Oakridge 24h 2007
Mergeo.com line-up: Kimberly Shavender, Mike Miller, Dave Russel, Pēteris Lediņš.
Race facts: 24h, 55 miles mtb, 12 miles trekking, 15 miles kayaking. Website: Big Blue Adventure, Results: here. MerGeo.com result - 3rd among 4 person co-ed teams, short-coursed by choice, 11th overall. Not too many pictures since we had no reporters on site: almost the only picture
Eyewitness stories
Mike "Man Of Steel" Miller:
By now you have seen most of the generic highs and lows of the races. I will try and put in a little more of the memorable portions that you probably haven’t heard specifics on.
It was great that we didn’t have to charge all over the area to drop of equipment. We just dropped our boats, bins and bikes at the finish and they took care of the rest-very professional. We were told to have trekking shoes on, have your bike helmets and shoes with you and get on into a van. The 50 minute ride was all up hill which put a big grin on my face knowing that that would mean riding DOWNHILL. After the start on foot, an aprox 4 mile out and back run lead by our Latvian energizer bunny-Peteris (translation-we went out a little too fast for us old people- Mike and Dave) we hopped on a our bikes for a truly epic technical downhill ride. I think that the final “crash” tally in this 35 mile leg was MOS-4, Dave the “Rock”-4, Kimberly-3 and the Latvian Wonderboy-7. Aside from some scrapes and bruises we all faired pretty well and no broken equipment. At about mile 30+ Dave had to swim out into the middle of the river and grab a cargo net, then drag himself to the top of it and touch a water bottle. Back on the bikes we finally arrived at a campground where we were given more maps and had to plot odd bearings (not UTMs) and then charge off on foot again to make our way to the Kayaks where we finally saw our 1^st transition box. This was probably 40 miles into the race and 7-8 hours from the start.
The Kayak was fun. We went 3 in the triple and me in the single following close in the slipstream. During the kayak we had to find several CP’s that seemed fairly easy. One that was probably a 2+ mile round trip from where we had to get out of the kayak and hike and bushwhack to. We caught a few teams and put ourselves into 3^rd or 4^th overall when we left. We finished the Kayak as it got dark with three teams coming off the water at close to the same time, one of them being another 4 person Coed. We hit the trail at a slow run and put a little space between us and the 4 person team. About 4-5 miles into the run MOS (me) began to have the distinct feeling of someone putting Kryptonite in my backpack. When Frenchie’s 2 person team came up the trail on us I was dry heaving my guts out lying in the dirt on the side of the trail. This it turned out, was to be a continuing theme for the rest of the night. I think that I must of read somewhere in the directions that somewhere in the race one of the teammates has to vomit their stomach at least 40’ before the team can continue. If you ask anybody on the team they can attest that I gave it my best effort to win that contest. It was not a pretty picture.
After racing with Ruri I thought that I was done having to interpret a language from another country. Only to be paired up with the Latvian Wonderboy who also has a think accent. I will try and leave you an image that you will not soon forget, hopefully it will not leave you with nightmares. At approximately 1:30 in the morning we are going down a lonely gravel road looking for a small spur road (that doesn’t really exist) with Peteris and MOS are doing a duet (this is no lie!), the Latvian Wonderboy is singing Latvian military marching songs and MOS is loudly displaying the unhappiness that his gut is feeling with very vocal dry heaving. I believe that all of the animals in the woods were quietly quivering in their dens over fear of what in the heck was happening. You have to stand up and salute Dave and Kimberly for not wanting to ditch both of us head off into the brush and hide. I am not sure how they put up with it all. I guess that that shows how much you come together as a team, just like me having to closely examine Ruri’s bare butt for a bee stinger in the last Trioba. Ruri, does that mean you and I have to get married? But so I digress.
After a brutal bushwhack, we (mostly me) struggled into the next TA to pick up our bikes and do another 25+ mile ride towards the finish. I spent most of the time laying in the dirt trying to get my stomach settled enough to continue on while the rest of the team put all of the pieces together. Thanks team-You guys Rock!. We had caught up to DART who had spent quite a bit of time there trying to get one of their teammates gut back together. Here was where I really started to slow our team down. I was able to get on my horse and ride for a while but them would need to get off and dry heave (since I am not talented enough to ride and heave at the same time, it tends to be more of a full body seizure that would surely result in a wreck). Once done, I would climb back on and ride until I had to do it all over again. They would patiently wait for me to writhe in the dirt for a while each time and then help me get a little further along the way. You guys were awesome.
With about ten miles left to the finish, Kimberly took a stick into her de-railer and broke it off. Dave the Rock quickly made it into a single speed and we were off again. With about 5 miles left Dave was pretty much dead towing me just so that we could get done. Otherwise too much exertion would send me into nasty stomach convulsions. When we arrived at the finish, no one was there. Dave grabbed the microphone and announced to the whole campground that that great and mighty MERGEO.com had completed the race and was now finished. Dave, nice touch. I believe that we still ended up finishing 3rd for the 4 person coed teams, but we could of easily won had I not been a boat anchor for almost half the race. Thanks for all of your support. I hope that I didn’t gross you out too much trying to show you all the inside of my stomach. The MOS felt a little more like MOB (Man of Boloney) at the end of this race. I now have a team of doctors trying to figure out what went wrong (actually not, but I have found someone doing some research on endurance athletes who have their stomachs shut down after a certain numbers of hours into a race. I will keep you posted).
Good luck Ruri, Julie, Glen and Matt in Montana. I will hopefully see you at the start. AV, I gave Glenn 6 tubes of Nuun to take back with him. I also gave Kimberly the extra 2-pairs of shorts and Dave’s racing jersey. Kimberly has the other jersey to round out what Ruri gave me at the Trioba.
Happy Racing,
MOS (sort of)
Pēteris Lediņš:
Now about emotions/facts - The spreading out in the first stage could have been larger - it seemed they had a lot of land availability, I would have gone for a small rogaining like orienteering. The idea of taking us up was brilliant - all downhill rocks. During downhill they should have added some checkpoints so that no teams should even try to go off the trail. Interesting that several people were having problems with bikes in some 100m interval. Kayak was nice, the first point in the stage was somewhat strangely put when looked at map. Interesting that they allowed night kayaking - e.g. kayak stage was planned so that you could get darkness pretty fast. After kayak we were first between 4pers coeds. Trekking up the hill was good, but it seems we should have slowed down since it was giving Mike problems. Bushwhack was hard and after it I had lost lots of energy - I did most of it with two backpacks, found it hard to tow anyone afterwards.