Conquering "The Beast" Within

By Blain Reeves

As I wake, the sun is just beginning to pierce through the forest in Claytor State Park, Virginia. I try to lie down and go back to sleep, yet I can’t. My nerves were already starting to work on me. In a few short hours I would be in the race of my life. "The Beast of the East Adventure Race" was billed to be the toughest in North America with some sixty thousand vertical feet to travel, equivalent of two Mt. Everest climbs. Adventure racing wasn’t new to me, however, going solo was. For some strange reason I really enjoy pushing myself beyond all my perceived barriers and limitations. After each race there’s a great sense of accomplishment when I’m through. An adventure race of this length is very much like life. Through it you can experience some of your highest highs but also your lowest lows. I knew that my training would help me, but I had no idea how to handle the solitude. Handling the low points in the race, when my body shuts down and my mind quickly follows, worried me. I knew I was strong enough and confident enough in my skills to complete the race but this would be the ultimate test of what I could do without the restrictions of a team. I’ve raced all my large races of this length with teams but often wondered if I could do it faster alone. Once the race began, I hoped my survival training learned through my thirteen years of military service would pay off. Before I knew it, I was at the starting line with thirty minutes until "start" trying to make sure everything was ready for the first canoe leg. Dan Moy and Danelle Folta, aka Ms. April 1995 for Playboy Magazine, my support team, were busy preparing all my remaining gear and the support vehicle. It was now 11:50 p.m. on the 22^nd of May and ten minutes from the gun. Did I eat enough? Do I have enough food for the first sixty-mile canoe leg? Am I carrying enough water and do I have the right equipment?

The horn sounded and we raced to grab our boats and reach Checkpoint One as quickly as possible. By the looks of it one would think this was the start of a three or four hour race. As boats ran into each other in the back, the leaders were off the front of the pack hammering towards CP1. Checkpoint One was 10 miles out and 10 miles back past the start line so it allowed teams to see each other. Now 20 miles into the race, I passed the start line going the opposite direction and began to feel nauseous. I'm not sure if it was the carbohydrate beverage I was drinking or what. I was just 50 feet from shore where we were required to carry our boats around a large dam, when I vomited everything I had remaining in my stomach. I hit the bank of the New River to begin the mile and a half canoe portage and thought to myself that this can’t be happening...Not this early in the race! All I could think of was that I am now going to dehydrate and have no food in my stomach. Even if I had food, I didn’t know if I could keep it down. To this day, I don’t know what caused me to get sick just 20 short miles into the race. By the time I finished the portage around the dam, the sun was just beginning to crest the hills in the New River Valley. I knew I needed to rapidly get my fluid level back up or I would soon be feeling worse than when I was nauseous. I continued to push down the New River knowing each paddle stroke was draining what little fuel I had left, and the rest would soon be gone. Not anticipating getting sick, I found myself critically short on fuel and knew that it would take some time to make it up. The longer I went without fuel for my body, the longer it would take to recover. I had a total of five carbohydrate gels left to get me through the remaining forty miles of the first paddling leg. Knowing I really only had one option, I completed the first paddling leg. I began to wonder whether or not I would finish this race. Losing all my food and fluids just 20 miles into a 350-mile race made finishing appear to be merely a dream.

