The Longest Day
Adventure racers hike, bike, row, battle nature for 27 hours
By Nancy Haggerty
For the Poughkeepsie Journal
Longest Day. Longest Night. Longest Morning.
At midnight, the stark darkness of surrounding woods was no longer erratically broken by the reflected dance of the campfire.
The fire was low, the woods nearly black and concern obvious.
Seventeen hours into the 27-hour New York Adventure Racing Association's Longest Day race and no one had appeared at Checkpoint 16 except for a couple of people, who, throwing in the towel, had found cell service and, in turn a ride in.
NYARA's own seasoned racers were still either on Mount Pleasant or elsewhere in the Slide Mountain Wilderness Area near Boiceville. And so was Eastern Mountain Sports, as usual, widely regarded as the team to beat.
And what of the other two-, three- and four-man teams? And of the seven soloists, who had enough internal drive to kayak, mountain bike, tube and navigate themselves to somewhere that was not yet here?
Finally, at 12:08 a.m. last Sunday, bobbing headlamps, visible one second, then gone the next behind the camouflage of trees, were spotted above this makeshift camp, which served as a transition area for those running, trekking, stumbling and hobbling to their bikes to head back out into the middle of the night.
It was a return to normal, if adventure racing can ever be considered such.
Seventy-six people on 35 teams started the Longest Day, which officially ended at 10:30 a.m. Sunday at North-South Lake Campground in the Catskill Preserve.
Seven teams dropped out
Seven teams would drop out or accept a ride at some point.
On the flip side were Eastern Mountain Sports' Jennifer Shultis, Jeff Woods, Joe Brautigam and Jason Urkfitz, who went to 11 optional checkpoints and won the three-and-four-person division with 27 points.
But as impressive as that was, then there was John Heppolette.
Going solo under the team name Gunk'd, the New Paltz resident beat everyone, his 10 extra checkpoints earning him 28 points.
"There's a lot of very tough hiking and biking but it's extremely well planned, Heppolette remarked before biking from CP 16.
This year's race directors, Rodney Villella and Amy Bartoletti, part-time Newburgh residents with a decade of adventure racing experience, originally mapped 95 miles for those not trying for extra CPs (and not getting lost) and 125 miles for those who collected all 27 optionals without a misstep.
But due to the slower-than-anticipated wilderness trek, the course was rerouted. Four optional and two of the 19 mandatory CPs were removed and a 3,000-foot climb of Overlook Mountain was replaced with road miles.
The race began at 6:45 a.m. Saturday at the Ulster County Fairgrounds with a 12-mile kayak of the Wallkill River that concluded at the covered bridge in Rosendale.
Heppolette's wife, Rebeccah Wassner, and her sister, Laurel, biked to the Wallkill Valley Rail Trail Bridge to see him.
The following morning, the women would compete in a half-Ironman in Connecticut.
"I'm not going to complain about my five hours," Rebeccah said, smiling.
Of adventure racing, she added, "I don't like not to know where I'm going."
But for many the much bigger concern was the inclusion of six miles of dam-release-propelled tubing on Esopus Creek through Phoenicia.
"My strategy is not to die," quipped Tricia Pandolfo, who, with Pain Syndicate partner Matt Ciaglo, used the Longest Day to prepare for a 64-hour race.
It wasn't clear how many racers flipped in the 57-degree water but, at one stretch, four, already separated from their tubes, entered whitewater.
Later, the rapids tossed two more.
Cold and wet, some exited early, walking down Route 28, tubes in hand, to the take-out spot.
Dave Wells of Gears Are for Pansies lost his shoes entering his tube.
He and his teammates, brothers Aaron and John Courain, walked a mile at one point, then went back in. Wells, whose feet were "a little raw," gobbled pasta salad, studied a map, then started trekking with his team at 7:50 p.m. - more than two-and-a-half hours after the first racer departed.
Teamed up for trek
Relief was evident when Brian Stavely and Michael Baldwin walked into CP 16. Soloists, they teamed for the trek after seeing each other in the woods.
"It's nice at night to have a friend," said Stavely, who suggested they really weren't leading since they'd foregone extra checkpoints because the terrain "just looked brutal".
Baldwin credited Stavely for their arrival but Stavely, whose race fuel was Chef Boyardee cold from the can, downplayed his performance.
"I fell off my bike every way possible earlier," Stavely said, adding, "I've fallen off everything you could fall off today, including my own feet."
It wasn't until nearly 1:25 a.m. that Heppolette, the next racer, arrived. He said he believed he had a shot at a top-three finish in solo.
The Lakedaemons, though, had run out of shots, taking a ride to the CP.
The fact they'd done part of the trek said something, since Paul Connolly had gotten stuck underwater for about 10 seconds while tubing.
"I almost drowned," he said. ... "I was seizing up. My muscles were so cold. I was shivering uncontrollably. I got to shore and started doing jumping jacks."
Wearing flimsy sneakers to tube, his feet then bled from walking to the pull-out area.
The Boston resident, a marathoner, ultra-marathoner and mountain bike racer, continued out of "just pride, just never quitting anything."
Of his team's abandonment of the trek, he explained, "We got lost orienteering. We went up three-quarters of the way but it was all bush, cliffs and stuff. We didn't know where the top was."
All told, they spent about five hours trekking, which was nothing compared to No-Limit's 11.
"It was brutal - pine trees and nettles," said Tracy Bureau.
Legs take punishment
It was especially brutal since, with no experience in long adventure races, Bureau and teammate Trish Parks had worn shorts during the nearly-all-bushwhacking trek.
As a result, their legs looked as though they'd kick-boxed with a tiger.
But it was other injures that persuaded them to pack it in.
Bureau, who broke her leg so severely several years ago playing ice hockey that it required multiple operations and much hardware, was bothered by a broken toe suffered just a week before the race.
And while their teammate, Kirk Lauri, was in one piece, Parks was feeling the impact of more than 20 hours of racing on her sometimes bothersome back.
Vegetation, which included thick mountain laurel, was so thick, according to Shultis, that her team was sometimes traveling one mile per hour.
Pain from an Achilles torn last year eventually sidelined Ben Scaturro, who teamed with his son, Sam, on Team NYARA Animals.
While not enamored with tubing - "It was scary. Sam flipped twice. I flipped one time. There were big rocks, big waterfalls. I got out and I was shivering so bad." - Ben fell victim to the trek's mountainous terrain.
"It was too much up and down," he said, explaining the race was his first major test since injury.
He lamented exiting the race before the next bike section, which was followed by a Tyrolean (rope) traverse of Kaaterskill Creek overseen by Alpine Endeavors' Marty Molitoris of Rosendale and his staff, then a final trek.
"You feel like you left unfinished business out there," Ben explained.
But Parks said, "Sometimes you just have to be smart when things are not working. It's a hard lesson to learn, rather than just bulling through."
And, after all, there will be other adventure races.
"It feels like my last," Parks said, "but I know it won't be."
