Its been a helluva long time since Ive written up the race report.
Its also been a helluva long time since I’ve raced without my better half, these two things are bound to show in my recap attempt.
Every story starts with a back story ya?
We first heard rumor of the Inferno 12 hour adventure race, held here in Myrtle Beach and put on by Apex Promoz, back in the winter sometime. Of course were stoked to see a 12hr come to our area. So stoked in fact, we decided to sponsor the race on behalf of Hart Strength and Endurance Coaching to help ensure it would happen!
There’s not a ton of terrain to choose from in this area for a race this length, basically Lewis Ocean Bay area and The Hulk, our local MTB trail.
Because there’s not a lot of terrain down here, our training grounds are essentially the only areas this event could go. Thus, our team, when we rego’d, was in it to win it.
Heather and I have been training our asses off on the bikes, we’re respectable paddlers and knew the heat of the race was going to keep running to the barest minimum anyway. Although he had a super busy early summer and couldn’t get in the training Heather and I did, Greg is just one of those athletes who’s strong without having to try too hard. We were going to crush this damn race!
Ya, well the best laid plans…
About 10 days prior to race day, Heather gets sick. A day later, I get sick. Two days later, I feel fine, but Heather isn’t improving. The week moves along, she’s still not feeling great and finally decides to call it on Friday just before race day. No race for her.
Fuck.
On a couple of levels.
On a personal level, this is my wife. I hate that she’s sick and I hate racing without her. I love AR, but racing with her makes it special.
On a competitive level…I no longer have a reliable Navigator. In fact, my blind ass is now the Nav. I can Nav! I’m not a world class navigator by any means, but I can usually figure things out.
But, I can’t see for shit.
Glasses sound like a great idea, but I’m far sighted and only need glasses to read. If I wear them any other time I get that fun drunk vision thing going on. This means constantly having to put on readers to look at the map, then take them off to move. HUGE pain in the ass.
Friday night before the race:
I never get pre-race jitters, yet I can’t sleep at all because I’m stressing about the navigation.
(Gahd, is this what my wifey has to deal with every race??)
I toss and turn, the scheduled 3am wake up essentially becomes a 1:30am wake up because I’m so restless. This sucks.
The real 3am wake up call finally comes around and the house starts bustling. Our friends Morgan and Scott (who we raced with at Fall Foliage 15 Hour last fall) had come down to stay with us and race for the weekend, are getting last minute things ready, and wifey is taking care of our zoo. Im getting my hydration bladders in place, lubing up, sun-block, all that last minute crap.
3:50am, out the door! We had the car already packed the night prior, bike and kayak locked on, helmet and other kit already loaded.
From our house on the south end of town, it's about a 40min drive to the boat drop, then another 10min drive to the bike drop. Not too horrible a drive for the boat drop as I've found its usually preferable to use your own boat vs a rental. From the bike drop to race start is maybe another 20min.
We roll into race HQ around 5:30am or so, plenty early for the 6am check in time. Its already nice and warm out, I think low 80s with a nice sticky sensation in the air. We do the usual pre-race things, queue for the loo, shoot the shit with friends, get some more food in, all that stuff.
2024 The Inferno 12 Hour Adventure Race Recap
6am. The RD calls for one team member to come grab the maps, then get our asses on the buses. Decent buses too I might add. Not posh, but certainly room enough to take care of any mapwork over the 40 (?) minute drive to the actual start.
On the bus I get to shoot the shit with our buddy Paul who came up from Jacksonville, Florida to race, as well as our bud Micheal from NCARs. We all exchange thoughts on the maps and potential route choices. Our maps are quality waterproof paper and ink, but our clue sheet is regular old copier paper. Knowing the potential weather and how gross and sweaty we get, I ask Greg to copy the clues straight on to the map (Gregs handwriting is pretty nice). With no topo lines to worry about, this only makes sense.
We roll into the actual race start at Chris Anderson Landing way out in BFE Longs SC, hop of the bus, take a last minute bathroom break, then hang out and wait for the RDs opening spiel.
This was the RD’s first go at putting on an AR, and I gotta say, his speech went pretty well! He was quick to answer everyone’s questions and explained the general course layout. He emphasized CPs 14 through 17 were mandatory Trek after hitting TA3. He explained TA1 was optional, leaving some interesting route choices (more on this later).
Now, I knew going into this race who the main crowd would be. We see a lot of these same cats at Swamp Fox AR every year and there is a certain reputation to many of them not sticking together as a team (which is typically required in an adventure race). So after the RD’s opening statement, I throw up my hand and ask “How close do team members need to be to one another?”
Yep. Im that guy. But damnit, race after race after race we see teams send one dude into the woods to get the CP while the rest of the team sits trail side and recovers.
