Red River Gorge American Classic, a/k/a The Fig VIII

Red River Gorge American Classic - The Fig VIII
Slade, KY
ph: 859-619-6464
stephanie.ross@fuse.net

Results

Thanks so much to the volunteers, sponsors and hosts who ensured this year's race was another epic adventure. There was a glitch or two along the way, but I appreciate everyone taking those in stride and being so supportive. Here is a recap of the 2009 event:

Racers received a large waterproof topo map from MyTopo.com on Friday night, along with UTM coordinates by which they plotted CPs 10 - 22, all but the first leg of the race, a foot orienteering leg that would begin at an undisclosed location.

Saturday morning, racers received a topo map with CPs 1 - 9 pre-plotted and were then bussed from the finish line at the Kiwanis Community Center on Happy Top in Beattyville, Kentucky, to the starting line at Gray's Arch Parking Area, off Tunnel Ridge Road, in the Red River Gorge.

Racers had been admonished at the outset that the course was a full 12-hour course for the winners, and they had 14 hours in which to complete the course and still be considered official finishers. Therefore, they were advised to think early on about skipping CPs and planning a route that would allow them to finish, based on their navigational skills and fitness level. Consequently, teams quickly broke off in different directions, some starting with CP 1 and other deciding to skip the first one, two or even three CPs, to ensure they completed the 11-mile foot orienteering course in good time.

CP 5 was a stunning 170' rappel from the top of the cliffline that is home to the well-known climbing area, Left Flank. Unfortunately, there was a back-up at the rappel attributable to two factors: first was the volume of racers that showed up so close in time to each other, given the number of teams that decided to skip CPs early on and second was an incident that developed when a racer's hair became caught in her rappel device. Though she was on a top belay, her hair had become hopelessly entangled in the device before the ropes crew was aware of the situation, making the rescue long and difficult. Though teams could skip CP 5 - and any other CP for that matter - without being disqualified, some teams opted to wait it out, and the wait was long, indeed. This was time that could not be gotten back, unfortunately, and cost some teams an official finish.

There were many racers who were instrumental in the rescue, and several who simply stuck around to offer either support or comfort to the racer on the rope. Unfortunately, those efforts and sacrifices cannot be adequately reflected in the "official race results." I hope that as those racers reflect back on this day, they will appreciate the opportunity they were given to be heroes, in big and small ways, and take joy and satisfaction in the choices they made.

After a trip to the ER in Winchester, KY, where she received stitches to repair the flap tear with which she was left from this incident, the racer and her husband/teammate returned to continue racing. Needless to say, Tina Woita has the respect and admiration of everyone at the Fig.

The foot orienteering leg ended at the Red River Gorge Campground on Star Gap Road, the location of check-in and dinner on Friday night, where racers left their bikes and bike gear. From there, racers would bike a grueling leg south, over quad-burning hills, along rough gravel roads, and over many wet creek crossings, to the next transition area, the boat ramp on the Kentucky River in Beattyville.

If racers arrived at the boat ramp after 7 pm, they were routed directly to the finish line at Happy Top. If they arrived before 7 pm, they had the option of paddling 6.5 miles down the Kentucky River to Heidelburg. They would take out at the lock alongside the dam.

Their bikes were transported from Beattyville to Heidelburg, allowing them to bike the 9 miles back to Happy Top, another grueling leg with two huge climbs and a winding gravel road running along the north side of the river. The last climb of the day was up the huge hill to Happy Top, overlooking the confluence that forms the Kentucky River. There were smiles, there were snarls, there were sighs. . . it was an adventure race.

You can relive the day through some great photos taken by Michael Skirvin, available for purchase at www.knobstone.smugmug.com

Click here for results of the Fig VII.

For complete results of the Fig VI, click here.

Click here for results from the Fig V in 2007.

Racer comments:

"WOW! That was a beast of a course. for what I did of it. Thank you for setting it up."

(2009)

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"Just wanted to tell you thanks for all of the time you put into this race. It was by far the most enjoyable race I've done. Even with the delay at the ropes, I was still having a good time joking and meeting the other racers. I was disappointed in the unofficial finish, but that had nothing to do with how much i enjoyed the adventure. Please continue to put on quality races, and I'll continue to come and race my buns off!!"

(2009)

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"I just wanted to thank you for putting together such a wonderful race.....okay maybe not wonderful because it was the hardest 12 hours I have faced in a while. The land navigation was 10 x times harder than any land nav I had done,which includes Army Ranger school.

Thanks for coordinating such a great weekend."
(2009)

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"I had a blast, experienced the challenge I had hoped for, met some new AR friends - learned a ton about better pre route planning and careful UTM plotting - and I can't wait for 12 hrs of fig-n-pain 2010!"

(2009)

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"First....We enjoyed the race. We wasted time at the transitions, we skipped CP's to make the mandatory 7PM paddle cutoff. At just after 5PM we calculated a max of an hour thirty on the river and an hour thirty back to Happy Top. Plenty of time......We didn't realize we'd not be able to go straight from our boats to our bikes and would have to hoist and carry our boats 200 yards through a maze of fences and posts. I thought the guys at the dam should have taken care of the logistics of getting the boats to the truck. The racers that skipped the paddle....nearly 60 teams..... didn't get to experience this.

