The Warrior Challenge
Cool temps and fog greeted racers the morning of the Warrior Challenge Adventure Race. Despite the gray skies, everyone was excited for the final Nebraska Sports Council Adventure Race of the year.
For this race, there was no night before check in, so we didn’t get our maps until just before the race. This made things a little more interesting since teams didn’t have as long to plot their Check Points (CP’s). And to challenge racers even more, we only received the first few coordinates which had to be completed before you could receive the next part and move on.
The CP’s for the first section were divided into two with half needing to be retrieved by running and the other half retrieved by bike. After plotting our CP’s, BentVenture decided to head out on foot first. We found some paths which allowed us to bushwhack to some of the points and saved us some time.
After finding all the running CP’s in Section 1, we grabbed our bikes and headed for the other half in this part. Most of them we found fairly quickly. We only had one more CP to find and then we could checkout of Transition Area (TA) 1 and move on. That’s when we had our first big problem of the day. Riding down a steep hill, I (Matt M) hit a deep rut with my front tire.
Anybody who has any experience with riding mountain bikes on a single track course knows that can’t possibly end well! You’re right! For about half a second I felt like Superman as I flew through the air…and then gravity kicked in. I laid on the ground trying to catch my breath as Adam and Matt S asked if I was still alive. I told them I thought I would be fine, but I needed a little while to recover. I wasn’t sure if I had just cracked some ribs or bruised them, but they were hurting!
Finally I was able to gather it back up, check my bike over and move on. We found the CP we had been looking for and went to check out of TA 1 and get our coordinates for the next section of the race.
Adam set about plotting our coordinates and I got some ibuprofen from Jim. It didn’t take long before we were moving on. We found the CP’s in
After about the second or third bounce…clunk! The bolt holding his crank onto his bike had sheared off. We did a quick assessment of the situation and unfortunately none of us had the spare part that was needed to fix his bike. We were done for the day.
Even though it was several miles back to the start/finish line, we decided we would walk our bikes back, rather than hitch a ride. We decided rather than receive a DNF, we would take the time penalty for the CP’s we missed.
Thanks to Jim Craig and all the volunteers who helped put on this race. And thanks to all the race directors and volunteers from throughout the year who helped make 2008 a great season! We’re looking forward to 2009 already! Good job to all the participants as well…everyone was great to race with!
Matt M
"It's not enought that we do our best...sometimes we have to do what is required." Sir Winston Churchill
