The Longest Day 2025
The Longest Day 2025
Having a hobby that you can combine with ultimate family vacations is paramount to adult happiness... in my opinion. The idea of not only getting my fix of racing but also having epic family memories to look back on is a concept I'm finding to be increasingly satisfying. Our trip to upstate New York checked all those boxes. We started planning the trip a few months ago while chatting with our great friends, the Offens. Also a family of avid adventure racers, we together devised a plan to attack NYARA's Longest Day 2025 AR as a 4 person coed team under the Offen's AR company moniker "Delmarva Adventure Sports." We located a perfect Airbnb within driving distance of the start that would house our party of FIFTEEN (two couples, a combined total of 10 children, and one irreplaceable Oma to tend to the brood of kiddos while the adults were out playing in the woods) and we began counting down the days until the awesomeness would ensue.
Both Andrea and I were coming off the high of having raced as a four person female team at the Maine Summer adventure Race just a few short weeks before. Where I had been uber organized for that race, having planned out all details from nutrition to race strategy, I found myself completely disorganized and ill prepared coming into the Longest Day. I can attribute this to the fact I was racing alongside my husband, who has an unbelievable knack for thinking of EVERYTHING, and Jonathan, who has a natural talent with navigation and strategy. I felt like I was just along for a good time on this race with all the details being taken care of for me. I have been the lead navigator on a majority of the races I've done over the past year. It felt almost foreign and disappointing knowing I didn't have that responsibility for this race. Disappointing, but also slightly relieving. I don't know how I would feel navigating on a team with someone I'm positive has more experience and expertise than me. I was hoping to just glean some of Jonathan's techniques and tricks along the course.
We arrived to the area on Thursday afternoon and settled in. Flitting around like ADHD squirrels, we spent that evening and the following day doing all our last minute packing and organizing. After a quick trip to Walmart on both Thursday and Friday for the inevitable forgotten items, we headed to the race start on Friday evening to hand over our bikes and pick up our race swag. The race staff was super friendly and organized. Arriving to McCauley Mountain, we signed waivers, received some really nice race shirts and were given a plethora of free swag to choose from. We loaded our bikes into a Uhaul, and were back on the road to Fish Creek within 30 minutes. That evening I whipped up my renowned chicken curry to send us off into carb induced comas for our prerace meal. Sitting around the dinner table, we all enjoyed a glass of wine and discussed a few last minute race details and words of encouragement to my dearest mother who would be manning the home front.
Being 45 minutes from the race start, and with the knowledge that maps were to be handed out beginning at 5:00 am, we awoke to alarms ringing at 3:30am. Ughhhh. I am first and foremost, not a morning person. Being a nightshift L&D nurse, the only reason I'm up at that ungodly hour is if I'm STILL awake, and getting paid. Adventure racing makes us do so many things outside of our comfort zones, and we love it for those reasons. In all the hubbub of race morning prep, only two little ones awoke and had to be convinced to return to sleep before we could head out the door. Pulling out of the drive at just after 4:00am, we collectively steeled ourselves for the day (and night, and most of the next day) knowing full well when we returned to the house we would be a little ricketier, a lot more tired, and whole lot more filled with memories.
As the sun slowly made it's way into the morning sky, we noted just how thick the fog was. We still had over an hour bus ride to the official race start, so undoubtably it would be burned off before we began, but it still looked foreboding and disorienting. At 7:00 am sharp, the race director went over a few key points to consider in the race meeting. After a few questions from the racers, we all were ushered over to two awaiting school buses and we were on the road to Adirondack Lake. We passed through a few towns and villages that we were sure we would see again over the next 24 hours. I was honestly lulled into a false sense of relief from the lack of elevation I perceived on that ride. While I could feel an overall sense of gaining elevation, nothing looked too terrible and rugged. False hope is better than no hope, I guess. The ride was spent in flurries of conversations, quiet moments where racers were either questioning their life choices or trying to grab a few more precious moments of rest, and grazing on last minute nutrition.
