Unity race not for the weak

UNITY -- Are you the kind of person who gets bored running an average 5-kilometer road race? Does the thought of one more bike ride make you hope the in-laws will show up unannounced with slides from their vacation trip to Albany? Do you just need something different to do with your weekend, instead of the same old, same old?

You, my friend, need to sign up for an adventure race. It won't put the spring in your step, it will suck all the spring out of your body. But if you're looking for a new challenge, a race like the one held Saturday at Unity College is perfect.

Traditional adventure races span hundreds of miles over a wide variety of terrain. There's a little mountaineering, a little white water and a little sleep. Unity's race was built on a much smaller scale. And you didn't need a passport or anti-malaria drugs.

First, each team of two racers completed a 6-mile mountain bike/trail run ending in Thorndike. From there, they canoed down the Half Moon Stream to the Sandy Stream, ending back at the bottom of Quaker Hill in Unity. On the last leg of the course, teams needed to use a map and compass to navigate through an orienteering course, hitting all the checkpoints, before finishing back at the start.

"I've done a lot of running," said Clayton Kern, who with his teammate Dave Curtiss was the first team to make it back to the finish. "But I must say, I was out of shape."

Kern should have said his fitness was tested, because anyone finishing this course was certainly in shape. Much of the mountain bike trail was still covered in snow and mud, so contestants had to run with bikes in tow.

"We scouted it out a few days before. We weren't even going to try and ride in the woods," Curtiss said. "Mud was everywhere."

Last year, just six teams entered the race. On Saturday, 15 teams lined up on the Unity College soccer field. Race organizer Zach Schmesser, in his first year organizing the race, was glad to see the race grow.

"Last year was definitely like a building year for (the race)," Schmesser said. "My goal for this year was to double the attendance."

To avoid bottlenecks along the course, teams left the start in two minute intervals. Each team's start was counted down by the athletes waiting their turn. When those running the Unity 5K (road races don't bore everybody), they got a loud cheer from the adventure racers, too.

Curtiss and Kern, a.k.a. The Lost Boys, were the third team out, and after they were the first team back, and they took time to collapse at the finish and drink some water, they lit cigars. They had no idea if they had won yet, it just seemed appropriate.

As it turned out, Curtiss and Kern and the entire field were blown away by Team Extreme, also known as Eric Fluette and Josh Nelson. Both Unity sophomores, Fluette and Nelson were the first team to arrive at the start on Saturday morning, already on their bikes and ready to go. They started 13th of 15 teams, and when their time was adjusted for the staggered start, Team Extreme had finished the course in 1 hour, 48 minutes and 4 seconds. Just about two minutes faster than The Lost Boys.

"It wasn't bad once we got started," Nelson said.

"We just kept the mindset of have fun," Fluette said.

The only thing that slowed them down, Fluette and Nelson said, was the high water. At one point on the Sandy Stream, they had to row to the shore and dump the water out of their canoe. Other than that, it was go, go, go.

"We were going to try training, but..." Fluette said, dismissing the idea with a flick of his mud-caked wrist. "We just ran through the tough spots and it worked out mint."

Team Extreme, as is turned out, was kind of a misnomer. But who enters a race with the name Team Even Keeled?