| Summary | None |
| Owner | Nadine Mueller-Dittmann |
| Creation Date | 2012-07-13 23:09:39 UTC-0400 |
| Description | Photos by:
Alison Carolyn Nicole Nadine ____________________________ July 8 2012 by Mark Smith & James Burgess Through forested hills and muddy swamps, intrepid two- and three-person teams plied their grit against a challenging twenty-five mile course. With beautiful sunny skies and temperatures in the low 70’s, racers began trickling into the Wompatuck State Park Visitors Center around 7:30 AM. By 8:30 the free shuttle bus from MIT had arrived and most racers had completed registration and participated in a brief navigational clinic. The rules and hazards of the course were explained and the maps revealing the race course were distributed at 9:10 AM. Teams were given 10 minutes to study the maps and plan their strategy before the official start at 9:20 AM. The first leg of the race was a half-mile sprint to Triphammer pond, planned primarily to avoid chaotic bike collisions off the starting line. Each team elected a champion to tackle this leg. At 9:20 the champions lined up and were off in a tight pack with a strong performance by team MOC putting them in the lead. Racers starting the Rugged Rampage! After the champions returned, the teams set out on their bikes to attack the second leg of the race. Here teams had to navigate to a dozen locations marked on their maps, collecting points for each control flag they successfully encountered. Controls were distributed across ten miles of forested trails, with a unique hole punch attached that racers could use to mark their passport and prove they had reached the control. Each control had its own point value relative to the difficulty of finding the flag, and all controls on the race were optional, enabling teams to choose the route that could maximize their score and enjoyment. A scenic checkpoint flag waiting for racers to discover it! During this second leg we had our first and only serious injury on the course. Arthur Anderson [following his triumphant return] slipped off his pedals and suffered a moderate laceration above his ankle. Fortunately, we had a mountain-bike mounted EMT on-hand who was able to quickly reach Arthur, clean his wound and help him walk out to a fire road where Ian Ferguson, a race volunteer drove him to the local hospital. After a few quick stitches Arthur was back to join the race volunteers for the rest of the afternoon! Checkpoint 13 was memorable for many racers, lying in the middle of a shallow pond that racers could (unexpectedly) ride their bikes through! By noon the temperature had climbed to 80 and racers were relieved to encounter volunteers hiding in the woods and surprising them with water guns. Carolyn Edelstein (volunteer) is spraying team KFJ adventures. Racers struggled to find checkpoints 5 and 8, both buried deep in a swamp, although 2 especially skilled (or perhaps lucky!) teams managed to find each point. The army crawl approach to checkpoint 8 offered a particularly rugged experience. Around Noon the first teams began arriving at the transition area. Here they were greeted by volunteers challenging them to a hydration challenge. After beating the volunteers, racers proceeded to select their next challenge from a series of engineering-themed riddles. Our chemical-engineering challenge required racers to scale the highest point in the park. There a model of a chemical compound (ethanol) was hanging from a control flag. Racers then needed to return to the transition area to reconstruct the compound using either their bodies or a kit (everyone chose to use their bodies)! Team Robot Unicorn Atttack. For a mechanical engineering challenge, racers had their bikes locked together and needed to carry their bikes up a hill. At the top of the hill the key to unlock the bikes was tied to a tree – they received their points when the returned with the unlocked lock. Two racers working together to move their bikes past this challenge. The most daunting challenge of the day was the Monty Hall problem inspired by the notorious game show host/logic problem. Three very difficult checkpoints were plotted on the map deep inside a series of three swamps located miles apart from one another. Only one of these locations actually held a checkpoint. Racers were allowed to ask a volunteer to eliminate one of the false options, but still were at risk of visiting at least one false checkpoint before finally discovering CP 21. After all of these challenges, most of the racers were thrilled to have the opportunity to jump into Holly Pond on their way to collecting the only aquatic control in the race. There was an added challenge with this CP, though, as it was attached to the back end of a kayak captained by a fierce Viking volunteer evading their attempts to campture the flag. With persistence and occasional bribery the Viking was eventually captured by most teams [Viking admitting defeat]. By 2:30PM, the first teams had begun to cross the finish line back at the Wompatuck Visitors’ Center. A steady stream of teams continued to cross the finish line right up until the 3:20PM cut-off time when the last team made it across the line. By this time the barbecues were cooking, and the post-race celebration had begun in earnest. The cookout was a much enjoyed and critical part of the day, giving racers a chance to relax, refuel, rehydrate and bond over war stories from the course. After the cookout, prizes were distributed to the winning teams. The top finishers received Dri-fit race shirts and discounted entry into The Bitter Pill, a longer adventure race put on by GMARA in Vermont. In addition to prizes for the top finishers, an additional prize was offered to the team with the best costume. The team Robot Unicorn Attack [Left] easily won this award, although Disappointing Moustache Ride gave them a fair run for the prize! By 5:30PM, all of the racers had eaten to bursting, prizes had been distributed, and the bus was rolling back towards Cambridge. After a final clean-up, the race site looked exactly as it had before, and the 2012 Rugged Rampage was officially complete and a great success! A major thank-you to our sponsors, the ASA (LEF fund), which allowed us to dramatically reduce race fees, improve the BBQ and offer free transit to the race, as well as MYTOPO which offered sharply discounted maps. Finally, our volunteers were incredibly generous with their time, crafty with their challenges and liberal with their water guns on the course! They’re all listed below to explicitly recognize their awesomeness as the race could never have happened without their hard work! If you know any of these characters give them a high five! Awesome Volunteers! Karl Yoder, Wendy Liu, Ian Ferguson, Mark Smith, Carolyn Edelstein, Ben Scandella, Becca Greene, Nadine Mueller-Ditman, Nafeesa Remtilla, Adam Rosenfield, Minh Nguyen-Dang, Nicole Ozminkowski, Phoebe Whitwell, Jeff Rominger, Alison Takemura, Pam Montegomery |