I rounded the last bend of the first 60-mile paddle leg to see my support crew waiting for me at the first Assistant Checkpoint. I was very happy to see them and told them I needed fuel and water because my body was beginning to shut down. The sun was nearly vertical overhead and felt like it was cooking me. As I hit the bank they handed me peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in exchange for my paddles and backpack. They quickly added my climbing gear to my bag and sent me on my way. I told them I would spend more time with them at the next Assistant Checkpoint (ACP) and try to recover from the paddle. I didn’t have time to explain. I knew I must get to the climb quickly or there could be a bottle-neck and I could get stuck and waste more valuable time. The next Assistant Checkpoint was a short two hundred-foot ascent, a half-mile hike across a ridgeline and a two hundred fifty-foot rappel away. As I waited for a rope at the base of the climb, I was able to get one of the sandwiches down with some water. I was given rope number three for the climb. It wasn’t a bad rope or route for the climb except for the fact the first 100 feet of the ascent was literally covered in poison ivy. The temperature was rocketing. It felt like it was at least 90 degrees Fahrenheit and rising. By the time I reached the summit of the climb, it felt like I sweat away at least a gallon of water. Probably the gallon I just tried to put in. Dehydration was again becoming a factor but I knew that all I had to do was walk a half mile and rappel and get resupplied at the next Assistant Checkpoint. When I reached the rappel, Team Trident Southwest was getting ready to descend, so I went down the ropes along with them. I reached the bottom of the rappel and quickly moved over to the transition area, Assistant Checkpoint Two, to get ready for the sixty-plus-mile mountain bike leg. As I reached the checkpoint, my support crew greeted me with "your bike was run over but we’re working to get it fixed". My first reaction was disbelief. In fact I just disregarded what they said and told them what I needed packed in my backpack. Then it finally hit me. In my current condition, low on fuel and dehydrated, and the realization of what happened to my bike, I was beginning to have serious doubts about being able to finish this race. Sure, this was an honorable way out of one of the most miserable races I’ve started in a long time. Could I quit easy as that? I know my body wouldn’t have any heartburn with that decision. My mind wondered if I would be able to look at my self in the mirror the next day. I saw months of tough training going down the tubes. My mental outlook was dropping quickly. As I tried to get ready for the bike leg, eat and drink, I assisted where I could in fixing my bike. I quickly realized that my own bike would not be traveling with me on this first bike leg. Luckily, after seeing what had happened to my bike, Team SEAR’s Support Crew helped my crew. They knew I wasn’t going anywhere on my bike and, instead of watching me be eliminated from the race this early, loaned me one of their own support crew bikes. It was a larger framed bike than I was used to, but it was a bike with two wheels and it was much better than the alternatives. At this point I was not in a position to be choosy and the time clock was ticking. The Beast is unique in that it has different divisions in the race, which eliminates much of the cutthroat competition that other races have. Adventure racing for the most part is the athlete against the course, not the athlete against other athletes. The comraderie among racers in adventure racing is unlike any other sport. The race course is designed to teach the racers about humility while pitting them against the best that mother nature has to offer on the course.

Danelle put water and food in my pack and it felt like an additional fifteen pounds. I could see in her face the true sorrow she felt about what happened as she handed me my pack. As I put the pack on, it must have weighed forty pounds. I left the transition point not knowing how it happened, but I wasn’t riding my bike for the first bike leg. In the first fourteen hours of the race, I’ve vomited and had my body shut down only to find out that I wouldn’t be riding own bike, that I’ve been training on, for the first biking leg. What a race this was turning out to be!

Shortly before dark on Day One, I reached Wood's Hole Cabin, another checkpoint but one without assistants. Wood's Hole Cabin was a good resting place because it offered shade and a much needed water source. This point in the race, I would later discover, would be one of my low points in the race. Hoping to do well in this race, I was the third solo racer and somewhere in the middle of the pack of all the teams. My body was beginning to shut down quickly now and I was seriously debating terminating the race. The race just didn’t get off as I had hoped. As I sat at Wood’s Hole Cabin, other teams arrived, refilled with water, rested and left. As I sat and pondered my existence in this race and was considering dropping out, I realized that I was showing all the classic signs again of being dehydrated and low on fuel. I also knew that in the last sixteen hours I hadn’t put in near the amount of calories that I had expended. Having been in this bad situation before, I knew that if I wanted to finish this race, it would be imperative to ingest water and food as quickly as possible. I remembered back in 1988 when I was going through the United States Army’s Ranger School to put the situation into perspective. The school was a gut wrenching two-month school where food and sleep were scarce and numerous patrols were conducted both day and night with packs in excess of eighty pounds all done on one dehydrated meal a day. Why was I feeling sorry for myself? At least I had food in my pack. I sat in the shade of the towering pine trees surrounding the little grassy area and began to drink all the water I was carrying and opened my large ziplock bag of food. It contained some good stuff like beef jerky, dehydrated fruit, candy, and nutritional food bars. Wanting to eat the candy and jerky but knowing that my body required food immediately, I ate almost all the food bars in the bag. I had to force them down because of how I felt. With the clock still ticking, I knew that I needed to get moving. Somewhere in the process of feeling sorry for myself, I remembered something else that I learned when going through Ranger School. The mission must be completed, even if I was the lone survivor. Funny as it is, I chose "Team Survivor" as my team name. On a team of one I had no choice but to be the survivor.

