report on thunder rolls adventure race

We headed off to Oquawka, IL (about 100 miles south of Davenport, IA) last Friday for the Thunder Rolls Adventure Race - 24 hour. The stars were aligned for us this weekend as both Rich and I felt great.

We got our maps at the pre-race meeting at 7:30pm, after about two hours of plotting our checkpoints and route planning, we headed to get our gear ready. The race started at midnight sharp with a two mile prologue run around the little town before hitting the bikes.

Now I do have to say I have never started a race like this but at midnight in a small town there is some drinking of alcohol that goes on. As we jumped on our bikes just past midnight there were 70 teams of two and three blasting thru town, well the local girls didn't want to miss out so they came out in front of the bars and yep boys you guessed it they gave the guys on the bikes and eyeful - it kept me laughing the whole way.

So after we jetted out of town we hit the gravel roads/double tracks - there were lots of mud holes to dodge on the double track for awhile. One thing with adventure racing is that only sometimes I look down at my computer and barreling down a gravel road at 20mph at 3 am is sure priceless!

We next arrived at a ropes course which we had to pull ourselves across the rope with our bikes attached. We arrived and saw our two rival teams (one from St. Louis, the other from Minnesota) there, we were right on them. We finished another 10 miles or so on our bikes and arrived at the orienteering section. We had ten points to get and boy was the underbrush unforgiving!!! I sit here at work and look at my arms - yes it looks like I got in a fight with my cat over the weekend. Thorns, twigs, sticky bushes, did I mention poison ivy. But we ran about 10 miles to all the CP's, did I mention this was a very sandy part of the state so our running was all in sand or at least most of it.

We were in 2nd place off the bikes, the first CP got us and we looked for it for about an hour. We thought we were out of the race but we kept running strong and came back to our bikes to learn we were in 3rd place. Now if that is not a lesson in life - don't quit until you're done because you never know where you'll finish.

We jumped on our bikes for another 10 back to the transition area. We grabbed our paddling gear and headed to the canoe put in. We paddled about 22+ miles in the the slews of the Mississippi of which about 10 miles were against the current - that was not so much fun!!! Okay it was one of those things you just put your head down and get thru! Luckily we hit all the controls on the water and didn't have to back paddle.

Next we ran back to our Transition to head out on another trekking section - this one was about 5-10 miles (more sand), we cooked this section and made it back to the bikes. We had about 20 + back to the finish - did I mention we were biking on a lot of trails which happened to be horse trails??? Well I don't know how many horses we met on the way back which meant we had to stop get off our bikes plus they tore up the trails which made them slower. Oh well, we adapted and pushed on :-).

We ended up finishing in about 17 hours (I believe, my mind kind of forgets the time!!!). We placed 3rd in our division (our rivals beat us but not next time!) and 4th overall out of 70 teams from 7 states. We were happy with our efforts! We are now training hard for our 36 hour at the end of September, this upcoming one is around the Berryman trail in the Ozark Mountains and will have about 50+ miles of awesome single track plus lots more running, biking, and paddling. We are looking for lots of hills between now and than. Good times for sure!!!!

Debbie