Lionheart 24hr AR - 2008

For the 2008 Lionheart 24 hour, Team Halfwaythere.com put together two teams.  The first consisted of Shane, Christy and Bryce.  On Friday the 30^th of June, we traveled to Ohiopyle , PA and to who knew what as far as the lay of the land.  What we found was steep and unrelenting hills.  After racing the last few weekends in the New River Gorge, WV we did not think the East coast could provide anything better but this location may give it a run for its money.  The town was great, plenty of little bars, shops and restaurants around the river.

This race started off with a great rainstorm that quickly raised the already substantial river and stream flows.  We set up our transition and had the canopy set up before the rain started coming down when we realized we set up in the low area of the parking lot and we had a few streams pooling into our transition area.  We dug out some channels and diverted some of the water.  All this rain made us ready and eager to go, but a tornado watch delayed our start by a few hours. 

This was a linear race to the first 4 checkpoints.  After that the race was in Rogaine format.  Get the Check Points (CPs) in whatever order you want, with different CPs having different point values.  Finish with the most points in less than 24 hours. 

When the race finally began we had a long trek along the Laurel Highlands trail, a single track mountain trail for about 11 miles.  After that we dropped down to the river and followed RR tracks into and out of a small town.  Halfway through the weather cleared and was perfect for the rest of the race (except the remnants of the storm).  The trek was long and fast, plenty of ups and downs as Shane and Christi increased the pace (to my dismay).  After the town, we arrived at the put in for the kayak section. 

We grabbed the duckies and off we went.  The water section was great, plenty of rapids and fast moving water.  We had Shane in a single and Christy and I shared a 2person boat.  There were a few sections were we almost dumped the boat but we managed to stay in.  This water section had us on alert most of the time either trying to keep the boat straight, find the best path around the rapids or the fastest moving water to keep us going.  We made it to the TA after a short run from the boat take out.

From there it was a quick foot movement out to the rappelling section.  The rappels seem to be a signature part of Doug’s races and are a great way to get a quick breather.  Rappel complete, back to the TA.

In TA we got ourselves ready for a long bike and the Orienteering section that would come later.  We finally left the TA and headed out on bike.  We hit the first point and bushwhacked up to the next one along a pipeline.  This pipeline was steep and full of underbrush that would supply us with our token leg blood and thrashing.  After that we continued on a rail trail hitting the next few CP’s without problem.  We left the rail/trail and headed up some fire roads (up being the key word) to collect the next couple CPs.  We continued on “our path” and that path is where the map and real road had a difference of opinion.  We crossed paths with many teams at this point and everyone was looking for a path that would lead down to the river we were heading towards, dreading what we all knew we had to do.  We continued on a few paths until we decided to bikewhack down to our point and found it after we received some additional memento’s on our legs.  After this hiccup in our schedule we were shorter on time than expected, but we kept to plan before hitting the O section.  On the way back we passed many teams with mechanicals or not feeling well, and we tried to help NYARA out with their broken derailleur (this paid off in the long run) when all of a sudden this string of bad events struck my tire.  I had a flat, the first of many for our team.  We made it to the TA and quickly refilled our water and food.

We headed to the O section on bike along a single track mountain bike trail, the Sugarloaf trail, which was affected by the earlier rains.  The trail was similar to a rocky shallow stream, uphill of course.  Bike problems continued where I got another flat tire, Christy got her 1^st and 2^nd flat and Shane broke his derailleur hanger.  Other than that it was great.

We started the O section at Sugarloaf Mountain at 3am and knew we only had until 6am to get off the course.  So we quickly plotted a course and hoped to grab 3-4 points, and took off.  We passed some teams that got all 6 and had been on the course since 10.  We hit 4 points while running the entire way to the end of the O section with about 6 or 7 minutes to spare.

We headed out on the bike for the last section on mainly roads and fire roads until we had to return on the dreaded Sugarloaf trail.  We hit all the bike points as planned and were on schedule until our last flat of the day occurred.  Only this time we were out of air and tubes.  We stopped by a house and Jon, a local kayaker, was eager to help.  He tried and dug out all of his gear from his RV when he decided that using super glue and a piece of old tire would help.  We agreed and started working on it when NYARA was biking by and they said they had and extra tube and pump, problem fixed.  We thanked Jon and tried to leave but he was very happy to have someone to talk with at 0700 Sunday morning.  Time now was getting really short and I was thinking of skipping the last 2 points, but Shane talked sense into us and off we went for one of them and then we would make a decision from there.  We hit it as Shane planned and headed back to the Sugarloaf trail which was much easier going downhill during daylight.  We then came to another decision point, we had 1 CP to get and only 1:15 hrs left in the race.  The CP was 18 miles round trip on a rail/trail, none of us thought for sure we could handle that pace this late in the race with our bikes in the shape they were in so we opted out of it and finished the race in 3^rd place with the likes of ATP, GOALS, Berlin Bike, ARMD, NYARA and Nature Cure.

This was a great race put on by an excellent outfitter, American Adventure Sports, thanks Doug.  Did I mention it was wet?