Peregrinus Orior

by Robertson, John

  By five thirty-five in the afternoon, the team was jogging their way out of the transition point. They had dropped their bikes for Kevin to load back into the van, taken a quick rest and calorie break, had their logbook signed off and were on their way. They had planned on twelve hours for the mountain bike segment and were pleased to have completed it in slightly under eleven hours. In some ways the twenty-seven-mile running segment they now faced would be easier, but in some ways it would be tougher.

  On the easier side, it would be more downhill than up, descending from 7,900 feet down to the shoreline of Goose Lake at about 4,700 feet, though there would be one stretch where they would have to regain about 2,000 feet before continuing down. However, a long downhill run can be harder on muscles and joints than the same distance on a flat, or even slightly uphill stretch. It was also only a third of the distance of the mountain bike segment.

  On the tougher side, it was running, not riding. Their full weight, including backpacks, would be on their feet and legs, not split up between legs, arms and seat. This would be an especially significant factor for the men whose greater upper body musculature was an advantage on a downhill bike ride but was just extra weight on the running segment. Lastly, it would be night in a few hours and the latter half of this segment would be run in the dark. Darkness has no effect on energy consumption or muscle fatigue, but it definitely has a psychological dampening effect. It also makes navigational decisions much more difficult.

  The topographical maps that had been issued to all teams had the start point and finish point of the running segment clearly marked. However, there were several different possible paths they could take through the network of unpaved county roads and trails spanning the first three-quarters of the descent, and route selection was up to each team. Given that part of the twenty-seven miles would be covered in darkness, there would be one mandatory checkpoint and aid station shortly after the point where all the feasible routes converged on the Fandango Pass Road for the last quarter of the run. Several SUVs would be available to track down any teams not passing through the checkpoints within their predicted window.

  Carlos had studied the alternative paths the prior evening and had marked what appeared to be the shortest, straightest route. He had also tried to identify prominent landmarks near each junction point where they would need to turn. He had measured and noted the number of paces between each landmark and each junction, and the compass heading they should be on after passing each such point. They each had clickers for pace-counting, one click for every ten paces, and at least two of them would independently count the paces on each section of the route. In daylight it would be relatively straightforward to follow the chosen route. Once darkness fell the risk significantly increased that a team would turn at a junction prior to the correct one or continue on past the correct turn, either because they didn’t realize it was time for a turn, or they just missed seeing it in the dark.

  The team planned to alternate between jogging and walking, making sure to reserve some strength for the final kayak segment, though that would involve upper body, not leg, work. Carlos had roughly planned where they would run and where they would walk, starting with a long run to make the most of the remaining daylight to get past some of the more complex navigation points near the beginning of the segment. That would also bank up some extra run time to allow for more walking on the uphill section of the route.

  They were soon approaching the point where they would turn off the Oregon Trail onto the road network, and all four were feeling pretty good. That’s when they began to catch sight of another team in front of them. At first they would only catch a glimpse as the other team rounded the next bend in the trail, but it was soon apparent that they were gaining. There was a temptation to close the distance more rapidly and overtake the other team, but Helen, who was setting the pace, cautioned against doing that this early in the run. She kept the pace steady and easy. For a while, as the other team became aware of them and picked up their own pace, the separation between the two teams increased. This continued for about five minutes until the team in front was no longer visible while Helen continued to set the same steady pace. Another five minutes later the other team once again came into sight and, if anything, the gap closed more quickly than before.

  As the police team closed up behind the other team near the turn from the trail onto the road network, the other team again picked up their pace and began to draw away. A few minutes later they came to an abrupt stop and moved to the side, with one member heaving on all fours. The police team also halted briefly to confirm that the other team were in control of their situation but soon resumed their steady jog. In fact, it was not just a single team that they had caught up to. There was yet another team just disappearing around the next bend, which was the entry point to the road network, as the police resumed their pace.

  It appeared that the two other teams had been running one behind another and the front team had also been bouncing their pace up and down to stay in front as the police team closed in from behind. The cycle repeated itself and soon the police were nipping at the heels of their next competitors, although this time the other team seemed determined to sustain a position about thirty yards in front. After another few minutes of this, Carlos quietly called a halt.

  John, Fiona and Helen gathered around Carlos, slightly puzzled. It was true that he was responsible for planning their walking breaks but they were less than twenty minutes into the run, with a good stretch of daylight still before them, so it seemed much too soon to slow to a walk. Carlos quietly advised them that they had just run past what he believed was a turn required to follow the shortest route. If they continued to follow the other team, then both of them were going to at least add an extra half mile to the route, with increased risk of further navigational confusion in identifying the correct junction to turn back onto the shortest route.