Cool, the RD says “within eyesight.” That’s a good distance, easier than 30 feet or 10 yards or whatever.
Then, thankfully with no further ado, prayers, pledges or any of that, we’re off to do the prologue!
Prologue: Legos!
Our prologue requires us to run a half mile out to a 5 gallon bucket, grab a wee box of legos, run back and put the legos together. After completing our lego thingy we can get our passport and start the race itself.
The prologue didn’t require us to carry our mandatory kit, which was nice, but also meant I didn’t have my damn glasses. So when I sit down with Greg to put the damn lego thing together, I am completely useless. What a great way to start, too blind to do legos…ugh.
Greg finally fudges our damn lego octopus thing together and we trot down to the RD to get our passport. We pull our boats to the water and finally get this thing started in earnest.
Leg One: Paddle.
- Total distance paddled: 9miles.
- Total time 2hrs 1min.
- CPs 3 out of 4.
Ugh, the things I learned during this leg…I have GOT to get deck compass if Ill be navigating without Heather. See, our usual MO is for me to tow her behind my boat so she can navigate without worrying about getting dropped or anything. She can stare at the map, stare at the compass for as long as needed. But me…shit. I was able to pretty successfully use my wrist compass, but that did mean I had to stop paddling. I hate stopping paddling!
I also learned that seeing a map through a wet map bag is even harder than seeing a map at all. And I learned that navigating on twisty rivers is really damn hard! I took Greg and myself on a nice little twenty minute bonus loop of river that I don’t think anyone else got to see. Thank gahd Greg has good eyes and noticed a building we had previously passed our our left was suddenly on our right.
When we finally had figured out my first nav error we put the hammer down…and blew right past CP2.
I do want to say though, I don’t think was necessarily due to me wanting to push so much as me being absolutely terrible at navigating.
Gahdamit. I forgot how long it takes to write these race recaps out. I wish Heather had been there to take of all this. I don’t have this kind of patience…(editor's [Heather's] note: I told you so. This is why I've skipped the last 3 or 4 race recaps.)
Still on the paddle leg, we see an opportunity to pick up CP8. This could be grabbed during the upcoming O-Course or on the paddle. We pick NOW! Beach the boats, stumble about 10minutes thru the woods, punch CP8. Cool, another one down.
Back in the boats, on our way to TA1, Greg and I have a pow-wow about CP5. We can get there via paddle, or fire a bearing from TA1 and take a chance on the terrain. We pick the latter and now Im trying to paddle my damn kayak while shooting a bearing on a map, pretty sure its raining a bit here too. But, I get our bearing sussed and as soon we beach our boats at TA1. We’re off on foot following my trusty(?) compass to CP5.
Leg Two: O-Course
- 6.5 miles
- 2 hours 16 minutes
- 7 out of 7 CP's
I did get some GoPro footage of CP5, hope it comes through, this was a particularly pretty CP (Kudos Brandon!). Greg and I push thru some shiggy (editors note: "shiggy" is hash house harriers slang for thick brush, usually full of thorns and other angry plants), pass a grubby little pond, dodge some litter and wade thru some river to grab CP5.
Finally feeling like maybe we’re catching up after some previous errors, we’re feeling pretty good.
Up to CP11!
Somewhere in this area we bump into Micheal NCARs (not his real last name, but that’s what Heather and I call him, hope he doesn’t mind). He’s in recovery pace vs his normal race winning pace, so Micheal, Greg and I all roll together for the next few CPs. Some cool highlights include an incredibly slippery trench, a nasty half kilometer bushwack from CP10 to the attack point for CP7, Micheal inadvertently picking up a gorgeous and huge banana spider passenger and seeing several athletes on course without their team-mates and without their mandatory gear.
An extra special highlight of this leg is the three of us chatting like school girls and navigating our way to CP8. Which, it turns out, we’d already gotten on the paddle. And surprise, surprise, there’s another racer standing at CP8 without his team in sight, and no mandatory gear.
Is this just a coastal SC thing? I never see this racing in NC or VA. Am I missing some special South Carolina AR rule?
After our blunder with CP8 we head back to pick up CP9 and bump into Morgan and Scott along the way. The five of us now looking for the CP with the clue “Big Oak Tree”. This takes us a few minutes as there are several tempting trails where the CP could be, but we finally find the big ass oak just as the thunder and lighting start. And hot damn! It was some thunder! Pretty confident in saying all of ducked for cover when the first crack happened, it sounded like a shotgun from 10feet!
Greg climbs the tree, we hand him Morgan’s passport, Micheals passport and our passport. He punches all three and we’re good to go.
