Rootstock Racing!

Without a doubt, the new star on the AR scene is Rootstock Racing. Our own Eric Caravella has taken on a few of Rootstocks recent events and reports back here:

Hello AR peeps! Eric here with some cool stuff to tell you about a few great races I took part in recently. Rootstock Racing is the AR brainchild of Brent Freedland and Abby Perkiss, and for their 2016 inaugural year they put together a series of new and creative races in the PA/NJ area. I had conflicts for the first couple of races on their calendar, but was lucky enough to catch their final three races of the year.

The Stockville

The Stockville was a 2-day foot nav race held in Tuscarora Forest in Central PA in October. Inspired by the European mountain marathons, this race was a blend of trail running and gnarly off-trail scrambling and bushwhacking. I raced with fellow NYARA buddy Brice Wilson and newbie (at least to NYARA) Teresa Burke.

Tuscarora Forest is a super long, super skinny park with rocky and hilly terrain. Day one came with a 14 hour time limit, and took us from one end of the park to midcamp (or Stockville, as seen above). Yes, Brent and Abby set up a midcamp complete with Christmas lights, signs, canopies, fire pits, and hot beverages. And if that wasnt enough, Brent somehow found the time to carve a Rootstock-O-Lantern!

October was a beautiful time of year to cruise around central PA, as the foliage was a riot of color (of course all the orange leaves made for some false CP sightings!) The weather was quite brisk, but fortunately I had my MontBell Plasma 1000 down jacket to keep me warm. Seriously, without sounding too much like a commercial, this thing weighs less than 5oz and packs down to the size of my fist. Yet with 1000 fill power down, it kept me amazingly warm for such a light garment. Coupled with the MontBell Convertible Rain Jacket (9oz) and Versalite Rain Pants (3.6oz) for wind protection, I was light, fast, and warm!

We raced through the day and into the night, through a series of mandatory and optional checkpoints, and made it to midcamp where we enjoyed some hot food, warm beverages, good conversation and a full nights sleep (a rare luxury in adventure racing!)

Day two was a race back to the start, and the route was on fast trails for the most part. That is, until we found one particular ridge we liked so much we decided to spend several hours on it, walking back and forth looking for a checkpoint. Fortunately, we found it and made it to the finish before the cutoff and found pizza waiting for us! We took the overall team win, but two solo racers were able to finish a bit faster. Congrats to Dave Ashley and Glen Gibson on a great race, and to Rootstock for conjuring up such a great way to spend a fall weekend!

Our first place in the team category earned us some sweet swag, and delicious home baked muffins!

The Wild Pig

Next up was the Wild Pig in November, a 6.5 hour MTB-O race in Reading, PA. The Wild Pig was the third race in Rootstocks 2016 Adventure Series, which started with a foot race in the spring and then a canoeing race in the summer. See what they did there? The three AR disciplines in three separate races? Genius. Anyway, teams that participated in all three events gathered cumulative points to determine the overall winner of the Adventure Series after the Wild Pig. We missed the first two races but were happy to have made it to the Wild Pig.

For short races, I love using my MontBell Cross Runner Pack 15. Its lightweight (13oz) and fits like a vest, but has a deceptively large capacity. I raced with NYARA teammate Cara Guilfoyle, who might be one of the fiercest competitors Ive ever met. Im actually a little scared of her, because I know if I screw up shell kill me. Plus shes a surgeon in real live, so Im convinced she knows all kinds of ridiculously efficient ways to end my life. The race started with a short foot-O prologue. We were supposed to copy the prologue CP locations off a master map, but those instructions went in one ear and out the other and I totally forgot. So after the starting gun went off, and after frantically copying half a dozen points onto our map, and after talking Cara out of killing me, we scampered off into the woods hoping we were heading in the correct direction.

