Results & Reports - 2005 Save The World Adventure Race

Enduraventure Claims Victory at Save the World

Report by Lisa Randall

This past weekend Lisa Randall and Bryan Goble of team Enduraventure were joined by Ardie Olson of Mighty Dog for what proved to be a great race filled with tough navigation and team challenges near beautiful Baker Creek State Park in South Carolina.

The race opened with a short lake swim to a mass of canoes that were tied together out in the middle of the lake. While my teammates and I had strategically eyed one of the faster boats as our craft of choice, apparently the race organizers did the same thing as most of the fast boats were conveniently located the furthest from shore. Being a relatively slow swimmer and not watching where I was going, I ended up near the start of the line of boats and needed to swim down to the end where I hoped my teammates were. This proved to be quite a challenge as I had to dodge flying paddles and canoes from frantic racers trying to get to the shore quickly. Once I got in the boat we opened our instructions envelope, which basically said we needed to do one lap of the 10 mile mountain bike loop at the State Park. Due to the 8:45 pm time cutoff for the bike loop, we knew we had to transition quickly to get out on the trail so we could finish before the cutoff. Once we were rolling, we quickly took the lead on the single track trail and held it the entire loop despite a few wipe outs on the slick bridges and roots that seemed to lurk around every corner.

Back into the TA in first place we received our next set of instructions and our UTM coordinates. Here we had to plot approximately 25 points on several different maps. We were told we could do the points in any order and by any means of human powered travel, so we opted to do the paddle to land-nav section first, as it was dead calm and lake nav is pretty straight forward, even at night. With Snickers Marathon on our heels, we picked up our first couple CP's, one of which was hung from an old railroad trestle which was a bit tricky to punch. After a strategic portage, we continued onto the land nav section which was full of fun and games. We arrived at one of the CP's and soon learned it consisted of a ropes course, an obstacle course, and an additional control point that we needed to plot. Since we were the first team to arrive, we decided to tackle the ropes course first since it had bottleneck written all over it. Ardie chose the timber climb and rope bridge, Bryan the knotted rope, and myself the climbing wall. Each rope element was a 30 minute penalty if you fell, so it was important that each team member choose the appropriate discipline(s). All went well except for the evil knotted rope, which turned out to be much harder than it looked, and we got out with only a 30 minute penalty.

Next it was off to the obstacle course where teams had to complete a series of military style obstacles while tethered together. The only notable obstacle was the slippery log bridge which we ended up just crawling across in an attempt to limit our losses. It wasn't pretty by any means, and I think Goble was confused as he appeared to be lying down and napping, but it got the job done and we were on our way. The remaining CP's were pretty straight forward with the exception of two of them which we had to attack several times before finding. The lack of distinct features made pinpointing these CP's quite a challenge.

After picking up all the controls, we headed back to our boat to paddle back to transition. By about halfway back, I was growing ever more intolerant of the uncomfortable paddling position and the canoe yoke that had been poking me in the back the entire time. I was overcome with joy and relief when I saw the lights of the Park Pavilion. We arrived back at the TA around 5:30 am and transitioned to our bike gear.

We took off for Bussey Point in the early morning hours and were greeted with a nice sunrise along Hwy 220. We made quick, but tiring, work of the road ride down there and picked off the CP's one by one. Most were less than a quarter of a mile off the road and since it was relatively open, they were pretty easy to spot from a distance. Then it was back on the bikes for the long ride back to Baker Creek State Park for the final CP's that were scattered near/throughout the park. We picked up the remaining CP's in a manner similar to what we'd been doing at Bussey Point, dropping our bikes and running in on foot to get the punches. When we arrived back at the TA, our final obstacle was the wet wall which was actually surprisingly fun and felt good after a hard morning of racing. Ardie leaned against the wall and let us climb up, which got Goble and I up and over. Since we didn't have the help of other teams, we used a sling I had with me to pull Ardie up and over the wall. With a big splash we were finished and crossed the line in First Place. All we had to do was sit and wait to make sure no other elite teams came in within 30 minutes, which they didn't, so Enduraventure took home top honors, some great shoe certificates from Merrell and a $400 sponsorship towards the National Championships. This was a very challenging and well run event that I'd highly recommend to anyone.