his successful “do-over” Brian Schmitz had no trouble staying awake.

DA continued to suffer from Poison Oak for weeks and in fact, most team members can show you their scratch scars to this day.


Dirty Avocados (“DA”) is a Californian team with many teammates from near Yosemite to San Francisco and elsewhere in California. In February, the six team members gathered for the initial assault were Jessie Bolton, Mark Irwin, Jeff Patrick, Mark Richardson, Brian Schmitz, and Will Gilmore. Due to other race commitments plus more injuries in May the team changed out Bolton and Patrick adding Adam Armijo, Adam Doti, and Jennifer Stillwell. For more information about DA contact Will Gilmore at willisnot@yahoo.com .

While we hesitated to write a race report, we wanted to at least share our experience in an entertaining way. We also want to thank Gordon Wright, an unassuming master race director (and former prison warden, as demonstrated by his course selection) and clearly one of the most prolific PR professionals that adventure racing has today.

Thanks again, Gordon for another super BAAR Brawl! We look forward to next year’s!!

I'm re-reading these posts and I realized that I now know or have since met each of the racers in different races and have come to really enjoy the community of this sport.

When I raced with Dave (yikes almost 3 years ago) I barely new the racers - you guys were just "the competition". Which you still are you SOB's But now, I mean - Brian - OW! that totally sucks that you banged your shoulder. I now understand, after racing against/side-by-side/mostly from behind the DA's why they would need to go back to the race course and hammer it out for posterity's sake - they're crazy fruits.

John O'donnell - I didn't realize you raced this event. I mean, I now use the term "Irish Gatorade" because of that bottle of merlot that was shared at 5:30 am (BRAWL 2006)

Karl and Cynthia were out there - I didn't know them then. All I saw was this couple who were TEARING up the course. Then I started racing with them in 2006 - very cool.

Randy Franklin - who I had met on the hilltop of a Silver Sage 2004 CP - he was volunteering there - I met again at this race and we decided to race together that year - after his ankle healed up from that injury right outside Gordon's house.

There are more people I am forgetting/intentionally leaving out, but you guys get the point. Hang out with people, you get to know them. (wow Brandon, that's quite a revelation), but the real moral of the story is - Everyone is normal until you get to know them. That definitely holds true for this crowd!

Cheers!
-Brandon

Brandon, I know just what you're talking about. As we head into planning the 08 Brawl (5th anniversary!), the Pt. Reyes 05 Brawl remains a favorite. There's a reason that this post has seen almost 10,000 hits (highest, as far as I can tell, of any race other than PQ): it was awesome, with an awesome response from the race field. It was a highpoint of my race resume, and glad that it introduced so many people to each other.

gordon