The morning of the first race…

Race weekend: June 21, 2008. Hidden Valley Resort in PA. Actual race day was early Saturday morning, so we decided to camp out at a nearby state park the night before so we would be at the race on time. It was just our luck that it decided to downpour on Friday night, which made for quite the camping adventure. Luckily, we didn’t set up camp over a small creek like the summer before, but that is a story on its own. The camping wasn’t the worst, actually it was pretty fun and we ended up meeting a couple adventure racers who were camping there too.

Race morning, excitement was turning to some nervousness and the only way to combat the nervousness was to blare whatever station came in on the radio and scream along to a Beastie Boy song. We zipped into the parking lot and spied fellow racers unloading gear. We turned down the music and tried not to look like newbies. Of course, as we were unpacking, a guy asked us if we had an extra tire and of course, we didn’t (note to self: poss pack extra tires for the next race). We followed our fellow racers to the TA (transition area) and started to organize our little amount of gear. A kindred spirit helped us with our tire pressure (note to self: investigate appropriate tire pressure for mt biking) and we were feeling ready to race…about 30 mins before the actual start time. During the 30 mins, we had time to reflect on the fact that teams were not talking to the other teams and everyone was very serious. We could barely illicit a smile from anyone besides Frank and Bethann, the race organizers. Were we in over our heads?? About 5 min before the race started, Frank called all teams over to talk about the course. During his description, we learned that the biking and running were both going to be longer than we thought AND there was going to be a short swimming element involved. Oh. Man. It was too late to back out, so we trekked on.

Training for the first race...

Our first adventure race was something special. But let’s first talk about the training we did before it. Actually we can talk about the almost non-existent adventure race specific training we did or didn’t do before it. We knew prior to the race that there would be a mountain biking element that could range from 8-10 miles. We also knew the trail running would be 4-6 miles. We thought we would be OK with the running because we could run 4 miles without stopping …on a flat, paved surface. Now the biking…we knew we would be in a little over our heads, but that was definitely an understatement. Prior to the race we took our bikes out about 3 times, maybe. Twice on a paved surface and we probably biked 6-8 miles. We also took the bikes out once on a “trail”. I put “trail” in quotes because it was a trail for about 200 feet, then it tapered off into wooded, unmarked terrain. In the 15 mins that it took us to bike into the woods, realize there wasn’t really a trail, cross a small creek carrying our bikes, then turn around and head back out to the cars; Kristen cut her leg and was bleeding and she also managed to come in contact with poison ivy. What goes on?? That sums up our training. Although we felt poss a bit unprepared, excitement was still at an all time high.

How we Started Adventure Racing

It all started with one simple email. I read in a Women's Health magazine about the new sport of adventure racing. I had never heard of such an endeavor that would combine all the things we love: running, biking, and your best bud! I quickly googled Adventure Race Ohio, and really couldn’t find anything, then I found a sprint type adventure race series in Pennsylvania and emailed it to Lisa. The subject of my email was Adventure Race Poss? "Can we do something like this, this summer" I wrote "I know we cant do this one!!! but I want to find an adventure race we could do together, with mountain biking, and kayaking, and running!! What do you think?" I asked. Lisa replied in about 8 minutes and 30 seconds with this "I'M TOTALLY LOVING THE ADVENTURE RACE IDEA!!!! WHAT A GREAT FIND K!!! I WOULD DO ONE THIS WEEKEND IF IT WAS POSSIBLE!!!! OH MAN! I'M SO EXCITED ALREADY ABOUT DOING ONE!!!!! IT'S ON MY LIST AND NOT COMING OFF UNTIL WE COMPETE...NOW WE NEED TO GET YOU A MOUNTAIN BIKE!"

At the time we had just run our first 5k of the year, it was April of 2008. Lisa was getting married and going on her honeymoon in a month, I didn’t even own a mountain bike and the most we had ever raced up until this point was a 5k. But somehow we knew this sport was made for girls like us. We eventually found a race. The race would be on June 21st 2008, at Hidden Valley as well as the Forbes State Forest. We had two months to train, for something we would NEVER be ready for!

Official GGB Logo :)

Logo courtesy of Zack Hall. Thank you for doing such a wonderful job - we can't wait to see it on the jerseys!!

How did you come up with Green Governor BEASTS?

The partial formation of the name goes back to the Julie Zajac 5K at John Carroll University on Sunday, April 13th 2008. It was a rainy, cold morning and therefore a lime green raincoat was needed. The lime green raincoat made subsequent appearances in future races, along with the immergence of a bright green raincoat. Pretty soon, we were planning on any coordinating green apparel to boost morale during races throughout the summer. That explains the “Green”. Now the “Governor” is a little more complicated and possibly embarrassing, but we know you won’t judge. Some of you may have heard of America’s next Top Model. During cycle 4 of ANTM, the girls had to take an acting class. They were challenged to learn a script in a foreign dialect and then they were judged on their performance. A line from the script is “Hello Governor. Lovely day, isn’t it?” They, of course, have to say it with a crazy accent and it comes out like this “’Ello Gov-nor. Luv-ly day, i-n it” or something like that. ANYHOW (we told you this was a little complicated), we started repeating that line to each other and using an accent during our phone conversations. The line transformed from the whole sentence into, ‘ello gov! Pretty soon, it was just gov or governor, depending on our cheekiness. Cheekiness may not be the right word to use, but whatever. Lastly, “BEASTS”. This is fairly simple and self-explanatory. We are fierce, competitive and intimidating beasts – it had to be incorporated into the name. Also, it we think it might make the all guy teams we compete against a little nervous.