There are two things I can count on in every adventure race. First, it’s always a thrilling, yet challenging adventure, thanks to the race directors who dream up these delightfully punishing courses. Second, I can always count on some kind of self-inflicted misadventure. The Teton Ogre 8-Hour Adventure Race was no exception.
I received the map on race morning and eagerly looked at the mapped checkpoints. The initial bike segment was a massive climb over a pass in the Beaverhead Mountains on the Idaho-Montana border. By my estimation it was about 2,500 feet of elevation over a fairly short distance. A significant climb, but manageable – or so I thought.
The route was marked on forest roads, which in my head translated to “smooth-ish gravel, maybe a few rocks.” Even the race director’s warning about “some hike-a-bike” didn’t shake that mental image. I’d just ridden the Unbound Gravel 100 a couple weeks earlier and figured I was in decent shape. Different kind of effort, sure. But still gravel, right?
Wrong. So wrong.
The roads turned out to be a rocky, brutal mess. I ended up pushing my bike uphill for about 80% of the climb — nearly two hours of dragging my wheels through loose rock, steep grades, and existential dread. Downhill wasn’t much better, thanks to the technical terrain. It was humbling. The kind of humbling that makes you reconsider your hobbies.
But I kept moving. That’s a golden rule in AR: always make forward progress.
At this point you may be wondering — where’s the fail in all of this? Sure, I misjudged how tough the route would be, but a couple miles of hike-a-bike isn’t a self-inflicted mishap. But this race was generous — it gave me extra opportunities to suffer.
Fifteen minutes in, I dropped into my lowest gear and immediately ran into problems. The gears were slipping badly, and right after checkpoint one, I managed to wedge my chain between the cassette and spoke protector. Stuck like Pooh in a honey jar. My initial attempts to free the chain by pulling it by hand failed miserably.
Enter Fletcher, a fellow racer and all-around good guy, who stopped to help. After a few failed attempts, he suggested shifting to the big chainring and cranking the pedals. It worked.
I thanked Fletcher profusely for his help. Without it, my day may have ended after one checkpoint. It was a frustrating 15-minute delay, but things were looking up.
Unfortunately, while flipping my bike during the chain surgery, I lost a water bottle — a repeat offense from Unbound 100. Oops. There was no way I was retracing my steps to retrieve it. (Note to self: check bottle cages after mechanical issues.)
In the end, Teton Ogre Adventure Race was the hardest race I’ve done to date. It pushed me to my limits, served up some classic AR mishaps (hello Chisholm Trail), and still somehow left me eager for next year. Because that’s what these races do. They break you a little — and then you come back for more.