I filled up on water and left Wood’s Hole Cabin with about three hours of daylight left. Knowing that navigation would become more difficult, I wanted to cover as many miles as I could before the sun went down on day one. As I traveled the ever-climbing dirt road, I knew this night would be difficult to get through and hallucinations were inevitable. It would be almost 48 hours of no sleep before I would get my first power nap at the third Assistant Checkpoint. As I moved toward the next ACP I discovered that I would need to do a little off road navigation in order to get there. I soon found myself caught up with Team Schwab. It was good to see another human being after the last seven hours of solitude. Traveling so long without seeing any other teams made me wonder if I was still on course. We talked about all kinds of things during the ride as we made our way to the next checkpoint. I really enjoyed the conversation with Scott Williams, Rob Hardelaza and the rest of Team Schwab. It really made the short time I spent with them much better than the alternative. Needless to say, I was happy to have run into a team even if it was only for a couple of hours. Focusing on smaller goals, my race was now reduced to just making it to my support crew. Still feeling the effects from the day before, I arrived at the third Assistant Checkpoint around four in the morning on the second day of the race.

Happy and hallucinating, I came into the checkpoint and asked for an IV because I knew it would make me feel better. While Danelle and Dan were busy trying to prepare my gear for the next leg, heat up some food, and order an IV for me from the race doctors, I slept. Just in the nick of time too, because it had just started raining as I crawled into my support vehicle for a quick one-hour nap. I guess that I had been sleeping about forty-five minutes when one of the doctors showed up to administer an IV. I gave him my arm and tried to go back to sleep to catch that last 15 minutes of sleep. The doctor poked around for a good five minutes using about four different locations on my hand, wrist, and arm. As he poked I would flinch occasionally at the pain as he dug to find a vein. Maybe he felt bad about inflicting more pain on a guy who looked like he’d been to hell and back already and he left to retrieve another doctor to see if he would have better luck. I quickly fell asleep for the brief moment he was gone but was soon awakened by the new doctor tightening the tourniquet. I hoped the new doctor would find a lucky vein, because I really wanted to get those fluids in me to make me feel better. Well, the new doctor tried his luck and I guess my veins had a stronger will than the doctor did. After five more minutes of poking I sat up in the truck to see blood spots everywhere and said that was enough. I’ll just drink the thing. This was an old trick I learned from some Navy SEAL buddies. Plus my arm couldn’t take anymore. Just then Dan handed me a bowl of hot mashed potatoes with butter and cheese and said I was only behind the leaders by six hours. I quickly washed the mashed potatoes down with the IV solution and got ready to go. I was in twelfth place coming into the transition and still in third place of the soloists. Soloist Andy Scott, a Navy SEAL, worried me as he was still in front along with Dominick Arduin. I wasn’t too sure what to expect from Dominick but I knew Andy would be tough to catch.

It was now about five in the morning and the rain had stopped. My belly was full of food and IV solution and I got a good forty-five minutes of sleep. I actually felt pretty good. Danelle approached me and tried to explain what had happened to my bike. I told her not to worry about it since it didn’t matter now. I just wanted to get my bike back into action as soon as possible and preferably before the next bike leg up White Top Mountain, the second highest peak in Virginia. She said she would do what she could to make it happen. I knew she had run over my bike and felt badly because she trained with me for most of the days prior to the race. She knew how competitive I was and how deeply I wanted a victory. Knowing her sense of guilt about what happened, I told her that we needed to get back into the race. Dan walked with me for a little way as I left the transition starting the first hike leg. We both estimated 12-14 hours until I would see him again. He handed me a bag of chocolate chip cookies and I reemphasized the need to get my bike fixed before the next 90-mile bike leg. I estimated this hike leg to be close to forty-or-so miles.

As I started the first of several climbs I could smell the rain in the fresh mountain air. Maybe this was a sign that I was feeling better. The narrow overgrown trail lead me through a series of switchbacks to the top of Walker Mountain. It couldn’t have been more than a half-mile up the trail when I passed a hiker sitting on the side of the trail covered from head to toe in raingear. The guy looked like he got caught in the rain and just decided to stop and sleep. As I passed the hiker, I didn’t see a racing jersey on him and assumed he was just some nut case out hiking. Passing the hiker must have stirred his sleep as he quickly got up and soon followed me. I had started to pick up the pace because for the first time in the race I had a full stomach and felt better. The fuel and water had me feeling good and the chocolate chip cookies made a great early morning breakfast.

