My First Eco-Challenge
by Sean Lunny, July 2003

Well, not just my first Eco-Challenge, but actually my first race over 12 hours ever! I've always considered myself to be a fairly rational person. Although from the looks of pity I got from fellow competitors at the Eco-Challenge North American Championships in Sault Ste Marie this July, when they found out that this would be the first time I had ever done anything like an Expedition race, I began to wonder if maybe I had made a bad decision. The response we were getting from volunteers and support staff who knew details about the race route weren't building my confidence either. Each of them had a well practiced "you guys are going to die" look. The next indication that things were going to be pretty crazy was the fact that it took three days to go through gear and safety checks, and to pack our gear and food into our team containers.

All my doubts aside, I was getting excited about what the race had in store. I had first become aware of adventure racing three years earlier, and this race would my chance to find out what I was truly capable of.

The race got under way Sunday morning, when all the athletes boarded buses. A short drive later and we were at the train station where we hopped on the Algoma Central Railway and headed north--way north. It was at this point that we first received are maps and were told we had two hours before the train would stop and the race would begin.

The maps we received filled us in on the first three stages of the race. An approximately 50 km trek would start us off, then an 80 km mtn bike, followed by a 120km kayak. FUN, FUN, FUN!!!!!

The two hours on the train were over quite quickly, and then it was time to get off and line up for the official start. With helicopters over head, and TV cameras all around us, the race started and we were off. I quickly learned that like all Eco-Challenges before it, this one was going to waste no time in getting you wet. Within 3 minutes we were working our way across a river and up a steep ravine. We would then enter the wet marsh land and coniferous forests that make up northern Ontario and enter bush-wacking hell. Twenty one hours later my team would exit the woods. We were disappointed to find out that the conservative route we had chosen had been too slow and that we were in 14th place out of the 40 teams in the race.

A quick transition and it was off on the mountain bikes. The riding was easy and our team started to make some progress and managed to pass three teams. As daylight began to fade we neared the end of the mountain bike. With only about 5 km between us and the CP I began to think about clean clothes, food, and my sleeping bag. However as we approached the area where we thought the trail needed to get us to a dam, and across a major river was located, we noticed lights moving up and down the road. This was not a good sign. I was soon to learn that the Eco-Challenge race organizers really like to make finding CP's difficult. After hours of riding up and down trails we were unable to find the trail we needed, and after 40 hrs of continuous racing we needed some sleep. This would mean no sleeping bag, instead I got to use my previously never, but soon to be well used emergency space blanket! After waking up two hours later, very cold, and not very well rested our team decided to bush-wack up and down a set of power lines with our bikes, to a different dam to get across the river. Hours later and we were in CP 2.

We were now under the gun. The next leg was a 120km kayak section that had to be completed by noon Wednesday. That would give us 24hrs to complete the kayak leg. We headed off, and it soon became apparent that we would need to paddle really hard to be able to make it. The course followed the entire length of Lake Superior Park. For the most part we would follow the coast line, checking in at two CP's along the way. We had really hoped to make use of sails the Brad and Tim had brought along, but unfortunately after hours of trying it became apparent the wind was just not going to be consistent enough for us to make good use of them. The highlight of this leg for me was the incredible coast line, and paddling through a group of small islands as the sun set on our third day of racing. During the night the team had the sleep monster attack, and two of my team-mates Kim and Brad were unable to stay awake for most of the night. This resulted in Tim and I trying to paddle each double kayak by ourselves. The result of this was when morning did hit and it was apparent how much further we had to go, Tim and I bonked heavily. The team had to hit the beach on a little island in the middle of nowhere, and for the second time made use of my previously unused space blanket. An hour later we were moving again and when we finally hit the CP at the end of the leg we got the bad news. We were the 11th team and had missed the CP cutoff by one and a half hours!

At this point we also found out that this was not actually a transition area and that teams actually had to get back in there kayaks for an additional 50km kayak!! Maybe missing the time cutoff wasn't such a bad thing.

Our team then had to make a decision of withdrawing from the race, or continuing on after skipping the next two legs. There was no real decision to make and out team continued on to our next leg. Since we were no-longer really "racing" we took sometime to eat and sleep and Thursday morning at 5am headed off on what was supposed to be a twelve hour canoe leg. We had a beautiful morning paddle then got to hit one of the most enjoyable parts of the race, a 350 meter ascend and repel. All went smoothly here, and I didn't die, and we were all too soon back in the canoes and paddling again. This time however we had the wind on our side, and we roped our two canoes together and put up a huge tarp to act as a sail, and we literally flew down the lake. At one point we worked it out that we had covered ten kilometers in just under an hour. We new we were going to be hitting a small river at the end of the lake, unfortunately we had one problem in that we didn't no exactly how long the river was, because our navigator had accidentally left one section of maps back at the previous TA. It soon became clear that this leg was going to take more then 12 hours, what we didn't know was that it would take closer to 30!

You know when you get canoes in an AR race that you are going to have to portage them, but none of us could have imagined just how hard this section of the race was going to be. Luckily we ended up with another team so we could suffer together. This leg proved even more difficult then the organizers had predicted, as what was supposed to be a shallow river, became a shallow stream and we were forced to push, pull and carry our canoes over slippery rocks and trees. Once again we were forced to spend another unexpected night in the woods. This time our night was spent on a small river bank along with two other teams. In the morning we continued on and eventually we made it to the CP. At this point it was clear that there was no way we were going to be able to finish and get Kim on her 6am flight back to LA on Saturday so we were force d to withdraw and my foray into expedition type racing was over.

Going into this race I had no-idea what to expect. I had never raced over night. I didn't know my teammates. I had never raced for more than three days. Luckily for me I didn't mind the sleep deprivation, my teammates were great, and racing for six days really wasn't too bad. Racing this race was an experience of a lifetime, and I can't wait to try it again, now that I know what to expect.