The quick and dirty 'race' report is that I quit at 38 hours (based on the DR clock, was actually only 36 hours from the time we left Amee Farm on Friday) with 1st place finishing around 57 hours, and the last racer finishing after an incredible 67 hours.
The Death Race is a gauntlet of challenges. It begins before the race even starts. It has an reputation for being merciless, so racers prepare well in advance. Some (like myself) engage in day-long training sessions that most would consider masochistic. How does walking through 32F water for 12 hours train someone for anything? I suppose I was interested in seeing my physical (and to some extent mental) limits. The camps put on by the Tire Guys (Jeff and Bruce Foster) were mini Death Races of their own, and I'm glad they happened, I don't think anything else I had experienced before them would have prepared me for the utter punishment myself and ~230 others went through this past weekend.
 |
| Retired Death Racers |
Back to DR (that's Death Race) crap. This years theme was "Betrayal". Just keep that in mind, because it's present in everything we did this year. Our first task was given to us back in October/November. We had to have an essay as to why we wanted in on the race, and we also had to get our entry publicized in a local magazine or paper. If we failed to do so, a 13-14 mile swim was in store for us the morning of the race instead. My article can be found here(http://www.nhmagazine.com/home/955478-101/weekend-warriors.html). In reality, neither challenge seemed to matter. The 1st place male didn't have an article, and on the day of the swim, those without an article weren't required to. Betrayal, yay. I heard 1st place still has to get something published within a week, but it's all rumors. ANYWAY, I arrived at ~2:30, was told to park, put my stuff in the racers' tent and find Joe...well, I saw Andy and Joe (race directors) both told me I was way behind and I didn't know what I was doing, which was true. Apparently I suck at reading comprehension. I was supposed to head to the top of the mountain, weigh in, then I could head to the bottom and get my bib number. All of this was at the other end of town, at a different farm. Luckily another racer was in the same boat, and drove me up the access road; from there we had a ~400ft climb to be weighed in.
 |
| Amee Farm, Pittsfield VT |
At the weigh-in some kids teased us about finishing, asked me to guess my total weight(~195lbs, and that was without an axe or a bucket). A young girl then gave me rabbit food and told me if I made it to the end, I hade to have 4 pieces of it left, or owe 3k burpees. As for my axe and bucket, my Death Race pal, Dan Corbera, was kind enough to let me borrow his, but he was ~30 minutes behind me. When we got back down to the service road, Dan had just gotten out of his car, he handed me the axe, bucket, and then took off up the mountain. I made it to registration at the bottom and realized I'd forgotten to make an index card with my pack's inventory...let me attempt to recall my gear:
Axe(req.)
5 Gal Bucket(req.)
Hand Saw
4x pairs of gloves(only wore 1)
Baggy of human hair(req.)
Toilet paper
Fire Starter
Knife
Leatherman
2xIbex wool t-shirts
Dry pair of Darn Tough socks
Compression Boxer Briefs
Marmot lightweight technical shell
Duct tape
Electrical tape
Rope
Ratchet Strap
3L Water bladder
3x Lara Bars
1x Coconut/chocolate bar
2x Headlamp
3x bungee cord
First aid kit
Sunglasses
Needle&Thread(req.)
Life Jacket(req.)
Pink Swim Cap(req.)
 |
| Cowabunga! |
When we arrived, racers were doing a number of things, there had been a strength test that involved moving a huge log and chopping wood. There'd been a swim test in the small pond, and a fit test in the culvert. I learned the only one that they were taking bib numbers for was the fit test so I walked over to see what was up and I'm greeted with "You haven't done this yet!? You're already losing! You have 15 minutes before we're leaving, get in there!" As I entered, one of the staff with a megaphone started screaming at me in the culvert. Anyone who's ever crawled trough a culvert with someone talking to them through a megaphone knows how loud it can get. He kindly stopped yelling and switched the megaphone to "siren" mode. Awesome. I missed the rusty holes but scraped my knees. I ran over to the tent where Dan had been and the place was deserted. Everyone had been asked to pick the items up and hold them over their heads. I saw Dan, shirtless (hadn't stitched his shirt!), and joined a group of people holding one of the items. The items were one of 3 things: a 6'' diameter PVC pipe filled with water, the same pipe filled with wood, and a 3-person kayak. There were multiples of each.
