24 Hours of Shale Hell pit crew

The action is nonstop - not long after BattleFrog is 24 Hours of Shale Hell!

I felt some kind of peace of mind once I switched to the Beast. I can stop fretting about certain things now! 

I've heard that Shale Hill is an OCR destination in Benson, Vermont, with some crazy hard obstacles that'll make most other obstacles pale in comparison. I saw a bit of the madness while volunteering at the 8 hour Polar Bear Challenge back in February. The penalties were formidable, to say the least.

New this year is the 4 person relay team, so initially I was going to pit crew one runner (Jen) but since she joined a team I guess they inherit me as well. 

As I usually do when traveling through Vermont, I suss out a craft brewery en route so this time I do some sampling at Otter Creek Brewing (Middlebury, VT). The bites I've ordered on the side blew my mind - brie with strawberry habanero jam on crostini! Whaaat!!

I arrive on site and the owner and creator of the Shale Hill madness, Rob Butler, gives me a warm welcome. Whoever's arrived has started to set up camp; I meet Paul Jones, one of the main players of the New England Spahtens, and he's already chilling with a drink. The space eventually starts to fill up with tents (from 2-person ones, to a 1970s behemoth we dub 'The Green Monster', and a couple of 10 x 10 EZ-Up tents overhead), as well as camping gear, coolers, water jugs galore and enough food to last for days.

The guys' tent with a little accessory

The evening starts off with a meal at the restaurant (The Wheel Inn) in the village, and we end up meeting a number of New England Spahtens. One of them, Sandy, had completed a 30-day stint at Shale Hill so I immediately ask if I could accompany her on a lap the next day, since she'll be full of tips and info. 

There's also a blue moon in the sky - now I wonder if there's something rare and unexpected that will happen (maybe we'll spot a unicorn! Or the Trix Rabbit!)

I haven't been camping much, but I absolutely love waking up when the sun comes out. The camp comes alive and amongst the camping stoves here and there, only 1 kettle can be found. Hm, will have to be strategic with my timing when I brew the coffee. 

The team is awake; Alex cannot be missed as he is in his trademark Pac-Man pj bottoms, though I'm told he's in the zone when he's wearing them. 

At the morning brief Rob explains how the event is going to go and how the penalty (30 spider-man pushups) for elites will be counted as the rounds go on (by the 5th round, failed obstacles means zero penalties) His zigzag wall has more than 1 section and the penalty will be multiplied by the number of failed sections. Yikes! 

The racers take off at 9am and the sun is already hot and blazing overhead. I hope it won't affect too many people.

After less than two hours the first runner, Evan, comes in (he'll eventually win the event with 10 laps completed, and he never really stopped for the whole 24 hours!); after 3 hours or so quite a few have finished their first lap and many have started cooking their 2nd breakfast - the aroma of bacon is everywhere. 

An amazing pit crew, Bill

We figure out how to fire up the older-model Coleman stove that was sent along with the team, and Alex cooks himself up some bacon and eggs and takes off on a lap after eating. He ends up running a penalty-free lap and has earned the title "The Canadian Ninja" from fellow racers! 

It isn't long before I get ready to go out on a lap with Sandy and 4 other NE Spahtens. I've pretty much brought a full set of gear to do a run, all I'm missing is my hydration pack (hey, I wasn't really expecting to be sweating up a bunch). I really don't know what to expect; up until then; I had never been on the Shale Hill loop (about 10km with 51 obstacles). I'm feeling some slight trepidation - will it be hard obstacles that I'll have a lot of difficulty doing?

Not long into the loop we see Rob's edition of teeter totters - the 2nd one is longer than most, so it takes a bit of shuffling towards the middle before the end drops down to the ground. 

I'm not going to reveal much on the Shale Hill course (come and try it for yourself!), but one of the obstacles I really liked was the Lincoln Log. It reminded me of the tree climb (with the rock climbing grips) at the 2013 Montreal Super Spartan. On another climbing obstacle (Abacus) I whack my shin on the descent, and it stings. 

Up I go on the rope ladder

There are a lot of obstacles that are grip heavy (hello, hoists!) and some involve a bit of tricky climbing against gravity. There's also an inordinate number of hay bales to jump over. Several obstacles I chose not to attempt (the tyrolean traverse, for one) since I was pit crew and I had to be coherent and functional (ie no blistered hands) just in case. 

We make a small detour to a taco stand that has homemade frozen fruit pops - mostly frozen crushed fruit, some have a bit of cream mixed in there - that are almost as long as a giant Mr. Freeze (but 3 times wider). It was totally worth it! 

4 hours later (we walked, after all), my new racing buddies and myself finished our lap and rang the bell at the start/finish zone. I am POOPED. The evening goes on and I'm trying to stay awake in case if my teammates need me to run with them (safety reasons - it's an extra headlamp) while they go out on a night loop.

9:45pm feeding and I STILL fell asleep despite the coffee!

(The take-out spaghetti tastes fantastic and curiously enough, the noodles don't seem to be traditional egg noodles. I can see myself tucking in a large bowl of these swimming in chicken broth on a winter's day.)