Little did I know the race, for me, would soon transition from a race of survival to a race to win. I noticed as I pushed the pace, the strange hiker continued to follow. I was actually getting annoyed and looked back to see what this psycho was doing. As I turned my head I found Andy Scott, the guy I was worried about, hot on my heels. Just knowing he was now behind me gave me an awesome surge emotionally. I felt like I was back in the race and was full of fuel. As I stepped it out, I gradually pulled away from Andy in the switch backs. When I felt like I had a sufficient lead, I looked back to see if I could see him. I didn’t. So I turned up the heat by running around each switch back trying to gain a stronger lead. I finally reached the top of the Walker Mountain ridgeline just as nature called. Perfect timing, of course! Just as my direct competition is trailing me, and trying to close the gap, I have to go one on one with Mother Nature. Just as I was walking out of the woods to grab my pack, Andy passed by on the trail. It dawned on me that in order to pass me so soon, Andy must have been running back on the switchbacks. I knew he would now try to strengthen his lead. As we walked the trail across the top of the Walker Mountain ridgeline, he began to run the short downhill sections and some of the flat areas. As he continued to run, so did I. This was now the only race that I was racing. I knew if I could get in front of Andy, I would do well in the race because of his strong competitive spirit. I stayed right with Andy and sensed he knew I was there. After following him for at least thirty minutes and having enough of the cat and mouse game I caught up with him to ask him how he thought the race was going. I told him mine had sucked up until now. Soon we would need to find a route off Walker Mountain down through the steep forest. The forest was strewn with down fallen trees and heavy undergrowth. Just as I estimated a route for us to take, it started to rain. I guess Andy and I had made an unspoken agreement that we would hang together for a little while if for nothing else than conversation. The compass bearing I took off the mountain couldn’t have been better. It put us right on the road we were looking for on the map. We are both very strong willed and even more competitive. The inter-service rivalry didn’t hurt the competitiveness either. We continued to keep the pace hard. We traveled together for about an hour. During the hour I felt better and better as Andy began feeling worse. Once again a gap had formed and I was in the lead again and the race was on once more. This time I vowed to gain a much stronger lead. I began to loose sight of Andy on a long series of uphill climbs gradually taking us to the top of another ridgeline. Once I knew I was out of sight, I started running again. This time I ran much further before I walked. I knew at this pace I would soon be out of fuel. Eight hours after I left my support crew, I finally sat down for the first time to take a 10-minute break. Eating was tops on the list followed by a changing of socks and a self-foot massage. I knew I covered a lot of ground in that eight-hour time because of the pace but didn’t realize how much. After eating and putting on fresh socks, I felt like a new man. I actually stopped at the top of the last ridgeline on the hike leg so the majority of the mileage left was either downhill or flat. I felt so good that I began to run. I ran nearly the entire way to the next Assistant Checkpoint. I was ready to run in, grab my bike, get some food and water, and get started on the second 90 mile bike leg. As I entered the transition area to get my bike, support crews greeted me with cheers.

It’s a great feeling to get cheered at each transition. It’s like hitting the finish line each time. That’s one of the perks of expedition level adventure racing. Support crews were everywhere. I knew I could get back in the race and, if I wanted to do well, I would need to get through the transition quickly. I also had a couple of hours of daylight left that would assist me in navigating through the initial section of the 90-mile mountain bike leg. I immediately began scanning for my support vehicle, I didn’t see it. I had flash backs from last year’s race when Dan was 30 minutes late getting to the first transition. Even in a race this long, every second counts. It could mean the difference between finding the right trail before the sun goes down. As I wondered what happened to my crew, Team SEAR’s support crew told me that they hadn't seen my support crew in the transition yet. Knowing what happened to my bike the first time, they told me they were sorry for me because my support team wasn’t there. My worst fear was coming true again. This couldn’t happen twice in a row for the bike legs. I was beginning to think someone didn’t want me to ride in this race. After trying several times to reach my support crew by another teams cell phone, Team SEAR’s support crew once again ran to my aid. They had helped my support crew before but now they were all alone for me on this transition. Without hesitation they began to organize a way to get me pedaling. One of their bikes was already with my support crew from the previous bike leg and luckily they had one bike left. A 16 inch Cannondale bike. It was a big decision point of the race and I had little sleep to make the decision. Do I wait for my support crew for an hour or two or three? How do I get my mandatory equipment for the bike leg? Should I wait for a bike that fits me better, maybe my own, before journeying out for 90 plus miles on the bike? I figured, I made it this far without my bike, why not go for it. Support crews rallied to get me out of the transition. I think every support crew in the transition at the time helped me in one way or another through the transition. Support crew members from Team Tiger Adventures and Sugoi helped get me fed and ready for the next leg. Team SEAR’s support crew rallied the remaining crews to collect mandatory bike leg equipment. Surprisingly enough they were able to get all the requisite equipment needed for the next 90 miles. Pumps, lights, tubes, cycling shorts, and climbing helmets came from everywhere. Support teams from Ravenwolf and Schwab greatly assisted Team SEAR in getting me out quickly. As I got ready to check out with the race official, the show stopping question was asked. Do you have your maps for the next leg? I cringed in fear they weren’t in my pack. Out of sheer luck, stupidity or both I discovered I accidentally brought my maps for the next leg. This was one time I was glad I carried the extra weight. Initially when I came into the transition my intentions were to take an hour rest. Because of the sudden turn of events and the raw display of motivation from the support crews, I fed off the energy and decided to leave as soon as I had all my required gear. No need to rest with a pump like this. As I pedaled away with one of the fastest transition times for the checkpoint all I could think was what a testament this is to the sport and the people that are involved with it. I know of no other sport in the world where teams assist each other as much as in the sport of adventure racing.