 |
| Competitors' gear tent where crew and support stayed and waited for over 24 hours. |
Before the burpee-ing was done, we'd already lost 2 people though. Our younger members actually dropped at that point due to a lack of water. I was shocked. Why couldn't they just ask their team members for a sip? Instead, they left after ~1.5 hours into the Death Race. We started hiking again. It was dark, so we all donned headlamps and tried to push our way to the front of the pack. It was actually nice being in first. We could keep track of our team members better, and swap them off the tube as needed. We finally get to another big clearing and are told to do more burpees and swap our item for a kayak...boooo. The only team with a truck tire had to keep their item, which ended up screwing them later on as the trail narrowed. With our kayak we tried some funky rope-weave underneath to carry it easier, but since we didn't have time to get it just right we abandoned that in favor of carrying it over our heads.
I should mention, this is what we assumed would be the "warm up". Every year at the Death Race(and WDR too) there's a group activity that leads up to the actual "competition". At some point, tasks will become more individual-focused and that's when people start breaking ahead of others. Usually the warm up is 8-10 hours, and so most of us, myself included, only prepared to be away from our gear for that long. I had 3 Lara Bars and 1organic Coconut bar, plus 2.5ish liters of water. A lot of people had less than that.
The kayak-carrying continued; the trail was rough and narrow. We were constantly stopping due to congestion of groups ahead of us. Eventually things sped up, and we found ourselves alone in the darkness, assuming we were on the right trail. By the time we finally emerged at a small lake, we'd walked something like 18 miles, over 12-13 hours. We'd have to go that far to get back to our food, and our crew. The whole time I was feeling horrible for my mother. She'd come all the way to Pittsfield, prepared so much for me, and I had absolutely no idea when I'd see her or if she knew where we were. I was constantly worried about that, as well, and I was concerned about when we'd get more food. I eat a relatively high fat, low carb diet, so I'm usually ok with no food for great lengths of time, but I typically don't fast AND lift heavy things for hours and hours. Back to the race-- we were at a lake, and we were the second to last group to show up. We were told to bring 10 buckets of rocks from ~.25 miles up a road down to the beach, and afterwards we'd do a swim test in our life jackets, wearing our pink swim caps.
I brought 1 bucket down and hear Andy ask a teammate of mine: "Did your TEAM do its 10 buckets?" I think he was speeding us along, which sucked for others who'd done 8-10 buckets on their own, but with a team of 11, after 1 trip, we were all Okayed to swim. And holy crap did cool lake water ever feel soooo good. It was basically a breather of sorts. All I had to do was float around a dock and buoy, and I had a flotation device on, how hard could this be? The swim was like a massage. My legs felt renewed, my feet stopped aching. My Traps stopped throbbing from the weight of the kayak. Afterward I cleaned my shoes, put on my dry pair of socks and got ready to go. Andy told us we could leave our lifejackets there because Sunday there'd be another swim at the lake, and to grab 3 buckets of rock before we leave. Well, while I was filling my 3rd, I'm told from behind: "Drop the rocks and get your packs, we're leaving. You have to be ahead of Jack (race staff) by the next checkpoint."...Awesome..myself and the people at the rocks were probably the last ones to fill, so we were the last ones to our gear. I rushed to pack, and found Dan waiting...what a swell guy!