I tell the guys I'm going for a power nap, and expect to be woken up later on. 

&&& I wake up 5 hours later. Must have been exhausted (and probably overtrained, at this point) after that lap.

It's about 3am and some runners are still trickling in and out. Turns out Alex is on course, and teammate Andrey looks like a ball in a sleeping bag in the tent.

The sun comes up just before 6am and I make my way back out. The fire that has been going pretty much all night is shrinking, and Rob has been hanging out with other racers around the fire. We spot a figure in bright green running the last section (Anaconda) and we guess it's Andrey.

Heeeere's Andrey! Ringing the bell for the team's 8th lap

After making sure Andrey won't fall asleep standing up by having him drink a complimentary chocolate milk (a bonus for Shale Hill racers - the chocolate milk is AMAZING!), the morning winds away and the event's 9am finish approaches. There are pops of champagne corks here and there in the camp; people are eating their breakfast and simultaneously sipping away at the bubbly. My kind of event!

Another Spahten, Hannah, has a table of plenty which includes a large bottle of bourbon whiskey. Ok, where do I sign up for the next race?

Not long after the event officially ends, Rob proceeds with the awards ceremony.

The Canadian contingent wins 1st place with 8 laps completed! 

Writing's on the wall...now who named them the Ottawa Titans? Awesome

What a great weekend, met lots of cool fellow OCR runners (aka New England Spahtens - thank you Sandy, Steve, Tora and Sue for letting me tag along on a lap) and I will definitely be back at Shale Hill for at least training weekend and a few events. Another frozen fruit pop won't hurt, either!

What a team! Photo courtesy of Jen Milligan 

For a racer's perspective of this edition of 24 Hours of Shale Hell, check out Jen Milligan's post

BattleFrog Xtreme New England and a big reality check

Time flies now, doesn't it?

While the weather outside is still indicating that summer isn't completely here yet, I've blinked and it's already the end of July.

...it means BattleFrog is finally here!

I'd been hearing a lot of things about this event and those of us registered are chomping at the bit. I've decided to try the Xtreme - originally the 15k course followed by up to 3 laps of the 5k course - but the format changed and now it's multiple laps of the 8k course, with racers not allowed to start another loop after 3pm.

Obstacle order was changed that day..

We're a bit skittish about how we get there (parking then shuttle to the venue) but it's a very short distance (less than 5 minutes) so we start to settle in. There is a tent for the Xtreme participants, but what has me a bit hesitant is, it's just a tent with a couple of tables, chairs and giant trash cans (also bananas and water). There doesn't appear to be any personnel guarding the tent or having it racer-access only.

Pre-race chaos in the BFX tent

Half an hour before the BFX wave starts, there is a short briefing on how the event is going to go, with instructions on where to run in order to start another lap and not accidentally cross the finish. Simple enough, right? We are also told it's the biggest BFX wave to date. Big emphasis on not doing burpees at BattleFrogs, but 8-count bodybuilders (basically a glorified push-up)

A helpful race packet

The elite men take off, and the elite women are all lined up with Coach Pain giving his usual motivational pre-race speech - he is very, very good at delivery. As he's talking to the ladies, a figure appears over the 7 foot wall to climb (before the start) and tries to inconspicuously weave his way through to start the course. It's PlatinumRig Dom, but with his bald pate, lumberjack beard and orange Platinum Rig shirt he can't hide from anyone!

The BFX wave starts and there is a general idea to take the first lap easy and gradually ease into the rhythm. Me, the turtle crawling in peanut butter, at some point I'm trailing the group but that usually happens. Call me a creature of habit, but I also hadn't had a single drop of coffee prior. Not far into the course, someone calls my name, and it's Sara catching up after a slight delay at the start. Yay, a race buddy! I hope I don't slow us down too much..I end up chasing after her for most of the race, which is good training for me. I'm a little faster than I give myself credit for.

One of the first obstacles is a rope climb - gee, this will be fun as the day goes on with more mud caking the ropes and the grip failing. It's a bit shaky as the ropes are strung up in the trees, and I may regret not having worn longer socks as the rope chafes my shin on the way down.

We run some neat trails in and out of the woods, find an 8 foot wall and an obstacle I haven't seen before - 60 Degrees. Picture an incline wall, but 5 metal bars to climb over instead of wall. The turnaround at the top is a little tricky but quite doable. Sara is in love with this obstacle.

The trails lead to piles of rocks that Sara gracefully skips across and I pretty much plod through - note to self, work on stride so I don't keep crash-landing on my feet with every step.

Jerry can carry - ladies get 1, men get a larger one, and compared to the Ottawa Sprint, this one is much lighter. The loop is maybe 600m and goes up a small hill, with a photographer at the top, clicking away. He'll be seeing a lot of us as the day goes on. We dodge cow-pies along the way (hey, it's a farm after all)

On our 3rd lap

More trails, more rocks to skip over, and then we turn the corner and find something...fragrant? Mounds of Grounds is next and at first glance appears to be some mud hills and trenches, but it's giant piles of ground coffee. It's still slippery when we try and climb up, and the water is not as shallow as it appears in some spots. The mess the wet grounds leave on socks is incredible.

