This year the Endorphin Fix lived up to its name, again.  Despite cutting the course back down to its original length of 2 days (50hours) this race was probably just as tough as the last two 3 day courses.  Again being held in the New River Valley of West Virginia it was sure to contain A LOT of elevation.

Heavy snow in the area over the prior 2 months made conditions very wet/muddy.  Leading up to the race Odyssey was even considering requiring snow shoes as mandatory gear because it was unknown when the snow would melt.  The snow did melt but this proved to provide a whole new challenge, MUD!

The team struggled to find a fourth team member to race.  Brian was still not ready to race such a long taxing race on his hamstring and Jennie ran into some scheduling issues so KD, JD, and Baker were stranded without a fourth.  Baker finally convinced his roommate, Michael Stratton, to join the crew and make it four.  Michael is certainly experienced in the longer races competing prior Beast of the East’s and EFIX’s as well as many 1-days.  Although he hasn’t been racing much lately at least he knew what to expect.

The crew showed up Thursday night and prepared for race start Friday morning.  As it always seems they were packing up until the last minute.  At race start (noon) it was actually SNOWING!!!  What were they getting themselves into?  The course as seen from the maps and race rules of travel seemed to be very challenging especially considering the weather and there was plenty of climbing as always.  It seemed only the top teams would be able to finish the entire course and there were plenty of extremely competitive teams there.  Several of the top 20 teams from Nationals traveled to WV to race.

Right from the bat the course starting taking a toll on teams.  Teams were already realizing that getting all the CP’s might not be the best strategy.  Dima, from Calleva, determined from the start to finish took the lead and decided not to get any optional CP’s, a strategy that would later prove wise as he was the only won to finish the entire course (aside from optional CP’s).

Certain stories I heard involved walking through knee deep mud and having to drag canoes through mud.  They even had to “melt” the mud off their bikes after it had frozen on over night.  THAT IS CRAZY!!!

Other top teams were getting knocked off from a combination of attrition, weather, or injury.  TeamSOG was facing there own troubles.  Baker was having some issues with his ankle after twisting it a few weeks before the race.  JD on the other hand had recently had some hardware removed from his ankle which was also causing him pain.  The guys pushed through this and kept on fighting.  Michael was handling most of the navigation and worked out some early kinks from lack of practice.  About 36 hours into the race JD really started to have issues when he started throwing up.  It started inhibiting the team and they were having trouble keeping pace.  The team was hoping to just finish in time under the best conditions so with this setback they felt they would not be able to finish on time and therefore felt it was best for everyone’s health not to continue.  The team certainly gave it there all and fought through a lot of adversity.

Again, this was an extremely difficult race and many had trouble finishing let alone finishing the official course.  These guys will get some rest and be ready to go again and start racking up some wins.