Soon I was back in the woods on the second of the two different bikes I used for the race, neither of which were mine. Navigation would be critical for the next 20 miles or so judging by the map. Somewhere in that 20 miles I moved up in the standings. This was also the first time I ran into Alan Bishop and Jim Mandelli, two Canadian guys from Team Ravenwolf. Naturally, when I ran into them I said, "hi" and proceeded on my way. Wanting to get ahead of them, I tried to move at a good pace, however, all the fallen timber in the trail prevented anyone from going anywhere fast. As I tried to pull away, Alan and Jim were hot on my heels and I thought to myself, these guys are really strong riders. We soon arrived at the next checkpoint and found out that we were fourth and fifth place respectively and only two hours off the lead. This was a tremendous boost once again and it helped us increase the pace. I was really appreciative of the bag of food Team Schwab’s support crew threw in my pack with all the good stuff like Oreo's and Corn Nuts. Man, were those good after two days of nutritional bars. Jim talked about a can of Pringles Potato Chips that we would share at the summit of White Top Mountain. Little did I know that I wouldn’t summit until around midnight and Jim and Alan wouldn't summit until 45 minutes later. As we climbed the dreaded White Top Mountain I began to pull away from Team Ravenwolf as Jim was beginning to slow some. I just wanted to get up to the top and stop pedaling up hill. As I cleared the trees near the summit, a weather front was beginning to move into the area. The winds were so strong at the top that I could have walked my bike faster than I was riding it into the wind. The wind in combination with the elevation made it very cold at the summit and I had to put on almost all the clothes I was carrying in my pack. I wanted to wait at the checkpoint at the top for Jim and Alan but was not allowed for safety reasons because of the temperature and approaching bad weather. All I could think about at this point was the Pringles, Jim and I were suppose to share. Clad with a coolmax top, fleece vest, and a lightweight windbreaker I began my descent. I was about 10 minutes down from the summit when I ran into Jim riding towards the summit. I stopped and said they wouldn’t let me stay up there thank God! It is too cold up there. He asked me if I saw Alan on the way down and I said no. He looked a bit like a zombie when I told him Alan must be behind him. He agreed, saying he felt like he had been sleep riding for the last five miles and may have passed him and not noticed. This is when the envelope begins to get pushed in adventure racing. It’s also when things begin to get extremely dangerous because of unclear thinking. Much like climbers when they summit Mount Everest. I told Jim I’d find Alan and we could share the Pringles potato chips later. I continued down the mountain and about a mile and a half down the road I saw a red blinking light off the side of the road so I stopped to investigate. It looked as though a rider crashed and was lying on the side of the road. It was Alan curled up in a fetal position catching a quick nap while he was letting Jim catch up to him. Because he was asleep he didn’t notice that Jim rode right past him on his way to the summit. I woke Alan up and told him Jim was up the road about two miles waiting on him. He jumped up in a daze, jumped on his bike and took off to catch up with his teammate. The next time I would see Team Ravenwolf would be about six hours later just before sunrise. I continued to push and get back to the Hurricane Creek Campground and the checkpoint.

