** Updated ** October 28, 2003
Sometime during the winter of 2001/2002 I got the crazy idea that I could put together an adventure racing team with some friends of mine and enter a Raid the North 36 hour event. I being a dedicated couch potato having watched plenty of eco-challenges thought that looked like fun and 36 hours should be easy. Next all I had to do is find a couple friends stupid enough to join me in this endeavor. Of course the first person I called was Chris, he was only about 30 or 40 pounds past his prime and always looking for an excuse to punish himself. For the next victim I had no further to look then in the office in which I worked to find Dave. He had the right combination of free time, money to spend on gear and he actually knew how to use a compass. From this humble beginning the team started to take shape and I went so far as entering us under the name Max Payne (short for maximum Hornepayne) and sent in the entrance fee for the New Liskeard race.

This only left one problem, we had no female teammate and the race was starting to get close. I was scouring the team finder database when all of a sudden we got a bite. A courageous young lady by the name of Nathalie Cote said she was interested and wanted to meet the one teammate in her area to see what we were like. Much to everyone’s surprise after meeting Chris she still wanted to join the team. So just like that we had a complete team and with the addition of my brother Dennis Gaudreau and friend Dave Jaremy to handle the support we were ready to race.

Thursday, August 8, 2002

The day starts well enough with Dave and I taking an adventure-racing course from the great Dave Zietsma, whose excellent advice we pretty much forgot once we were on the course. After that we met up with the rest of our teammates at the hotel, where Nathatlie was introduced to the whole team for the first time. The look of concern on her face was very noticeable and understandably so. This group of raw rookies would scare any sensible person.

Friday, August 9, 2002

Race day is finally here and after going through a thorough gear check and for three of us our first rappelling training (we demonstrated our knowledge of the technique by rappelling off a picnic table) we were anxious to get the maps and start planning the route. After receiving the maps and race instructions it was back to the hotel to go to work. And this is where we made our first mistake. We misinterpreted the instructions and plotted the bike drop and CP1 in two separate locations when they were one in the same. So from this interesting start we made our way to the start line which was a mass bike start leading to about 30 kms of biking down hilly rough gravel roads.

The start went well and we made our way solidly into the middle of the pack and eventually grouped up well when about one hour into the race, whoops! Coming down a high-speed hill Nathalie hit a rut and her bike slid out from under her and she went down hard. This event led me to the one truth about adventure racing that I believe I have discovered so far. The women in this sport are way tougher than the guys, as a matter of fact I think the reason they have women on the teams is to keep the guys from whimping out. Nathalie rose from this crash to just dust herself off inspect the damage (scrapped and bruised shoulder, leg and hip, plus a broken bursack) and got back on her bike and kept going. So after just 2 hours on the bikes we checked in at CP1 (should have been the first clue that we had made a mistake) dropped our bikes and headed off into the trek.

We did a really good job of navigating between roads and clear cuts and found a trail leading down to the Montreal River. We were at the river by 3:00am ahead of schedule especially considering we though we were much further back on the map due to our plotting error back in the hotel room. All of a sudden along came team Star Choice and after a short discussion with their navigator and after watching them jump in the river and swim across we knew where we were, sort of. We followed them across the river (my excellent swimming skills barely kept me afloat) and determined that because the road on this side of the river came to an end at some buildings then we must be at the end off a trail that led to a camp on the map. Wrong, we were at a set of building at the end of the road from which the trail to the last camp would start. As it was it just meant that we were going to start our bushwhacking a little further north then we had thought. This also meant that we were headed into thick lowland swamp and balsam forest instead of the highland ridge that we wanted to be on. We pushed on through some of the worst bush I have ever seen but by daylight we broke through onto a cutting road and instantly found another team and followed them for a while. Whoops again! One of the first things Dave Zietsma taught us was to never blindly follow another team and this was why. After about an hour heading in the wrong direction on roads that didn’t match anything on the map that team started heading back towards us saying that they were headed the wrong way. After our two teams navigators talked for a while we established exactly where we were and we headed off on a trail we found to a lake that we had been heading for all night. Once at the lake our team tried a split approach to getting to the end of the lake. Nathalie and I walked in the water just offshore while Dave and Chris followed the lakeshore just a few feet inland. Turns out the inland route was quicker and the team got a little too separated which caused some anxious moments which we quickly put behind us once we regrouped and found the expected quad trail at the end of the lake.

Cp2 appeared soon after and we took a brake to start to tend to the early ominous signs of the blisters to come (see photos if you dare). We then continued on the trek which went from gravel roads to trails back to bushwhacking and finished with a long, very long walk and swim along the side of the Montreal River in the mud and weeds. This is where I discovered I would drink just about anything to stay hydrated and who has the time to bother with pristine anyways. Finally after have started on the trek at about 2:00am it was now about 7:00pm Saturday and we arrived and Cp3 which was TA 1. Tired and relieved to be off our feet we took way too long (as Nathalie continually tried to tell us) in transition and finally headed off onto the Montreal River by canoe with the night skies darkening. Four hours later after paddling through a beautiful warm star filled night we reached portage bay and TA 2. After a marginally quicker transition and a hot meal we said goodbye to our support crew (Mr. Jaremy was in a very good mood after liberating the contents of a bottle of Crown Royal) and headed out on the bikes (after a short delay while Dave headed back to transition to retrieve his compass). The riding was good with even some pavement to help speed up the pace, but the effects of sleep deprivation were starting to show as we were navigating very slowly and carefully at this point. The ride ended with another bike drop and unfortunately we had to trek a mercifully short distance up to the rappel at Devils Rock. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation or maybe it was the peer pressure but we managed to convince ourselves that we could do a 300+ foot rappel with absolutely no experience. Nathalie was the first to go and her experience was obvious as she was gone in a flash and without hesitation. Dave was next and did a remarkable job of disguising his fear as he descended to the lakeshore below. I was next and that is when things started to go wrong. After one false start I then proceeded to lean too far back and slipped off the top of the cliff. Luckily my death grip on the ropes ensured that my prusik did not activate and I was able to start my rappel without further incident. Next up was the extremely nervous Chris. Everything started fairly well and for about the first 40 feet or so it looked like he was going to be able to do it. But and this is a big but, he had on a very heavy pack and was struggling to stay upright. It was a battle he would lose and with that any thought of ever rappelling again, or even ever racing again would be wiped from his mind. After dangling for several minutes screaming for help he was eventually lowered from above and joined us at the bottom. From there it was just a little swimming and a little trekking up along the shore of Lake Temiskaming which brought us to the last TA at about 10:00am. That plus the 45 minute adjustment for the delay at the ropes meant that we actually had a chance at finishing this thing. All that was left was a paddle up Lake Temiskaming past Haillebury and on to the finish line at the beach in New Liskeard a mere 34 hours after we started.

All in all a very successful start to our adventure racing lives for which I owe an awful lot to my teammates who’s relentless never quit attitude established a tradition that Max Payne has continued to show ever since. I also want to take this opportunity to thank Nathalie, for without her combination of skill, determination and experience (which we relied on heavily) our success would not likely have happened. She also established a tradition of excellent teammates that has continued to this day. Everyone at Max Payne wishes her the best of luck with her new team Canadian Outback. As for Chris retirement from racing came too soon and hopefully when the memory of blisters and hanging 300 feet up in the air start to fade you may return someday. Of course this would not have gone so well without the help of Dennis and Dave (Dave even continued to work even trough a strange flu like illness) our intrepid support crew whose hard work was well appreciated.

Andre Gaudreau
Team Captain