"Into the Heartland" - The Mighty Mo Expedition, May 2006

This week’s mighty expedition race – the Mighty Mo -- in the great state of Missouri actually started about two weeks earlier and nearly 2000 miles away on the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais in the San Francisco bay area. Three of the four Silly Rabbits teammates – Jason, Jen, and Rick, with prompting by the fourth, John, who ultimately ducked out (most likely due to conflicts with his international dealings as part of a top secret CIA team), took on the Envirosports 25km trail race as a “training” exercise.

The 25km race (about 15.5 miles) would start and finish on the beach in the quaint seaside town of Stinson Beach. In between, racers would barrel up and down and up and down Mt. Tamalpais reaching heights of just over 1800 feet above the beach. There would be no navigation and no bushwhacking, just simple running on trails… a novel concept for us. Unfortunately, what transpired was not so novel.

I ended up beating out 92 other competitors to win the race in 2 hours, 1 minute flat. Okay, so that was novel. Jen was the second woman across the line, and a great 9th overall. Still cool. But, the Rabbits didn’t get to go 3 for 3 at the finish line as Jason ended up spraining his ankle, forcing him to drop out.

With less than two weeks to go before a 250-mile race, we would have to play the waiting game to see how quickly Jason could get better.

With this as a backdrop, and with the requisite strains of dueling banjos wafting through our collective conscience, the Silly Rabbits boarded a big old jet airliner last week for the heartland of America – St. Louis, Missouri. Unlike the many folks who travel around this region for game hunting and other vacation-like activities (it’s the canoe capitol of the country), the Rabbits were on a business trip. Our business: adventure racing. And we had a meeting with one Mighty Mo Expedition Race, a 250-mile adventure through the Ozark Mountains.

We would be facing some big challenges to successfully complete our business, namely one Team Nike, the vaunted powerhouse adventure racing team that’s won every major competition there is to win. There were a few other adventure companies in the form of Team Dart, the Mighty Dogs, Gerber Blades, and Dynamic Earth, vying to win the favor of Mighty Mo.

But the Silly Rabbits, America’s Adventure Racing Team ™, are now in upper management positions in our field, so when it came right down to it, the Rabbits got right down to business... Despite going into our “meeting” completely blind because we had scant information about this first time race.

We went into our crew situation blind as well, and lucked out like Powerball lottery winners with two jovial Missouri natives who we had found through the race’s website. They turned out to be so valuable to our efforts that they quickly became our “fifth” teammate.

We drove 2 hours from St. Louis and settled into a nice cabin at the Bass Lake resort, nestled squarely in the absolute heart of this American heartland, a few miles outside of Steelville. And, yes, we ate our first meal at the greasiest spoon perhaps in all of creation. We had a brief gear check the day before the race and were only given instructions on where to show up to start the race the next day. Nothing was said about how we’d be starting or where we’d be going from there. This would be a totally on-the-fly adventure.

On Thursday morning, we packed up everything into our two crew vehicles and made our way 15 minutes from the resort to the starting area. When the gun went off at 8am, all we knew is that we’d have to run nearly a mile to pick up the first set of maps and clues for the race. After acquiring our maps literally on the run, we saw that the first event would be paddling. So, The Rabbits raced back to our crew vehicles, gathered up a few belongings and headed for the nearby river. The race was on.

The Rabbits hopped into a four-person whitewater raft with race-provided rafting paddles for a 15-mile down river paddle. We got into the water in about 3rd and got out in about 4th, and in between there was lots of jockeying for position among Nike, the Mighty Dogs, DART, and Dynamic Earth – teams that would vie for the lead much of the race.

We hopped around inside the raft, trying to find the best paddling combination, and then we proceeded to switch sides every 15-20 minutes to keep ourselves fresh. Oh, yes, we also sang rap songs as we went.