We finally turned down a dirt road that sloped downhill. The entire bus made comments about how we were sure to be biking up this very same hill as we would be beginning the second leg of the race. The dirt road ended at a small parking area where a modest TA had been erected. Racers flooded from the buses and were corralled over to two flags set up along the road where the race would officially begin. We were instructed to keep away from our bikes which were staged along the side of the parking area. "The TA isn't open to you just yet!" The media team was busy snapping pictures and a drone hovered over head as the collective race entity made its way over to the flags. There was little to say other than "3, 2, 1, GO!" and at precisely 9am, the race began. Every muscle in your body wants to shoot out like a cannon at that moment, however, your team is the ignition, and you can only go as fast as the team does as a whole. So while Jonathan and Andrea were ready to at least jog out from the start, a quick look around and a missing Chris made that impossible. Chris is a stubborn man. A wonderful man, but a stubborn man. He was NOT going to run. It was a sudden reality I had for some reason not considered up to this point. While we are great friends with the Offens, Chris's race style is not the same as theirs. I love racing both styles. Aggressive and committed to the highest ranking possible for the Offens, and moderated and refusing to be miserable for Chris. I can see the benefits of either approach, but at that moment I wasn't sure if there was a possibility to mesh them.
The team settled into a fast walk and we came to the first fork in the race. Half the field went left and half went right. We veered to the right. It was the beginning of a near blind race for me. I had no idea which way lead to what. I only knew we were on a trekking leg, there were 6 possible points, and we had 2 different plans, depending on how the first few CPs shook out. We followed along the trail until Jonathan lead us into the forest along with a splattering of other teams. After punching our first CP of the race we returned to the trail and each of us shed a layer of clothing secondary to the increased effort and rising morning temperature. The race directors had forewarned us about the horrid bug situation in the woods of New York, but thankfully the cooler temperatures, or maybe it was just luck, had kept those blood suckers at bay so far. Just to be safe, we all covered our exposed skin with as much DEET as allowed before genetic mutations would result. Soon after, Jonathan lead us off trail again for the next CP. We reached it just as a few other teams were coming in from other directions. I always think that is such a cool occurrence. Multiple lines of attack from multiple trains of thought. The rest of this leg consisted of some nice trails, some sloppy swamp trudging, and a few moments of questioning why I was allowed to lead the team without a map in my hands. We back and forth surmised that we were painfully overshooting the TA and that I hadn’t, in fact, taken us too far in the wrong direction. All told, we bagged 5 out of 6 CPs on that leg. That outlier was probably the one with the most epic view, but we had plans and time goals.
We came gliding back to the TA and made a quick transition to the bikes. The next 28 miles held only 3 CPs and no single track, but I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a section of gravel riding as much. The route was punchy, beautiful, and entertaining. We clutched between long slow climbs with our heart rates resonating in our ears to exhilarating downhills with the wind whipping the sweat from our skin. The occasional stops to grabs CPs were perfectly dispersed.
The first CP on this leg was the only time in the race where our team could split up. I opted to take the quarter mile trek down to a pond to grab B1. Not quite sure why I assumed the CP would just be sitting there at the ponds edge waiting for me to skip right up and punch our passport. It was not. I had been so assured that it would be a mercy point that I hadn’t even taken the time to find out what the clue was. Thankfully, I had at least had the forethought to bring the map with me. After conferring with another racer, I kept repeating the clue “north side of ridge” over and over while scaling the side of said ridge and utilizing all the terrain association I could until I literally stumbled on top of the CP. After relishing in that little endorphin hit, I beboped back up the trail and reconnected with my team and handed the map back to the lead navigator. I enjoyed my short stint of navigating, but Jonathan was the MVP. As we were remounting our bikes, a local guy who was putting in some jogging miles along the roadside asked us where we were going. I knee jerk replied “no clue, I’m just along for the ride.”
