Moab Xstream Expedition Race Report – Team Big Bear Adventure Racing
September 27-30th, 2007

Somehow I was asked to race with team Big Bear Adventure Racing, after their 4th teammate suffered a severe, well let’s just say sports related injury. Paul Romero and Karen Lundgren from Team Sole would be to blame or thank for this arrangement. Hum, no surprise there Karen and Paul seem to be responsible for most of us (every member, myself included) to getting involved in AR in the first place. My first thought was no way I can keep up with Teddy “the Tow Truck” and his now wife and team mate Heather Salzer-Divito. As for their third Team Mate David Burks I was even scared to ask who he was. Oh, and when you see the picture of us all with our shirts off at the end of the race…you will be scared of Dave too! Although I have to give credit where the credit is due, Dave not only looks tough - he is. He trained for only three months with Ted and Heather for this expedition race - his 1st expedition and 4th AR race, if I’m not mistaken. At 48 years old and two teenage daughters at home he showed up with 7% body fat, pretty impressive I must say.

Needless to say after a quick drive (11 hours each way) to Big Bear Lake and a 12-hour workout with the team, we seemed as good of a fit to race together as you can determine. We did get to watch the firemen work on putting the fires out that were going in the area that Sunday (very cool).

I was happy to see the race start Thursday at noon and not 3am or some other ungodly hour. Our race strategy was a simple start at a comfortable pace and to keep going, always keep going.

Stage 1: Kayaking in rubber kayaks on the Colorado River from the Red Cliffs lodge south past Moab. The Rapids were class II at best and were fun, wet, and cold (50F water temps). For some reason me and Ted who seemed to be paddling harder than Dave and Heather, were constantly lagging behind our teammates. I found this odd as I had the “tow-truck” paddling with me and it’s like having a motor on board.” The fact that our butts were dragging below the boat never dawned on us. Ted had us hammering 10 hard/fast paddle strokes every 3 minutes just to keep our boat moving with Dave and Heather’s. My shoulders are still sore from this today, 4 days after the race ended! As we pulled out boats from the water one of the race staff told Ted and I “sorry you guys got a boat with “no air or a leak” as we looked at our sagging boat we realized what our problem was in the water. Oh well, luck of the draw as they say. We did decide to check our boats for air for the next paddle. J

Stage 2: We did a quick transition to our trek to the ropes section of the race with a 200-250 ft rappel. This stage went well: the views were incredible and the ropes section was fun though, we did run into one problem. At the bottom of the fixed lines, Ted removed his pack and bib (not sure why he removed his bib yet…don’t think he knows either). Heather and Dave head up the fixed lines first and we notice that Ted’s bib is missing. He and I both knew he had it 5 minutes earlier during the trek over to the fixed lines. We search both of our packs and try to say something to Heather and Dave. They are too far up and we now have one team in between us going up the ropes. Regrouping with the team at the top, Dave and Heather check their packs, we are all still a little dumbfounded until Heather realized that she was wearing two bibs. Yep, she saw Ted’s race bib on the ground and put it on. With a good laugh we moved on to the rappel and back to the TA. Once overhanging the Arch we rappelled off, I stopped for about 3 seconds to try and take in the beautiful scene, hey we were racing I shouldn’t have even stopped but couldn’t help it the view was too nice!

We knew the next bike leg would be long and tough. Still daylight on Day 1 when we got to the TA. We leave the TA for our first of three mountain bike legs. This would be a long tough ride through the night. We moved on the slick rock trails which were fun to ride even at night, except for the sections of sand which became a nuisance. The most difficult part of the stage was just trying to follow the trails. Since the area is mostly rock the jeep trails are marked not by trail signs but by small paints marks directly on the rocks. This made trail finding and following an entire team job throughout the night. We found ourselves backtracking many times once we lost the scent of our trail…opps I meant sight of our painted trail markings. Seeing bike lights buzzing around all the hillsides in the area as we rode was impressive to say the least. We hit the TA (bike to kayak-trek-kayak-trek) just before dawn.

The next stage required some planning as we would paddle to a remote location, drop our boats, continue on an 8-10 hour trek and then paddle again to final 7 mile trek with all of our paddling gear sans boats back to the TA. Yep, that meant we carried all our paddling gear, wetsuits, PFD’s, paddles for 7 miles back to the TA… Don’t you just love demented and deranged race directors. We had a good paddle to the Trek start, which we decided to do in a counter clockwise direction. Seems most teams choose the clockwise direction.

