Untamed New England Adventure Race
Team Odyssey at Untamed
Shane Hagerman (Team Odyssey Adventure Racing) / 17.07.2012
From June 20th to the 24th, 49 teams representing 11 nations lined up ready to race an AR Worlds qualifier. The race director, Grant Killian, and his dedicated Untamed New England staff did an incredible job delivering a world-class event, producing one of the premiere races in North America this year, and one of my favorite races ever. When it was done, we finished a very respectable 8th overall and 7th in the coed elite category.
The race began for us back in late 2011 as we solidified our team and committed to this event. This was a huge focus for us and one of our “A” races for the year. After months of preparation and some great races earlier in the year our team was ready to go.
Andy Bacon, Mark Lattanzi (racing with Goals ARA) and I travelled together, meeting up with Charlie Roberts and Jen Moos at Northern Outdoors, the event site/host on Monday evening. It was great seeing everyone jazzed up for the race. I know I was a bit nervous…did we bring the right gear, enough food (as always way more than enough!) and focus on the right events in our training? It was too late in the game to change anything now. We were due at Tuesday’s check-in at 4 pm, and what we really needed was Charlie’s bike to be delivered - it was already two days late! Our back-up plan of driving to Walmart an hour away and buying a Mongoose did not sound like a recipe for success! Packing, repacking, meeting new friends and getting reacquainted with old ones were the order of the day as we prepared for Tuesday afternoon. Much to our relief, Charlie’s carbon fiber Specialized steed showed up on the FedEx truck around noon and we could relax and focus on getting to the check-in. Now, it was full game on!
Tuesday night was spent pouring over maps, finalizing our gear bins (35 pound limit per bin barely covered food!), identifying routes and coming up with a solid race strategy. We wrapped up preparations around 1 am, with the final Captain’s brief scheduled at 6 am the next morning. There is never enough sleep the night before, but we were committed to getting the planning done pre-race, not out on the course.
Lots of moving parts on Wednesday morning, bins weighed and loaded, vehicles moved, gear grabbed at the last minute. Finally, we were on the buses and moving to the start. A sense of relief swept over me, as we were 100% committed to the race, regardless of what we did and did not have with us.
A Packraft Start
The race kicked off with an airplane circling overhead as a mass of over 170 racers inflated their packrafts and prepared to move out. We were right next to our sister team, TeamHalfwayThere.com, and close to our teammate Mark Lattanzi who was racing with the Goals ARA team. Then we were off…some teams choosing to immediately put in to the moving water while others chose to run. This was a common theme throughout the race, as we often had to select both the route to take and the means of travel – whether to packraft or travel overland on foot.
SleepMonsters
