Your favorite winter adventure race is back! Over the past 13 years, the Chill has given many of you the excuse to get outside in the dead of winter for a fun and adventurous day of racing in the “off season”. We are excited to bring this popular event back to Cumberland State Forest and Bear Creek Lake, nestled in the heart of central Virginia.
If you need an excuse to get outside, get off the trainer or treadmill and spend a day in the woods—with a chance of some very cold weather, crisp air, clear runnable woods, and NO creepy crawlers out and about—this is the race for you! It’s the perfect race to gauge your off-season fitness, work on some racing skills, race with new teammates, or even just see your adventure racing buddies who you missed all winter.
Over the course of 8-10 hours (the final time will be determined once the course is done and fully vetted), solo racers, and teams of 2-4 will trek, bike and full on navigate their way through a fun, challenging, and creative race course. Due to the winter season, there will be NO paddling in this race.
As is standard for our events, strategy will be key and you can expect a lot of decision making and route choices on both bike and foot. While this race won’t necessarily be designed with the beginner in mind, it is a great race to get your feet wet, learn a few things, test your gear and tolerance for racing in a cold environment and, if you're new to the sport, work on your navigation.
While we are still in the early stages of the course design, we do anticipate roughly half of the course being on foot and half on bike, time-wise. Of course this is ultimately up to each team and how fast they move, route choices, race goals, etc.
All checkpoints will be optional and all TA’s (transitions areas) are mandatory. Teams will be able to do as much of, or as little of, the course as they feel comfortable doing in the allowed time.