Thunder Rolls 2014, Mt Carroll Illinois
24 HOUR Adventure Race
Team Lupine Racing, USA
JZ, PWild, and Rick
We love everything is about this race. Amenities, race swag, food, showers, cabins…camp Benson is amazing. This was our fourth go around at Thunder Rolls, it is known for navigation challenges and strategy which both come into play. This year the format took a point to point (points in order) design, not so much our favorite but still a very FUN race.
We arrived at camp Benson after spending a quiet rest full
night in Chicago in plenty of time to get final gear ready. At check in you get your swag, cabin
assignments and any race logistics as far as bike or paddling gear drops if
there are any and what time it needs to be done by. This year we had a bike drop about 1 mile
away from start and the paddle gear was put in a truck to be taken to some
unknown location at this time.
We had our pre race meeting at the new outdoor camp amphitheater
with Jerry's funny humor about the race course.
Always a comedian. At this time
we were told we could leave our climbing gear at the start finish so we didn’t have
to carry it with us the whole race. At
the end of the meeting he passed out 9, 11x17 maps, 2 small google earth maps of river and a lake
section and the 3 page small print course instructions…with a passport with 55
CP’s! It was about 8:30 and the plotting and course planning began. We fell into our roles
quickly and started to get a quick over view of the race. Point to point….blah! Oh well, this still will be fun! This Race is really more like a 28 hour race if you include all of the plotting and course prep. The team was able to get the 9 maps made into one large map. It was going to be wet we knew, and the less the maps were out the better.midnight and we had to line
up at 11:30 for final instructions and photo. Click click, and the National Antahem, our quick team prayer and we were off.
JZ was able to fold them so as he only had to take them out twice to flip during the whole race. Race started at
Race discipline order run down the trail to
the river……Coasteering about 2 miles in the river collecting CPS along the
way(private property on both sides)……yep, wet up to our necks in some parts of
the river! Jerry. Still dark at this point so we really watch
our footing as the bridge you could hardly see with all the over grown trees……Nice! Thanks Jerry, In a fun evil way! We dropped our bikes after getting more CPS
on the way to the paddle put in.
Out of the river and short
run to our bikes…40miles?
Bike section with gravel roads, hike a bike over a road
closed bridge but "Jerry said go ahead just becareful!"
We cracked the glow sticks, got the boat down to the water, Rick in front, Pwild in Middle and as JZ got in back to push off…JZ Yells….back
up back up quick! The boat is cracked on
the bottom just under Pwild and taking on water fast!!! JZ moves fast and gets the team back up on
shore before the boat took on too much water.
Back up the side of the river, dragged to boat to get another boat….grrrrrrrr……better
it happen now then down river as this paddle was 22 miles!!! We had a pretty
good paddle length to the first CP so we just got in and started the long haul
making sure everyone was eating and drinking.
All gear in dry bags, and plenty of food in our PFDs to eat. Hammer Nutrition rocks!
Getting to the paddle shore line where we had to stick the
boat in a muddy slippery edge to go up to the CP section that was a Kick your ass O course.….this is
where one of the google earth small maps came into play. The scale on the big map was 1:24,000 and very hard
to tell the little lakes, coves, that were from 1986.
We passed several teams looking everywhere for this CP. With JZ having his
bearing and PWild pace count with Rick in the lead…..off we went only one turn
to the right back to go left and we found it!
In and out! Go! Started to rain off and on during the second
half of the paddle then it was a down right downpour. The boat filled up with a few inches of water
every 10 minutes it seemed, PWild used a empty Hammer bottle to bail the boat to keep us moving quick as possible. We were laughing…..Rick said
at one point “Is that all you got(to the sky), I'm not wet enough!” We all started laughing out loud! Push Pull……Rick and JZ work really well together
reading the water and we took the short cut, threw a small opening which was really only on the other Google aerial map. This choice wound up saving us at least 4K of paddling. This was not the best place to be in the peak of a lightning storm but we figured hey....its adventure racing. We almost got stuck in
the lily pads near the take out but took the longer way around, thank
goodness, we heard after the race several teams tried to go thru them and got
stuck in less then a foot of water and 2 feet of muck dissolving any time made up from the short cut. We got out at the
paddle and was greeted by Jerry and the awesome volunteers! They always make you feel welcome…and our
good friend Jerry Lyons!! No time to
waste, we wrapped up our paddle gear, eating more in TA and refilling the Hammer Perpetuem, changed our socks really
quick, and off on the bikes. This was a
ride straight to a BIG O section! Jerry
said this section would make or break teams…
28 CPs in order just in this section, cut off was 8:00 sunset to leave
this section. So we fill up on water and all the food we had….off
we went. knocking off CPs like crazy……one,
two, three, climbing hill after hill, taking some trials and power line routes……four,
five, six, seven, not seeing too many teams…..started to get dark and PWild was
watching the clock. The guys ‘lets get
one more’…..’lets get one more’….is all PWild kept hearing….time was
ticking. And Jerry is a stickler about
cut offs, and he means them! PWild started
to get stern about the cut off being the time manager…..JZ said clip in PWild “its time to run”…..and if JZ wants to
RUN he means we are CLOSE on time! OH S&*^!
Off we went 7:47…..out on to a road and running toward the TA…..we see
some other teams hurrying to leave the TA our good friends BDR. We can hardly breath….we made it! Whew!!!
not knowing the count of how many CPs we got during that section we
hurried out of the TA on our Bikes. Long
ride back to Camp Benson for a Bike “O”/Trekking/Ropes. As we pulled into the camp we grabbed our
climbing gear, checked in with the volunteer, got our map, exchanged friendly
conversation with our friends Apline Shop and off we went. The Ropes section we lost 25 minutes waiting and waiting….bummer The final section Jerry got us wet again in the river, at this point we didn’t care, it was the final section and wet socks oh well!!
We finished up the race with 47 CP's in fifth place. We were shooting for a bit better but we are getting better every year....Look out 2015, Look out.
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