Bare Bones Bike-O Meet Adventure Race

On Saturday 4/16/11 I participated in a new type of race in my experience, an 'orienteering' or Adventure bicycle race.  The basic premise was figuring out and riding a course to collect punches from 34 check points scattered throughout the Hines Park/Middle Rouge River valley, with a four hour time limit.  Checkpoints ranged from the intersection of Hines and 7-Mile, down to the south side trails a bit east of Nankin Mills.  All in all a good distance to cover, plus the whole getting off your bike (at almost every checkpoint) and finding the marker and punch.  And sometimes, with my inexperience, this took a lot of time.

The maps given out for the race.

My formal result was 4th place (out of 19 people), collecting 25 punches of the 34 available, in 3:56 or so out of the 4 hours alloted.  Two fellows collected all 34 punches and finished the course in 3:24.  Nice work!!  They rode cyclocross bikes, which was very much the best choice bicycle for the task.  I chose my IGH Raleigh, considering there would be very muddy areas and the ongoing possibility for rain showers.  I have to admit I was hoping for more pocket trails, and I did get a fair amount of single track riding in, but most of the milage was on Hines, paved roads, or gravel roads.  So the RRR was a bit of a disadvantage there.

On the other hand I didn't have a lot of expectations of my finish result, I was looking at this as a learning experience, and it lived up to its bill... I had no qualms about my 4th place finish, and will certainly analzye my performance for shortcomings and mistakes.  With the bike I had, I have my doubts that I would been able to finish the course, but I think I could have collected around 30 punches.  Being effective finding the punches is where I lost my most time, and this is the area I will focus my analysis on.

1.  Not minding the clues.  The 13th checkpoint was not a punch, but a 'tag' and that was literal, as it was a piece of graffiti in one of the river tunnels underneath the railroad tracks.  This was mentioned in the pre-race briefing, and explicit in the clue, but I was in the mind set of finding the marker/punch, and by the time I remembered to look at the clues I felt I had spent enough time, and after a brief search, moved on to the next station.  Checking the map and clue before searching for each checkpoint makes a difference.

2.  Not using map cues.  Two more points I had trouble with were 25 and 26.  25 ended up being an easy one, but I didn't think to look along the power lines (clearly marked in the map), and spent quite a bit of time looking fruitlessly before moving on (found 25 on the way back to Plymouth).  I spent some time looking for 26, and at my initial vantage point knew it was a river crossing, but not liking that idea.  After moving on to 27, realized that 26 could be accessed on the trail leading west from point 27.

3.  Not using the maps to regulate flow.  Related to the 25 & 26 error was where I went from CP 24.  If I had stayed on the south side of the river from 24, would have easly gone to 26 and then 27, and picked up 25 on the way back, which is what I did anyway.  I ended up missing CP 28, but if I had stayed on the south side/gravel road, I would gotten the punch, with less time spent.

4.  My GPS device got dislodged from the wrist strap.  I noticed it at CP 17, so went back to CP 16 to look for it.  I did find it, but that also cost me some time.

My Kenda SB8 kept me rolling.

Beyond these mistakes, I did have the advantage of being pretty familiar with Hines, and after studying the map and checkpoints, I decided to head south initially, and hope I had enough time to get some of the checkpoints north of the start.  Considering the trouble I had finding the checkpoints, seems like developing a strategy to find them is one of the most important aspects to plan (that is, have some sort of formal process to expand the search area.  I would often go over areas I had been through before).

Overall I really enjoyed myself, and (most of the time) liked the exploration aspect of the race.  Definitely saw some areas of Hines I have never explored, and got in a mile or two of actual trail riding.  The other racers that I encountered were generally pretty cool, and the race was conducted with a clear set of rules and in a timely fashion.  I had been hoping to ride to the start, but the weather and deciding to swap out my rear tire had me driving over.

Definitely a bit muddy in some of the areas.

This was the second annual race, so I hope to attend the third annual next year and find some improvements, and get a few extra miles riding to the start.  If you live in the SE MI area and want to try out something a bit different from the usual 'hammer out the trail' race, consider this one.