tion. They felt like sprints compared potential to paddle to other islands for to the 12-hour Island Quest. They usucheckpoints. We hadn’t done much ally started and finished in a local park paddling, but thought that an interwith the checkpoints spread throughout island paddle would be pretty sweet. neighborhoods, city parks, and local Headquarters were in Moran State Park trails in the area. These shorter races at the Environmental Learning Center helped us practice navigation since the located at the base of Mt. Constitution. courses covered a much smaller area with The race sent us riding or running up potentially just as many check points as and down most of the trails in the state a longer race. park. There’s nothing like an adventure Another race we used for training race to get to know an unfamiliar area. was Bellingham’s Kulshan Quest. Excited This race presented an added chalto be on our home turf, we ran the 12lenge when torrential rain began to fall. hour race as a two-person co-ed team The paddling segment had to be moved again. However, even though this race to a lake on the island due to high winds was on familiar and dangerous conterrain, we disditions in the open Dusty and Emily at one of the Hike-A-Bike creek crossings in the Cle Elum 24-hour race covered some new water around the Photo by Brent Molsberry places and new island. It rained so ways of getting to much that day that the familiar ones, during the paddle, especially during we could have the paddle. We been completely didn’t have the submerged and it weather excitewouldn’t have made ment of our first much difference. race, but snapThe wild weather ping the rudder added to the sense completely off of of adventure. our tandem kayak Island Quest near the beginwas the regional ning of the race championship race helped to keep and we ended up things adventurqualifying for the ous enough. USARA National Our final training race for Nationals Championships to be held in McHenry, was the Cle Elum 24-hour race, mirrorMaryland the following year. After having the length of the Nationals course. ing a blast at our first race, we decided Our friend and Quest Adventure race we wanted to keep doing more and figdirector, Brent, agreed to be our third so ured that training for Nationals would we could practice working together as a be a good way to get more practice. team of three, which is what we needed Adventure racing is more popular on the to compete at Nationals. It was here that East Coast but, fortunately, we ended up we became the official Quest Adventure finding some great races in the Pacific Race Team. Brent brought with him Northwest for training. a lot more adventure race experience We started our Nationals practice than either of us as he had competed in by competing in some weeknight races Primal Quest, a race that typically lasts in the Seattle area. These races were all about a week. We learned a lot at the three hours long and not all of them race in Cle Elum and felt at least a little included paddling, but they did have more prepared, especially for the deliribiking, running and, of course, navigastories & the race|play|experience calendar online.
Sun, rain or snow, always on the go! Top of Sauk Mtn with Mt Shuksan in the background
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