The route took us through the Moose River Wild Forest and mile after mile of beautiful New York rustic camping sites. Our team swooned over the idea of hauling our troops out there and setting up camp for a week or two. Everything we love would be at our fingertips. Rivers, streams, lakes, hiking, biking. Man. I’m pausing in my writing to further investigate this for a minute…
The gravel road lead us to our next TA tucked deep in the woods at a remote campsite. As we coasted in among a sea of gear bins and haggard racers, we found a spot to drop our bikes and located our bin. Within minutes we were heading back out on foot toward the south loop of CPs. Jumping off the road, we went for a reentrant that appeared on the map to lead us straight to C1. Things weren’t adding up and the map wasn’t mapping. We first committed to one reentrant, then another, then a third, and I think maybe a fourth fifth and sixth. Nothing was real world- map confirmatory. Jonathan stopped to stare at the map while Andrea whispered “I bet it was that first one I pointed out.” Spoiler. She was right. After a whole lot of climbing, stopping, going, guessing, confirming, praying, and muttering we finally felt confident enough to commit to a reentrant. A few other teams were sprinkled around the same area, all also staring at their maps and glancing around at their surroundings. We had come up with the race mantra “we just haven’t gone far enough” and we applied it to this situation. Hot dang. It worked. As we were slopping through the spring fed muck, making our way to the CP, Andrea and I whipped our heads around looking for whoever was blowing a whistle obnoxiously loud. When we didn’t see anyone, we continued on to the guys’ side. But again came the blare of what sounded like a young kid blowing his shiny new whistle so all his friends could hear how loud he could make it go. Still no one, adult or child, in sight. This went on for the remaining few minutes we were lingering around the CP trying to decide our next move. We never found the source of the whistling and we never ventured on for more points on that loop. We had dropped over an hour looking for that one point, and with our previously stated goal of at least 1 cp every 24 minutes, this leg was proving to be an endorphineless time sucker. We started back toward the cp, following the reentrant to see just where we went wrong. It’s still hard to tell in my memory. Maybe Jonathan has a clearer image of the snafu, but again, I was along for the ride.
We ambled back into the TA, this time with our sights on the north loop. Maybe the director had gotten his north and south confused and the easier loop was actually to the north, rather than south, as he had said. Cause if what we just fuddled through was the lesser of two evils, this other section was going to be a straight shot into Sheol. We gave ourselves the chance to nab C10, but we went into it with the plan to cut our losses before we dumped too much time into another escapade. As we hiked out of the TA we crossed paths with the ever chipper and chatty Cherubini Brothers. When they told Jonathan they had only bagged two points on the entire section it gave us a little confidence boost. If the brothers were tucking tail and cutting their losses, we were holding our own on the struggle bus.
What started out as a trail quickly dropped into a faint line of trampled underbrush. Over the river and through the woods, we found our intended flag. It was time to discuss as a team what our next step would be. Jonathan had an idea, I had a similar thought, Chris’s knee had a totally different plan. He had been falling behind on the trail out from the TA but not said a word about why. Sometimes I need a few quiet moments to get myself through a hard spell, and I know Chris is the same, so I hadn’t pried about his lagging. While we were bouncing ideas I took the chance to quietly ask him if everything was ok. I don’t remember his exact response, but it had a little “never again” and “ridiculous” and “f{>}^{ing knee” mixed in there. We agreed to disagree on our plan and go for just one more that looked doable. I was given the task of pace counting so I missed the birds that jumped Jonathan, whose startled yelp caused Andrea to scream and me to loose count. It was a series of unfortunate events. Not as unfortunate as the sight of the bog of unknown proportions that we came upon as we headed toward C9. None of us were up for the possibility of thigh (or higher) high muck trucking. We all agreed to agree to call it and head back to the TA.
We were resupplied, re-lubed, and remounted within minutes and back on the bikes for another 16 miles of road biking. We came cruising through a tourist town bumping with music, wafting with delicious food smells, and crawling with people lined up for ice cream. If it would have been just Chris and me I can guarantee an ice cream, beer, or burger would have been had by us. Actually, probably all three. No time for luxury when you’re racing with the Offens though! So on we hauled it, through another town or two until we came upon a small parking lot with a pop up tent and a uhaul. Either a sketchy late evening flea market or the TA we needed. Thankfully it was the later.
