24-hour Adventure Race
NH-24 hour Adventure Race and NEARS Final
Racing Ahead Staff / 25.09.2007
With a prompt 7 am start on the water, the teams quickly spread out. At the helm of the safety boat, Pam and Tony Halsey followed the pack out of Winter Harbor onto The Broads which is nine and a half miles long and over 3 miles wide. The wind can create a chop even on calm days which it was doing that morning as teams reported foot and a half swells washing over the sides of their canoes.
Erin and Kristoffer Nielsen manned CP1 in order to expedite teams on their way. By the time canoes entered Wolfeboro Bay they had about a mile spread between the first and last team.
Team Eastern Mountain Sports was the first onto the portage from Winnipesaukee to Crescent Lake on the Rail Trail path. Having wheels to help with the portage was not a guarantee of ease, as some wheels wouldn't cooperate and had canoes steering crookedly down the path. The next portage onto Lake Wentworth was optional and most teams took advantage of going up to a half mile through woods depending on the route versus a nearly 2.5 mile paddle around. Did anyone see the skeleton of a huge snapping turtle near CP3?
Tom Stanley (another relative) in another safety boat watched Eastern Mountain Sports turn around and head back to get a missed CP which allowed Wicked Pissah to move into first place which they held the entire race. Mad Moose maintained a third place standing throughout the paddle despite having only the borrowed canoe paddles from Saco Bound. (They looked like professional canoe racers)
At CP5 racers were met by Chris Edmondson at the waters edge with news that only one person had to run to get the CP. This CP was a bit confusing for some racers if they weren't told by their navigator that they were looking for not the first bridge upstream but the second where 'troll' Bill Greene was waiting under the bridge to mark their punchcards.
At TA-1 there was only a 1- 4 minute gap between each of the first 8 teams, but only Wicked Pissah, Cogg Wild and Mad Moose held that close lead leaving the transition area.
The start of the biking leg was deceptively flat and smooth on the rail trail which led to a long ago abandoned class VI road and more jeep trails where even the 4x4 off road vehicles get into trouble. Teams could drop their bikes and run up Tumbledown Dick Mountain via the steep south side or go around to the gentler north side. The top 3 teams that orienteer Jim Arsenault (who also helped at registration) saw were Wicked Pissah (12:08pm), Cogg Wild (12:16pm) and Littleton Bike Shop (12:21pm) who ended up having a spectacular bike split making up nearly 45 minutes on Wicked Pissah.
During a road section one team was nearly side-swiped by a fleeing truck going 55mph as it was chased by a police cruiser. The truck whipped through a field and hid behind a barn. Meanwhile the cruiser stopped in front of the team and asked them which way the speeding car went. All three team members pointed to the barn. The next team through saw men in handcuffs standing near the cruiser. No names are mentioned to protect the innocent.
The first teams to run up Devils Den, (we like the names of the mountains around here) manned by Gary LeMay were Wicked Pissah (13:35), and Littleton Bike Shop (13:50), followed by the large pack of Berlin Bike (14:15), GMARA (14:17), SPTU/DarnTough (14:19), Canigetawitness (14:22), Hype (14:27), Maximum Overdrive (14:31), and Mad Moose (14:33).
Lots of rough and confusing jeep trails. There were broken spokes, flat tires, bent derailers, falls and endos, but no major damage to bike or human and a nice screaming downhill to Merrymeeting Lake with a long paved but no less hilly section to CP14 manned by Tom Stanley.
Maximum Overdrive saw a car swerve to miss a fox (that was crossing the road) and hit a tree, nobody hurt, but a close call as it happened 200 ft. behind them.
SleepMonsters
