Shenandoah River Adventure Race 2025

     If I would have been able to see 15 years into the future when Annika was born, I don't think I could have imagined the relationship we share. Her being the oldest, and the only girl in our lineup, has helped forge an unspoken alliance between us in the household. Our shared love of the Lord has kept our hearts threaded on the same cord. Homeschooling has maintained a close connection (and caused many of the squabbles) between us.  But it's our mutual enjoyment in adventure racing that has provided us with some of our absolute best shared memories. 

                                   

    I first introduced Annika to the awesomeness of adventure racing 3 years ago at an event that was almost literally in our backyard. Our great friend and AR director, Jonathan Offen of Delmarva Adventure Sports, put on a 4-hour race at our beloved Trap Pond State Park, and through a series of serendipitous mishaps, I ended up on a team with both my daughter and my mother. That race was almost perfection in multigenerational glee. The three of us goofed our way into 2nd place in our division and solidified both Annika's and my mom's enjoyment in a sport I adore. 

    Since that race, Annika and I have had the chance to race in multiple races together. Sometimes on the same team, but often even competing against each other. It's been such a thrill to pass her on the course and know she is rocking it out with her teammates. And as much fun as that is, it's so much more fun to be on a united front with her. Last year we chose to tackle the 6-hour edition of Rev 3's Shenandoah River AR in Bentonville Virginia. It was an absolute hoot! We nabbed 1st in our division for that race. Little did Annika know, I was already scheming on bringing her up to the 12-hour level the following year. I knew after racing with her for the 6-hour that she was totally capable of a longer race. After a few well-timed suggestions and a whole lot of convincing and reassuring, she agreed to my little plan. 

    The Friday we were leaving for the race, I was coming out of a nightshift. After a painfully short nap, Annika was waking me up with a cup of coffee and pushing me to get myself together to get going. We hugged all our men and departed perfectly on time. After less than 20 minutes in the van, we both decided we absolutely deserved bougie drinks and gas station snacks to get us through the arduous journey ahead. A few iced coffees and Swedish fish later, we were west bound on route 404. Being as the race was about 4 hours away and wasn't scheduled to end until well into the evening on Saturday, we decided to make a full weekend out of the trip. Chris had been kind enough to book us a 2-night stay at one of the many "murder motels" of Front Royal. Spoiler, no one was murdered, but Annika was convinced we were going to get shanked whenever we came or went from the establishment. 

                                                  

    We opted to swing over to the race start to sign in and grab our maps before heading to the hotel. As much as some may think this little jumpstart to the race isn't in the spirit of the sport, I personally LOVE getting my hands on maps the night before. Maybe it's because sometimes I just want time to stare blankly at all the options before I commit to a plan, or maybe it's because planning the night before gives me the chance to sleep in just a little later in the morning. Either way, it's a sweet little perk to racing with Nick as the Director. We chose to indulge in some comfort food at the Cracker Barrell followed by a few last-minute items at Wal-Mart, and then we headed over to the homicide hotel for a restful, and non-lethal sleep. 

    On race morning we were both up and ready to go without a hitch. We arrived at the race start, unloaded our gear, and tucked our massive 15 passenger van into a tight little assigned parking spot. I recognized just a handful of the racers and Annika quickly spotted our divisional competition. We finished some last-minute drink mixing, and packing organizing before Nick conducted a quick pre-race briefing. We loaded two slightly dilapidated but still functioning school buses and were heading south by 8am. Neither Annika nor I do well with motion sickness, and the jarring, bumpy school bus didn't serve us very well on that 45-minute ride, but we survived. 

    The drop off location was at a small river access parking lot at the end of a roughly 1/4-mile gravel road. The prologue of the race was to run, with the whole team, down to the beginning of the gravel road, bop the CP, and run back to knab a boat. Annika and I maintained a light jog and let all the adrenaline filled racers elbow and bob and weave to their hearts content. We returned to the boats, grabbed up our gear and a canoe, and launched into the river. 

     Our first leg was a 7ish mile paddle down the ripply and slightly rapidy Shenandoah River. I had done a longer version of this same paddle a few years before on the Shenandoah Epic. I remember them making a big deal out of a river feature dubbed as "Compton Rapids." The race staff had drilled it into our minds at that race that at least a quarter of the field would end up swimming the rapids because it was so serious. My team didn't tip in that race, and we didn't tip in this race. The river company that was supplying boats for this race did give a recommendation to stay to the right of the river, but they didn't make a big fuss out of the rapids. I had the thought it was going to be a significant challenge to navigate the rapid well, but it was over before I realized we were in the thick of it. We made it through unscathed, just a little cooler from the fun little hydraulic waves and splashes. The rest of the paddle had a few smatterings of class I-II fun but was mainly flat and flowing. Annika lost interest in the concept of paddling about 2 hours into the venture. After some coaxing, convincing, and cajoling, we maintained a somewhat rhythmic rowing together to mile marker 25. We also easily hit all 5 checkpoints on the leg. 

The final CP was slightly downstream from the boat take out, so we had an opportunity to eye the water levels at the river where we would have to make our first major decision of the race. The next leg of the race was the trekking section which housed 14 checkpoints hidden within the confines of the Shenandoah River State Park. The very first, and most obvious CP was located just on the other side of the river from the TA. We could either keep our feet dry and trek nearly a mile down the river to a bridge or we could link arms and ford the river and shave off at least 30 minutes of trekking. I completely left the decision up to Annika. I knew it made so much more sense to cross the river, but I also knew a wet and disgruntled 15-year-old wouldn't want to put out much effort on trekking through the hot, humid, and buggy afternoon. Ms. Annika came through and actually suggested the idea before I could formulate my most convincing argument to even consider the thought. 