From here, Greg, Micheal and I had back to TA1, while I curiously watch Morgan and Scott head the other way back towards CP8.
By the time we get back to TA1, the rain is coming down like a futhermucker and we’re getting some thunderstorms. Its also about this time I start fading. Christ, it’s barely 5hrs in and I’m starting to fade?
But thankfully there was plenty of ice cold water at this TA so we filled up, pushed some more food down and got back in the boats to head over to TA2.
The paddle from TA1 to TA2 should have been awesome. It was gorgeous, rainy and thunderstormy, but here I am off the back. WTF. I’m growing most concerned about myself here. I LOVE the paddle and Im decent at it. What the hell is going on?
We make it to TA2, still thunderstorming and rainy (so awesome, if scary), and my lovely wife is here both to take pictures and collect up the boats (so we didn’t have to go back to the TA after the race).
I hop out of my boat, and jump right into the river. Gators be damned, lighting be damned. I need to cool off, big time. Damn that water did feel nice.
Greg and Micheal tag team their boats up the landing, I lug mine up, wondering why it feels so damn heavy today.
We find Morgan and Scott already at TA2 and getting ready for the bike leg! How the hell?
Well, come to find out, they had skipped going to TA1, put in at CP8 and done the O-course from there. Brilliant and 100% legit! They saved themselves SOOOO much time. Being smart > being fast.
This is the transition Ive been looking forward to for months. I LOVE to paddle, but the bike is my thing. I’ve spent hours prepping my Surly for this event, I’ve spent hours on the trainer, Ive spent hours out in Lewis Ocean Bay. This leg was where Greg and I were gonna put the hurt into anyone foolish enough to get on a saddle.
Well fuck me, the AR Gods had other plans for my cocky ass.
Leg three: Bike
- 36 miles
- 5 hours 45 minutes
- 8 out of 15 CP's
Micheal and Greg drop me within seconds. Its still raining, but no longer thundering and I feel like absolute dog shit.
In the past 5ish hours I drank at least 5L of fluid and felt I’d eaten plenty. Why am I dying in my saddle? This is horrible. Ive never felt so shitty. Pukey. Am I gonna shit myself?
Well, thank Christ for both Greg and Micheal. Greg slows down to pull me back up to Micheal and from there Micheal takes us thru the next two CPs and pulls us down Water Tower Road.
We finally pull off Water Tower and on to good ‘ol Telephone Road (a frequent road in our regular training, and one we love to hate). And again my lovely wife is here to see us!
I stop, Greg stops (and falls in the sand, bahahaha, classic Greg) and Micheal rolls onward.
At this point, I tell both Heather and Greg that Im not sure if I’ll make it past TA3. The heat, which is usually nothing to me, is starting to beat me down. My gut is in full rebellion and my energy levels are non-existent. Heather mentions that I look like a ghost.
But, they’re both incredibly supportive and we decide Im going to push on, at least through this next leg. Shit, we’re now on my home turf, I cant let this slip.
We head out down Telephone road, and it is in PRIME shape (insert sarcasm right there). Telephone road is notoriously awful. Sand, sand, sand and more sand. While my fat tires will normally push me down this road at 15mph no prob, today Im creeping, lucky if Im going 10.
CP14 is an easy find, we know it to be in a place we call "Brian’s Oasis". A nice stream that goes under Telephone before we get to the main roads in Lewis Ocean Bay. Greg hops off his bike and punches the CP while I take a pee and try not to die.
CP14 to 17 is just about a kilometer up the road and the road is in much better shape here after the Oasis. We make pretty short work of this segment and start seeing some of the Ultrarunners who were out doing the 6/12hr Ultra running alongside the AR. (Hi Eric!)
Dumping our bikes at an intersection, Greg and I stumble around the swamp for while, change attack points, stumble in the woods for a while then finally snag CP17 and head back to our bikes.
Then, the two big events that change the direction of my race:
Heather meets us as we’re heading back on to the road up to CP15. She’s got a Gatorade, a Starry soda and some pickles for us!
I am 100% aware that this kind of support is against the rules, but right now, I will happily give up my race in order to get some more liquids and sugar in my gut. I’ll tell the RD at the finish, but this is better than dying trailside. (Gahdamn, Im whiny eh?)
Then, we bump into another racer who reminds us that CP14 thru CP17 are supposed to be Trek only. Ffffffuuuuucck. Remember I mention that way above? Ya…should have written that on my map eh?
But at this point, I’m cooked. Greg is still pulling me along and helping out with the nav. I don’t care in the least about these CPs so we simply roll thru the rest of this leg and pick up the Trek CPs on Bike. We knew they wouldn’t count, but I had NO energy to come back on foot and this was still good nav practice for us.
