I decided I was going to do a 44-hour Adventure Race in Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania. I had never done one and I didn't know what it was all about, so, naturally, in my style, decided to go for it.
I've always called myself an idiot. I know I can be less dumb than I probably put out to be, but I'm an idiot. Any junior enlisted sailor knows what gets you in trouble... Boredom. And I think that boredom is what brings the biggest idiot out in me.
This year hadn't been my year for racing. Boot Camp and "A" School got me pretty out of shape for the bike. I've struggled in races and I've only gotten on the podium for a second place on one time trial, albeit a hilly time trial, which hilly isn't my forte, but still. The fitness is coming back quickly but man, it sucks going from being top contender to going back to the bottom of the totem pole in the field.
Not too long ago I saw a teammate posted about needing a female for an adventure race. I later learned that "elite" teams in Adventure Racing need at least one female since not very many females take the beating. It makes sense. If you have a female than can take this brutality, it should be called an elite team. I didn't really know what Adventure Racing was and I knew I had good endurance, although it hasn't been my year, so I replied with something along the lines of "if my Chain of Command lets me." When I brought it up to my CoC, they were all for it and started to do the paperwork needed for me to go before I could even say, "HELL YEAH I'LL GO." They pretty much did that for me.
Oh... Oh, shit. They're letting me go. Okay then.
I was pretty much balls deep into this now. I got my plane ticket and my arrangements to go to this race. My husband was supportive, though understandably skeptic of it. Oh, I also got a bike box since I'ver never traveled with a bike via plane and I wanted to ride my Grammo Toa during this race, not rent some other bike.
Crap! I'm balls deep now.
So, I get to the air port, and it was nerve wracking because the key to my bike case broke and it was all messed up, so I thought my new beautiful Toa was going to get messed up on the ride over. It didn't, but that's all I could think of. Five hours later, I got my stuff and met up with my team leader, who is a seasoned and amazing Adventure Racer, and went to his home, where he and his family were nice enough to host me.
We packed up and left for the race.
It was supposed to be about a three-hour ride. It wasn't, because there was so much traffic. Holy crap, what the hell? So much traffic there. Also, it's nothing like the West Coast. If you drive 20 minutes (maybe with limited traffic) on the West Coast, you get to the next town. In the East Coast, you get through like five state lines. It was crazy.
So like we got there and set up camp and met out teammate Dustin.
In the morning, I should have thrown up because I was so nervous but I didn't, and then we went to check in, and we got our stuff, and Dash did our map stuff. Dustin knew some of it, but I don't know maps at all, I know charts (FYI Maps = land, Charts = water... I'm Navy.. I don't know shit about maps), and we got our gear together and all of that and waited for the start time. It was cut close and Dash had his work cut out for him with the
And we started going up the mountain. I saw a few people in a single speed, which I though was crazy, going up the mountain, but up the mountain I was going about my 8 to 12-ish hour speed. It was pretty comfortable except the humidity. Holy shit... I was already sweating up a hill I normally am okay going up... it was bad and I became concerned. If it's this bad now, how bad is it going to be later? But then I decided that it's all fire roads and I can just grind it out. And I did.
We got to the first transition area after some riding.
As we kept going through the race, my brain kept fucking with me.
Hey! My brain would say.
What? I'd answer.
No... What are you doing?
What do you mean?
What are you doing? You've never done this? The most you've done is like.... 20 miles uphill. Give up.
But why?
Because it's over your limit.
Okay... I'll let my team leader know at the top of this hill.
I fucking hope so. You're too far and out of shape for this. Tell them!!
And we trekked. I thought that "trekking" was like.... the kind of trail running/hiking I do; pretty technical but you know, there's a trail. Nope. We went up shit I didn't even think we'd do and then went down it. I felt like I was going to die. Not only was the vegetation attacking and eating me alive, we were going down the fucking mountain and I couldn't find my footing at all. I was completely out of my element and I had no idea what to do... besides just keep going... or letting a bear eat me. That was also an option that came into my mind.
We got to some of the check points, one way the fuck up the mountain, and then we trekked down, in which we were going down some creek bed or I don't know what the hell and we had to climb down. Climb, not walk, not run, not slide, climb. I've never done anything like that before.
Yeah, we're way up there and we have to go back down... all the way down. This was only hour 6 of a 44-hour race.
I was struggling down the mountain. I was getting cut up because I didn't realize what "trekking" in Adventure Racing was, and I just couldn't figure out how to get my footing down the mountain whereas my teammates looked like experienced billy goats. And because it was such a struggle for me and at this point, though I didn't know, I had sprained my knee pretty badly... like super bad I'm still recovering from it, that we got to the Transition Area cutoff by mere seconds. I wish I was exaggerating but I wasn't.
We took a break in which I contemplated on whether I was dead or if this was a bad dream or something, ate food, got fresh water (we had gotten some water when we were climbing down the creek thing or whatever, so fresh water was awesome), changed back into bike stuff, and headed back out, which I don't know, man.
My knee was bothering me while I was riding but I figured it was just because I just climbed up and down some fucking mountain like a three-legged mentally challenged donkey. I fell back a bit and Dash asked my why I was falling back when we were going at an easy-ish pace. I didn't have an answer for that... I was wondering the same thing, so I just kept on pedaling.
We had more climbing, more this, more that, hills that kept kicking my ass. My brain wouldn't shut up, my knees were feeling weird, I was struggling on things I don't normally struggle with on the bike. Granted, I was 20 pounds heavier due to my pack, but I just didn't get why life was such a struggle. I was breaking and I didn't know what to do. My brain started to go into panic mode because I should have quit, but I kept going for some stupid reason, and I kept breaking more and more.
