No ORDinary Adventure Race
Ord, NE
July 11, 2009
I want to start by saying that Ord was a blast! BentVenture had a great time navigating the course Mike Blaha and his crew of volunteers put together. It’s very entertaining to see our Race Directors incorporate the whole Angry Cow theme into their races. And the Ord Adventure Race was no exception!
We started out Friday night with the typical routine of checking in with the Race Director and plotting of our topo maps. After figuring out where all the Check Points (CP’s) were supposed to be on the map, we made final preparations in our room for the race the following morning.
The starting point of the race in Bussell Park was buzzing with activity as we pulled in. We received our last minute race instructions and were then shown to a cattle trailer which was our ride out into a yet unknown destination in the countryside.
Several miles out of town our ride stopped and we piled out of the trailer along a gravel road. We had to run a ways down to the river where our tubes awaited us. The instructions were as follows: one inner tube per team, get down the river however you can, and find the checkpoints along the way.
Easier said than done! The Loup River, which was ‘up’, was still only 4-6 inches deep in several places which made floating on the tube difficult. Well Team BentVenture made our way downstream several miles, found all the CP’s, and exited to the first Transition Area (TA).
After rinsing what seemed like a hundred pounds of sand out of our shoes, we got on our bikes and headed out into a strong head wind. Anybody who thinks Nebraska is flat would have changed their mind after riding the first 10 miles! Mike made sure to include every tough hill in Valley County on the route.
A few miles from the end of our first bike leg, Tammy pulled over along the road. Unfortunately she had been suffering from a cold for the previous week and it was really affecting her. After an extended break to allow her to catch her breath, she rallied and continued on. Considering how rough I know she was feeling, it was a great feat for her just to get back on that bike and continue!
The road we continued down was a minimum maintenance road, which is fairly common in the Nebraska countryside. As luck would have it, the day before the race the county decided they would actually do some maintenance on it and ran a road grader over it. Nice gesture, but not good for mountain biking!
The road was difficult enough with the steep hills, but when you couple that with really fine powdery dirt, it just became brutal. After climbing the third hill along that road, Tammy took off downhill with me following right behind her and Adam bringing up the rear. The road had plenty of ruts left in it and that proved treacherous for me. Halfway down the hill, after building up quite a bit of speed (32 mph), my front tire slipped on the loose powder and slid into one of the ruts. As you can imagine, it didn’t end well. An endo and several barrel rolls later I finally came to a stop.
Gotta love your teammates concern! Instead of hearing ‘Hey, you alright?’ after the crash, the first thing I heard was Adam laughing his ass off saying ‘Man that was funny’! Thanks buddy! Anyways, aside from a sore shoulder, head, and thigh, I was fine. And fortunately my bike was too! We gathered everything back up and pressed on.
About a mile later we found the second TA and the start of the running section. This section was long, but otherwise uneventful. Again we found all our CP’s before checking out and getting back on the bikes.
The second leg of biking consisted of more singletrack through fields and pastures. In true Angry Cow fashion, we found CP’s next to water tanks and cattle gates. And although I’m sure it wasn’t intentionally planned by the Race Director, we did have to slow down to get some cows out of the path we were riding on. At least these weren’t angry!
By the time we made our way through this section, we had caught up to several teams that had been in front of us most of the race. Most all of us worked together finding several of the remaining CP’s. This cooperation among several competing teams made the race even more fun.
One more big obstacle loomed in front of us before we would arrive at the final TA and team challenges. We had to make our way up river again, only this time we were carrying our bikes instead of floating on a tube!
We survived the river and arrived at the last TA and challenges. There were three challenges and each teammate had to complete one. Challenge #1 was to dive to the bottom of a lake and retrieve a CP. Being a strong swimmer, Adam was nominated for this. Challenge #2 was to hit a golf ball to a green. Being a pro golfer (yeah right!) I took this challenge. Challenge #3 was to mount up on a horse and rope a calf. Tammy undertook this challenge by default while Adam and I drank a quick beer (energy drink!) with the volunteers.
With all the CP’s punched and the team challenges completed, the only thing left was a 7 mile bike ride to the finish. One of the teams that had been in our group, took off in front of everyone. The remaining teams all jumped on our bikes at the same time.
We stayed as a group until we got to the main road. Without saying a word, Team BentVenture knew this was the time to really put the hammer down and give it all we had. We wanted to put some distance between our team and the others we had been riding with. Although it’s fun working together with other teams, the finish is all about points and we wanted to get as many as we could.
Well we did manage to get a little distance between ourselves and the team behind us. After a few miles of riding, we saw the team in front of us that had taken off well before us. This just gave us extra motivation. Even though they had a half mile lead on us, we managed to run them down and make a pass. The finish line a mile later was a welcome site. Although we had a lot of fun, it was a tiring, exhausting day.
BentVenture would like to thank the town of Ord for their hospitality. We also want to send out a huge thanks to Mike Blaha and his volunteers for all their hard work. It was a great race and we’re already making plans for next year!
Matt