We passed through the campground on the way up to the summit. There were some hill ascents on the way back but it was predominately down hill. I figured I could push it to the checkpoint at the bottom before needing to stop for sleep. Coming off the summit I must have reached speeds of forty plus miles an hour. It was enjoyable getting all this downhill, but it was cold. I was ninety percent of the way back to the checkpoint that I passed on the way up to the summit when I began to feel the same sleep deprivation monster that was haunting Jim earlier. It was a battle that I was quickly losing. In fact, it got so bad that I got to the point that I stopped and told the camera crew following me to give me some room and keep their eyes open. I didn't want them running over my borrowed bike with me on it. It couldn’t have been more than two miles after I stopped and talked to them, that I crashed. Yes, falling asleep while riding a bike is hazardous! I really never imagined that my body would allow me to do that. Thank God, I wasn’t doing forty miles an hour but more like eighteen or twenty. I really don’t recall much other than waking up on the ground with everything on my left side hurting. Surprisingly enough the only injuries I sustained from the crash were some scratches and bruises. Reverting back to the days when I was in Ranger School and was once caught sleeping in a class, I stopped and did fifty push-ups. Maybe it was a trained reflex. Regardless, the pushups in combination with the pain associated with my crash kept me awake enough to get to the checkpoint.

Finally at the checkpoint, I decided it might be a good idea to refill on water and catch about 45 minutes sleep. My sleep deprivation was so bad that I could have slept in water if it was my only option. I pulled out my emergency blanket, put my pack under my head and left the race for a little while and drifted off to a happy place. Just before my alarm went off I was awakened by Team Ravenwolf greeting me while searching for water. I now started to shake uncontrollably as I peeled myself off the cold ground. I asked how their night went and they said they made it this far. I stuffed my emergency blanket away and grabbed a bar to eat and took off pedaling once more. The race was beginning to have significant effects on me now and it was beginning to move from the physical endurance to the mental fortitude for me. Bones, joints, and swollen muscles began getting stiffer with each stop.

Just before midday we reached Comer’s Rock and another Assistant Checkpoint. This would be the first time I’ve seen my support crew since I left early that morning to do battle with Andy Scott. Feeling good, seeing my support crew and getting hot food, I again started to get pumped about the race. Sure, I could have been very upset with my crew but I think they understood the magnitude of their mistake. Coming into the ACP in a tie for fourth place and just an hour and a half behind Cathy Sassin and Steve Gurney of Team Complete IT Solutions, I felt like I could gain another position but knew it wouldn’t be easy. Cathy had just come off an impressive victory in the Elf Adventure Race in the Philippines and Steve was on the winning team for this year’s Raid Gaulosis Adventure Race. By my calculations I had twenty-four or less hours of racing left and Cathy and Steve’s lead was growing every second I stayed in the transition. I yelled to Jim and Alan in their support area and told them I was going to press on and try to close the gap. Amazingly enough, my support crew and I didn’t even really talk about them not being at the last transition. Danelle did mention that she was upset that she missed me. I told her not to worry about it, I’m here and the race is now. Just make sure this bike I just rode makes it to the last ride. After 90 miles and one crash it kind of grew on me. This was Danelle’s first experience with an expedition level race and I told her to just learn from it. Dan, on the other hand, has had a lot of experience in adventure racing and that’s why he was in charge of my support crew. Although Dan was the one I appointed in charge, it seemed as though Danelle was beginning to take control of the support crew because of all that had happened. As I headed off Comer’s Rock and set out on the thirty-two mile hike, I began to pick up the pace once again. I wanted to catch Cathy and Steve but more importantly I wanted to try and cross the New River before dark. The hike leg appeared to have teams crossing through the New River according to the maps. I guess I was dreaming because I didn’t make it until just before midnight. As I ran and walked, the heat of the day began to take its toll and I grew increasingly sleepy. I guess up until now I’d slept for about an hour and forty-five minutes total. I had to take 10 minutes and get some rest, I knew it would help. I found a shady spot in the small trail and crashed. At this point there was no tossing and turning or getting comfortable. As soon as I lay back against my pack and set my alarm, I was out for a very quick 10-minute nap. I couldn’t tell if my drowsiness was from sleep deprivation or a mild case of dehydration. My guess was it was a combination of both. My alarm soon woke me and I felt worse than before I had laid down. Regardless, I got moving now knowing I had 10 more minutes to make up. It was about three hours since I left the checkpoint and I decided to take a break. Two minutes into my break Team Ravenwolf came walking up from another direction. Once again we were reunited and off to the river crossing in a hurry to beat the quickly approaching darkness. Alan was having a hard day with a severe chaffing problem. Severe enough that he had to go "commando" style for most of the hike portion down to the river. We eventually reached the river just before midnight and stripped down into our river crossing attire. Our attire consisted of shoes, shorts, life vest and headlamp. Alan opted for the shorts free crossing of course. Everything else was water proofed in our packs. Make no mistake, it was cold, very cold, cold enough to see your breath. The water temperature didn’t seem as bad as the surface temperature but the surface temperature was bad once we were wet. We moved in and out of the water for forty minutes it seemed. I thought to myself that there was no way this river is this wide. I must be near the end. Just then the zipline appeared out of the darkness in my headlamp. The zipline was a taught rope anchored up stream on the near side and downstream on the far side to move the competitors across the deep section. Soon I was stepping into the cold, dark, fast moving water and found myself up to my neck and not touching the bottom. My safety line and caribiner were working. I quickly got ripped across the river as soon as I hit the swift current. Next thing I knew I was slamming into the rocks on the far side of the river looking for a way to get off the damn line. I thought I would never get across. The darkness slowed movement considerably. Team Ravenwolf and I finally reached the far side of the New River only to realize we had a one hundred foot rock scramble to accomplish to get out of the river bed. The rock scramble would not prove easy at night. It seemed each route we took got progressively harder. All we could think was there was no way they would have us climb this route without some sort of ascending device. It was difficult but not impossible. At the top I figured we had between fifteen and twenty miles to hike to get to the next checkpoint. By the top of the rock scramble we were warmed up again and ready to finish this race. As we reached the top we were given instructions by some of the race volunteers as to the direction we needed to take. The directions were in direct contradiction to what the race course directions said. We searched for the route we needed to take for an hour before returning to the volunteer and getting more clarification. We eventually figured out a way to go and began to move in what we thought was the right direction. With a little extra mileage and a few more blisters added on to the ones we already had, we made it to the next checkpoint just as the sun was rising on the final day of racing. From there we only had a short distance to reach our Assistant Checkpoint not more than a mile away.