We started moving at a fast hike, and it felt like we were in the back of the pack. We started talking about Wolverine, the movie. Dan's a big fan, like my dad probably is. As he reads this I imagine he's thinking "hey, that was a good movie", and he'll be happy to know at least one other person on the planet thinks the same. I can't fault either for it, it's got attractive women, explosions and an angry guy with claws, recipe for amazing, right? Conversation took our minds off of the daunting hike ahead. No idea how many miles we did...numbers like 18 were thrown around. All I know is that we hiked from around 6-8am to 1:30pm. Dan recognized the trail we were on as part of the Peaks Ultra 53 miler he'd done previously. It went on for what felt like forever. Dan eventually needed to stop, as his new shoes weren't being friendly to his feet. He'd found he had a blister forming, and tried to tape it. As he bandaged, we were passed by a bunch, but as soon as we started going, we popped right back in front of them. In fact, on the downhills, we ran and caught up to even more.
Dan had a surprise for me as well, courtesy of Margaret, a racer who'd dropped earlier. She gave him a bottle of honey. We each had some, but didn't overdo it, and kept on hiking. Eventually we came out to a road, and a man had a hose going for us. We refilled on super nutritious hose water(but seriously, that guy was awesome to do that for us) and saw that we were actually pretty far ahead of everyone, as Junyong Pak passed us as we were getting water. He's won men's 1st at the 24hr World's Toughest Mudder in December. We followed markings on the road that lead us up a never ending dirt road/hill. Finally we came to a driveway where we were directed to sit on our buckets and in groups of 8 or so assemble a toy-sized Radio Flyer wagon. As amazing as that sounds, it was also a depressing point in the race. Dan was out. He'd told me at 1pm that if we didn't have food in 1hr, he didn't think he could keep going. Couple that with a blister that had been growing for the last 2 hours and he wasn't in good shape.
In fact, a lot of people were limping due to foot pain. That was probably the number 1 killer at the race(makes my reason sound pretty damn lame). I was on the verge of quitting for lack of food, and for what I felt was my own betrayal of my mother for not being able to see her, but since I was in good health, with perfectly A-OK feet, I didn't want to throw in the towel just yet. I said my goodbyes to Dan, wished him well, and sat on my bucket, envious of the food, and rest he was about to get.
We were then given a doozey of an exam. There were 250 questions, 3 different answer sheets, an essay question, and a bonus letter decoder puzzle. I finished 80 questions. In reality, the exam was a betrayal. It was needlessly annoying to even answer. To answer, you had to go to answer sheet A, find the number of the question you're answering(and they're all out of order), and put the answer above the number. But then answer sheet B required you match the question to the answer out of a giant garble of numbers. Answer sheet C needed you to record all of the numerical answers(I think). The essay was to be exactly 100 words long. There was other crap that they asked you to write on each page, time, hours into the event, name, bib number....didn't matter, I don't think anyone had a chance in hell of finishing it even though we were given 2 hours.
Once that was over I found ultra-runner Michelle Roy, and then met up with Lisa Lunt. Lisa went into the Death Race with a fractured heel, and she was still going strong even though her team had been pushing a tire the last 18 hours. They were so far behind that the didn't meet up with us at the exam or water. She was in pain, and you could tell she was fighting it but she was still moving. We then found ourselves at the farm where we registered and we were told we needed to race to the top, and that the last 50 people would be disqualified...which was a lie to get us to move. Either way, I was going to huff it with Lisa, since she was the last of the people I knew well that I'd seen and I like the buddy system. about 2/3 the way up, Lisa needed a break. I felt horrible leaving her, but I wasn't sure she'd keep going, and her support crew/boyfriend Eric was there to help her if she needed it, so I reluctantly started running(holy shit, running?), yes, running, up the mountain road. I don't know why/how, but I felt fresh enough, and energized enough to run.
