Another year has come and gone since the last Raid the Rock that I participated in. During that time, especially in the last several months, I’ve been training hard for Raid the Rock 2007, in hopes of actually competing this year instead of just “participating.” My team this year was comprised of Tina (who I raced with last year), Rex (another adventure racer from work who has been very successful in previous RtRs), and myself.
The race started at 5am inside a future gated community, which basically turned out to be a big plot of farmland a private owner gave permission to use. The first leg was a ROGAINE section (which stands for Rugged Outdoor Group Activity Involving Navigation and Endurance), in which we would have to find 14 checkpoints (CPs) in any order that we wanted. These points were already plotted on the first of two maps we were given. We were also given the option of using any mode of transport we wanted (i.e. walking or biking). We also had a 10am cutoff that we had to meet in order to race under “official” status.
The short of it is, we managed to find all 14 CPs without much trouble, only made a few minor mistakes, and made it back to the transition area just after 9am. We had to trek through ankle deep irrigated fields, bushwack through hilly terrain, search for CPs in the dark & fog, and slog our way through numerous muddy, wet trails. Coming into the transition area, we were told that we were in 5th place overall, out of 20 or so teams in our “Premier” division! We were very pleased!
We then received the map for the remaining course, although the points were already plotted on the first map we received for the next leg - canoeing. Before we jumped in the canoes, we made the decision to plot all the points now, while we were still somewhat fresh, instead of waiting until we had completed the canoeing section.
I plotted the points while Rex and Tina got ready, and then Rex double checked the points while I got ready. We left and got the canoes, followed closely by two other teams which came in while we were plotting. The canoeing section was tough - having to paddle down Palarm Creek which was a sinuous, debris infested, stillwater stream. We had to navigate around logs, branches, low-hanging brush/trees. From Palarm Creek, we paddled to the Arkansas River and picked up the first three CPs located on a series of three islands. We then headed back towards the shore and had to paddle down a slough (pronounced “slew”).
This portion entailed us paddling along even murkier water, and having to portage the canoe up and over several road crossings. This meant having to get out of the canoe into the nasty stinky muddy water, shoving the canoe up and over a steep 15-ft bank, and then getting back in the canoes to paddle further. The last 40 minutes or so was spent paddling through thick vegetation which made the going even tougher. Overall we spent 3 hours on the canoeing section, which seemed long to me, but I found out later was about par for all the teams. The two teams that were behind us? Well, they passed us during the canoeing leg, although I don’t think we finished that far behind them at the next transition.
We made it to the transition with sore arms and legs, ready to get on our bikes to complete the last leg. We were also glad to have plotted the points earlier, as we were even more tired and worn out at this point. This transition area was located in a future development of Maumelle, my hometown. In fact, we were probably only a couple of miles from my house. So we did have a slight advantage with me being from this area.
After studying the map to determine the best route, we set off for the next checkpoint. Since a lot of Maumelle is under development and the roads weren’t all on the maps, it took a while to orient ourselves and make sure we were headed in the right direction, at least for the first CP which I was a little unsure where it was located. Fortunately, we ended up finding it without too much trouble, and then we were off. I knew the locations of the next several points like the back of my hand, and we rode through the town I know so well. After picking up the last “urban” point at the new softball complex, we ended up riding through a lot of backwoods ATV trails. We didn’t have much problem with this section, mostly just making sure we were traveling in roughly the right direction and following the trails. There were some steep climbs, and A LOT of muddy trails/stream crossings, but nothing we weren’t used to. The “highlight” of this leg was having to wade through a chest-deep stream (White Oak Bayou) carrying our bikes.
Eventually we returned to “civilization” and picked up a point at the LR Big Dam Bridge. We had one more checkpoint to get before heading to the finish, and this was located at this huge cliffs on the North Little Rock River Trail. From the race instructions, we figured we would be rappeling here, but we were unsure how high up we would be. We had passed two or three more teams during the biking section, and as far as we knew, they were still behind us. We sped as quickly as we could to the rappel, hoping to make it there before any other teams did.
The rappel was awesome, although we had to hike to the top of a 150-ft cliff. This was the same trail we had to carry our bikes up last year. We were pretty weary at this point, but we managed to get ourselves to the top. Coming off the cliffs was pretty awesome, and it was definitely the longest rappel I’ve done.
I was even more surprised when I got to the bottom of the cliffs since I was met there by Jen and several other friends who witnessed my rappel. 
We were fortunate that we got there when we did because several teams showed up just as we were coming down, and we knew that it would take them a while to complete the rappel.
We rode off towards the finish down the River Trail, a mere 3-miles away at the NLR Boathouse knowing that we had little chance of being passed at this point. Feeling good about our day, although very tired, we crossed the finish approximately 11 hrs & 45 minutes after we started, just shy of 5pm. We were met by our support crew, friends, and family. Handing the passport to the race officials with ALL the checkpoints punched, we learned that we had finished unofficially in 5th place!! Later we learned that the 1st place team - Lab Rats, had finished 2 hours ahead of us, and the 3rd place team, had only finished about an hour ahead of us. I don’t think we really could’ve raced any faster than we did, so I was very pleased. It was also the first race I’ve ever finished under official status (i.e. having met all the time cutoffs and having found all the CPs), and the first one I finished while it was still light out. I even had the chance to go home and shower and change before coming back for the awards dinner.
I know that this race was made even better with the awesome teammates and support crew that we had. Tina did a great job pacing off distances during our ROGAINE, and is a MONSTER on the mountain bike. Rex impressed me time and time again with his sense of location and leading us to CPs, as well as manhandling canoes during our portages. Tina’s husband and Rex’s wife did an excellent job with support, having taking care of anything we needed done. It was definitely a team effort, and I can’t say how proud I am of everyone.