Now, this is where I made my first mistake. I decided not to use a paddling shoe and just wear a big warm sock in my trekking shoes to paddle. Then change to a dry pair of socks I had in a zip lock bag at the start of the trek. I hate being cold more than suffering up a 5,000ft climb. Being somewhat cranially deficient, which may be related to my hair loss. J I forgot to change my socks. I did the entire paddle/trek/paddle with the same wet damp thick socks. Never having foot/blister problems before I wasn’t/wouldn’t be too worried about that myself. More on that next. First, we moved quickly through the trek. Ted, nailed the Nav. One highlight besides the amazing vista’s was the waste deep muddy creek crossing put in our way by our beloved/demented Race Director to ensure our feet would stay wet and we would suffer. My feet were already wet, I didn’t care about more water…I should have.

Dave was suffering from the heat and a possible electrolyte imbalance. He was hurting for the last part of the trek. With 45-30 min. left in the trek he threw-up three times. After a short break we continued on and he took some e-caps and tried to drink as much water as he could. Dave sucked it up and we made it back to the kayak’s. Small change in strategy here. With only a one mile down current paddle. Ted paddled with Dave and let him rest a bit, even get a short 10-15 nap in, while Heather and I leisurely paddled fast enough to make sure Ted was working hard enough paddling by himself. So for at least a 15 minute period of the race we made Ted work hard and suffer. Once on shore Dave perked up and was already feeling better. Amazing what a cat nap can do for an Adventure Racer.

Back to shore. The start of the 7 mile trek to the TA and, oh yea, my feet. We got out of the kayaks and my feet hurt. I took my shoes and socks off. My feet looked like I had been soaking them for months under water, completely pruned. Their film crew got some footage of the bottoms of my feet before the trek. That will be interesting to see when the DVD comes out. I did change my socks at this point, albeit too late. By the end of the 7-mile trek to the TA, my feet had split open around the balls of my feet and heels. My first real foot issue during a race…gotta say that sucked…sucked real bad! I would like to blame myself for this but I can’t. I have to blame Paul Romero for teaching/beating into me the “go fast, take chances” attitude. Why carry an extra pair of dry shoes for the trek if I had to carry them around. Extra weight I didn’t want to deal with. My lesson learned here. Head the warning signs and do something about it when they start…don’t just think…oh, it’s no big deal…because it will be! One last personal note. I wasn’t wearing my La Sportiva Mountain running shoes, (www.mountainrunningteam.com) with my Sole Custom Footbeds, (www2.yoursole.com) this stage. Had I done that I’m sure my foot problems wouldn’t have been as bad or may have been avoided. With that combo I’ve never had any foot problems. My mistake!

Back at the TA my feet were a mess. We decided that the team would do a slow TA, eat some good food, our Crew John and Pam made some incredible chili. This would allow my feet to dry out so we could duct-tape them and be on our way. We left the TA for our 2nd night of mountain biking which would take us from 5,000ft up to 8,000ft at the foot of the La Salle’s to the start of the mountain Rogaine section of the race. After a quick, well somewhat quick stop at the local Moab grocery store on our way out of town for some needed supplies. I needed ChapStick and Aleve and we got some Red Bull and Vivarin for the team. Note the team had yet to sleep going into the 2nd night. About 20 minutes after downing the Aleve, Vivarin, and Red Bull the team was riding like a bunch of crack addicts. We had a great time making our way up hill to the TA. Telling each other crazy stories and laughing most of the way. Dave by this stage had fully recovered and hammered his way up to big climbs, as if he had wings…could it have been the Red Bull?

Only problem was it was cold and we missed a turn somewhere and added an extra 2 hours to our bike leg and at least and an extra 1,000 vertical ft of climbing. It felt like the never ending stage. OK, I lied, we had one other problem. I brought my 20lb hard tail race bike (with and 80mm front fork) and not my full suspension bike to race in Moab. Once again my “go fast take chances” attitude…and again thanks Paul! Actually, I managed to ride with my hard-tail no problem on the trails. But, we found my bike had a broken spoke from the previous nights ride. At the beginning of the ride during one of our stops and map checks the team noticed my spoke daggling. We tried to fix it but it had snapped at the nipple. These were Easton Rims and double nipple spokes. We were forced to break it off I was to continue with a slightly taco’d wheel. There’s a reason right there to have disk brakes. Actually the only real worry at this point was me descending too fast or hitting a big bump or rut and rendering the wheel truly unusable [pun intended.J] or killing myself in a high speed crash downhill if the wheel self-destructed.

