The adventure race covers the distance of a marathon - 26.2 miles - sending racers over the course by mountain bike, canoe, and by foot. All three racers have to travel together: there are penalties for any time the racers are more than 100 feet apart. Teams can be comprised of all men, all women, or a combination of the two. The Aroostook Adventure Race (AAR) is heavily sponsored by businesses in the greater Presque Isle area, and serves as a fundraiser for The Aroostook Medical Center (TAMC).

The Piscataquis Team - named the "Piscataquis Mountain Men" - competed together for the first time at this race. The course began at the Skyway Middle School Athletic Center in Presque and worked its way to the Nordic Heritage Ski Center (part of the Maine Winter Sports Centers), also in Presque Isle. Course details were not announced until the start of the race (8:00 AM), when teams ran to a fence to grab their race instructions. The teams were further challenged by being told they must carry a full dozen eggs with them throughout the entire course and keep them in tact until the end. Over the entire course, racers would have to carry a paper "passport" and stamp it at each of 25 checkpoints.

The course began with a ~15 mile mountain bike ride along fields and wooded trails, and through deep mud holes and down steep banks. As an added wrinkle, racers had to get off their bikes near the end of the mountain bike course and each run through a 100' long trench filled with water, mud and muck (bonus points given for how muddy each racer gets during the run), all the while carrying the team backpack with the eggs in it.

Following the "mud run" the bikers came to the transition area for canoeing. Here the racers met up with their support person, who helped them replenish water supplies, get team members into life jackets, and sent them back up the trail to wade across the Aroostook River, which was about 150' wide and 1' - 4' deep. At the far side, canoe course instructions were given to the team, and an added wrinkle: each team had to complete a word search puzzle before embarking in their canoe. At this point, the team had been racing for roughly 3 hours, and the humid air in the bright sunlight was reaching temperatures in the mid to upper eighties. Clearly, the longer the teams were on the course, the more difficult even simple tasks would become.

The canoe course was five miles long, with several stops along the way for checkpoints. One checkpoint called for racers to climb the bank of the river and travel through the woods to the Aroostook Cinemas and search for a checkpoint which did not exist: this checkpoint had been stamped for each team, but this was overlooked by most if not all teams. Misdirection like this served as an equalizer for teams of differing abilities.

Canoeing down a slow-moving river sounds easy, but becomes more difficult with three paddlers squeezed into the canoe. Despite the Piscataquis teams' training, navigation proved difficult - a problem exacerbated by the heat.

At the end of the canoe portion, racers had to haul their boat up a bank about 75' and transition to the "trekking" portion of the race. The heat was getting to the racers, causing movement to be slow and deliberate. The team had been racing at a steady pace for over four hours at this point, now reaching the height of the day.

Racers were instructed to walk through a nearby campground and begin orienteering their way to the next checkpoint. A map was provided and the most direct course crossed numerous fields, ski trails, power lines, ATV / Snowmobile trails and mountain bike trails, with some checkpoints located along each. Some teams - including the Piscataquis Mountain Men - overshot some of the checkpoints, causing the team to backtrack and try to recover bearings in unfamiliar territory. The Piscataquis team had difficulty finding checkpoints 23 and 25, problems made worse by one team member having run out of water, and the unexpected backtracking having caused at least an hour delay and several additional miles of walking in open fields and thick woods. When things seemed the most desperate and the team was completely exhausted and unclear of their location, the final checkpoint was found as well as the finish line at the Nordic Ski Heritage Center - only 500' away!

An added wrinkle to the finish was when the purpose of the dozen eggs was revealed. Each team's support person had to take their team's eggs to the top of a footbridge and drop the unbroken eggs one at a time to the team members ~20' below. Each egg successfully caught and returned to its crate would result in 5 minutes beings deducted from the team's time. The Piscataquis Mountain Men had surprisingly kept all of their eggs in tact over their journey, and caught ten out of the twelve eggs dropped from the bridge. The team crossed the finish line seven hours after starting the 26.2 miles long course, which was made longer by navigational errors. The Piscataquis Mountain Men - finishing 19th out of 25 teams overall - were met with cheers from a crowd of over 100 participants and spectators at the Nordic Ski Heritage Center. The organizers of the event took excellent care of the participants, from taking and developing before and after photos of the teams, providing a great barbecue at the end of the race, and having safety checks throughout the course. It was a very well-prepared event.

The Piscataquis team was pleased with its successful completion of the race, which team member John Simko called "the most difficult endurance event I have ever completed". Jonathan Pratt agreed with this statement, adding that "from now on, when I finish a road race, I'll be asking, 'what else have you got?'" Keith Kendall said this was an accomplishment he will remember for the rest of his life. The team could not have completed the course without the great organizational effort before, during, and even after the race by Lisa Simko, with strategic support from Roger Merchant. "Adventure racing is a team effort, and the strength of any team comes from its ability to work together, not the strength of any given member. We had a great team made of friends who grew stronger from the intense physical challenge we completed together. If 'that which doesn't kill you only makes you stronger', then we're now ready for just about anything" said team member John Simko.

John Simko, Town Manager of Greenville; Jonathan Pratt, Executive Director of the Moosehead Lake Region Chamber of Commerce; Keith Kendall, electrician and volunteer firefighter in Guilford; Lisa Simko, Paramedic for Mayo EMS; and Roger Merchant, Photographer and Community Developer for the UMaine Cooperative Extension Service in Dover-Foxcroft, are all interested in working with other volunteers to develop a similar event somewhere in Piscataquis County. If you have interest or ideas for starting such an annual event, please contact John Simko at 695-3430 or by email John@GreenvilleME.com.