Footsteps are heard behind us and not long after a blur with red hair streaks past us - Allison Tai! She's flying on the course, but turns around long enough to say hi, then zooms off.

Trail leads to some waist-deep puddle crossing, then the obstacle I've been dreading since I signed up: The Dirty Name, aka Gut Buster, aka Sternum Checker. It's terrifying! I don't quite make it over, and hence begin my 8-count bodybuilders.

On my second lap, I figure if I jump a little farther and a little higher, I'll make it over, right? I throw caution to the winds, and leap..

...whoosh!

SLAM! Land on my back, on the ground.

It happened so fast I didn't have time to brace myself. The guy who jumped after me also slid off the same way (we basically clotheslined ourselves) and it didn't help there was a girl who was getting carted off. Only later on did the organizers put hay at the bottom to cushion falls. Dangerous much?!

I get up and figure I'm ok (maybe it does pay to be an athletic therapist as I run through a quick checklist in my head) and I can tell I'm going to be bruised on my back end. I hope I didn't scare Sara too much. I'm fairly certain there's a package or two of squashed Shot Blocks that (slightly) cushioned my fall.

Ryan and Corinna debunk the Dirty Name (video courtesy of BattleFrog)

Onto Normandy Jacks - the 'jack' part looks like wooden jacks and there's wire strung between them. But it isn't barbed wire and is done in such a way where racers still have to duck low to get under but don't have to worry about snagging hair, clothing or hydration packs. I get to keep my shorts for another week!

12 foot rope walls are next - picture Spartan's slip ramp except it's a straight up wall (with a few beams acting as footholds). This should be interesting once the grip is failing as it's a lot more upper-body reliant.

Wreck Bag carry - 50 pounds of Wreck Bag, 600m loop, 4 foot wall as part of the loop. On the first lap I toss the bag over the wall before jumping over, but like most everyone later on we perch the bag on the wall and hop over it so we don't have to burn energy picking it up again. I'm glad I got a practice round with mine, figuring out how to set it on my shoulders. At the 3rd lap the volunteer asks us to drop the Wreck Bags in a giant bin which is taller than either of us! I also am not sure how my legs would handle a 4th loop of this carry.

Slant wall to jump over after some trails, I think I'm getting the hang of this one. And then it's a big, bad, long Platinum Rig traverse (that even Dom gets stuck on! Hahaha). I make it maybe 1/3 of the way the first time around. Sara flies through the obstacle and everyone around me has become an admirer. I did say she was the climbing expert!

Unfortunately a number of us were given the wrong directions from a volunteer and were steered to the BFX tent after the Platinum Rig and back to the start line, even though there was still about a mile to run with 5 obstacles mixed in. As of the 2nd lap we were directed to a tire flip obstacle.

What we wound up missing for two rounds was the 12 foot delta ladder (picture huge wooden A-frame to climb over), OUT walls, a revamped Tsunami (not the original slip ramp run, but it has now become a giant slide), a 6 foot wall, an incline wall to run up (I get a bit discouraged after 3-4 tries but maybe I shouldn't have stopped), two 12 foot ladder walls to climb. Lots of climbing and jumping, and as we ran the last section we were wondering why we weren't seeing the finish line.

Tip of the spear - just when the grip is pretty shot, it's some incline walls with ropes, finger grip holds and more ropes to shimmy across. My hands are pretty toast and I find it hard to get across the first part of the wall. More 8-counts.

We mug for the photographer as we cross the finish line, and the volunteers have armfuls of different medals for the racers. "8k or 16k?" one of them asks. We answer with "Xtreme", and out of another bin she unfurls the lanyards to reveal the hugest medal I've earned to date. We also go to get our 3 stars, even though we feel it's an incomplete merit.

Ok, I put the stars on the wrong side initially!

Morgan McKay ends up being the female BFX winner, so awesome! After the race we end up exchanging notes on pre-race coffees. Turns out she was late for the BFX pre-race brief because she was at Dunkin' Donuts getting a cuppa joe, and we're giggling nonstop at this.

Our race mates Jen and Alex have gotten in 5 laps (5th star awarded is a silver one), maybe next year I'll get in 5.

BattleFrog Xtreme was a good challenge and fun at the same time, but some of the obstacles we were looking forward to were not on this course. I hope that situation gets rectified and we get a crack at the original Tsunami. It is also a good test for the upper-body strength needed for obstacles involving grip. The format (minimum 3 laps to earn that gigantic medal) is also a pretty good indication about training for a Beast.

Can I get a 'HOOYAH!!"

During the weekend I got to talk to Jen and Sara about their Ultra Beast experiences and I'm grateful they were very honest and straightforward with the facts, including me being told at some point that my current pace likely wasn't fast enough to make time cutoffs. Had I gotten in 4 laps of BFX I would have figured I'd had something of a chance at the Ultra Beast, but after 3 I realized I am just not ready this year to take on such a huge event.

I've still got a long way to go, and I wonder if I'll ever get there.

Check out Allison Tai's blog at http://yomamasofit.com/ and see what it's like to be a mom and an OCR runner