Now, I did feel bad about the wheel because a few days before the race my local bike shop, Sonoma Bike Company in Petaluma, CA was converting my bike to tubeless tires and managed to Taco my rear wheel, a brand new Easton SC One wheel set. Being the great shop that they are and not having time to get a new wheel from Easton before I left for Moab the next day, Jeff gave me his wheel from his personal MTN Bike. I knew this was a mistake but didn’t have a choice I had to pack the bike into a bike box and get to my flight the next morning. Jeff, sorry man I hope Easton repays you in some way…and of course you have a fine 6-pack of beer coming your way.

When we finally got into the TA we were cold and hungry. At this point we decided that a 1 hour sleep would do the team well. I should have eaten before taking my nap, but for some reason I thought it best to climb in the warm crew truck and sleep first…my second bone-head move of the race. Yes, you guessed it when we woke up we quickly got ready for our Rogaine in the La Salle’s, it was now just before sunrise and COLD. I started our first trek without eating any food or water at the TA. My feet hurt with every step. Of course I mentioned the pain. Heather just looked at me, she had duct-tape on her feet to, and said. “DP, deal with it!” She was obviously tougher than me and had dealt with foot aliments many more times than I had. My response was something like, mumbling, “er..ah..yeah…sure..no problem.”

On our way from 8,000ft up to over 11,000ft to the our 2nd CP called grand view. I started suffering from the altitude and the lack of fuel in my body. Once we passed 9,000ft I told the team. I was really dizzy and felt drunk. They gave me a set of trekking poles and we slowed the pace down just a bit. I drank all of my water, took 3 e-caps, and ate like 1,000 calories of my food. Half the way to the 3rd CP I finally recovered from my slump. I knew this because my feet hurt again. I never thought I would welcome the foot pain, but I knew it was a sign I had regained conciseness! We bouldered our way up a 2000-ft spur to our 3rd CP. This was a very fun part of the Rogaine. We weren’t just trekking it was a little more technical…I love-d that stuff… The team did as well. From there we made our way to the Mandatory CP, our 4th.

At that CP we bumped into Lou and Melissa (she raced with Mark Richardson and me at Baja Travesia in March). They looked good and I was impressed that they were toughing it out as a two person team, after losing two teammates to illness earlier in the race. Up to this point we only had to deal with my altitude/nutrition related issues which lasted about 3 hours or so. Oh, and the bitter cold and wind which I have failed to mention yet. That all changed as we headed down to our last a 5th CP on the way down and back to the TA. First we found ourselves at about 10,000ft coming out of the 4th CP on the top of a spur/plateau when the weather changed for the worse with higher winds, darker clouds and lightning. As I stopped to water a bush (i.e., to pee) on that said plateau, lightning struck about a mile away and the hail started to fall fast and hard. We basically were like “OK, we need to get out of here fast.” Kicked it into high gear and ran down the single track trail to the 5th CP at the intersection of the Kokopelli trail and the road to the TA. Hoping that the hail wouldn’t make the trail slippery. We or perhaps I should say I, were not dressed for those cold conditions…so running was really my only option. Yes, “go fast, take chances,” thanks Paul! Now I’m freezing cold running downhill from the lightning and through the hail storm.

We got down to the TA just before sundown. We were cold and tired. We had really only slept 1 hour up to this point. Now going into the third night of mountain biking. I never once got to ride Moab during the day. Now, I have to go back and ride some of those awesome trails during the day! Our awesome crew, during our trek, managed to drive 1.5 hours each way down to Moab and get me a replacement wheel for my bike. As no one in town could fix my new fangled double nippled spoke, they heard comments like this wheel doesn’t even have a high enough spoke count to ride out here. Yeah, I knew that, but I’m not hard on my bikes…that is of course my opinion and open to much debate and speculation from my local bike shop. John/Pam, I can’t thank you enough for finding a way for me to keep rollin’ instead of wobbling.