About 1/4 mile from the checkpoint I saw a familiar face, my mom. I was doing a jog/walk interval to try and catch up, and she saw me as I was jogging around a corner. She had food, which at first, I refused. Apparently staff was going back and forth with support crew on whether or not they could give us food on the course. Since no staff was around, she convinced me it was ok. I downed a coconut water(which makes me want to gag thinking back on it), and it actually didn't taste like puke this time. The bag of food was gorgeous. So many options, so many calories....I ate a bit, but didn't want to overdo it, since I was actually in a good place as far as energy levels and stomach comfort went. We chatted for a moment, she told me to keep going and suddenly I was at a new challenge.
 |
| About 1/2 mile up from where I met my mother. She took this waiting 3 hours for us. Lucky for her, she had good intel! This is where just about every remaining racer 'cheated'. |
The staff let us move on, and Josh(one of the teammates, I forget the other two, sorry fellas!) and I were directed to a large log. Here we were to cut a section of log off of a larger one(there were markings that had been pre-cut to about an inch on one side), cut that in half, then cut the halves into 12ths. Lucky for us, the log wasn't too huge. We each had saws, so we cut our sections off quickly. I cut mine in half and started chopping. As wet as the wood was, the X27 maul made short order of it(OOO I sound badass!). I started collecting my wood and let Josh borrow the maul, since his shorter maul wasn't giving him much leverage. As I'm bending over and using my intelligently packed ratchet strap on a pile of logs, I'm suddenly struck in the head. My first thought was that it was stray wood, but standing up slowly, I find that the maul had bounced off of Josh's log and hit me in the back of the head. Luckily it was just the shaft. Still, I had about a ~1'' lump on the top of my head.
With my newly lumpy head and a bunch of chopped wood, I was ready to get back to the farm for the first time in over 29 hours. I gutted my pack, stuffed it with half of my wood, and looped the other bundle around my neck with a thin rope I'd brought. Josh was getting his stuff ready to when we hear a race staff yelling at all of us to come forward if we'd cheated. The whole stake-fiasco was coming back to bite us in the ass. The staff member was walking up and down the center row of the wood chopping area showing everyone what the stakes he put in the ground looked like, and that if we hadn't found that earlier, we'd cheated. Offenders who were coming forward were told to drop their packs and head to the farm to sit in the pond for a bit. I figured since they had our numbers they'd screw us over and make me do it again later. Me and Josh just wanted to get our wood back to the farm, I'd deal with whatever punishment then. Bringing what felt like 90lbs of wood over the mountain felt like punishment enough.
Before we could descend the mountain, we had to climb a few hundred feet to the peak(though, later on people were simply walking down the access road). This proved difficult as the logs that were hanging in front of me were bouncing on my thighs, making my steps short. The additional weight didn't help my speed either. Unfortunately for Josh, his logs weren't behaving. He kept those in his pack and ditched the bundle he'd been carrying on the ascent to the top. He said he'd come back for them and offered to carry my bucket for me, since I had to unstrap it from my pack to fit the wood inside. We walked..and walked...and walked. The trail markers told us to go uphill, and we decided that was wrong. We met someone with a map, and he agreed we should go down rather than up. Meanwhile others were simply bushwhacking their way down by following a stream to the river crossing. We kept going, I kept shifting the logs so they'd stop bashing my thighs in the same place. We finally get on a trail with markings and follow it to a stream crossing where Josh's support crew was waiting for him. Just in time too, my headlamp decided to spaz out and turn off. Josh's wife guided me down with her light.
 |
| Action Shot! The only picture mom was able to get of me while I was in the race. This was just before I sawed my finger. |
This is where things got seriously serious. Joe asks me what happened with the puddle filling(stake fiasco). I explain, and he says he'll be lenient and let me skip the 45minute pond soak, but I had to tag along with a group of 'criminals' headed up the mountain. I was now a CRIMINAL! So, here I was expecting to get a break, eat some food, rest a wee bit, and I have to rush to pack my bag, fix my headlamp, change shoes, eat a cookie and find my bucket. Well, I got all but the last bit done in a few minutes, then saw Josh had placed my bucket near the log check-in. I grabbed it and started a quick shuffle to where the criminals had been while my mom attempts to bungee my bucket back on my pack. Felt bad I had to leave Josh without a "THANK YOU", but I didn't feel like waiting around and risking standing in the water. So I started jogging to catch the group, asking every racer along the way if they'd seen any groups, to make sure I was on the right track. Every person I saw said that I'd just missed them, but oddly enough I couldn't see a group of headlamps ahead of me in any direction.