The paddle was mandatory last year and the cutoff time was lax to say the least. If the "USARA qualifier" status is the factor for the strict rule change, the CP's being over 10 meters from the UTM plotted points should be enforced too. By the official rules, teams should not be penalized for missing a CP that was misplaced. We figured there would be a time allowance for that.....enforcing that cutoff was a penalty. The paddle transition should have been a point we were all informed the CP11 would not count and the cutoff would be 9PM sharp.

I know you do the best you can with what you have to work with and I admire you for that. I just really feel sorry for the teams that have supported your races for years getting scored unofficial. Especially the ones who finished so well last year and several years prior.

I was really let down by the results of our efforts....especially after staying up to midnight the night before only to get disappointed again by a 2AM email saying to wait another day. Geez, we can have a mandatory cutoff for a race, but we have to forgive you again for not following through with your results cutoff."

(2009)

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"There were two things that were a little bothersome to us. The first being when teams were told to skip checkpoint 1 if they didn't have plans on doing very well. No matter what, this was going to cause a little more delay on the rappel, plus it allowed some of the slower teams to get out ahead of some of the better teams which slowed us down a bit. Plus we seemed to find a lot of teams searching for CPs 2,3 and 4 and would just kind of follow the teams that went after CP1 once they caught up to them. CP1 being a little off the beaten path would have really spread out the teams well, but instead, the course became clogged from CPs 2-4. The other part that frustrated us was CP11. I know you have heard enough about that one, but this was the first CP since we started adventure racing quite a few years back that we intentionally gave up on. We have always spent an hour or even two looking/replotting/searching/crying, till we found the CP. That said, it is always mentioned that if you feel you are in the correct place and can describe it, if you don't find it within 15 minutes or so, to move on. This was even more relevant because the plot and the clue were not in the backwoods somewhere, but rather should have been fairly obvious. We notch this one up to lesson learned and should have treated it as if the CP was stolen. This did cause some problems though as it took our navigator some time to get his head back on straight for the next couple CPs as he was stewing over not finding it.

Now for the good stuff. The course was awesome, at least what we made it too. The first section and some of the CPs were in awesome places and was just beautiful, definitely one reason we do this race, and will continue to. We don't necessarily do these races to win, though we seem to do fairly well in general, we do these races for the entire experience. Missing the rappel was definitely discouraging, but that is not on the director or staff and is understandable. Cool part was getting down without doing the rappel, the scramble was kind of fun. The bike leg was pretty tough navigationally. There were roads everywhere (except on the maps). We never really got off course, but every time we hit another road or trail, we had to take a minute to consult the map and be sure of where we were which cost a lot of time. It took us a while to find CP10, but only because we did not know what we were really looking for. Maybe at the pre-race next time, if you use those flags again, it may be good to have one to show. We had no problem at all with CP14, so not sure where the confusion was on that one. However, we happened to meet a local at that CP and he advised us that it would be wise to hit the main road and head back rather than continue down that road as it got pretty rough. Probably shouldn't have listened to him, but he did offer us a beer, so no harm done.

As for the paddle, we didn't make it there which was unfortunate. One thing you may want to look into is paddling on the Red River. First year we did the race (2004), we paddled on the river for a couple miles. River was definitely wide and deep enough for some good paddling, but that was a while ago and things may have changed. We did pick it up somewhere near the Nada Tunnel, so it was somewhat near the campground.

Lastly, the trophies were awesome this year. If you have a couple extras, I would be more than willing to buy them off of you. Thanks for all the time and effort you put into the race and we look forward to it next year, and hopefully Shellowtee if it fits into our schedules."

(2009)

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"A couple of thoughts I had about the race itself....

The rappel...I think it maybe having it later in the race would help....that would help spread the field out a little plus it would give the top teams a chance to get some there before it gets backed up...

Also I've done a few races where they put the ropes course right by a "o" course or a lake paddle etc, so if the ropes course was backed up you could go do the other discipline and then come back to the ropes....just a thought :)

As far as the length of the race...I don't really think it was to long or to hard....I will say I've never done a race before that you had to get off your bike or out of the canoe to get to a punch...I think keeping them visible would help the slower teams out a lot and in most cases it's really not going to make the top teams that much faster...it doesn't take good teams long to find them anyway....usually! :)

I do understand the whole hiding them so they don't get stolen believe me, we spent an hr. looking for a CP on night that someone had stolen, it's not only very frustrating for the racers but it's a nightmare for the promoter!

All in all I think it was a good course...our biggest problem was to many nav errors...well that and trying to complete the whole course instead of swallowing our pride and skipping the paddle and last biking legs :)

I have every intention of doing this race again next year, but if for some reason I can't race I would be happy to help you set up / vet the course! "

(2009)

Star Gap Arch - Fig VI