We looked at the Maps and realized while it was snowing/hailing/and sleeting that the ride was huge, big descents and climbs in the absolutely hideous weather. We knew it would be a big big effort and even with all of our clothes and gear on - we were going to FREEZE! Knowing that we had a dark zone before we could get in the kayaks the next morning, we, I would like to say smartly, but it was really luck, decided to take our second rest/nap of the race to make sure we were alert for the big ride to come. Perhaps it was the cold and the break in the storm that lead many other teams to rush out of the TA onto their bikes…they are the ones that really suffered in the cold out on the course. Look for other Race Reports. So basically by the time we woke up we found out the mountain bike section was canceled and we were to take the road. Next in performing our slowest TA, not even looking forward to a freezing cold downhill decent via road with a dark zone in front of us. We wasted yet another hour in the TA, only to find that the ENTIRE BIKE section had become so dangerous, was now canceled and we had to go with our crew via car to the kayak put in, while the race directors tried to fetch the rest of the teams from the mountain bike course. The Curse of the Moab Expedition Adventure Xstream had struck again!

It took the 4 of us at least 1.5 hours to help our two crew (Pam and John) to load the vehicles. All the while we wondered how in the world the two of them had been doing that all race long? We once again tipped our caps to our crew. We knew what a tough job crewing was but now we got a fist hand taste of it.

We made it down to the dark zone, kayak put in at 12:30am, Sunday. We were told to meet at 8AM ready to paddle the last 18 miles to the finish line in the morning. “Get warm and get some sleep.” The team got a good 6 hours of sleep before the restart of the last kayak leg of the race. We all felt very good the next morning. Knowing that the last paddle would end up making no difference in the outcome of the race for anyone. We decided to allow everyone into the water in front of us to avoid the mayhem and begin our paddle in the back of the pack. We really weren’t racing this stage, we were enjoying the beautiful morning paddle down the Colorado River back to the Red Cliff’s Lodge and to the finish line. We enjoyed the final paddle and treated it as the final Sunday’s ride in “La Tour” we just didn’t get our Champaign until we actually crossed the finish line almost 3 hours later.

After all of that racing, turns out we may (race results are still preliminary as of this writing) have placed 6th in the 4 person Coed division, just 30 minutes behind Team Adventure Racing Concepts. If we knew that in the last mountain bike TA we would have left early and frozen our butts off trying to catch them, of course it would have been for not as the entire 3rd mountain bike stage was canceled. Dennis Paprocki, Tara Paprocki, Jim Holmes, Jane Larkindale from team AR Concepts…we were hunting for you. Great job guys!

A few shout outs now. It was great to see so many Nor Cal teams at the race. Yep, there were a few more teams from Nor Cal than with Racing with Giants, Racing with Giants 2, and Racing with Giants 3. John how many teams did you actually bring to Moab? Mark Henderson, constantly kept popping up on the course, I think I see Mark in the middle of more races than any other racer I’ve raced against. Oh, and Mark if I were a little taller I would steal your mountain bike! J Melissa and Lou great to see the two of you pushing on, great effort! Team Lucky, have I mentioned yet that I love that team. Moab was their first Expedition race and they kicked some butt! Jeremy Olson, Mila Olson, Bob Lapanja, Johnny Ryan you guys constantly prove how tough and competitive you are out on the race course. Looking forward to racing with/against you again. Oh and Mila and Jeremy, don’t think I forgot about my Quick Blade paddle. I’m coming to Santa Cruz to collect if from you guys! J True Grit, sorry to hear about your problems, I don’t know what happened yet. But, you guys were crushing it. Kent Ryhorchuck and Bryce Armstrong raced as Dogs in space and seeing them out on the race course helped know were going fast. If you have done more than one AR race and don’t know Kent it can only be because he finished the race, packed up his gear and went home before you got off the course.

One last thing I need to point out. Team Big Bear AR is sponsored by Champion Nutrition and the makers or Revenge Pro (www.champion-nutrition.com). I’m a new convert to that secret stuff. They claim it’s “Rocket fuel for any intense activity!” They are right I love the stuff and will be putting an order in for a 55 gallon drum of the stuff for next season! If you have yet to hear of Champion Nutrition I highly advise you check them out. Oh, and my Wing Nut Pack was the bomb during this race. I used it for every stage, big and small. The pack rocks and I’ll be using it all next season, exclusively (www.wingnutgear.com).

Ok, really the last thing here. If you really really want to be faster and healthier. Check out Ted and Heathers www.powermyhealth.com site. They are personal trainers, nutritionists, etc, and all around awesome athletes. So if you want to be faster talk to them.

I had a great time racing with Team Big Bear. Heather, Ted and Dave are incredible fit, fast, and just all around fun to race with! So, Paul and Karen I guess at this point I will thank you instead of blaming you. Oh, yes, I will continue to “Go Fast and Take Chances!”

Racing with Team Big Bear AR: www.bigbearadventureracing.com

Donato’s Flickr Photostream

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