At the race brief, I asked race director Don Mann if he planned on canceling because it wasn't raining. He laughed and said he would try and find some rain. The race was scheduled to start at 7am with a prologue run. Five minutes before the start Don announced that racer Mark Sells, wanted to know where the rain was, so he added a prologue swim to the race in addition to the run. Nobody believed him at first, but I assured them he wasn't kidding. So at 7am we ran down to the river and jumped in, swam around the Red Bull buoy, and then ran uphill to the starting line to get on our bikes.
The bike section was interesting, you had to rely more on the passport than the maps, which I wasn't comfortable with. The first part was a 10-mile single track. There were no long slow climbs hills, but the number of small ups and downs more than made up for it, because there were very few flats. At the end of this section (although Angie won't admit it), we were doing pretty well; we were in 12th place out of 29 teams. The next bike leg is where the maps were of little use. So we started looking for road signs and headed out on what "should" have been a 22-25 mile bike ride. The first part was 10 miles of roads to a pipeline intersection, followed by three miles of single track to another road. At this time Angie was getting a little tired of mud, logs and tight trails, but she was hanging. We made it to the road and headed to the transition, which was only ten miles or so away. Ooops! We were biking so well, that we missed checkpoint 5. The staff person who should have been there had been replaced with a punch point. And since we were looking for a person, we totally missed the punch hanging from a tree. We went about two miles down the hill past the checkpoint. We ran into some other racers who were also lost, but had seen the punch point. They told us the unthinkable: we had to go back up the hill. I felt Angie needed to eat and drink, so I asked her to sit and wait while I and members of two other teams, which did the same thing, went back. As it turned out almost half the field did the same thing. After an hour run up and back we were together again. WHAT!!! While we were gone, it was determined that we should also have turned up the hill. So back up we went, again. After almost two hours of wasted time we were back on track, we thought. At the turn, we took the wrong trail, but fortunately for us it took us to the same place. We had dropped from 12th to 19th, but we were off the bikes.
Time to hike. We gathered our trekking, climbing and water gear and headed out. This was going to be the fun part. We trekked about two hours to the first ropes course. This part was rock scramble, which means you hike up and down rocks with the help of a rope. Angie had never done this, but she had no problems. At the end of the rock scramble was the first cave--Hey! I can see all the way through it; caving's going to be easy (famous last words). After the first cave it was a short hike to the next one. This one had an opening about two feet high and 15 feet wide and NO end in sight. As we were putting our lights and helmets on, another team emerged from the cave. We looked at the course worker who said they'd been lost in there for a while and were coming out to start again. They came out covered in mud and soaking wet. Oh great! They had gone left at the entrance, so we went right and followed the water. After crawling on our stomachs for a while the caved opened up and just ahead there was light. We exited the second cave, headed down a creek bed in search of the last and longest cave. We hit the next cave with enthusiasm (Red Bull promised cool drinks half way through). We started in the wrong direction, but after only 30-40 feet the cave dead-ended; so we turned around. Again, we followed the water and things looked good. The cave stayed open so other than walking in water, it was going good. We found the Red Bull cooler, took a couple for the road and climbed the ladder that we were looking for. At the second level we walked up and out of the cave. Now it was time to head home. We knew at this time we were going to push the 8:30pm cut off, but we headed out. Back able to use the maps again, I knew where we were and where we were going. They only thing between us and the trail we needed was bushwhacking up the side of a mountain. I shot a bearing on the compass and away we went. Once on the trail we headed to the river. We arrived at the river at 8:37 p.m., seven minutes too late. OK, no worries, time to head home. As we started walking up the stairs towards the finish, I thought my race was over. I had been suffering from cramps, but, hey--that's part of racing! About half way up the stairs, my legs locked. I fell down and could not move. I couldn't believe it, I've not finished races for one reason or another in the past, but this was the first time, I didn't think I could physically finish. Truth be told, a small tear may have formed in my eye from the pain and the thought of stopping with a quarter mile to go. Angie started massaging my legs, which hurt, but helped. After a few minutes I was able to stand. A few more minutes and I was able to bend one leg. I started up the stairs one leg at a time. Once at the top, and able to use my legs, I was good to go. We headed to the finish where a climbing wall awaited. Angie climbed that wall like it was down hill. The next and last event was pulling a jeep to the finish line. 14 hours and nine minutes after we began, we finished together and in one piece. Although her body was bruised and beaten, she's already planning her return next year. Welcome Angie to the world of Adventure Racing, I'm very proud of you.
Mark