Where do I even start? I guess the best place is by thanking our wonderful crew who not only provided the proper amounts of pampering and discipline, but also because of their quick thinking kept us in the race when things took a turn for the worse. To Angie and Julie, thank you for everything.
At race check-in when Robyn Bennincasa and Team Earthlink followed by Danelle Ballangee and Team Balance Bar walked in, we quickly realized we were in the big leagues (Robyn and Danelle, are two of the best, male or female, adventure racers in the world). But hey, that's why we're there; we wanted to know where we stood.
The start was a staggered start at Grand Central, we where the 35th team out. The first leg was a 7-8 mile run. Out first stop was Carnegie Hall; then the United Nations; followed by a trip to Madison Square Gardens. Upon our arrival at the garden we were told to drop the packs and hit the stairs. Nine stories later we had to answer questions based on checkpoints we had visited. Nine stories? Was this the stair climb we had been training for? Man, this was going to be easy,,,, Yeah right!
After another run across town, we made it the Battery Park Harbor. We were then told that because of the weather and water conditions the race director had to remove the first part of the paddle, which as trip around the Statue of Liberty. That was OK by us, so we started out on a 14-mile, upstream paddle in 4-6 foot swells white capping over our kayaks. There were times when we paddled to stay in one place, we were facing 30-40 mile an hour winds, but we kept going, we even managed to pass more boats then passed us. After 3 hours or so of paddling we arrived at Columbia University to transition to the bikes. The transition was quick, it was raining and we were wet, so there was no need to change clothes, so off we went. We rode to Van Courtland Park to start the bike orienteering course. This is where it got interesting. We found the first three points with little problem, but it was eating up a lot of time and we had a cut off to think about. The 4th point was a disaster; we actually found number 5 looking for number 4. At that point we made a decision that saved our race. We decided to blow the rest of the bike points and go to the foot orienteering course. We started the foot course and it was just as tough. At one point there were 20 races combing the woods trying to local a point, it looked like a search and rescue operation. After, two point in a driving rain, we applied our strategy of wanting to run the whole course and headed out. This turned out to be a great decision. After the foot course it was back on our bikes to Yankee Stadium. Once around "The House the Ruth Built" and we headed back to Colombia, through a neighborhood I wouldn't haven't driven through in the middle of night. But, other than a few strange looks we had no problems.
At Columbia, we were told that the in-line skating section has been removed due to weather. This meant our crew drove us to our next location, so we piled in the Aztek and started eating. A few minutes later we arrived at Hudson River Park and the start of the scooter. At first this was really cool, we went down the West Side Highway and then headed towards our next checkpoint, the Empire State Building. Upon arrival at the Empire State Building we were once again told to drop the packs and hit the stairs. This time is was 86 stories, we made the round trip, which included a quick trip to the observation deck, in 45 minutes. Then it was back to scootering. Soon the city was waking up and we were dodging traffic on our handy little scooters. We managed to scooter to Central Park without incident. There we made our way around to different spots where we had to write down bits of trivia to be quizzed on later. We then hit Broadway, again, (this is were I should add we saw more of the "Lights on Broadway" then we ever cared to. After Broadway, we scootered our way through Time Square and out of Manhattan. After an hour more or so of the scooter, we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge and hit the subway for a ride to Shea Stadium. Our arrival at Shea was met with mixed blessings. This is were I was informed that my bike had fell off the bike rack and had been destroyed. But thanks to the quick thinking of our crew, all was not lost. They had raced across town to Julie's house and brought her bike back. It was a great move. After Angie changed a bike tire for the first time in her life, we were back in business. With Patrick on Julie's bike and me on his, we headed to Rockaway Beach. By now the sun was out and we were getting baked, but we pressed on. After a quick stop at Rockaway and it was off to Coney Island and Nathan's Hot Dog stand. It was around 1230 and we knew at this time we had to make the next transition by 1:30. We made it with 30 minutes to spare. We left the checkpoint with one other team; we were later told that we were the last teams allowed to continue of the full course. Our race strategy had paid off. The next section was the triad, Patrick in-lined, Chris and I split biking and scooter. About half though the triad went had one of our scary moments, Chris was attempting to get out of traffic and onto the sidewalk and took an endo across the sidewalk. She sat up, dusted off her legs, picked up her glasses and carried on. A few minutes later I asked Chris if she was OK, and she almost went blank, she looked at me and said she felt faint. See stepped off the scooter and sat down on the sidewalk. I was worried and she was a trooper. She took a couple of bites of food, asked if I minded switching so she could ride and we were off again. Later she said she had hit her head and was a little worried, but you would have never noticed.
After the triad we started the death march. We had approximately a 10-mile trek to the Manhattan Ferry. Chris wanted to run, I didn't, so we compromised, run a block, walk a block. We did this for an hour and made good time, we left the other team in the dust. The ferry only runs once an hour on the weekends, and as we got closer we started wondering did we just miss one, will it be there, and so forth. With about a half mile to go, the other team caught up. We walked the last part together. We entered the harbor, still wondering about the ferry, it was 4:26 and we ask someone who told us we had 4 minutes until the next ferry. It was a new race as we sprinted to the dock and walked on as if we had planned it that way.
Once we arrived in Manhattan we had 3 more checkpoints and the finish. First stop was Federal Hall and then a trip to the Ghost Buster Firehouse. Now all that was left was a two-mile trek to the last checkpoint. We ran a little and walked little until we could see the finish line. We picked up the pace and ran under the banner 27:50 minutes after we began. We finished together, in good mental and physical condition. Twenty some teams finished the full course and we felt proud to be one of them. Next up: Team Quixote takes on the Beast of the East.