The next trek started out on a higher note than anything up to that point. Maybe it was knowing we were coming up on the halfway point of the race, or maybe it was the anti-fatigue pills I had finally convinced Chris to take kicking in, but the team chatted and chuckled down the trail. We easily punched D1 and sauntered on down the trail. D2 proved to be a little more of a challenge, and not only for us. Our first attack, using pace counting, brought us up empty handed. Our next attack following a ledge also proved to be unfruitful. Our third attack, this time pace counting from a trail intersection further up and holding a bearing into the woods and working with at least two other equally as frustrated teams, was successful.
We went on to find D3 flawlessly but should have listened to Chris who adamantly disagreed with the idea to go trolloping up the mountainside for D4 through D6. While we ended up finding D5 (luck shot there. I looked to the right at just the right time to see the headlamp of another team shining directly on the flag like a beacon in the night) and D6 (less of a luck shot, but still probably not worth the collective time it took) we never did lay eyes on D4. Two points are nothing to turn your nose up at, but the toll those two points took on Chris’s knee and the morale of the team in general, probably wasn’t a good investment. Within about 30 minutes of converging back on a trail and trying to maintain a speed we had no business hauling at, Chris reached a point he needed to either quit or rest for a good chunk of time. I didn’t hate the idea of either in that moment. We paused and allowed a few teams to pass us. Chris got his breathing under control, I assessed a good sized goose egg I had grown on my head from a run-in with a miscalculated branch-ducking, and Andrea starred off into the thick woods, whispering to Jonathan to calm down his breakneck pace-setting. Even if one were to choose the quit option, how would one do that? We had just as far to go as we had already come. We were committed, whether we wanted to be or not.
After a few minutes we forged on deeper into the dark abyss of Fulton Chain Wild Forest. By some type of navigational sorcery, Jonathan was able to hone in directly to D7 and hit it straight on. While this was a celebration worthy event, I felt little like celebrating at this point in the night. Without maps I really had no idea how far we had gone or, more importantly, how much further we had to go. So when Jonathan threw out the idea to skip the next 3 points and take a paved roadway to TA 5 we all heartily agreed. We weren’t there yet though. In fact, we had about 4 more miles and at least 3 more “this is the last uphill”’s from our lead navigator. I caught myself throwing fictitious daggers at our fearless leader. Rationality prevailed and I had to keep telling myself it wasn’t Jonathan who was the problem, it was the beast of a course designed by sadistic AR directors. It helped to cast my hexing energy on someone other than the person leading me through the ordeal, and within striking distance.
We eventually came to a road where our sleepy eyes convinced us nearly every car was “heading straight for us!” And Jonathan proved he could detach his mind from his body and literally sleep walk. While neither Chris nor I was capable of such advanced AR techniques, we linked arms and commiserated down the roadway together until we emerged into the firelight of TA5.
A TA in the middle of the woods, in the middle of the night, is a magical place. After so many hours out in the woods without another team in sight, all the hullabaloo is a welcome energy booster. Between kind human interaction, soda, chips, and cookies, we were as recharged as we could get. Maybe our downtrodden faces alerted the TA staff to our fragile status. Within a few minutes of wordlessly shoving “nutrition” into our faces and contemplating our will to go on, Brian Gatens approached us with just a few small words of encouragement. It’s amazing what a slight bit of perspective can do to your whole outlook on a race. With renewed vigor we set to work attaching glow sticks, assembling paddles, securing packs, and hauling 80 pound canoes down to the boat launch.
