From 4LPH41337.com

Contents 1 Blue Ridge Pictures 2 Blue Ridge Map 3 Blue Ridge Website 4 Blue Ridge Results 5 Blue Ridge Reviews 5.1 Josh's Take 5.2 Jordan's Take 5.3 Laura's Take 5.4 Jack's Take 5.5 Holly's Take

Blue Ridge Pictures

Challenging Teams
Team Power Gel'n: Placed 20th	4LP|-|4 1337: Placed 41st (24th unofficially)

Blue Ridge Map

Blue Ridge Website

http://www.adventureracega.com/

Blue Ridge Results

Race Results

Blue Ridge Reviews

Josh's Take

4 hours without water. 5 more hours of recovering from it. My navigation was spotty, we got lost at points. We had a great paddle, since the storm created surf for the canoe that propelled us forward once the wind was at our backs. The 5K at the end felt great. Still bitter about Ron Zadroga not lifting our penalty for missing CP15, since we, in fact, punched it.

Jordan's Take

Laura's Take

Great first race. Excellent team. We didn't have water for the first 4 hours and I experienced dehydration for the first time. I learned you can recover and you can finish 5 more hours of a race. I also learned which portable hydration source I liked best before training for my next AR!

I would like to take this time to look back to the time when 2 sibling rivalry teams went head to head at this epic event.

There was attempts to make the girls on each respective teams enemies, and thankfully these attempts were in vain!

I can remember starting out the race with 4LPH4 1337 on foot and running on a trail, without any packs, and Josh telling us that we had to go straight up the hill. After asking where the trail was, Josh said there wasn't one and the fastest way would be to go forward(buskwacking, but I had no idea of that term yet). I said, "Excuse Me? You didn't tell me this was part of it!?!"

I also recall getting to the next T/A where some people had their bikes waiting on them and we anticipated seeing our support person to get some water. He was no where to be found and Jordan asked a race volunteer if someone had left some water for our team. We then continued on without any water.

I started getting really thirsty, and kept eating the Cliff Blocks I had stashed in the back pocket of my shirt. Josh thought that was what was making me dehydrated and asked to try one and then promptly forbid me to eat anymore. I am confident he will never eat another Cliff Block in his life.  :) I drank out of a few streams, Jordan practically carried me down a hill that I don't recall, and some random team asked me to if I was ok and if wanted to drink out of his camel pack, which I attempted, but didn't get anything because I didn't know how to bite on the valve.

We made it to our bikes and Josh and Jordan made me drink a full Gatorade before we left the T/A. For the next few hours, when I would try to get on my bike, my calf on the ground would cramp up as I lifted the other leg over my bike! I think that I shed a few tears at this point... but got over it.

Then we finished to find that the only people we cared to beat were cheering us from the finish line, already recovered! :) I told Holly I would never do one of these crazy races again.  :)

Jack's Take

Felipe lost a nut off his front wheel not more than a mile or two into the bike section. We fixed it Louisiana style...duck tape!

He managed to finish probably 13+ miles after this repair. Sure, he was a bit hesitant to go above 25mph with a front wheel only attached to his bike with duck tape, but he did it!

Holly's Take

We were given coordinates the night before the race and we had to plot them on the map. We were also given 3 pages worth of instructions that were like deciphering the tax code. We could do checkpoints 1-11 (there were 17 checkpoints) in any order we wanted and how many we wanted to do by bike, was our option. There were 4 checkpoints that we had to do by foot in that section though. There were some that if we got there by bike we had to do an extra one, etc. Lots of options and decisions that each team had to factor and make the night before. There were 4 checkpoint options that our bikes could be dropped for us by our support person (Will) to start biking from. So, we choose a COMPLETELY different route than Josh's team did.

We choose the longer- way out of the way checkpoint that equated to a longer bike and a longer paddle. The other route was much shorter bike but went over a high ridge and a 2 mile shorter paddle. Our route equated to a long bike ride on the road along the river that we ended up doing 26 miles an hour at some points. 2 miles more of paddle only equates to about 30 minutes we figured so it would be worth it. The other route (Josh's choice) was GRUELING according to the racers that went that way. The majority of the top teams including the winners choose our route direction.