We found the shallowest, rock riddled path across the river, linked arms, and ever so wobbly and graceful-ish-ly crossed the flowing waters of the Shenandoah. We slipped, whooped, squealed, and giggled until we came to a small pebble beach. We quickly bushwacked the short distance through the woods to the bike trail. Thankfully, we had had the forethought to wear the wet shoes we had from the paddle and carried our dry socks and shoes in a dry bag above our heads. After changing into our dry trail runners, we left our stinky, soggy kicks hidden in the wood line. 

Together we nabbed CP after CP, none of which were putting up too much of a fight. The placement of the CPs played well to my navigation abilities. Many were off trail, but with pretty obvious geographical giveaways. We followed the river trail that meandered through thickets of pawpaw trees
. Annika found irrational joy out of squishing the overripe fruits under her feet. I reached down and grabbed one up before she could trample it and started dissecting it to make sure it was the native fruit I thought it was. Annika could see me thinking and smacked the fruit out of my hands sternly saying "MOM! You CANNOT try one of your hippy foraging foods while we're racing! What if you get bubble guts?! I'm not losing because you want to eat from the woods!" She is my rational voice from time to time. 

 Later in the trek we were parallelling an off-limits road when the heat of the day, incessant gnats kamikazeing into our eyes, and sore feet got the best of my teenage teammate. I knew she was starting to have enough of the trek, but I was taken off guard when she yelled out "I QUIT! THIS IS DUMB! I HATE THIS!" How was I to deal with this little conundrum? Just quietly keep walking while passing her pieces of candy and pointing out weird looking mushrooms, of course! And it worked. After her little tantrum she soon returned to her usual go with the flow self. We had cleared the course up to this point, but I knew we were in need of shaving off a few points to keep our planned times in order. We chose to ditch a few far placed outliers and scurred down a reentrant to the main bike path that encompasses the lower part of Shenandoah River State Park. We trotted back to our stinky, soppy shoes, traded out our dry kicks and forded back across the river to our waiting bikes and the final leg of the race. 

Returning to the TA, we transitioned over to our bikes relatively swiftly and were off on the road from the Low Water Bridge Campground back over to the State Park. We chose to begin the bike with the most elevation gain first and leave the final race back to the finish on the flat section of the River trail. Annika held her own on the punchy ascents and technical descents, occasionally choosing to hike a bike over saying a hail-Mary and winging it like her momma. We passed plenty of other teams and were passed by others. Picking off CP after CP, we quickly realized my intended route left much to be desired. I'm not sure where my mind was when I was route planning the attack for this bike leg, but I had left off so many low hanging fruits it was embarrassing. We reevaluated and grabbed at least 3 extra points that I had assumed we wouldn't have time for. As the sun started its descent and the trails became harder and harder to see, we stopped to dawn our headlamps and down a few fruit strips and gels. The subsequent energy boost gave us the gusto to push hard all the way back to the finish where the light rain began to cover our gear. 

As we came flying under the REV3 arch I heard Annika yelling something, but I was fixated on making it over to the tent where I was sure we had to check in for our final CP. Alas, my daughter was right again, and the final CP was hanging from the middle of the arch I had just flown past. This gave her all the reasoning in the world to voice her absolute frustration with her totally not cool and completely deaf mother. Eh, I'm kinda used to being on the receiving end of that these days. But you know what? If that is the price to pay for having the chance to spend an entire day with one of my favorite people, doing one of my favorite things, then its a price I'm totally willing to pay.  

We had finished about 30 minutes before the official race end, so I took the opportunity to haul a majority of our gear back to the van. After 3 trips, all we had left to haul back was the gear bin. So, we used that as our seat and waited for the awards ceremony as we chugged a few sodas and snacked on some chips. The hotdog dinner didn't draw our appetites as much as our plans for grabbing some more appetizing take out on our way back to the hotel. I had the chance to catch up with a few other racers I see pretty often, and others I had never met before. Soon enough, Jesse Tubbs drew everyone's attention and the awards began. We applauded those who cleared the course and won their divisions. I always have the intention to track those people down and pick their brains on route choices but never seem get the chance. My own laziness, really.  Finally, they came to the all-female division... third place was called, not us. Second place was called, not us. First place was announced as "a mother-daughter team.... Wild and No Longer a Child!" That's us!! We won first in our division! Second year in a row!! We had our picture snapped, congratulations poured over us, and I could have just squeezed the dickens out of that daughter of mine! She resisted my outpouring of affection, but her radiant smile showed she was just as excited and proud as I was. 

After the crowd dispersed, I approached Jesse to thank him for a great event and give him kudos for all the work he does with the youth of our sport. After chatting for a few minutes, we realized Annika was the youngest racer in the 12-hour event, so she was given her own trophy for that honor. Awesome! With plaques under one arm, and hauling the gear bin with the other, we made our way back to the van. After a few quick messages and calls to update family and friends on our race, we headed back toward Front Royal for some well-earned food and rest. We giggled, commiserated, and relived all the details around the past 12 hours over fried chicken and flat sprite. The whole trip was perfection in mother-daughter bonding. And I can't wait for the next one.