Finally I catch up to someone on the trail, a racer who had to get the other half of his wood pile. We chatted a bit, didn't exchange names, saw a porcupine, got lost momentarily, and finally made it to the top. I again began to run. I passed a few wood carriers, and finally arrived at the pile of hard pack rocks we used for the very challenge that labelled me a criminal in the first place. I had arrived just in time to fill my bucket halfway and follow a staff member as he showed us where to dump our buckets. I left my pack at the wood and carried on, chatting with some racers I'd met at previous events. We walked for probably 30 minutes one way, saw some stakes with team numbers that hadn't existed(the challenge was a Betrayal! OMG!). Finally we reach the last stake, only the last person in the group with a bucket wasn't with us...! Someone went back to scout, but didn't meet him. Criminal on the run! At this point, had I brought my pack with me, I could have simply walked down the trail, since we'd basically side-cutted our way to the front of the mountain (wished I'd known about it sooner, knowledge is power!). We hike back, silently, in the dark, and I separate from the group as the Criminal crew starts chopping their wood and I grab my pack.
This was where I turned into a lame potato and fell victim to my sleepiness/brain fog/lack of motivation. I had honestly done things in the last 37 hours that I never expected I'd be able to do. Not that running uphill with a pack after 30 hours is more impressive than someone who saves lives for a living, but physically, I was proud of myself. I didn't realize how tired I was because I had either been with people, talking, or I'd been chasing people, and running. Now I was alone, it was 3am, and my mind decided to take a nap. I began tripping on roots, taking bad steps, yawning and walking in zig-zags on the trail. I almost fell off of the narrow foot bridge across the river. I was also noticing the shoes I'd replaced for my RunAmocs, my New Balance MT110's, were giving me a blister....I did the same thing Dan had done and wore a pair of shoes I hardly ever use. :(
So here I was, deciding to go home because my mind was asleep, and then as I'm checking in at the farm Joe tells me "Hurry up and you can join Michelle on the next challenge". Oh boy, Michelle is still alive!? I was actually excited a bit, but also torn, as I was set on leaving and eating and sleeping my Sunday away. I refueled, came back, and was told Michelle just quit...interesting. I gave Amelia(thank you for not telling me to go to hell for calling at almost 4am!) a call and talked to her, and she helped me solidify my decision to leave. I was happy with what I'd done, afraid I might hurt myself if I didn't find anyone I knew, so I was happy to leave. I let Joe know, he asked if I had a good time, and I definitely did. I learned that I am in better shape than I thought, and that I fall asleep without a buddy around. Maybe next attempt I'll get to bring my dog with me? The Death Race is a tough "race", it's a challenge. People put a lot of deep thought into what it means to compete, to finish, but I just see it as a very difficult challenge. It doesn't even tell you much about yourself other than give you a sense for just how long you can go without sleep and continue moving, lifting, chopping, eating, rolling, swimming, and burpeeing before crashing. I didn't crash, but my mind did wander, and with it wandered my motivation to keep going. Definitely not as hardcore as Lisa Lunt(friend) who had to stop because her FRACTURED HEEL was in excruciating pain, or as hardcore a reason that any of the other injured racers left. I was shocked to outlast some of the veterans; The Foster Bros left because Jeff's feet fell apart and Bruce's pack broke, a certain Vermonter who shares an affection for flannel, and the mighty friendly Johnny Waite, who also had to quit because his feet didn't hold up.
 |
| Improved Ventilation thanks to 34 hours in "the suck" |
I'm not sure this is something I'll do again. It's a race, but it's not a race. Aside from winning the label "badass", staying awake 60+ hours to earn a skull isn't enough for me to want to finish. I know I could do it, so if anyone wants a Death Race buddy.......