The race started with giving us a choice of A,B, C or D on the first checkpoint. We were all grouping around the start with some teams on bikes, some on foot around the start time. I realized that I had mistakenly left my camera in my pack so I was taking some starting line pictures when the race director snuck amongst the crowd and POW went the starting gun. It was a startling start and everyone looked around at each other and then bolted in all directions. It was pretty amusing and it got the blood pumping big time.

At checkpoint 2, I grabbed our passport from Felipe's back shirt pocket to run ahead and get it stamped. Unfortunately, he didn't put it back into the ziplock bag so after realizing it was missing and all of us FREAKING OUT looking at each other with disbelief....he only had to run back 50 yds to find it on the ground. That was a good early lesson for us on the importance of the passport and putting it back in the bag. Without it, there was no point in continuing in the race.

During the treking part, as were bushwacking straight down the side of a mountain, I was grabbing trees as I descended to slow me down. As my foot went into some briars, a tree about 5 inch in diameter that I had grabbed, started falling on top of my back. I jumped to the side as my leg scraped out of the briars to get out of the path of the rotten tree. I looked like I had been attacked by a cougar. So much for wearing miniskirts....ha.

Then, we picked up our bikes at checkpoint 4. Within a mile of picking them up, and while we were pushing the bikes up an unridable creek bed for about a mile, Felipe disappeared behind us. I yelled at Jack to hold up and after a couple of minutes of waiting on him, some of the passing teams informed us that he was looking for something. UGGGGG I grumbled at Jack. So, we left our bikes there and walked back down. He had lost the nut off his front wheel axle (that held his wheel on) and the wheel had fallen off as he was pushing it. Jack and Felipe went back to look for it and I quickly accessed that aside from a quick look, that was a waste of time. It could have popped off a mile ago and the brake kept the wheel from coming off initially. So, our only other options were finding a nut off the bike that would work from a less important position (like the seat height) or the duct tape that I was carrying in my bike pack. We managed to basically duct tape on his wheel enough that we could continue the pursuit of beating my brother who we had not even seen at this point in the race. So, away we went....unfortunately, it made our weakest biker even weaker since he was scared of the wheel falling off and grinding him into the pavement. Luckily, since we choose the road route, it was unlikely anything would happen since it wouldn't be very bumpy.

Checkpoint 12B turned out to be a HARD one. We rode up on a creek in the path and found lots of bikes laid over and one team with their map laid out. We asked them if they had found it and they said everyone was having trouble. Jack pulled out the map and accessed that there were 2 creeks and we should ride to the second one before bushwacking along the creek. So away we went with a team that had been tagging along with us/and us with them for a couple of checkpoints now. .....and then the "loop" trail on the map that we thought were were on suddenly ended into undergrowth. WHAT????? Were the heck are we? and why have so many teams made the same wrong decision? We pulled the map out and talked it over with the other team for a minute and LUCKILY, at that moment, from the opposite side of the trail that we thought the checkpoint would be on, emerged a team. "Did you find it?" we asked. The first guy was pissed off and said "read your map and you'll find it". Jack smirked at me. The next guy, his teammate, shook his head and said "we found it...after 2 hours of looking". So, trusting (which you can't always do) the 2nd guy, away we went and found it and clearly saved us some time because of them.

The paddle was amazingly long. It was about 8 long miles with one checkpoint on an island. A severe storm was coming so we put the pedal to the metal and stroked continuously thinking of lightning. We lost about 15 minutes because we didn't use the double ended kayak paddles. Our mistake. After portaging around a dam, we ended up running 3 more miles to the finish line. There was a team of highschoolers that had exited the paddle with us and they were trying to get the girl to run it. She was having trouble and I just thought...we can't let high schoolers beat us! So, I pushed my teammates to keep running in the pouring down rain. I told them to forget all they had just done...it was just a 3 mile run around the neighborhood...that's how you have to think about it. Races like these are truly just a mental challenge. You have to figure out how to trick your body into performing. It was amazing and exhilarating. I ended up getting really emotional at the end and thought I was going to just do a whaling cry at the end. We crossed the finish line with the GREAT news from my hubby that Josh's team hadn't finished yet. We all gave each another round of hugs for that alone. They came in 25 minutes later....with many stories of why they took so long....but NONE topped our duct taping on a bike tire.

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