From the rafts, we scrambled into a transition where we plotted some more checkpoints before heading onto an 85-mile mountain bike section. Aaron, one of our stellar crewmen, is an accomplished orienteering athlete and was able to plot nearly all of our maps before we hit the transition. Because of this kind of help, The Rabbits got onto this bike section in first place. We blazed the first 30 miles in about 2 hours along rolling fire roads en route to the Ozarks YMCA where we would engage in a high ropes course. However, we were caught just before the YMCA ropes course by the Team Nike freight train that includes three world-class bikers and the man touted as the World’s Greatest Adventure Racer.

The high ropes caused some problems for Rick who drew the short straw and was charged with the most difficult task – climbing a series of vertical, free swinging logs. Five minutes after scrambling breathlessly to the top platform and rappelling back down to earth, Rick was flopping on the ground like a fish out of water with severe hamstring cramps due to the odd muscle usage from the climbing. Thankfully, Rick recovered in a few minutes, and the Rabbits were off to chase Nike over the next several hours and into the first night of the race.



The cramps were just the beginning of Rick’s wild ride. A few hours later in the darkness, he would break his bike chain and then less than an hour after that, he would rip off his rear derailleur after getting a branch stuck in his wheel.

At this point, you either throw in the towel or you become MacGuyver of the Wilderness. We didn’t have any chewing gum or paper clips, but Captain Jason and Rick mish-mashed Rick’s bike into a makeshift single speed (taking off the broken derailleur and connecting the chain loosely over one particular gear) and the team proceeded out of the forests and onto a road for the final miles to the transition… somehow still clinging to 2nd place even after an additional 20-minute slowdown to find a checkpoint.

From the bikes, it was onto our feet for an 18 to 20-some odd mile trek through the woods that included a wealth of bush-and-stream-whacking to find checkpoints 15-20.

The lead teams started accordion-ing together and apart on this section: the Mighty Dogs (a tough bunch of ruffians from Georgia) and our friendly rivals Team Dart (from the Northwest), the Silly Rabbits, and Nike. At one point, Nike passed us no less than four times in the space of 2 hours.

Daylight broke as we made our way through the underbrush and across a few more hillsides before finding a dirt road that would lead us to the next transition. We found ourselves in third place as we straggled in to meet our crew. Jason’s ankle was holding up, however we were traveling slower than we would have liked on foot. At this point, all teams were informed that the next section – a 40-mile mountain bike leg – was being excised from the course to keep the lead teams on a projected Saturday morning finish.

So, in a brief respite from racing, all teams would hop into their crew vehicles to be transported several miles up the road to the next river section. We scarfed down some food and looked over our maps as Aaron and Craig drove us to the next transition (and yes, we even nodded off…). This next section would find us in some horribly slow inflatable kayaks for another downriver paddle.

This time, the four teammates would split up to paddle in 2 separate boats. This 30-ish mile paddle would be interrupted by a roughly 8-10 mile trek/run which would include another ropes section. Burdened with our climbing gear, a wealth of mandatory gear, food for several hours, and Jason’s sprained ankle, we hobbled out of the kayaks at the trek/run/ropes take out. We were in 2nd place. Not behind Nike, but behind DART who had jumped in front.

Team Nike had forgotten some gear when they drove off and took a little nap as their crew went back to retrieve it. Team Dart was looking and feeling strong. We out-paddled the Mighty Dogs to the take out, but were quickly overtaken while trekking down a few miles of road.

The ropes would include a river traverse via pulleys and harness (hand over hand pulling) and another river crossing via cable. The real cream of the ropes course – a rappel -- was unfortunately sabotaged by some locals and had to be bypassed.

Team Nike caught us on this trekking section, and we found ourselves a bit unhappy to be in fourth place as we got back to the river for the second part of the paddle. We tried to rally as we got back into our kayaks. Prior to this run/ropes section, we had been giddily dropping into big class III rapids and spinning out of control as we got doused with water in the hot afternoon sun. The second paddle would eventually find us slightly terrified as the sun sank, leaving us negotiating some rapids in the darkness. With trees and branches stuck into the river at odd angles (called “strainers” in river speak), and only our tiny headlamps to guide us, we honestly thought about pulling off the river for the night… but, we’re crazy so we didn’t!!

