SPROUTE 2006
SPROUTE Sprouses up Spring
Jon Neely, Photos by Will Ramos / 07.04.2006
Experience eventually pays off in adventure racing. The lessons are like so many rounds of electroshock therapy. And sometimes you’d think it would be easier just to take enough power to light a small city and run it through your tongue. But if you hang in there, you eventually see all the tricks and potential traps of course design and just might be able to apply that knowledge to make an easy day of a tough course. HR Adventures Sproute offered Team GOALS ARA (Bruce Wong, Jeremy Kuhlen, Kristen Dieffenbach and myself) a chance to put all our hard earned knowledge to work. Sproute was a 9-Hour Race in Pocahontas State Park outside Richmond, Virginia on Saturday April 1st. Quite a successful season kickoff they had 47 teams show up for the long course that we would be doing and quite a few others signed up for a sprint that would start later in the day. Friday night, however, there was a check-in and mystery prologue to be tackled. Results from the prologue would determine start wave position the next morning. With four waves and four minutes between waves we realized it was in our interest to take the prologue somewhat seriously.
We showed up at Peak Experiences gym ready to run and navigate at night but found out the prologue was a pair of climbing activities in the gym. Two shots at a dyno in the bouldering section to gain either a 10-second or 5-second time credit. Which would be applied to a combined climb time from two members scrambling up a small wall. I’ve played in rock gyms a little so I stepped up to the dyno attempt. What’s a dyno move? You jump from a low position on the wall to a higher position and stay there by grabbing onto a handhold. Realistically though it was really a ploy by everybody else on the team along with the gym’s teenage staff members to laugh and point at me hanging off the wall in my Go Lite Stride shorts.See All Event Posts