We rode through the night. I actually had a few hours where I felt pretty awesome. I was riding well, I had fun, the downhills were kick ass and my body was, "WE WORK NIGHTS I KNOW WHAT WORK AT NIGHT IS!!!" so I was a bit more in my element. We went to some checkpoints, strategically not going to the northern-most checkpoints, and grabbed the checkpoints we could while going to our next mandatory checkpoint, a 24-hour gas stating, which, unlike the first mandatory checkpoint, we reached five hours early.
This gas station had some awesome pizza roll things and I tried eating one. It was rough. My body just didn't want to cooperate, but I ate as much as I could, got some Gatorade (which I never drink but I think that shit saved me on this race), chatted with some other racers and found out that they, too, decided to skip the northern checkpoints, some were also struggling in the hills, and so on. We moved on.
It was cold as can be but we rode on through the night. I broke again, my brain wouldn't shut up, I was struggling. We got more check points, I kept struggling. I just didn't know what to do. I kept pedaling but I was so out of my comfort zone and my body's limits that I just didn't know what to do besides keep following my teammates. So I did just that. My knee was hurting a bit more but oh well.
We kept going through some fun trails and then they got super technical. They got to the point where we couldn't ride, and we hiked the hike-a-bike trails of hell. They were pretty bad. We got to the checkpoint we needed and kept going, hiking our bikes more because the trails were just not rideable. I was getting annoyed because, god dammit, bikes are for riding, not fucking hiking! But, whatever, I was still struggling and it sucked and I hated my life.
It became day time and then I realized that this wasn't a nightmare, it was real life. Shit. But some of the views were pretty sweet.
We kept going while getting checkpoint to our next mandatory checkpoints and transition area, which the cutoff was at 3p.m. We got lost once trying to find the trail, and had to hike a bike more. At this point my knee was absolutely killing me. Great. So my brain finally shuts the fuck up but now my knee is bitching about being hurt or something. Whatever. We got to our transition area and Dash had promised us a nice break, where I took about a 45-minute nap. We were late but we didn't get the penalty because so many teams missed the cutoff time due to the race promoter misjudging how long it would take to get there. Sweet, good news. The other good news is that the trekking in that area wasn't mandatory so we rode on to our next transition, which was the kayaking. WOO!
On the way to this transition area I literally had a mental, emotional, and physical breakdown and was literally crying because it sucked and I was hurting like crazy. I've never been so out of touch with my body and it was freaking me out so I broke down and had a total meltdown and tantrum. We sat a bit and took a break.
After that meltdown, we rode some more and went to the kayak portion, which was a ton of fun. 10 miles and 2-1/2 hours later, we were at our second to last mandatory transition area/checkpoint. Holy shit, I've made it this far. The race promotor was there and checked in on me, which I thought was super nice of him. My knee was so bad at this point that I fell when I went up the stairs to go to the bathrooms.
There were more checkpoints to get but none were mandatory. We decided to just walk the 8-ish miles back to the bikes and come back to finish the race. 16 miles and a severely sprained knee were in the way of me finishing this race. That's it.
Too bad that the walk got harder and harder. My knee wasn't doing well. No matter how much we walked we seemed to never get there. I actually don't even remember part of the walk because I fell asleep. Apparently I was walking so slow that Dash and Dustin were wondering what was going on (besides the hurt knee) and when they came back for me, that's when I woke up. I started walking faster then, the hallucinations from sleep deprivation were so trippy, too.
Then... there were lights. It was the little town, and Dash said it was about another half mile or so for the bikes.
We got to the bikes and we got ready. Luckily, because of my cycling background, my body just said, "Fuck you, brain. I know how to do this." I went into auto mode and I was able to hop on, tell myself it's a flat 8 miles... Go! My body knew what to do, though I was so hurt I wasn't able to do a full revolution with my right leg, but fuck it... we had 8 miles and I would be done. Officially done. We kept going and Dash stopped once because he was falling asleep on the bike. We took a little break and kept going. We TTd it back to the finish.
And there it was. Ohiopyle. We finished. I got off my bike by the last checkpoint so the race promotors could see I was with them but I sat on the grass. I was done. I went beyond my body's and mind's limits, but while many times my brain said I needed to quit and I told myself I needed to quit, I never actually told my teammates that I wanted to quit. It was done.
We headed back to the campground, showered, and passed the fuck out.
We went to the breakfast buffet the race provides for us and then the awards. We got 5th place... our 2/3rds novice team beat some very, very experienced teams. The race promoter even gave me a shout out because it was my first race. Normally, people don't make a 44-hour race that's this hard (apparently this race was pretty hard even for experienced adventure racers) their first race. It was done and over with and I was able to wear my Equinox Traverse shirt I got.
As far as aftermath, I didn't realize how badly I was hurt. My knee is just now, two weeks later, feeling better on rides. I was finally able to ride a few little hills on my mountain bike. Tomorrow, June 6th, I'll actually try to ride my road bike. I'll probably lose a couple or three toe nails, but so far they're being champs and hanging on. Throughout the race I mentioned that this type of racing was probably something I'll finish and cross off my bucket list, now I'm wanting to train to do another one, a shorter race, but I really want to do another Adventure Race. I'm changing my diet, trying to trim a few more pounds, and trying to figure out how to make my giant fucking quads smaller (the struggle of a sprinter).
I'm glad I had awesome teammates. I would have never made it without their support, and I'm so happy my team provided me with this opportunity. I went to a place I never thought I'd go visit, DC and places in Pennsylvania, and I went to a place mentally, emotionally, and physically that I never knew I'd ever reach. Overall, this was an amazing experience and if I can get through this, I can get through a lot. I'm part of an official finishing elite team!
I want to do another Adventure Race.
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