AFC Team Grabs Win at The EDGE 6 Hour Adventure Race

:: Marsh Creek State Park, Downingtown, Chester County, Pennsylvania. Bill Vickers and Mike Berry (Team Adventures for the Cure) grabbed first place in the 2-Man division and 3rd place overall past a large field of participants at The EDGE 6 Hour Adventure Race held October 25, which benefited the American Cancer Society.

Over 115 teams competed in the sprint adventure race, which consisted of a 10 km paddle, 8 km trail run, 20 mile bike course on or around Marsh Creek State Park. The sprint adventure race is sponsored by Gibbons Outdoor Adventure Leadership School Adventure Racing Association (GOALS ARA), a member club of the United States Adventure Racing Association (USARA). According to the USARA website, there are three major categories of Adventure Racing (AR):

• Sprint Adventure Race: Advertised winning time less than 8 hours
• One-Day Adventure Race: Advertised winning time 8 to 24 hours
• Expedition Adventure Race: Advertised winning time 24 hours or more

Mike Berry and Bill Vickers (Team Adventures for the Cure) enjoy their 1st place male and 3rd place overall finish at The EDGE 6 Hour Adventure Race.

NOTE: The following is reprinted with permission from Bill Vicker's Blog.

This is sort of hard to believe. 118 teams at an Adventure Race! Didn't know it was possible, and most folks wouldn't believe it, so I posted the garbled results below. They didn't transfer format to the mac. When I saw the park map, I was scratching my head how they could pull this off in a relatively small park and make it feel like an adventure race. My distances by digital map scale device. 10 km paddle, 8 km trek/run, 20mi bike mostly within the confines of Marsh Creek Park in Pennsylvania. Took about 90 minutes for each section. Of course the trek felt alot longer, and we even got to do a 15 meter swim--after all, it was Mike's first adventure race, and he is President of the Annapolis Triathlon Club. We had to show him all that adventure racing offers. Curiously, it was only the lead few teams that actually took that swim? That swim was followed by a nice uphill slog thru thickets of briars.


This wasn't a High Tech AR of the past--it was a true AR race. How do you do that in a sprint race?Maybe because it somehow had offtrail bushwacking, trail running, river crossings with a bike, road biking, singletrack biking, paddling amongst waterfowl and fishermen, and enough challenging navigation to make it feel adventuresome. Also, Jon N, the course designer, took the time to gps transpose the park trails to the 1:24,000 National Geographic topo map. He pain stakenly created possibly the best map in existence of that park! I asked him in detail how he did it, and he obviously has enough experience so that he pulled the design together in a long day of training. Maybe racers should always be the course designers? The gps transposed trails were a nice touch especially for those of us who had never seen the park. It helped level the playing field for out of towners. It was the best Goalsara race I have attended to date. Maybe I was just overly hyped, blessed, or happy to be out in the woods again? And I can't tell ya how fun it was. I have been having trouble with intensity sessions in racing and training, but AR was the perfect type of race right now. I really didn't think I would make it to this point again and especially run the race so well navigationally. I am definitely gonna be back in AR now and then, as it felt like home.

They broke up the teams into 4 sections to spread us out. We had a short run prologue to obtain our passport which directed us to our first section. It was partly a run up a technical washed out trail with a creek running thru it. When we got to the location of our passport/race instructions, it was the first time where I actually helped other teams jump up on the hay bales to obtain their instructions. Maybe I temporarily lost my competitive edge?

The 25 checkpoints were in a rogaine format (points assigned to each depending on distance or difficulty), the route choices had enough options to keep all of us entertained, and it was a very accessible race for newbies. Yes, they threw in "special tests" which included a memorization game which was maybe the most fun as we blew it off and took the penalty, which was slightly faster, then we progressed to tying a sequence of knots including a bowline, clove hitch, and a prussik, then floating a ping pong ball in a PVC tube by running back and forth to the Lake with a cup of water. This was a huge disadvantage with a 2-person team and our leaky tube. Realizing we would be there all day emptying the Lake water level, we took the clue from a neighboring team and bent the rules AR style. As much as I usually think "special tests" are goofy, I understood the importance of them this race. Obviously, they only had approximately 30 canoes for the teams, so spreading out the teams without delaying them on the paddle took careful planning.

Apparently 70 folks or teams were new to this, which is very nice to see. I suppose I was a wee bit confused about racing only a month ago, or ever racing again for that matter, but doing a team AR again was just the trick. I was very on the fence about registering. I ended up being glad I did, and I'm very thankful to Mike for making this happen and tolerating my hesitations. After the race, I have been doing experimental brain injury treatments that have me approaching racing form again. I couldn't be more stoked and mentally ready to start racing again on more than one cylinder!!!

This was Mike Berry's first AR race. He and I trained hard for the Mayor's Cup [New York City Kayak Championships] kayak race, so we had an advantage on the paddle. It was the fastest I have gone in a plastic canoe, as we had peaked for the Mayor's Cup only the week before and that race was cancelled due to appalling weather. I think we both felt awful or silly lapping the beginner teams ahead of us, trying to explain to them that we actually spend alot of time paddling. During one of our training sessions before the race, we bumped into a fellow triathlete who Mike knew from the tri club. Someone who looks up to Mike. Mike had to sort of play it down as he looked like an adventure racer convert all decked out in a backpack and trail shoes. I admit, I love converting triathletes to adventure racing. We are guessing his friend only thought we were out for an ultrarun, but they didn't see our kayaks stashed back at the beach.

The largest division had nearly 70 teams, and you can barely find our name on there. TMK and some superfast local folks, Tyad PT, had amazing races.

Strangely enough, I bumped into a guy who was claiming to be the oldest racer and wanted an award for that. In talking to him, I found out it was his first race back after having a right total knee replacement.

I figured he should have an award for that! So I took a picture of his knee. You can barely see the scar so don't bother straining your eyes. Medicine has progressed to the point where this guy was barely walking only 8 months ago, and he was now out doing an adventure race. With questioning, he did admit he wasn't allowed to run, but he can bike and paddle to his heart content, and was able to trek well with poles and a backpack. Inside his knee was a metal tibia/femoral prosthesis and a synthetic patella replacement. He was 54 yrs old. Pretty impressive!

Congratulations to Bill and Mike for representing Adventures for the Cure so well; here are the full results of the EDGE 6-Hour Adventure Race.