My first adventure race, December Chill, was a bit chilly. My second one, Spring Fury, quite hot. Michigan spring can be unpredictable, weatherwise; this time, warm and sunny were on offer. Considering the possible alternatives, I’m not complaining, even though burned my lips pretty bad and had lots of dehydration-induced leg cramps during the race.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Spring Fury adventure race had two options: an elite/advanced race on April 18, and beginning/intermediate on April 19. I had originally signed up for the latter, considering I’m a beginner, but someone talked me into trying the advanced. There’s a word in Finnish, yllytyshullu, which describes someone who is easily talked into foolish things. That’d be me.

This was a “sprint” adventure race, that is, a race of less than twelve hours. In this case, it had a ten-hour cutoff, meaning that if you didn’t finish within ten hours, you were not going to be ranked. The location for the race was Genesee County Parks, near Davison, Mich., which is sort of past Flint. About an hour or so away, which meant a 3 a.m. wakeup for me to get there on time for the registration, etc. Race briefing was 6:45 a.m. and the start at 8.

The disciplines in Spring Fury were paddling — canoeing for teams, kayaking for solo racers — mountain biking, and orienteering. I raced solo, so was going to use a kayak. My second time ever; I had my introduction two weeks ago. Why overdo the preparation?

It was an incredibly beautiful day. When we started the paddling, the sun was bright and the wind, at that point, calm. There were five control points to get on paddling, plus a small extra orienteering bit from one of the control points. In adventure racing, some control points are mandatory and some optional. Mandatory means you need to get them — by getting them, I mean finding the control point and using its particular punching device to mark your “race passport” in an appopriate place. Optional means you don’t have to get them, but you’ll do better if you do.

So, a-paddling we went. I very much enjoyed it early on and a little less toward the end. Altogether, it was seven miles of kayaking if you paddled as the crow flies; I paddled as the crow flies when the winds push him a bit. Toward the end, the wind had picked up, and the return leg to the start and transition area was upwind. I felt happy not to be canoeing, though, as they had much harder time with the wind.

Next up was biking. Route choice was optional, but you had to get a bunch of control points, which more or less suggested a course. Also, there was going to be a mandatory four-CP orienteering section from one of the bike CPs. In other words, one had to take trail shoes along with bike shoes. (You always have to carry quite a bit of required and non-required stuff with you in adventure races.)

On the map, it looked as if the biking could all be done on roads. But the USGS topo map sometimes indicate a road where it indeed was a road twenty-five years ago and now has deteriorated to a two-track or even track or even more or less nothing. Given the recent rains and snow melt, let’s just say mud was on offer.

Before the mud, though, I was puzzled that one road I was about to turn onto had a Russian name. I mean, here we are in rural Michigan, and Russian isn’t the most likely thing to run into. But as soon as I turned onto the road, I saw a large Russian-style barn. It was dilapidated in the way it might be back on the steppes, and I realized the vicinity of the depressed Flint and this slightly desolate countryside had points of symbolic connection with Russia.

But enough of socio-cultural analysis. It’s interesting how clipless pedals — in which you can’t get you feet off the pedals as quickly as with the old-fashioned kind — motivates you to pedal through conditions where you’d otherwise give up: frog ponds, water-filled muddy tractor tracks, logs. I still ended up with a couple of spectacular but mud-cushioned falls. Not even my pride was hurt, so no problem.

Most of the biking, I should say, was in quite nice conditions. I don’t think I’m a very strong biker. Not a lot of people passed me, but some did, even though I felt I was working pretty hard. Practice, practice, practice, I guess.

The mandatory orienteering section from CP 12 was made a bit more difficult by the sneaky map we were given at the CP: It wasn’t a map at all, but a satellite image of the terrain, with the four CPs marked on it. Here’s where playing a lot with Google Earth and satellite images in general were helpful, and I made it through that section in 35 minutes, only about five minutes slower than the best times on it.

