New England Adventure Racing Series #2
A Barrel of Fun
Tracey / 05.06.2008
The race started with a tapped keg of Woodstock Inn Brewery Ale for teams to sample at registration Saturday evening; a great way to start any race! What felt like just a few hours later, early on Sunday morning we were all grabbing a quick bite to eat and heading out on the 45 minute drive to the start of Racing Ahead’s point to point 12-Hour Adventure Race starting at Fox State Forest in Hillsborough, NH. The race began with team captains lining up with their hands behind their back to receive an orienteering map, directions and a punch card. They then ran to their teammates to plot their route through a ROGAINE course prepared by veteran orienteer Ken Walker. Teams had up to 4 hours to collect 20 checkpoints and then transition to mountain biking. Twelve teams got all 20 CPs, within the time limit, which had a penalty of 1 CP for every 5 minutes late.
Teams then had a choice to plot a full mountain biking section of 25 miles or a short course of 16 miles. The Full was more of a trek at times with tough hilly unrideable sections, while the Short had a few urban CPs along with a bike-whack across a stream.
The last leg was a paddle on the lake-like Contoocook River again with Full (11 miles) or Short (9 miles) choices both with a split trek section on each side of the river. Ideally a team would send a runner to collect the 3 CPs on each side while the paddler got the 3 river CPs. There were some interesting choices here as teams could drop their runners anywhere along this stretch of river. Some team-members chose to swim across while getting both sides rather than wait for their canoe to ferry them. Everyone had to be back in the canoe for a 2.5 mile paddle sprint to the take-out and then a short run to the finish-line at Race Headquarters at Camp Spaulding in Concord NH.
At the finish-line teams were rewarded with on-site showers and a great post race party with grilled kielbasa, hot dogs, salads and Woodstock Inn Brewery Ales. Awards and raffle quickly followed to allow teams time to drive home with some light left in the day.See All Event Posts