TA3.
This was actually really damn cool. Apex Promoz had decided to put on a 6 and 12 hour looped ultramarathon at the same time as the Adventure Race. This is where the Ultrarunners were set up and there was a big ass Ultra Aid Station.
Ultrarunners and Adventure Racers finally getting to co-mingle, see who smells worse, who eats the most, has the grossest feet…
Even though I felt like trash, this was so damn great to finally see. (Kudos to you Apex, please continue and expand on this, our communities belong together. Hmm, think about maybe getting the Gravel community in here too?)
I get some fluids in me, stick my helmet in the ice bucket and Greg and I decide to give the final Bike Leg a go. We’re now 8hrs in.
The ride over to the main bike leg is pretty uneventful, we’re on very familiar terrain, nothing too horrible but the sun is now out full tilt with no more rain in sight. Its pretty bloody hot.
Once we cross International Drive to the main bike leg, things start changing a bit.
Navigation is getting a bit trickier. Is this due to fatigue? Maybe.
Is this due to interpretive mapping? Maybe.
BUT! Im finally starting to feel a bit more like myself. My energy level is still pretty crappy, but my cheery disposition is certainly starting to come back.
Entering this side of the course successfully proved a challenge for many racers (self included) as the maps are now showing some roads, not showing others, we’ve got obvious structures here, but nothing on the map. Even though Ive trained hours out here, it takes Greg and I around 20min to determine if we’re actually on the correct roads or not. But we finally get ourselves sussed and head out to CP30. This is some typical LOB type of terrain, sugar sand, pine straw and all around loose terrain. It’s a little tiresome.
But here we pass Micheal again and he gives us a nudge in the right direction of the CP.
Allright, this recap is too bloody long already at 3200 words and I really should be working, so I’ll sum up the rest of this leg:
- Very tricky and frustrating nav.
- Many roads looked penciled into the maps, some established roads not even on the map.
- Topo lines mean next to nothing here.
- LOTS of swamp and bog wading. Hopefully my better half has pulled some vid/pics off the GoPro.
- Heat.
- More swamp and bogs, then some thickets.
I think we got 6 of the 13 CPs out here? Not great, hell, not even good. But it was simply too frustrating for me trying to hit some of these CPs, and to be honest, our race was already shot between biking the trek CPs and me feeling like crap early on.
So somewhere around the ten and half hour mark, Greg and I decided to call it a day and roll back to race HQ, a quick 10k ride on some passable dirt road and pavement.
Back at race HQ it’s wonderful to see my wife waiting for us! She says something snarky about how I no longer look like death warmed over as we hand in our passport. We grab our medals and a friendly and helpful volunteer gets us a Gatorade and water.
Summary:
- Regardless of my bitching about anything previously mentioned or to come, huge Kudos to Apex and Brandon for putting on a great event. I had a great time and will absolutely return if they do it next year.
- Although relatively linear, the course was great with a few route choices that could really impact your time.
- Having water on course was very nice indeed, especially for this race. As Adventure Racers we usually don’t expect much support, but this race was bloody hot.
- Cool, quality shirts, dig the logos on the back. These aren’t garbage cotton Ts. These are tech.
- Although I’m not a medal whore, I liked the medals.
- Even though this was a super heavy F3 crowd, I was glad they kept their dogma out of the event.
What I would fix:
Not a lot really.
- Watch for teams splitting up. Sure, its their race to do with what they want, but the podium could be seriously impacted by cheaters.
- Lose the chicken bog at the finish line. Sure, this might be a personal thing, me being vegetarian, but unless you’re a local, any food called “bog” just sounds revolting, especially in the heat.
- Although Im sure this isn’t easy to arrange, by having the racers pick up their boats after the race, a lot of community feel is lost. If our boats were shuttled to the race finish, more racers would tempted to stick around post-race.
What I learned and what I will work on:
- I really need to be running. Zwifting and riding is too damn fun, but I need to run. (editors note: I told you so.)
- I’m going to get a kayak deck compass, regardless of my Nav situation.
- I can be the weak link. Im not happy about it, but my team-mate was supportive.
- Bring my own food to the finish line. Should have learned this from years of doing Swamp Fox AR.
- My nav isn’t really as horrible as I thought. Sure, it needs work, but my compass work (as little as it was) did the trick and my pace counting was pretty dialed.
- River navigation is damn hard. Especially with the current pulling you faster than you’re used to.
- Don’t be sick the week before a race. I felt better at Sea to Shingles than I did for this event.
- I should probably look into shin guards.
Hot damn! There it is! My first recap in who the hell knows how long. Im sure there’s a ton more I could tell. But my fingers hurt.