Back on the bike, the heat demonstrated its next toll by offering some nice leg cramps. I was prepared with Succeed capsules, and they helped a bit. The cramps did continue to cramp my style the rest of the day, but not too badly. It was warm, though, and when I saw an empty Bud Light can on the side of the road toward the end of the bike ride, I thought, “Oo, even a Bud Light would be good right around now.” But no, it was just increasingly warm Gatorade from my CamelBak.

For much of the race, I was by myself, with no idea how many people were ahead and how many behind, but occasionally I connected with other people. As we were getting CP 18 (in a tree on the side of the road), another solo racer said, “Thank god the biking part is over soon.” I agreed.

How foolish! With seven miles of paddling and 26.5 miles of biking behind me at five hours and forty minutes into the race, I thought it would be perfectly doable to survive the final orienteering section. Now it was clear it wasn’t going to be easy: there were twenty CPs to get (six to remain ranked), and the distance a minimum of twelve miles. Like a good adventure racer, I had prepared after the briefing by creating a plan, including the compass azimuths and distances from each CP to the next. I could have done a little better still, taking advantages of trails and roads in my planning, but I hadn’t had time for it.

Off I went, all the same. Early on, I failed to find one CP, despite reasonable confidence I was in the right spot. But never mind; I forged ahead to the following one. This was all in a swamp, which, in case you don’t know, are plentiful in Michigan, and lovely particularly in the spring. Also, it seems to me that Michigan has the greatest number of innocuous-looking prickly and thorny trees. Here you’re pushing through a thicket, thinking it’s just a nice wild cherry or something you’re about to move out your way, and you’ll have a three-inch thorn through your thumb. With the plentiful brambles — blackberry is everyone’s favorite, is it not — I was pretty scratched up. And all the conniving stuff on the ground — branches, twigs, hip-deep swampy spots — try to make forward motion were difficult.

All the same, it was beaufitul. I saw a beaver house, an eagle, bunch of deer, bazillion frogs, two garter snakes and a wood grouse. I learned that deer trails are a nice thing to take advantage of occasionally, except that deer being shorter than me, they clear the thorny branches that meet me at face level.

These ruminations make it seem like I was just enjoying myself. No sirree. At about eight hours in, I felt I got my fourteenth wind when another swamp sucked it straight out of me. A small navigation error had me miss another CP, but again I felt it was fine to forge ahead. It was becoming a matter of making it within the cutoff. At another CP, which should have been easy (“edge of a sidehill near Mud Like,” the clue said), I and two other teams spent at least ten minutes looking for it. Then one of the race directors showed because they had been told it was probably stolen. Indeed they ended up thinking it was, and we got a ten-minute credit for it. Once again, I forged ahead, now again being able to run on a pretty decent trail. I overshot the next CP, but concerned for time, decided to skip it. I had three more to get and then two miles of running on the roads to make it within the cutoff, which was now forty minutes away. I got the last three pretty successfully — meaning I didn’t have to look for them for long — and then started hauling ass. “Hauling ass” at nine hours and forty minutes into an endurance event, when the temps are 75F and you’re carrying a backpack, a large map case, compass (two compasses, in fact), knife, long pants, etc., isn’t much, but I told myself anyone can run two miles in twenty minutes. That might be right, but I really didn’t feel like running anymore. Still, I knew I’d be really bummed if I missed the cutoff, so I ran. (I thought of Emil Zatopek in the 1952 Olympic 10K: “There is the gold medal, the silver medal, the bronze medal. And for me, what? A potato? What must I do? I must run. Argh!”) So I ran, argh, and made it to the finish at 9:57 by my watch.

The preliminary results have me on the twelfth place overall and fourth solo male, given the combination of time and CPs acquired. I’m pretty pleased with it, considering it was my second time around. My heart rate average for the entire day is 131, which is an easy-run heart rate for me. In other words, it’s roughly equivalent for running easy for ten hours. I am in awe and humbled by the folks who did the whole thing significantly faster; I definitely need to start working on my biking in particular, I think.