Race Recap: Abominable Snow Race

Abominable Snow Race 2/2/19 Merrimac, WI

Weather: 30s, foggy, calm winds
Terrain: ski mountain and forest

Distance: 7.5 miles

Course map

The first race of the year took place at Devil's Head Ski Resort near Wisconsin Dells, which is one of my family's favorite vacation spots. So I convinced my mom to come babysit my son and signed my husband up to do the Adventure (long) course with me. He's never done an OCR before but he is a great runner and a triathlete, so I figured he'd love it. Famous last words? We went to packet pickup the afternoon before, which suffered from a severe lack of signage, but once we figured out where in the lodge the pickup was and what line to stand in, it was just a (long) wait for our stuff.

The next morning we arrived about 30 minutes before my 8:45 AM wave and stayed warm by a heater in the main tent (the heaters were a nice touch, because although it wasn't still the 2019 Polar Vortex of 50 below zero from earlier in the week, it was hovering around freezing). I started on time and the first thing we did was go straight up the black-diamond ski hill. It was steep as hell. I am proud to say I managed to pass a lot of folks on that hike and got to the top in a speedy 4 1/2 minutes. My husband later reported that he was able to jog up the entire thing. :-/ At the top was a ladder wall, followed by a trail through the woods that gave us a sense of what we were in for. There was a lot of snow and it was extremely tough to navigate. You couldn't tell on any given step whether you were going to sink into powder or land hard on compacted ice, or (most likely) some horrifying combination of both wherein you land with a totally bent-sideways ankle. It reminded me very much of the Spartan Super Chicago, only with snow instead of mud. My husband started in a wave 15 minutes after me and when he went blowing past me on a descent, I only had 31 minutes on my watch. WOW. He'd be in for a long wait at the finish line.

This ladder will keep me company!

Just a programming note here: I'm not exactly sure of the order of the obstacles and I hope I don't skip any. Due to the extreme weather in the prior week, the course was changed from what was on the map. I do remember there were a lot of walls - an inverted ladder, 5-foot hurdles, O-U-T, a couple 4-foot walls with a crawl in between, and an 8-foot wall that I got up by myself easily (it was very walkable, thank god). At the top of the mountain was The Apex, which is ASR's version of Olympus and just as impossible for me. I could, thanks to my gloves (seriously, I wore cheapo stretchy gloves with Dollar Tree work gloves on top, and it was FLAWLESS), do it, but not for the entire traverse. A kind man offered to throw an elbow into my ass so I could get across it for fun. This turned out to be an obstacle that my husband couldn't do either, so I felt okay about that.

A few heavy carries finally came along later in the course. An ice bucket carry (women carry one, men two, and they're about 45 lb each) was blessedly short but still tough with the deep snow. I had Chicago Beast flashbacks to the deep sand. Another heavy carry was a wreckbag carry that was much longer, with 40 lb or 25 lb bags. I grabbed the 40 lb bag because I ain't no sissy. There were supposed to be more heavy carries (a sled pull and a tire drag) but the weather precluded them, I think. Very difficult sections of trail came in the last few miles, where you had to slide down on your butt and climb up with a net. We saw a gorgeous frozen waterfall, though, so it was very scenic when you were able to look up from the terrifying snowscape at your feet.

In the last couple miles came a Z-wall which was very difficult due to having totally blind corners. I had to get off this one and take the L. Turns out my husband "cheated" this one by holding onto the top, so we were 2/2 with matching obstacle failures at this point! After more forest, we did a longish crawl under paracord and came out by the finishing gauntlet. First thing was a slip wall (very slippery indeed, but I got up easily with my "bend your damn knees" strategy) with a cargo net traverse at the top which was creepy but fun. After that I gave my (done) husband my Camelbak and tackled the new Arctic Web, which was a cargo net that you climb underneath up a tilt, across a straight section, and down a tilt. It was tough. Very tough. Challenging on the grip and you needed to know how/where to place your feet. It also required a bit of a swing to get from the first tilt to the straight section. I was the only one on the net so it was quite loose and sank a lot, too (the men near me fell off almost immediately). I managed to get about 90% through this obstacle before my hands stopped working and my calves started cramping. Asked my husband after if he'd gotten through it and he laughed "NO, I fell off way before that." Success! And we were 3/3 with matching failures for the day!

The final obstacle was a hike uphill with a tube, then sliding down the hill. I hate tubing and am a big chicken so I didn't like that part, but I liked crossing the finish line in about 2:45! Turns out I finished in the top half of women, which was my secret goal. I took TWO bottles of water at the end, since I'd resorted to eating snow for the last hour after I ran out of my own water. Although I was signed up to go back out and do the short course, I had to get back to my long-suffering mother who had to leave for home by 2 PM and I didn't think I'd have time. Decided to save my strength for Coach Pain's bootcamp on Sunday (recap of that to follow!).

Pictured: the most stressful part of my day

Pros:

-Challenging terrain. Very challenging. The kind of terrain that'll get your ankles in great shape in a big hurry.
-Perks. Medal(s), shirt, beanie hat, chip-timed, free great pictures.
-Size. Small enough that there's no line for obstacles, but big enough to feel like you're part of something.

Cons:

-No water. This was really, really bad. I wish there'd at least been a pre-race email telling people to bring their own. I saw a lot of folks struggling out there. Medical personnel on course should ALWAYS have water!
-Packet pickup. It seemed a bit disorganized and the line was long and slow-moving.
-Put distances on the signs at the split. I had to remember whether I was running Adventure or Expedition, and it could have had the mileage on the signs (or even Long/Short). I heard about a kid who missed the cutoff and accidentally did the long course, eek.

Race Grade: B+. The race experience itself is very good, but I can't score it higher because of the total lack of water. I will definitely do this race again, but I'll bring EXTRA water next time.