Race Report - Mission Lite - May 10, 2014

Canoeing, mountain biking, running, and orienteering - all in one race! This is what Mission Lite was all about - my first adventure race.

Transition Area

This year's race was held at Versailles State Park in southeast Indiana. The park is a very beautiful park with a covered bridge, hiking trails, lake, biking trails and more. It is Indiana's second biggest state park.

Mission Lite is a 4 hour race. There was also an 18 hour race going that had started 2 hours prior to ours. You can race solo or in 2 or 3-person teams. My husband (Ryan) and I were a team calling ourselves "The D Team" since we needed a team name for the race. Our last name begins with D and I am also a fan of the old TV show, "The A Team" so it fit us.

Some of the gear

With adventure racing, there is certain gear you have to carry with you at all times, some just when on
a bike, and some when canoeing. Fortunately, my camelpack is smaller than Ryan's, so he carried most of the loot. Everyone had to carry food, water, and a whistle. One person on each team had to carry a pen, knife, compass, first aid kit, map, passport (paper that you stamp at the checkpoints). When riding bikes, everyone had to have a helmet and bike tire. One person on each team had to carry a bike pump and multi-tools. For the canoe, just the life jacket and paddle which were pretty obvious why everyone had to have one.

When we arrived to the race area, we checked in and were given a map. There is only one map per team. We marked our points from the Master map which had about 15 check points on it. The race started at 8am so about 7:30am, Brian (the race director), gave instructions on the race. He handed out a piece a paper with our first 4 checkpoints which was the same for everyone. We started the race by running about 300 feet to the canoes that were at the bottom of the steep dam! Ryan started pulling up the canoe while I ran to go get the paddles. He was halfway up by the time I met him. We were able to launch off and get paddling fairly quickly. Since, Ryan had more experience with orienteering, he kept the map and compass. The first 3 checkpoints we could find in any order, so we stopped by the first one on the map. We had to get out of the boat and find it.  The next 2 checkpoints were the same way. One of them was in a very marshy area, so pretty much impossible to keep the shoes dry. There were a few boats that tipped over, so just having wet shoes was nothing!

Can't tell what color my shoes were

The next stage was the mountain bike stage. I had not been mountain biking for over 5 years. Needless to say, this was the most challenging part of the race. There were rocks that were slick because of the rain which my tires were slipping on. I was fine on the descents, but going up hills, I crashed and slipped like crazy. The check points for the biking portion were right along the path so much easier to find than the canoe section. One trail was called,  Cliffside trail and lived up to its name. 

The next stage was the running part. We only had time to get one more checkpoint. You get penalized for every minute past the 4 hour end time. We finished with about 10 minutes to spare.

2nd place!

The adventure race was quite an experience. Having competed in canoeing, running, and biking races, I really enjoyed the added element of orienteering. Having grown up stomping through woods, it was fun to get to do that again while hunting down the checkpoints. I also liked the strategy aspect of how are you going to get from one checkpoint to another. You  have to use your team's strong points. For example, during the canoe we decided to portage through a small island since there was a headwind. When I first stepped out, I sank up to mid calf in mud, and I had not even put my whole weight out there yet. Fortunately, Ryan was able to push us up a little more for a bit firmer ground.

Believe it or not, we actually came in second for the co-ed division and 6the overall out of 41 teams! It has been fun to look back over the race to see what we might have done differently to cut off a few minutes here and there.

The Dino race was well run. Everyone was friendly and encouraging. The race even provided a meatball sandwich, salad bar, chips, fruit and dirt pudding after the race for lunch. This gave us a time to talk with the other racers about the course. I am definitely up for another one soon! If you are interested in orienteering or adventure racing check out OLOU or Flying Squirrel Adventure for more information.