Our lead boat would have Andrea in the front and Jonathan steering while our caboose boat had Chris in the front and me at the helm. As soon as we pushed off from the launch we were engulfed by the thick white cloud of fog particles reflecting every bit of wattage coming off our headlamps back into our eye holes. We could see next to nothing. We quickly realized we could see far better with just one headlamp on. I turned my lamp off and followed the gliding glow sticks from the Offen canoe. We didn’t make it far before Jonathan had to stop to try to make sense of the flowing water. This didn’t seem like it was going to be easy considering how hard the push was from the start to just 200m where we were lodged in some river weed. “Look at your maps fellows!” Came from the TA. Ooooooh poop. I can neither confirm nor deny that we went the opposite direction as we were supposed to go. After a rapid change of direction, we headed off into the night along the North Branch of Moose Creek. Over the next 4 hours we experienced nearly every emotion known to man. Freezing temps, but later the warmth of the rising sun through the towering spruce trees that lines the banks. Infuriating, impenetrable fog, but later the beauty and serenity of watching it fade away revealing an almost alpine and pristine beauty. Boredom and unforgiving pain in our paddle muscles from the the constant need to speed up and then loose all momentum to sharp turns in the river, but also the fun challenge of navigating a tight waterway. The confusion of hearing detached music coming from the uninhabited banks of the river at 5:00 am to the fear and surprise of making out the ominous figure sitting in the foldout chair just next to the radio. (I can still get the heebie jeebies just thinking about that one.) It was a paddle that has taken me a few days to appreciate. I can say now, it was probably one of the very best and most memorable paddles I’ve had in my life. I would love to go back and float down it a little less tired and a little more appreciative of its beauty.
When we eventually made it to TA 6 (after grabbing the sole two cps on that leg) we were heartily greeted by more race staff. We hauled our boats up, gathered up our belongings and absorbed all the information being thrown at us from staff. Since the race was digging teams into their proverbial graves, the directors had opted to allow an additional 30 minutes on the clock. According to Chris, that didn’t matter because we were heading DIRECTLY back to the finish and we would not be scurrying about on McCauly Mountain for any more of those ding dang CPs. Jonathan heard something totally different… more like “here’s 30 minutes, go rub some dirt on it and try to get ALL THE POINTS!” There had to be a compromise. We stored away our paddle gear, prepared for the battle between our bike seats and our bottoms, and headed off on the Tobie Trail. I wasn’t 100% sure how the two totally varying mindsets were going to find a happy median, so I just quietly rode along. We came to a stop at the foot of a series of bike trails. Jonathan was studying the map and Chris was staring off down the flat, paved trail knowing his freedom from this torture was probably within sight. Andrea and I were between these two, desperate to keep everyone happy-ish. Without a word, Jonathan slowly starts to head into the trail system. I took a cautious look at Chris as I began to cross the threshold into the park. He didn’t resist, so I didn’t stop. It was painfully short lived and we were all back off our bikes, pushing them up some of the most rooted and technically challenging terrain we had seen thus far in the race. This ended up being the compromise of the two plans. For the final hour of the race we walked our bikes up and down, back and forth across the the northern bike park of McCauley resort and grabbed up nine more points. Later we found out the southern sections were far more flowy and fun, but we did what we could with what we had.
We were down to the final 10 minutes of the race. Jonathan was pushing for “just ONE more” Andrea was assuring him we did not, in fact, have any more time for one more, Chris was having an out of body experience, and I was just along for the ride. I don’t know who made the final executive decision, but we headed out of the bike park and over the road to the finish line. We were guided down the path to the inflatable arch. As we were approaching it, another team came scooting in from the back of the parking lot at the exact same speed and trajectory as us. By the grace of God we didn’t collide, but I don’t think either team was willing to back down to be polite. We came plowing through the arch to the MC announcing the arrival of Delmarva Adventure Sports as official finishers in the 2025 Longest Day Adventure Race. We did it. It wasn’t a documentary worthy performance, it didn’t earn us a podium spot, but we made it into the top ten. 5th in our division and 8th overall. Nice!
So from the highest of highs to lowest of lows, from the “just haven’t gone far enough” to the “you’re pushing it too far”, from the “I’ve never had a DNF, but this might be my first” to the “I’ve never had an overall top ten finish before!” It was a race to compare other races to. It was a race to know I’m capable of digging even deeper into the pain cave and surviving to tell the tale. It was a race to push the boundaries of friendship but ultimately solidify that friendship. It was a race I’ll remember and a race I’ll try to forget parts of. It was an adventure race above all else.
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