Pop quiz. What side of the river is "river right" when paddling upstream? It may not be what you think it is. It certainly wasn't what I thought it was at this weekends Geico sponsored Ocmulgee Adventure Race.

Carol Garrity, Allen McAdams and I teamed up to tackle the GOAR in Macon, Georgia. The race benefits the Ocmulgee Heritage Trail and this year we helped raise over $75,000.

The race started off Saturday morning with a lap of the 1 mile track at City Park. The catch was that we had to have our bikes, but couldn't ride them. After the quick lap we got our race instruction packets, which then gave us textual locations of all the CPs for the day. The first section was a fast road ride through downtown Macon. Since the CPs weren't plotted on the map, Allen was reading off the street addresses of the points and I was frantically looking at the map trying to figure out the best way to get there while avoiding parked cars. This was actually a pretty effective way to split up the pack, but definitely gave a distinct advantage to those who knew the area. We made one wrong turn which put us a little behind, but we knew it was early in the race, and anything could happen.

As we picked off the remaining bike points we ended up on the Ocmulgee Heritage Trail riding flat out with Allen leading the charge, while I was towing Carol as fast as I could. We had a very close call on one narrow, blind, corner on the trail when Carol swung a little wide and narrowly avoided a head on collision with another racer coming the other way. Several minutes later, we weren't so lucky. As we got the last bike CP and headed for the transition to the paddle, Carol tried to hook up on the tow again. I heard her say something about going right, so I hugged the right side of the trail. I was supposed to hear "I'm coming up on your right." The end result was a touch of the tires and Carol hitting the deck hard. Looking back I was afraid something was going to be broken, but lucky for us it was just some road rash (if you call that lucky). She was a trooper and got right back on and we transitioned to the paddle.

The first paddle check point, CP8, was described as river right, just north of the I-16/I-75 interchange, visible from the water. We portaged the boat up to the overpass and scanned the far bank for the CP. When we didn't see it, we put in and started paddling upstream. We debated how far "just north" means and figured it could mean a couple hundred meters, given the map coordinate we were given. After paddling almost a kilometer and we didn't see it, we figured they didn't place the point and we continued on.

The rest of the course was pretty straight forward. The paddle was broken up with a trek in a very sandy area, which required a short portage with the boat. Unfortunately we chose the wrong takeout point and ended up having to drag our 17 foot boat through some really tight underbrush. By the time we got back on the river we were in 4th place. On the paddle back to the bikes, I started cramping up pretty bad and was trying to re-hydrate and refuel. It was bad enough that my forearms started tightening up while holding the paddle! Thankfully it was a short paddle before we got back on the bikes.

We had a short ride back to the start/finish area where we got ready for a short river swim. The swim was quite refreshing in the afternoon heat, and we all wished it had been longer. As we got off the river and checked in at CP16 we were surprised to learn we had moved up into 2nd, passing 2 of the teams that had been ahead of us. As we looked back we saw one team had put into the river much further upstream and were still swimming towards us, the other had run down the levee and were opting for a shorter swim, but hadn't gotten in the water yet. With both teams on our heels, we ran the last several miles punching the last 3 CPs and making the dash for the finish line.

We finished the course having only missed the elusive CP8 and had to wait until other teams came in to ask if anyone found it. Turns out almost half the teams did find it we just got a little impatient and paddled right by it. The CP had apparently been less than15 feet from where we put in, hidden in some brush on river left. We spoke with the race director and explained that river right is only on the right when you are facing downstream, I can see how this is an easy thing to get confused on, as I had to double check myself. In all fairness, the race director did not make a decision on if that point would count and said that they would review the evidence and make the call later.

The outcome remains to be seen, but we had a good time and will be back for more, once Carol's road rash heals up and my calves loosen up.

-Peter