The First Race (from another point of view)

Prior to the start, we were informed there was a short swimming element involved. One teammate would have to swim across a short lake to retrieve their checkpoint card while the other teammate plotted the checkpoints on a trail map. Kristen volunteered to swim and I was relieved; I was happy that I had avoided getting in the murky water where anything could have been lurking beneath the surface!

The whistle blows and we are off! Kristen jumps into the water with her PFD and I’m plotting the points. While Kristen is cruising across the lake, I plot and then try to have her gear ready when she gets out of the water. We transition quickly and with our maps in hands, we head out on the trail running portion of the race. I won’t go into great lengths about the run, but I will mention the ski hill. To get to the first checkpoint, we had to run up a huge ski hill. It was steep and it almost made you want to call the whole race off. We huffed and puffed and eventually made it to the top. The rest of the run was hilly, kind of muddy and we miraculously stayed near the middle of the pack and got all the checkpoints in order. We were loving life after the running portion.

Back at the transition area we learned that the other teammate will have to swim across the lake to retrieve the biking checkpoint card. Nooooooo!! There was nothing I could do but jump in and stay close to a fellow racer. I even attempted to make small talk while swimming in order to alleviate my nerves, which I learned after the race that the whole conversation could be heard by all the spectators. How embarrassing! Regardless, Kristen had all my gear layed out for me by the time I was done and we were off on the bikes.

The biking portion, ohhh the biking portion. It was a love hate experience, mostly hate. We started off the whole thing on the wrong foot by getting lost on the way to the first checkpoint. We must have carried our bikes more than we rode them and can we say “hills, hills and more hills”!!! Also, some of us, which really means me, don’t like to go downhill at fast speeds. Fast speeds referring to anything over 5 mph, so biking was painful in so many ways. There might have been some tears shed, choice words shouted into the wilderness and even a confession of defeat that was strategically ignored. Our bodies hurt, our loving life attitude was slowly getting snuffed out and we were still friends, but we were reaching the brink of taking our frustration out on each other, something we really wanted to avoid.

Quoting the race summary by Frank: “Seemingly the GRR racers have stepped up their training because only one team—A/R newcomers “Green Governor Beasts”—DNF’d. And they were only two CP’s, a few miles, and a bunch of hills from TA when they succumbed to their better judgment and tossed in the towel so they could “live to fight another day!”

We quit. OK, we hate the word quit, but we were listening to our bodies and we really did want to stay friends and we really wanted to like adventure racing after the race was over. It was a mutual decision and there really wasn’t any regret after. In the van, on the way back to the finish, we made a pact that we wouldn’t decide about any other races until a week had gone by. We didn’t want to make any rash decisions.