  Carlos led them off the road to the edge of the adjacent forest and backtracked parallel to the road for about fifty yards and then turned off onto another road where it intersected the one they had been on. The intersection would have been easy to overlook in the dark. It was reasonably visible in the soft light of the late afternoon, especially if you knew where you were and were therefore on the lookout for it, as Carlos had been. Clearly with the pressure of pursuit, all members of the team ahead of them had missed it, including their navigator.

  Navigation skills were an important competitive aspect of the adventure race, and Carlos basked in the glow of his teammates praise as they hydrated and resumed their jog down the mountain road. However, they kept their celebration brief. Assuming that no other team had missed the turn, they were now in fourth place but knew that they had yet to face the more elite competitors. For some, holding onto fourth spot in their first long race might have been enough. For John Forsythe and his teammates, they wouldn’t be satisfied with less than the front of the pack. As it turned out, the only other front running team that had missed the cut-off was the nonconforming duo.

  The sun was low in the western sky a little over an hour later as the team turned right off the well-graded county road onto a smaller, rougher road, and began the uphill section. Carlos soon confirmed that they were on the right route. They were pleased to have made that turn with some light still left to guide them. It wasn’t difficult to spot, but any team missing it would go a long way out of their way. Soon thereafter Carlos called a break for calories, hydration and other biological necessities. They had maintained their steady jog for nearly all of the nine miles of the run segment covered so far, so they would drop back to a brisk walk for the uphill grind. Four miles later, in twilight, after pushing up the 10 percent grade for a little over an hour, they had reached the top of the climb. Shortly thereafter they resumed a running pace. The next seven miles to the mandatory checkpoint on Fandango Pass Road were uneventful.

  At the checkpoint, with only seven relatively flat miles to go to the kayak segment transition point, they were pleased
to learn that their remaining three competitor teams were only minutes apart from each other and that the lattermost had only left the checkpoint a few minutes before. This meant that the police team had gained on them, having started the race that morning with a time roughly half an hour after the departure time of the first three teams, assuming that’s who was still at the front. Although John and his teammates now knew how close they were to the other teams, the lead teams were unaware that a new competitor was hot on their heels. Once again, the temptation to pick up the pace and go sprinting past the competition was strong. And once again, Helen held them to the same steady, endurance pace. An hour later, a little after ten o’clock, they were at the boats, having held pretty close to the four and a half hours they had allowed for the running segment and still close to an hour ahead of their overall schedule.

  The transition area was well lit by lights powered by a portable generator. Tandem kayaks and life vests were provided by the race organizers and all team members needed to check in with life vests fully fastened. The kayak segment had been planned by the organizers to be at night when winds would tend to be lightest. They had also reserved the right to cancel the kayak segment, or to shorten it, if conditions were judged to be a risk to safety. There was in fact a light breeze from the north kicking up four-inch wavelets as the marshals cleared the police team onto the water. They had seen another team departing the shoreline a few minutes ahead of them, but it was now invisible on the dark lake.

  John was paired with Fiona, Carlos with Helen. There were two optional checkpoints on the kayak segment, in addition to the finish line at the eastern end of the Westside Road Bridge at the bottom of the lake. Many of the teams, especially the slower ones or those having endurance difficulties, would skip one or both of the optional checkpoints to avoid exceeding the thirty-hour time limit and incurring overtime penalties. If they chose to skip both they could head straight south close to shore with the wind — a relatively short, low-risk twelve miles. John and the team had once again planned to roll up the extra points for both the optional checkpoints. They were in good time and still feeling strong after sixteen hours of strenuous activity. Carlos took a reading from his compass and led them forth, into the wind and waves, toward the lakeside town of New Pine Creek straddling the Oregon–California state border, six miles away.

  As the team paddled their kayaks through the dark, the wind began to freshen and the light chop began to strengthen, sending occasional waves over their bows and into their cockpits. The going was tough, but John and Carlos were in their element, digging deep with each power stroke. Although they were only making two miles per hour, within the first hour they caught the next team, which appeared exhausted and were floating and being blown backward. The next team they overtook had actually put to shore. One crew was carrying their kayak along the shore and the other were thigh-deep dragging their boat. Both were having a difficult time. Their strategy was within the rules, but didn’t appear to be helping them much.

  The team reached the checkpoint at State Line Park Road after three hours of determined paddling. They beached their boats and tumbled out of them, numb with cold and fatigue. The lead team was just putting back out into the lake as the police team came ashore, but they knew that they needed to warm up and rest before pursuing. The marshals gave them a few minutes to recuperate before checking them out. The next optional checkpoint was across the lake on an angle to the southwest, a fifteen-mile crossing on the shortest path. The marshals would check their physical condition, looking for any indication of incoherence or other signs of hypothermia. They had the authority to require them to skip the crossing and the second optional checkpoint or even to withdraw completely from the race. There was a safety boat, but it wouldn’t necessarily be able to spot and assist anyone having trouble.

