Recap/Results

Team BIKEIOWA captures its first 1st place win (4 person co-ed) with Team IOWA less than 30 minutes behind!

Total Race Time was 12 hours and 59 minutes

Disciplines included running, hiking, mountain biking, ropes/traverse, some swimmiing and river crossings, climbing wall, orienteering, mystery events and an awesome 300 foot zip line near the finish line

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Race Results

(shows split times and the different disciplines.

Race Pics

Thanks to Jason Neilson of Iowa Active.com for putting this race on!!

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Raid the Ridge 2004 ReCap

Team BikeIowa
Jason Plunkett
Scott Sumpter
Cagri Cakinberk
Laurel Friedman

We arrived to the race start area on Friday afternoon where we learned that two of our team
members would be doing a timed ascent of a climbimg wall. The total time would be used to
seed the order for the race start the next day. Some of the handholds were off limits, which made the climb much harder. Cagri made it up the wall, handed off to Laurel, who made it half way up before time elapsed. We were charged with an eight minute penalty that would be assessed at the race start.

We received our maps, plotted our checkpoints, and received pre-race instructions on Friday night, where we learned our starting order for the next morning would be 22 out of 25 teams. It only amounted to 6.5 minutes down from the first team, which is pretty inconsequential in an 18 hour race. The race would begin at 2:00am Saturday morning, with what we were told would be the Mountain Biking leg. However, at 1:45am, the team captains were given a new map and were told that the race would actually begin with a run down the road to a small pond were we would have to locate 3 checkpoints before returning to the start line to begin the mtn biking. We quickly scrambled to change into running shoes and to put on our PFDs, because we knew we would be getting wet.

We started the race and passed a few teams on the way to the pond, where sure enough, we had to cross the water to get checkpoints A and B. Checkpoint C was located on higher ground, but had us running in circles for 20 minutes until we finally located it. We left the pond and returned to the start line. The air temperature was in the 40s, so after our little swim, we were pretty chilly, but knew we would quickly warm up on the bikes.

We transitioned quickly to the bikes and immediately headed up a hill that seemed to go on forever. The trail was marked with orange flags at trail junctions because of the MANY intersecting trails in the area. We followed the marked trail a short way until we ran into approximately ten teams at a standstill near a trail junction. There were no markers at the junction, and teams had been searching up the trail to locate the next flag, to no avail. Thinking that the flags had been removed all of the teams went back to the last set of flags and put a call into race management for clarification. As we all sat there awaiting word from race management, the cool temperatures were really starting to chill everyone. After 20 minutes waiting, Scott decided to do one more check up the trail to see if we possibly missed something. Sure enough, Scott came back and said he had located a small trail with the markers that went off into the woods. Cursing our stupidity, we rushed to the trail and continued on our way. We did a few more miles of trail and then came out to a manned CP1, where we were shown our location on the map and told to proceed to CP2. At this point we were told we were in 19th place.

We continued down a dirt road until we hit CP2, were we had to get off the bikes for a "Special Task". This consisted of a run down a trail to a river. Laurel then volunteered to cross the river to a small island to obtain the checkpoint, at which point we ran back to the bikes. We continued on the bikes, making good time, through CPs 3,4,and 5. At CP5 we had "Special Task 2", which took place in a marsh. We had to take a compass bearing, walk in that direction until we found a marker, record the number on the marker, take a new bearing and continue on. We found all three markers easily, and used the numbers we recorded to open up a combination lock which was proof of having successfully completed the task. Now back on the bikes to CP6. On the way to CP7, we were presented with a few route choices. The safe one was to stay on a major road that would take us to CP7 but we estimated it would add about 4 miles of distance. The risky route was to take a small dirt trail to a pond that may or may not be rideable, but would cut a lot of distance off. Thinking we were in the back of the pack, we went for the risky option. We ended up skirting around corn and soybean fields, but the trail was rideable and we ended up at CP7, saving a bunch of time. From there we made our way back to the race start area to begin the next section. We logged just over 30 miles on the biking section.

At the race start, we transitioned into our trekking gear and proceeded to the climbing wall where Scott and Jason had to do their climb. At this point we discovered that we had jumped up to 10th place, so adrenaline took over and we both cruised to the top of the wall fairly quickly. We left the wall and headed up to the top of a hill where we did a 30 foot rope traverse across a trail cutout. After the traverse we had to proceed into the woods and locate 11 orienteering checkpoints.

CP8 was the closest, so we decided to start there. What seemed like an easy CP turned out to be a nightmare as we wasted an hour searching to no avail. We finally gave up on CP8 and went for CP9. We found it in short order and then proceeded to locate CPs 10, 11, 14, 15, 16 and 17. At CP17, located in an old outhouse on the edge of a pond, we found a bag that contained our PFDs. We could see CP17a on the other side of the pond, and knew we had to swim to get it. The water was cool and refreshing, and a little gross because of all the vegetation near the shoreline. We punched CP17a, swam back across and went back into the woods to get our last three CPs. We found CPs 13 and 12 with little trouble, and now just had to head back for another try at CP8. This time we had no trouble at all and found CP8 right away, I don't know what we were thinking the first time we looked for it! At CP8, the race director rolled up on his ATV to see how we were doing, when he informed us that no 4-person teams had yet finished the orienteering course. In disbelief we tore ass back to the transition area fully expecting other teams to arrive before us. We had one more "Mystery Event" which consisted of trying to hit a series of targets with a paintball gun. For each target we hit we would nullify a certain number of penalty minutes. Cagri and Laurel each hit the big 5 minute penalty targets, so we only had to serve a 3 minute penalty. The adrenaline was really flowing now as we struggled into our ropes harnesses for the final event as we took our 3 minute penalty. When released from the penalty, we rushed down the road to the 300 ft zip line. Each team member had to run up the hill, hook into the zip line, and scream down the line to the bottom. We then ran to the finish line where we discovered that we had in fact won the 4-person coed category! Our first win!!

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Description

Just Plain Fun

Distance - 12 to 16 hour continuous

Multi-sport event featuring Mountain Biking and Trekking as the main components. Also includes Navigation, some water test, and mystery challenges to make things fun and interesting. Co-ed teams of 4 will be the premier division. This year will also have 3 and 4 person 'open' divisions that will not need to be co-ed.

Route

In and around the Loess Hills of Western Iowa.

Registration

Visit www.iowaactive.com and follow the links to RAID the RIDGE.

Contact

Jason Nielsen

racedirector@iowaactive.com