As we got closer to the Assistant Checkpoint I saw a vehicle resembling my support vehicle which made me very happy. As I got closer I saw a tall blonde who very much resembled my wife. I remember asking my wife to arrive for the finish, which I expected to be tomorrow not today. I told Alan that can't be her, she's not due here until tomorrow at the earliest. We were soon a few hundred feet away and my wife Tracy and Danelle came running to us asking how we were doing and what took so long. We explained our mishaps with the navigation directions and moved into the transition area. As I asked for another IV to drink, to get my fluids back up, my wife explained she couldn't stay at home and watch another second of this race from the internet. She couldn't believe what had happened to me and she flew early to help. Having her in the transition boosted my moral and seemed to give me the feeling that this race would soon be over. We filled our water bottles and set out on the third bike leg of eighteen miles to the final transition.

I reached the final bike to canoe transition and my support crew was there waiting for me. I was having mixed emotions at this point. I began to get happy because I knew I could finish this race for sure, even with my tendonitis developed from the first paddle. On the other hand, I was almost sick from the amount of fluids I ingested while trying to ride there. I began getting flash backs from the first paddle leg a few days ago. There was no way I was going to let that happen again. I filled my canoe with plenty of food and water and set off on the final canoe leg of twenty miles with Team Ravenwolf by my side. We talked and enjoyed ourselves as we paddled in for the finish. We knew we were secure in our placing and there were no immediate threats coming from behind. It was a great feeling to look back at the race as each paddle stroke drew us closer to the finish. What a great way to bond human beings and triumph over adversity. As we neared the finish, camera crew helicopters flew over to capture our finish on tape, yet they came a little too close and almost capsized both our canoes.

I finally reached the finish on one of the hardest races I've done, in a mere three days, thirteen hours, and thirteen minutes as the first solo racer across the line. I can't say if the race was harder because I went at it alone or whether it was the course design, or both. Needless to say it was nothing short of humbling. Maybe it was the extra hurdles my support crew threw in to give the extra challenge. Either way, I left the race satisfied, knowing that I again pushed my limits and set new ones. The greatest triumph though, was knowing, that I conquered the Beast and the Beast definitely conquered me!

By Blain Reeves