Florida Coast to Coast

Sun, Sand, and Swamps
Team Littleton Bike Shop
2007 Florida Coast to Coast Adventure Race

On May 24th a truck set out of Littleton NH bound for Jacksonville Florida and the starting line of a 280 mile adventure race that would end four days later in a small town south of Tallahassee. The truck was loaded to the brim with bikes, packs, food, tents, a kayak, two support crew members and a couple athletes that were rearing to go. The week prior to their departure was full of packing of, organizing and re-organizing gear, eating loads of pasta and strangely enough winning the first event of their season, the Kancamagus Team Time Trial. After twenty four hours of driving south Team Littleton Bike Shop arrived at race HQ, checked in and began race preparation. At an adventure race teams of two to four racers receive instructions and correlating maps of an area. The athletes are given UTM coordinates and have to plot on the map their Check Points or “CPs” and Transition Areas or “TAs”, they are told what discipline will be use on each leg and given a start time. That night I was handed the smaller of two map packages containing nine 9x17 inch topo maps and six pages of instructions. With the help of one support crew, two pizzas and three hours, I had the first half of the course all planned out. The final packing was done and my teammate Jamie was fast asleep. I got to bed just before midnight to catch a quick four and a half hours of sleep before heading out on the first big race for this newly founded team.
“Thirty seconds everyone” the race director shouts. I look at Jamie and give him the “Let play ball” look and the whistle blows, 200 spandex clad warriors take of out of the parking lot and head down the road. We start off on foot for an easy 25km (roughly a half marathon) before jumping on our new Specialized bikes. We quickly build a lead after CP 3 and hold it through TA 1, TA 2 and half the paddle when we scared a couple Manatees in shallow water who, in trying to get away from our Kayak, nearly gave Jamie a heart attack and filled our boat with 100 gallons of water. TA 4 we had been passed by two teams who had the unfortunate luck of being the “carrot” for two fast bikers that had 50 miles to reel in a measly 30 min lead. A bit to eat and a clean pair of shorts after our sea cow encounter was it before heading out to tear the legs off a few well trained paddlers that had gotten the best of us.
Back in the lead we are now working with Team Tools from Canada to find some well hidden CPs in the middle of nowhere. Because four riders are faster than two we made a packed to stay with each other till CP 6 and we would go our separate ways but at TA 5 (CP 11) we rolled in again in first place and all still together. Having lost ground after a mis-marked road through us off course we decided to prolong our parting and take a few short long cuts on the road to regain our lead. Most of the mountain biking was to be done on dirt roads but here in Fl there is no dirt, it is all sand, 4 inch deep bloody sand that makes training ride up the Mt. Washington auto road seem like an easy spin.
Twenty hours into a race is not a time to dilly dally and do something silly like sleep but after the days of traveling and hours in the hot sun and sand we all fell asleep for a little over an hour. I was in the bed of the truck eating mashed potatoes and sifting through 23 new maps and 6 more pages of instructions when the sleep monsters caught me and pulled me into a deep state of unconsciousness. Meg, our lead support crew, attempted to wake me a few times verbally before resorting to violate shaking and yelling. It was light now and we needed to get a move on. After plotting the next four sections we headed out on a swamp trek with our new found friends right beside us. Jason and Laura worked well with us and going into a bushwhacking section two eyes are better than one and eight are better than four so we stuck together. Also, we were four of the fastest athletes there and knew we could benefit from racing together.
The swamp section was good until we spent 7 hours in the thick bush looking for SP3 (Swamp Point). After a few hours we were on the phone with the race director and asking for more water on the course and going in for our last attempt. At this point most teams were skipping SP3 and heading to TA 6 without it. We, however, were dead set on getting this point which if obtained would automatically make us overall winners because the other teams passed it. But at 8:45 pm we cashed in our chips and left the bush like broken gamblers that just lost their fortune at the craps tables. We were still the leading Duo teams and high up in the standings but the lead team was far off in front and we had little to no chance of getting the overall victory that we were hoping for.
The next few sections were completed with another addition to our group, Team XS, and the six of us began to be known as a combination of our official team names “Wilson’s XS Tools”. From that point on we extended our lead on all the other duo teams and caught a bunch of other racers that had moved passed us while trying to find Swamp Thing 3 the day before. We ran, biked and paddled another 110 miles before pulling into the finish at Sea Hags marina on the gulf coast all three boats tied together. Over the past 48 hours non of us had slept and we all came really close as people do in Adventure Racing, we crossed the line together with mixed emotions of how we managed the race and how the race was managed but the one thing we all knew is we were all fast tough racers that united in the true spirit of Adventure Racing.
We ended in a three way tie for first and took home first in our division with a time bonus from early in the race and left the race site with new friends to race with next month and few prizes and a %50 off entry for next years race. Be sure the watch the leader board at next years C2C because Team Littleton Bike Shop will be there and gunning for an overall victory.
Many thanks are extended to our title sponsor Littleton Bike Shop for our clothing and equipment and our support crew Meg Skidmore and the young James Myers, you kept us moving fast, clean and well fed.