Jeff Williams And The Adventure Race.

Hey, Chris 

I just wanted to give you the update on the 8 hour Unbridled Adventure race this past weekend in Carter Caves, Ky. This was my very first adventure race, so I didn't really know what to expect and it showed as all of us on my team were all fist timers in the 3 man category. 

I was worried about the amount of running on the trails and bush whacking to check points that my sore knee would need to endure to make it through this race, but the inexperience had a greater effect then our physical short comings. 

So, with that said it was a blast even with our rookie mistakes.  The race was broken up into four legs BIKE, PADDLE, TREK, and BIKE. Heres the rub on the first bike leg we only need to get the first 3 check points, not understanding that the second bike leg was all bonus check points, so we went through the entire bike leg at first clearing all check points since my other two teammates were not that strong on the bike and we wanted to get all that we could while they were fresh. 

Once checking back in at the transition area to go out on the next leg, we found out that only the first 3 check point will count and we would need to go back out to double punch the 4 on the second bike leg. 

What a pisser that now we had wasted 45 mins on the first bike leg. Next the paddle wasn't so bad, other then the two time we almost flipped the boat, but we picked up all of our check points on this leg.

 Returning to the transition to set out on the trekking leg, we need to make up time so we could have enough time to double punch the check points from the bike leg. A few navigation errors didn't cost us much in time, but spent out on energy like think there was a trail at the bottom of a 120 step stair case that wasn't there, so back to the top tired legs coming on for the next 6 miles of trail running and check points. Luckily the Amino Vital was flowing through all our Hydra paks and we continued to push on bush wacking up a hill side and 60 feet down off a bluff, but the coolest check point durning the race was in a cave. 

My Sigma headlamp that James sent me just a week before this race did great back in the pitch darkness of horn hollow cave to pick up this check point. 

With only two hours left in the race our team decided to leave 3 check point open on the trekking leg, so we would have enough time to make it back to the transition and pick up our bikes to go double punch our check point errors. I think we finished in 7hours 10 minutes, totally spent, but not enough time remaining to pick up our lost check point on the trekking leg. We put the ADVENTURE back into Backbone Adventure this past weekend.