The next transition found most teams taking their time to warm back up and refuel before heading out onto the final 40-mile bike leg. The top four teams were within an hour of each other and it was the dead of night. A kind crew man from Team Nike had helped jerry rig Rick’s bike back together to allow Rick to ride the rest of the course with most of his gears.

The Rabbits headed off into the night in fourth place. If there was anything left in our tanks, now would be the time to find it. We busted a move through a few sleepy towns en route to yet another trailhead for the Ozark Trail, which we had already spent the better part of the last 150 miles on. At the trailhead, we were pleasantly surprised as we came upon the ghostly visages of Team Dart. Looking haggard and spent, they had taken a circuitous route after mis-reading their maps slightly.

With a little burst of motivation, we sped away from Dart onto the trail. And for the next 6 hours, we wouldn’t see a soul. Jason kept us on the straight and narrow and made up for his running with some absolutely ace navigation and renewed energy on the bike.

The ride took us through and along wet, slippery trails strewn with logs and branches. The ride also took Jen into what we like to call “the pain cave”. Jen was able to finally experience all the deep, dark secrets that adventure racing has to offer as she fell ill for a short time after racing to exhaustion on this section. Being the rock star that she is, she recovered soon enough, and the experience will hopefully end up being a positive one in the end (as zany as that sounds…).

We squirted out the far end of this section of forest as light dawned on the third full day of racing. As we scrambled to find a final checkpoint before racing down a country road to the end of the leg, Rick saw a man standing in the road waving at the passing traffic. He was warning folks of a car accident up the road. As Jason and John biked from the checkpoint to catch back up, Rick made a major decision to stop Jason – an E.R. doctor outside of adventure racing – and inform him of the accident. Jason quickly decided to go check it out to see if his services were needed.

Even in the heat of competition, with the finish line almost in sight, we were all comfortable with the decision because there are so many bigger things in life. Thankfully, the man who had flipped his car going around a sharp bend was okay, but we waited nearly an hour for an ambulance to show up.

Somehow, as we rode into the last transition, we were in 2nd place! Team Nike had barreled through the bike leg in relative short order, and somewhere along the way we had passed the Mighty Dogs while Dart never seemed to recover! Bolstered by one last shot of adrenalin, we changed into our running gear for a final 15-mile run to the finish line. Yes, this one we actually ran. It was a rather straightforward run down some country dirt roads and onto a highway (yes, an actual highway) and then into the town of Poplar Bluff, Missouri. In the middle of the run, we stopped for a ‘special test’ which found Jason and Rick doing their best Robin Hood imitations as they shot arrows at a target. As we left the special test area, we caught wind that the Mighty Dogs were not far behind…

With the Mighty Dogs smelling blood because they knew about Jason’s bad ankle, it was literally going to be a foot race to the finish. We got word that Team Nike had crossed the finish line a few hours earlier. Now, The Mighty Dogs were coming hard for second place. And all that stood in their way was a bunch of silly rabbits, I mean, Silly Rabbits!

From the archery range, it was still 7 miles to the finish. John kept calculating that the Mighty Dogs would have to run some wickedly fast times (that would be nearly impossible under such conditions), and he kept trying to convince us that they couldn’t possibly catch us…

This didn’t prevent us from looking over our shoulders for the next hour and half. It also didn’t help that the Mighty Dogs crew kept driving by us and turning around, in a sort of distance gauging.

We jogged off the highway (yes, as mentioned, we ran on the side of the highway and then onto the exit ramp!), and into the town limits. We had to navigate the streets of this small town to a park on the banks of a river where the finish line awaited.

And finally, 54 hours after beginning, we eeked across the finish line about 20 minutes ahead of the Mighty Dogs and collapsed, $2500 richer, in 2nd place!

The Silly Rabbits would like to thank all of our great sponsors: Salomon Sports, Ellsworth bikes, Clif Bar, Epic paddles, Zeal Optics, California Canoe and Kayak.

Stay tuned as we train for the granddaddy of them all – the Primal Quest – coming up at the end of June. It’s gonna be 500 miles of intense heat in and around the Moab, Utah area. Can The Rabbits – or anyone – survive?


~Rick Baraff
Web Site: Rick Tales of Adventure

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