  After a brief break, some calories and some extra cloths, the team caucused, checked each other and presented themselves to the marshals. Minutes later they were back out on the lake. All four had high-intensity headlamps to ensure the two boats did not get separated from each other, all the more important because they would no longer have the shoreline as a reference point. Here was where Carlos’s navigation skills would be put to the test. Not only would he need to keep them on a constant heading in the dark and with no external reference points other than his trusty Suunto compass, he also would need to adjust that heading from their course line to allow for leeway drift caused by wind and waves on their starboard stern quarter.

  At first the going was easier than when they were heading straight into the north wind. They had both wind and waves pushing them along and were making double the speed of the first leg. However, the wind then began to pick up strength. The bows of the kayaks were riding slightly higher than the sterns with the lighter women in the front, and soon the kayakers were having to paddle almost entirely on the port, downwind side to keep the wind from forcing their bows around to the south. At the same time, they were having to point more and more to the west in order to maintain a southwest course line. With waves running over a foot high and now striking the kayaks almost full on the beam, they were increasingly unstable. A change of plan was needed.

  John brought the two boats alongside each other. They grasped gunnels, held two paddles across their decks as braces, and allowed the wind to blow them around until they were stern-on to the waves. This was a much more stable arrangement. They floated for several minutes to rest, accepting the fact that they were being blown straight south. Then John had his two bowmen take one of the bowlines and tie the two boats tightly together at the bow while he and Carlos continued to hold the sterns together and to stabilize with a paddle held across the deck. They then tied the sterns together, and last they removed one stern line and used it to lash a paddle tightly across all four gunnels as a cross brace.

  The team could now take the waves nearly broadside without danger of capsizing. They were down by one paddle, but most of the paddling was still required on the downwind side of the makeshift catamaran, which John had taken. Carlos, on the upwind side, could help by prying the stern downwind and then taking a few strokes before prying again. The craft was actually stable enough that Fiona and Helen could crawl over the gunnels and spell each other off. They were back in the race.

  After four hours of fighting the lake, the darkness began to recede and the wind began to abate. The four police officers began to peer hopefully toward the western shoreline. It had been a long night, and each of them was approaching the limit of their endurance. They then heard a faint cry for help. Looking toward the sound, about a quarter mile to the south, they could just make out an object on the water. They immediately turned to the south and picked up their stroke rate.

  The lead team had decided to cut straight across to the west side of the lake and then straight south along the shoreline. The strategy had worked well for the first two hours but they hadn’t adjusted quickly enough to the strengthening wind and mounting waves. First one kayak had capsized, then, in trying to assist, so did the other. They had eventually righted one of the boats and, with the two men stabilizing the boat from the water, the two women had been able to slide onboard and bail most of the water out. However, the men had grown too clumsy with fatigue and cold to successfully climb aboard the second kayak. In the calmer waters of the early dawn, the women were doing their best to tow the other kayak to shore with the men holding onto the side, having tied themselves on with the last of their strength. They were making very slow progress.

  As the police team came alongside, they quickly assessed the situation and realized that they needed to get the men out of the water immediately as a first priority. Fortunately, their lashed-together twin hulls provided a stable enough platform that they were able to haul both men out of the water and lay them across the decks. They got the wet clothes off the men and covered them with sleeping bags. Everyone knew, though, that they needed to get these guys to a warm place as soon as possible. They could now see the shoreline c
learly in the distance, but they still had at least an hour of hard paddling to get there, even if they cast loose the unmanned kayak.

  The small flotilla had not gone very far when a motor launch arrived. Marshals and a paramedic team were onboard. The two shivering men and their female teammates were quickly taken aboard the launch and given warm drinks and thermal blankets. Not so for the police team, which would be disqualified if they accepted any assistance, including directions. The team judged that they had swung at least a half mile south of their course line during their assistance to the other crew and probably had added a good hour to their time. They decided to strike straight west to the shoreline and then work their way back north until they could spot the checkpoint.

  The rest of the race was anticlimactic. They reached the second checkpoint at seven thirty in the morning, having been on the water continuously for six hours. Once again, they could barely climb out of their cockpits and needed several minutes of stretching out their cramped legs before they could venture the few steps to the sign-in post. They took a good break to recuperate but were back on the water by eight o’clock. The last seven miles south to the finish line was an easy two-hour paddle.

  They got a good cheer as they beached their kayaks and carried them to the drop point. Many of the teams were there already, having started the paddle section later in the evening but then choosing, or being directed, to either skip both optional checkpoints, or to return straight south along the eastern shoreline after the first checkpoint.