Why the middrift jerseys?

OK…so now I'm sure you are getting the feeling that the race didn’t go as planned…but now since some time has passed and we are no longer frusterated and embarrassed we can laugh about it…right!

The race was set up starting with a 5 mile off-trail run, followed by a 12.5 mile bike, followed by another short 1 mile run, lastly followed by a brainteaser. During the run there were about 12 check points. At each check point we were to collect a poker chip, and at the final "brainteaser" portion of the race we would use the poker chips with letters on them to unscramble a word. Our run started out great, we were in the middle of the pack and things couldn’t be better. We were with around a lot of teams, and we were in this race!! We were! After about 4 miles of running and collecting poker chips we came to the next clue "on the island of lake JB". There was only one kayak and probably about 8 teams at the lake when we arrived. If we wanted to gain some ground, one of us had to volunteer. I volunteered, I like swimming I really do, and I was so ready to just jump in and get it done. (Now this race is south of Pittsburgh, In April…this lake was probably frozen solid only one month ago). It was freezing at first and so so cold, and I had a life vest on but managed to swim some sort of version of freestyle. As I started swimming I was feeling good, I was warming up! I climbed up the rocks and grabbed the poker chip…I did a little woo hoo dance for Lisa, but she just looked at me and said "Come on K, Let’s GO". I saw other teams were putting the chip in their mouth so they wouldn’t lose it on the swim back. I knew I couldn’t do that because A) I would swallow it or B) I would drop it...so I held on to it in my fist with all my might. I started doing my free style swimming again but felt strangled by the life vest so quickly flipped myself over and started doing my famous backstroke, I think its called elementary back stroke (I know I know…but we are still AR newbies). I quickly got out of the water, and lisa helped me put my shoes on while I put my shirt on! We were off…leaving those other teams behind who were waiting for the kayak. We eventually returned to T/A and hopped on our bikes for the bike portion of the race. I saw my long sleeve shirt, and laughed at myself thinking "why did I even bring that…haha…I don’t need it…

errr…I did need it. We were off on the bikes, and I was soaking wet, but it felt good at the time because it was cooling me down. But as the sunset and the tempature dropped! I got cold really fast. It didn’t help I suppose that we were out on our bikes for over 2 hours and only on the second checkpoint! It occurred to me that we werent going to be back for awhile. I could make it being that cold for a little longer, but knowing I would be out there for a while longer freaked me out. I was saying to Lisa "im freezing, my teeth are chattering" and she would ignore me, which was good, I shouldn’t have been complaining, but I was starting to get worried about my body and started complaining more and more, then Lisa came over "oh my gosh, I totally forgot that you were wet" she gave me her shirt, and put the little mid-drift of a jersey on. What a great teammate I have, to take her shirt off her back for me. It felt so good to have a warm shirt. We were back on our mission of finding "The Big Tree at Tee #4". Lisa looked good in the mid-drift but was so embarassed. We were approaching another team, and she looked back at me and said "Now K, when we go up to this team do not shine your headlight on me, I don’t want them to see me in this bathing suit like jersey." We approached the team and I completely forgot not to look at her, I noticed that she was hunching her back so much so that the bottom of her shirt would hit the top of her pants, then I got it again "the SIDE EYE" and the "LIP SNARL" oh SHOOT! I quickly remembered and turned my head away so no one could see her in the jersey alone, but the damage had already been done. The team we had asked for help had quickly pedaled away, judging my partner for just wearing her jersey, and they ignored us for the rest of the race.