After 20 minutes of sketchy fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants nav, we collected the prologue points surprisingly easily and were off on our bikes. Here is Cara going so fast the camera couldnt even capture her clearly:

Using a combination of orienteering maps, 1:20,000 topo maps, and cartoon park maps, we navigated our way to some really cool CP locations through a complex series of trails on Mount Penn and in the surrounding parklands. We kept a great pace and made no mistakes until we reached the old firetower CP that neither of us will ever forget. We found the old firetower without a problem but there was no CP! We bushwhacked around and rode the trails back and forth looking for the flag for 20 minutes before Cara finally said hey, theres a door on the firetower! Yes, the flag was inside. And to add insult to injury, Koa Wahine and Chris OBara rolled up just as we were getting ready to ride off, and they immediately walked inside to punch the CP! How did they know???

Anyway, after approximately 2 dozen times up and down the mountain, and after surviving a ride through an interesting area of downtown Reading, we finished strong with all CPs in a little over 4 hours and 30 minutes. Sadly, we were 13 minutes shy of the win. Somehow Rev3 managed to squeak it in ahead of us!

Its always easy to Monday morning quarterback your races and pick a million ways you couldve improved your time, but this race was pretty tight with the exception of the old firetower fiasco. But it was certainly a learning experience, and you can be sure that Cara and I will both be looking for doors on firetowers from now on!

The Two Rivers

The final race of the Rootstock season was the Two Rivers AR on December 3rd. Despite its name, there was no paddling in this one, just an 84 checkpoint 12-hour hammerfest through greater Philadelphia on bikes and on foot. Thats right, 84 checkpoints. What would possess Brent and Abby to design a race with 84 CPs is beyond me, but it ended up being pretty damn awesome.

We were originally registered as our 2016 Shenandoah Epic winning team (me, John and Aaron Courain, and Vanessa Peck), but some late-season health issues took a toll on our roster. Aaron dropped a week or two before the race due a nagging I.T. band that flared up after a recent 50K, so Jason Urkfitz (from team Canada AR) signed on in his place. Then, on the morning of the race, Vanessa came down with a nasty cold and felt it would be wise to drop on account of her inability to breathe.

So we raced as a 3-person all male team, and had a blast doing it! Well, as much of a blast as one can have when punishing themselves non-stop for 12 hours.

The race started on the classic Belmont Plateau Cross Country Course with a short prologue on foot, then it was off on the bikes to ride the great local singletrack for a couple of hours. After successfully navigating through what resembled a rats nest of twisting and turning trails, we hit the road toward our first foot-O section at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. We sprinted around the property answering clues and taking pictures, one of which was a selfie in front of the Rocky statue (L to R: me, Jason, John):

Just a side note, here. We got yelled at by some tourists because we inadvertently cut in line to take this photo. We attempted to politely explain that we were in a race and would only be a moment, but it was apparent that people in Philadelphia take Rocky statue selfies very seriously. And when we took a moment to look, there was indeed a line of people waiting to take photos. Which begs the question WHY? They do know Rocky is a fictional character from a movie and not a real-life hero, right? And do they also know that this is just a statue of a fictional character? None of that seemed to matter to this guy:

Anyway, we got our photo and scampered off toward the next point. After running around the museum and thoroughly confusing some more tourists, it was back on the bike for the next leg of the race.

This was a short bike ride to our next short foot-O challenge, this time through scenic Laurel Hill Cemetery:

We grabbed our CPs here (all the while being respectful of the graves, of course!) and it was back to the bikes for the longest bike leg of the race though Wissahickon Valley Park. I should remind you that there are 84 checkpoints. Also, we are only a few minutes behind Rootstock Racing team at this point, and had been fighting for the lead the whole race. So the pace is ridiculous and we are miserable. I seriously considered crashing my bike on purpose so that I could stop racing.

But we pressed on and cleared the bike loop only minutes behind the leaders, taking more selfies along the way (you cant tell, but this statue is on top of a cliff in the middle of the woods):

After completing the bike leg we headed out on the last long running leg back through Wissahickon, desperately trying to catch Rootstock. Thankfully Jasons navigation was great on this leg, and he didnt make us do any additional distance on foot. Heres us with some weird concrete hump thing:

The sun went down as we collected the last of our points, and we heard from several people that Rootstock was still only a couple minutes ahead of us. But alas, it wasnt meant to be. Rootstock just would not make a mistake and let us pass. We came scrambling in to the finish after 10 hours and 37 minutes of racing, only 7 minutes behind Rootstock. Hugs and congratulations all around, and relief tha