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We don’t want to jinx ourselves but Grass Roots Racing has been blessed with perfect weather for the last 12 out of 12 races. Ooops—Too late! What started as a beautiful warm sunny day on Saturday April 19th, quickly disintegrated into a cloudy, windy, and—ultimately—wet evening. But this is adventure racing and the GRR racers would prevail!

This year’s edition of the SONAR would again start off with a prologue but would be shorter, more intense, and much more exciting than last year’s combination of climbing wall and ropes course. Trying to keep things simple the race producers designed a “race within a race” by pitting teams against each other in a climbing showdown. Two teams were to line up with one teammate on each side of the wall. At “go” they would race to each of five cowbells placed in different locations on the wall. The first to ring the bell would receive the point and teams could accumulate as many as they could reach before their opponent. This made for potentially interesting strategies, exciting competition, and engaging spectating as well. But at the end of the day it was all-female team, and GRR newcomers, “Dick Danger’s Worst Nightmare” that were the only team to reach the maximum number of points—15. This put them in an excellent position before the race had even started! Other teams to fare well were co-ed teams “Blaze” and “American Adventure Sports” and all male teams “McKissock Snot Rockets” and “PainIsOurMuse”—all with 13 points each.

6:20 pm and all 80 racers are lining up at the start. Here they are given four foot tethers which they are instructed to use to join their two teammates together. The race would start at 6:30 sharp with a fast and furious 2 mile run which would end with three hazards that also had to be completed while joined at the waist. The first was the “Worm Crawl” which required teams to crawl under ropes in a 40’ by 50’ square while searching for poker chips bearing the initials for their category (i.e. F for female, M for male, C for co-ed). Given the area to search and the fact that the chips were as green as the grass in which they were placed, this was no easy task. The next hazard was “Buried Treasure” in which teams had to dig in sand to find their category specific chip. This time the area was 10’ by 20’ and as teams dug to find their own chips they, in turn, more fully buried chips of teams yet to arrive. On the third hazard—“Bouldering”—teams had to climb up to 9’ and locate the category specific chip concealed in mesh bags placed throughout the three climbing walls at Nemacolin Woodlands Adventure Center. The total point value of the run/hazard section was 5 and most teams, traveling at differing speeds, accumulated all of them.

After the opening run teams transitioned to the bike leg of the race and headed off to a quick but technical 3 mile section of trail riding. Here they would collect two more points and ascend back up the ski slope and ride past TA before heading off for the remaining 12 miles of biking. The first team to arrive was “Blaze” showing an ever widening gap. The absolute last to arrive was “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” walking up the hill with a broken chain. Showing true grit and tenacity this father and son duo made some quick equipment changes and headed off to try and make up the difference on the next section.

This second section would take teams into darkness and would contain 15 separate collection points—worth 1 point each— and 4 bonus sections—worth 2 points each—for a total of 23 points. This section of the bike leg was predominantly on cart path winding through the two separate golf courses at Nemacolin Woodlands Resort. The bonus sections would lead racers into the woods. The marking on this section was purposefully vague and racers had to rely on their navigational skills to get from one marker to the next. The bonus sections were even more lightly marked and tougher to ride—hence the higher point value. Almost every team managed to get off-course at least once. However, most of these were able to recover from their mistakes and find the point they were trying to locate. But in the end only 8 teams managed to find all 23 points on this rambling 15 mile bike leg.

Upon returning to TA racers were given instructions to find their next collection point at TWOFERTIL and that they should proceed on foot. With no other clue, racers had to unscramble and find the two word location before they could continue racing. Again, the leaders took the biggest hit and it was team Blaze that lost a 20 minute lead when they couldn’t come up with the answer. When they finally realized it was Lift Tower they managed to barely beat out the second place team—due in part to their attempts to mislead them by taking a “less than direct” route.

When teams arrived at the Lift Tower they were given another sheet with bearings, distances, and clues—which were again scrambled. This time they could at least follow the bearing while solving the scramble and had the ability to find the point without actually solving the clue. Navigation points could be retrieved in any order and racers were to return to the Lift Tower as the starting point for their next bearing—but this was not mandatory. An accomplished team was able to re-orient on the fly and could, thereby, reduce the travel distance and resulting time of the event.

Last year’s series runner-up Team Blaze clearly dominated the final section of the course and finished first in a head spinning race time of two hours nineteen minutes and fifty one seconds. They retrieved every available point on the run, bike, and navigation sections due to John Ralston’s navigational skill (and the teams combined fitness level) and missed only two points on the climbing wall due to Christine Valentine’s climbing prowess. Following a completely different strategy, it was Team Hollyloft (Scott Angove and Melissa McNett) that finished second in a “stick to it ‘til you get it right” time of four hours fourteen minutes and twenty six seconds. They also got all available race points and missed only four on the climbing wall prologue. Most exciting was third place overall finishers “Dick Danger’s Worst Nightmare”. This all female team comprised of Jennifer Philips and Sarah George is brand new to the Grass Roots Adventure Sprint Series and managed to find all but five of the available race points in an incredibly fast time of three hours nine minutes and thirty seven seconds. Combine this with a perfect prologue score and we have a Grass Roots Racing first: An all female team finishing in the top three overall. We are very excited to see where this takes D.D.W.N. and will be watching them closely through-out the series.

Another noteworthy finish was the one posted by “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”. The father and son team of Ron and Clint Hartle were last seen in TA with a broken chain and a lot of racers to catch. However, showing their true colors, this veteran team went on to find all race points in 3:53:59 and combined this with their 10 prologue points for an amazing “last place to fourth place” comeback, and received first all male team honors as well.

Rounding out the top-five was a second stellar all-female team comprised of sisters Lenore and Marcy Gianunzio. These absolute first-timers managed to locate and collect all but three of the available race points (that’s even more than D.D.W.N.!) in 3:28:01 and missed only 3 points on the climbing wall. Again history was made as Team Nunzio is (with D.D.W.N.) only the second all-female team to break into the top five! We at GRR would love to see them come back and defend their fifth place series standings!

In general the SONAR was a great success. We got to experience a shake up of the typical “all-male domination” and got to experiment with some different race formats. We hope (and believe) that those of you that raced learned some new things about yourself. As well, we are personally excited to show all that we learned at the next series event on June 21st. Stay tuned for race announcements regarding that event. Those of you that aren’t happy with your result—we’ll see you at the VO2 Test on May 17th! Until then, train hard and be smart!